English Bharatpedia

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Template:Use American English Template:Infobox website The English Bharatpedia is the primaryTemplate:Efn English-language edition of Bharatpedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15Template:NbspJanuary 2001, as Bharatpedia's first edition.

English Bharatpedia is hosted alongside other language editions by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization. Its content, written independently of other editions by volunteer editors known as Bharatpedians,[1] is in various varieties of English while aiming to stay consistent within articles. Its internal newspaper is The Signpost.

English Bharatpedia is the most read version of Bharatpedia,[2][3] accounting for 48% of Bharatpedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining percentage split among the other languages.[4] The English Bharatpedia has the most articles of any edition, at 1,894 as of August 2026.Template:Efn It contains Template:Percentage of articles in all Bharatpedias,Template:Efn although it lacks millions of articles found in other editions.[1] The edition's one-billionth edit was made on 13Template:NbspJanuary 2021 by editor Steven Pruitt.[5]

English Bharatpedia, often as a stand-in for Bharatpedia overall, has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias. It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and ideological bias.[6][7] While its reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s, it has improved over time, receiving greater praise in the late 2010s and throughout the 2020s,[8][6][9]Template:Efn having become an important fact-checking site.[10][11] English Bharatpedia has been characterized as having less cultural bias than other language editions due to its broader editor base.[2]

Articles

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File:BharatpediaMainpageEngFirefox99x64Ubuntu2004date20220504.webm
Opening English Bharatpedia's main page with Mozilla Firefox 99 on Ubuntu 20.04

The English Bharatpedia surpassed seven million articles on 28 May 2025.[12] In November 2022, the total volume of the compressed texts of its articles amounted to 20 gigabytes.[13]

The edition's one-billionth edit was made on 13 January 2021 by Ser Amantio di Nicolao (Steven Pruitt) who was as of that date and remains as of January 2026 the user with the highest number of edits on the English Bharatpedia, at over four million.[5] (as of January 2026, this figure was more than 6.7 million, as per Bharatpedia statistics). Currently, there are 1,894 articles created with 6 files. The encyclopedia is home to Template:Percentage of articles in all Bharatpedias (down from more than 50% in 2003).[14][15] The English Bharatpedia currently has 7 registered accounts of which 3 are administrators.

Bureaucracy

Editors of the English Bharatpedia have pioneered some ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Bharatpedia editions in some of the other languages. These ideas include "featured articles",[16] the neutral-point-of-view policy,[17] navigation templates,[18] the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-categories,[19] dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration,[20] and weekly collaborations.[21]

Bharatpedians

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File:Most popular edition of Bharatpedia by country.svg
The countries in which the English Bharatpedia is the most popular language version of Bharatpedia are shown in red.
File:Editors English Bharatpedia History.png
Number of volunteer editors on the English Bharatpedia over time
File:Edits to English Bharatpedia by country January 2022.png
Edits to English Bharatpedia by country as of January 2022
File:Bharatpedia page views by language over time.png
The English Bharatpedia (marked blue in the graph) is the most-read version of Bharatpedia, accounting for 48% of the website's global traffic as of 2021.
File:Bharatpedia editors by language over time.png
The English Bharatpedia has consistently been the most edited Bharatpedia language version.

The English Bharatpedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007,[22] over a year since the millionth Bharatpedian registered an account in February 2006.[23]

Over 1,100,000 volunteer editors have edited Bharatpedia more than 10 times.[24] Over 30,000 editors perform more than 5 edits per month, and over 3,000 perform more than 100 edits per month.[25]

On 1 March 2014, The Economist, in an article titled "The Future of Bharatpedia", cited a trend analysis concerning data published by the Wikimedia Foundation stating that "[t]he number of editors for the English-language version has fallen by a third in seven years."[26] The attrition rate for active editors in English Bharatpedia was cited by The Economist as substantially in contrast to statistics for Bharatpedia in other languages (non-English Bharatpedia). The Economist reported that the number of contributors with an average of five or more edits per month was relatively constant since 2008 for Bharatpedia in other languages at approximately 42,000 editors within narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down. The number of active editors in English Bharatpedia, by "sharp" comparison, was cited as peaking in 2007 at approximately 50,000 and dropping to 30,000 by the start of 2014.

