German Wikipedia - Growth, Coverage and Popularity

Growth, Coverage and Popularity

On 27 December 2009, the German Wikipedia edition exceeded 1,000,000 articles, becoming the first edition after the English-language Wikipedia to do so. The millionth article was Ernie Wasson. In November 2008, 90% of the edition's articles had more than 512 bytes, 49% had more than 2 kilobytes, and the average article size was 3,476 bytes. In the middle of 2009 this edition had nearly 250,000 biographies and in December 2006 more than 48,500 disambiguations.

Compared to the English Wikipedia, the German edition tends to be more selective in its coverage, often rejecting small stubs, articles about individual fictional characters and similar materials. Instead, there is usually one article about all the characters from a specific fictional setting, usually only when the setting is considered important enough (for example, all characters from Star Wars are listed in a single article). A dedicated article about a single fictional entity generally exists only if the character in question has a very significant impact on popular culture (for example, Hercule Poirot).

The January 2005, Google Zeitgeist announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched query on Google.de. In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind Firefox and Valentine's Day. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first.