Wikipedia currently has a total of 6,401,438 articles and as of December 12, 2013 had over 17.8 billion words in its English edition. It dwarfs the largest traditional English-language encyclopedia, Encyclopædia Britannica online, which in December 2004 had an estimated 120,000 articles and 77 million words.

The English Wikipedia passed the mark of two million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia made during the Ming Dynasty in 1408, which had held the record for almost 600 years.

The largest encyclopaedia is the ‘Dubai Icon’ which is 3.08 m (10 ft 1.25 in) in length and 3.20 m (10 ft 5.98 in) in width when closed, and was achieved by Aafaq Islamic Finance (UAE), as measured in Dubai, UAE, on 8 November 2016. The entire encyclopedia weighs 6,500 kilograms.

The Encyclopedia of the Nations is a complete source for detailed information about one hundred ninety three countries in the world, information about the United Nations and the associated agencies, and World Leaders.

Only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in Britannica. The study concluded that “Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries”, although Wikipedia’s articles were often “poorly structured”.

Best Wikipedia Alternatives

1. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. (www.britannica.com) In terms of traditional encyclopedias, this is Wikipedia’s main rival.
2. World Book Online. (www.worldbookonline.com)
3. Encyclopedia.com. (www.encyclopedia.com)
4. Infoplease. (www.infoplease.com)
5. Citizendium. (www.citizendium.org)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for citations elsewhere on Wikipedia. Because it can be edited by anyone at any time, any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong. Therefore, Wikipedia should not be considered a definitive source in and of itself.

However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not a reliable source. This is because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any moment. Although when an error is recognized, it is usually fixed.

Steven Pruitt (born 1984) is an American Wikipedia editor with the highest number of edits made on the English Wikipedia: over 4.36 million. He has also created more than 35,000 Wikipedia articles….

Jimmy Wales
Larry Sanger
Wikipedia/Created by

Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS; Latin for ‘Second Body of the Law’) is an encyclopedia of United States law at the federal and state levels. It is arranged alphabetically, into over 430 topics, which in turn are arranged into subheadings. CJS is published by West in print form and on Westlaw.

What is an A.L.R. Annotation? A.L.R. is the acronym for American Law Reports. A.L.R. annotations (articles) provide a very useful summary and analysis of the law in a specific area, and include citations to relevant primary law and other secondary sources.