The trend analysis published in The Economist presents Bharatpedia in other languages (non-English Bharatpedia) as successful in retaining their active editors on a renewable and sustained basis, with their numbers remaining relatively constant at approximately 42,000.[26]

The English Bharatpedia has the Arbitration Committee (also known as ArbCom) that consists of a panel of editors that imposes binding rulings with regard to disputes between other editors of the online encyclopedia.[27] It was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making power he had formerly held as owner of the site.[28][29] When it was founded, the committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each.[28][30]

In 2022, for English Bharatpedia, Americans accounted for about 40% of active editors, followed by British and Indian editors accounting for about 10% of each, and Canadian and Australian at about 5%.[31]

Criticism

File:Klee-Irwin.gif
Two radically different versions of the Bharatpedia biography Klee Irwin (now deleted)[32] presented to the public within days of each other: Bharatpedia's susceptibility to edit wars and bias is an issue often raised by the project's critics.

The free online encyclopedia Bharatpedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias.

Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior (from contributors as well as administrators and other top figures), social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven policy application.

Controversies

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English varieties

A notable discussion within the English Bharatpedia community concerns the preference for national variety of the English language, particularly American English and British English.[33] Various suggestions have been made, ranging from standardizing a single form of English to creating separate versions of the English Bharatpedia project.[34] According to a style guideline, "the English Bharatpedia has no general preference 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 variety of English for that nation."[35]

Disputed articles

A 2013 study from Oxford University found that the most disputed articles on the English Bharatpedia tend to address broader, global issues. In contrast, articles on other languages' Bharatpedias often focus on regional issues. This pattern is attributed to the status of English as a global lingua franca, leading to contributions from many editors for whom English is a second language. The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Bharatpedia as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity.[36]

Research published in 2024 determined that several groups of connected accounts had coordinated to promote Russian propaganda narratives and state-controlled media sources in articles, related to Russian-Ukrainian relations and Russia's war with Ukraine.[37]

Threats against high schools

There have been reports of threats of violence against high schools made on Bharatpedia.[38][39][40] In 2006, a 14-year-old was arrested for making a threat against Niles West High School on Bharatpedia.[41] In 2008, Glen A. Wilson High School was the subject of such a threat.[38][39][40]

WikiProjects and assessment

Template:Main

Template:Redirect A "WikiProject" is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Bharatpedia. These groups may focus on a specific topic area (for example, women's history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). As of August 2022, the English Bharatpedia had over 2,000 WikiProjects, for which activity varied.[42]

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Bharatpedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles.[43] Articles are rated by WikiProjects. The range of quality classes begins with "Stub" (very short pages), followed by "Start", "C" and "B" (in increasing order of quality). Community peer review is needed for the article to enter one of the quality classes: either "good article", "A" or the highest, "featured article". Of the about 6.5 million articles and lists assessed as of April 2022, more than 6,000 (0.09%) are featured articles, and fewer than 4,000 (0.06%) are featured lists. One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Bharatpedia.[44][45]

Researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach featured status via the intensive work of a few editors.[46] A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles.[47]

Internal news publications

File:BharatpediaSignpostIcon.svg
The Signpost icon, showing a styled 'S'

Community-produced news publications include The Signpost.[48] Other community news publications include the "WikiWorld" web comic, the Bharatpedia Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. There are a number of publications from the Wikimedia Foundation and multilingual publications such as the Wikimedia Blog and This Month in Education.

