English Wikipedia passes 500 thousand article milestone

March 18, 2005 Wikipedia hit the half-million mark Friday as the English-language encyclopedia passed the 500 thousand article mark, according to a press prelease by the Wikimedia Foundation (The Wikimedia Foundation also runs Wikinews).

The article that put the site over the top was Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union. The total of 500 thousand articles exceeds any other encyclopedia, according to the press release.

With an average of 2,500 characters per article, Wikipedia contains 1.25 gigabytes of raw text, which if printed on double-sided letter-size paper would form a stack about 66 feet or more than six stories tall. Other recent additions to its English-language edition include hundreds of full-length songs, almost a gigabyte of new images, and subject-specific portals.