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{{draft release}}

== 1 Billion edits on Wikimedia projects ==

'''?? April 2010, UK''': 

On 16 April 2010, the billionth edit was made to the Wikimedia projects - which include Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, amongst other projects.

Wikipedia was started on 15 January 2001, and will celebrate its 10<sup>th</sup> birthday next year. The first edit was reputedly made by Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, saying "Hello, World!". The oldest article still preserved is "UuU", a disambiguation page started on 16 January 2001. [If we know it, who made the billionth edit, and what was it?]

Wikipedia now has over 20 million articles in over 250 different languages; the largest is the English Wikipedia with over 3.2 million articles, looked after by over a million Wikipedians worldwide. Around 2500 English Wikipedia articles are viewed every second; the Wikimedia projects are one of the top ten groups of websites.

'''EDITORS' NOTES'''

;''About Wikimedia UK:''

Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

;''About the Wikimedia Foundation:''

The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the US-based non-profit organisation that operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These include Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.

;''Further information:''
* Running count of edits: http://toolserver.org/~emijrp/wikimediacounter/
* The Wikipedia article about Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
* The earliest recorded edit to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:UuU&oldid=291430
* Statistics on Wikimedia site access: http://stats.wikimedia.org/

;''Contact details:''
Michael Peel, Chair, Wikimedia UK
* Email: michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk


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