The English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007

,[11] just a little over a year since it had crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 re
gistered user accounts in late February 2006.[12]
About 250,000 new accounts are created every month.[citation needed] Over 800,00
0 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times.[13] Approximately the same n
umber, 300,000 editors, edit Wikipedia every month; of these, over 30,000 perfor
m more than 5 edits per month, and a little over 3,000 perform more than 100 edi
ts per month.[14] By 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been per
formed on the English Wikipedia.[citation needed]
A 2008 survey provided some basic information on the demographics and motivation
s of Wikipedia editors.[15]
As the largest Wikipedia edition, and because English is such a widely used lang
uage, the English Wikipedia draws many users and editors whose native language i
s not English. Such users may seek information from the English Wikipedia rather
than the Wikipedia of their native language because the English Wikipedia tends
to contain more information about general subjects. Successful collaborations h
ave developed between non-native English speakers who add content to the English
Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for them.
Arbitration Committee
Main article: Arbitration Committee (English Wikipedia)
The English Wikipedia has an Arbitration Committee (also known as ArbCom) that c
onsists of a panel of editors that imposes binding rulings with regard to disput
es between other editors of the online encyclopedia.[16] The Committee was creat
ed by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making powe
r he had formerly held as owner of the site.[17][18]
When initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into t
hree groups of four members each.[17][19] Since then, the Committee has graduall
y expanded to its membership to 18 arbitrators.[20]
Like other aspects of the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects have em
ulated the Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions. In 2007, an Ar
bitration Committee was founded on the German Wikipedia called the Schiedsrichte
r.[21]
Varieties of English
Andrew Lih wrote that the English Wikipedia "didn't have the chance to go throug
h a debate over whether there should be a British English Wikipedia or an Americ
an English Wikipedia" because the English Wikipedia was the original edition.[22
] Editors agreed to use U.S. spellings for primarily American topics and British
spellings for primarily British topics. In 2009 Lih wrote, "No doubt, American
spellings tend to dominate by default just because of sheer numbers."[23]
Controversies
Main article: Criticism of Wikipedia
See also: Wikipedia biography controversy and Essjay controversy
One controversy in the English Wikipedia concerns which national variety of the
English language is to be preferred, with the most commonly advocated candidates
being American English and British English.[24] Perennial suggestions range fro
m standardizing upon a single form of English to forking the English Wikipedia p
roject. A style guideline states, "the English Wikipedia has no general preferen
ce for a major national variety of the language" and "an article on a topic that
has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate va
riety of English for that nation".[25] An article should use spelling and gramma
r variants consistently; for example, color and colour are not to be used in the
same article, since they represent American and British English, respectively.
The guide also states that an article must remain in its original national varia
nt.
There has been a similar issue in the Chinese language Wikipedia concerning regi
onal differences in writing. Efforts at a language fork for Portuguese Wikipedia
have failed, and succeeded for Norwegian Wikipedia.
Incidents of cyberbullying on Wikipedia have been reported in the mainstream pre
ss.[26][27][28] The Glen A. Wilson High School was subject of such a threat in 2
008,[26][27][28] and a 14-year-old boy was arrested for making a threat against
Niles West High School on Wikipedia in 2006.[29]
A 2013 study from Oxford University concluded that the most disputed articles on
the English Wikipedia tended to be broader issues, while on other language Wiki
pedias the most disputed articles tended to be regional issues; this is due to t
he English language's status as a global lingua franca, which means that many wh
o edit the English Wikipedia do not speak English as a native language. The stud
y stated that the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia were: George W.
Bush, Anarchism, Muhammad, List of WWE personnel, Global warming, Circumcision,
United States, Jesus, Race and intelligence, and Christianity.[30]
Internal quality control and assessment of importance
Wikipedia in general uses a two axis approach to the internal quality control an
d assessment of importance which it uses to organize the support and development
of its content for users. The range of quality control assessments begin with "
Start" class and "Stub" class assessments, which then are refined and improved t
o "A" class, "B" class, and "C" class, respectively, until the highest quality s
tandards of internally assessed quality is reached in its "Featured Article" cla
ss of development. Of the total number of about 4.4 million articles supported a
s of 11 December 2013, approximately five thousand are at the "Featured Article"
status (about .1% of total). These statistics are actively updated and maintain
ed by the internal quality control standards at Wikipedia.[31]
The second axis of quality control is the assessment of importance which Wikiped
ia associates with the individual articles being supported. These range across f
our levels of gradation from "Top" importance, to "High" importance, to "Mid" im
portance, to "Low" importance. Of the total number of 4.4 million articles suppo
rted as of 11 December 2013, approximately 41 thousand are of "Top" importance r
anging up to approximately 1.98 million articles assessed internally as of "Low"
quality. These statistics are actively updated and maintained by Wikipedia and
are cross-correlated with its quality assessments of individual articles as desc
ribed above