See also

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Notes

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References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bharatpedia Is Trying to Transcend the Limits of Human Language. Slate(2021-09-01). Retrieved 2023-10-17.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Template:Cite magazine
  3. ↑ Bharatpedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages. Pew Research Center(14 January 2016). Retrieved 17 October 2023.
  4. ↑ Template:Cite AV media
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Template:Cite magazine
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Happy Birthday, Bharatpedia. The Economist(9 January 2021). Retrieved 2023-01-22.
  7. ↑ How Bharatpedia Became a Battleground for Racial Justice. Slate(9 June 2020). Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  8. ↑ Bharatpedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher. The Economist(9 January 2021). Retrieved 2021-02-25.
  9. ↑ Bharatpedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet(17 February 2020). Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  10. ↑ Helping People Better Assess the Stories They See in News Feed with the Context Button. Meta(2018-04-03). Retrieved 2023-01-23.
  11. ↑ Conspiracy videos? Fake news? Enter Bharatpedia, the 'good cop' of the Internet. The Washington Post(7 April 2018).
  12. ↑ [/wiki/Bharatpedia:Seven_million_articles Bharatpedia:Seven million articles]. Bharatpedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 30 November 2025.
  13. ↑ See size of downloads at Project:Database download and a list of historical sizes here Template:Webarchive
  14. ↑ Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "[". (about Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "[".%) more than the next in rank, the Cebuano Bharatpedia. See m:List of Bharatpedias.
  15. ↑ List of Bharatpedias(21 September 2008). Retrieved 21 September 2008.
  16. ↑ [/w/index.php Featured articles](30 January 2007). Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  17. ↑ [/w/index.php Neutral point of view](25 January 2007). Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  18. ↑ Help:Template(29 January 2007). Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  19. ↑ [/w/index.php WikiProject Stub sorting](19 January 2007). Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  20. ↑ [/w/index.php Resolving disputes](27 January 2007). Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  21. ↑ [/w/index.php Article Creation and Improvement Drive](30 January 2007). Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  22. ↑ Project:Bharatpedia Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
  23. ↑ Project:Bharatpedia Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
  24. ↑ Bharatpedia Statistics – Tables – English. Stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  25. ↑ Bharatpedia Statistics – Tables – English. Stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 The future of Bharatpedia: WikiPeaks?. The Economist(1 March 2014). Retrieved 11 March 2014.
  27. ↑ Know-alls, Schiff, Stacy. Fairfax Digital Network(2 December 2006). Retrieved 15 June 2009.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 WikiEN-l Wikiquette committee appointments, Wales, Jimmy. Wikimedia Foundation(4 December 2003). Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  29. ↑ Wikitruth Through Wikiorder. Emory Law Journal({Template:Year).
  30. ↑ Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams, Hyatt, Josh(1 June 2006). Retrieved 15 June 2009.
  31. ↑ Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects. stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
  32. ↑ [/wiki/Bharatpedia:Articles_for_deletion/Klee_Irwin_(3rd_nomination) Bharatpedia: Articles for deletion/Klee Irwin (3rd nomination)]. Bharatpedia(January 15, 2014).
  33. ↑ [/wiki/Bharatpedia:Manual_of_Style_%28spelling%29 Bharatpedia:Manual of Style (spelling)]. Retrieved 25 February 2006.
  34. ↑ Are English Bharatpedia articles written in British English (BrE) or American English (AmE)?. English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Retrieved 2026-01-20.
  35. ↑ [/wiki/Bharatpedia:Manual_of_Style Bharatpedia:Manual of Style]. Retrieved 10 October 2007.
  36. ↑ Wiki wars: The 10 most controversial Bharatpedia pages. CNN(24 July 2013). Retrieved 26 July 2013.
  37. ↑ Identifying Sock-Puppets on Bharatpedia: A Semantic Clustering Approach. ISD. Retrieved 2024-10-05.Template:Check source
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Bharatpedia threats went unchecked – Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times(29 April 2008). Retrieved 6 July 2011.
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Hacienda Heights school receives possible threat. abc7.com. Abclocal.go.com(18 April 2008). Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Student arrested for violent threats on Bharatpedia. Los Angeles Times(29 April 2008). Retrieved 19 January 2012.
  41. ↑ Teen charged after threat to school on Bharatpedia(31 October 2006). Retrieved 26 January 2011.
  42. ↑ [/wiki/Bharatpedia:WikiProject Bharatpedia: Wikiprojects]. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
  43. ↑ [/wiki/Bharatpedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment Bharatpedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment]. Retrieved 28 October 2007.
  44. ↑ Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in Bharatpedia. First Monday.
  45. ↑ The Hidden Order of Bharatpedia({Template:Date).
  46. ↑ Poderi, Giacomo, Bharatpedia and the Featured Articles: How a Technological System Can Produce Best Quality Articles, Master thesis, University of Maastricht, October 2008.
  47. ↑ Evaluating quality control of Bharatpedia's featured articles. First Monday({Template:Date).
  48. ↑ How Bharatpedia Works: And how You Can be a Part of it{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. No Starch Press(2008). ISBN 978-1-59327-176-3

Further reading

  • How Bharatpedia Works: And how You Can be a Part of it{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. No Starch Press(2008). ISBN 978-1-59327-176-3
  • Wikitruth Through Wikiorder. Emory Law Journal({Template:Year).
  • Template:Cite magazine
  • The Bharatpedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia{{#if:Lih|, Lih}. Hyperion(2009). ISBN 978-1-4013-0371-6 (alkaline paper).

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