Wikipedia reaches milestone with half-million English articles
Wikipedia added its 500,000th article in English last Thursday, with Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union being designated as the milestone article.
In the half-million pool to guess when Wikipedia would cross this threshold, the winner was Llywrch. Nobody managed to pick the correct date, however; Llywrch was the closest, coming within one day by guessing 18 March. The pool was held last June, and another pool for the millionth article was set to close once the half-million mark was reached.
Sj started a press release to send to media outlets publicizing this event. Some even got in on the news without any prodding. In anticipation of the milestone, The Inquirer published an article Thursday entitled "Wikipedia nears half million article mark Archived 2005-03-17 at the Wayback Machine", coming barely a few hours before it was actually reached (The Inquirer also happened to be the first media organization to break the news of Wikipedia's one-millionth article overall last September).