From “over 6,000 articles”
to “Read Wikipedia in your language”

The July 2001 capture is one long list. Under the welcome paragraph sit headings such as Philosophy, Mathematics, and Natural Science and Culture, each followed by links joined with double dashes. Social Sciences opens with Anomalous Phenomena, a step ahead of Anthropology and Archaeology. Above it all, one line reads You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project.

Other languages get one row, International Wikipedias. It lists 12, and every name is spelled in Latin letters: [Japanese (Nihongo)], [Russian (Russkiy)], [Chinese (Hanyu)], [Hebrew (Ivrit)]. Wikipedia had been running since January 15, 2001.^[1]

The bottom of the page is a wiki at work. Today is Friday, [July 27]?, 2001, servertime (Pacific Standard Time). In the code, the question mark links to a form for writing a page called July_27. Under it: Last edited July 27, 2001 2:17 am, with links to edit the homepage itself and to View other revisions.

By September 2002 the address shows a Main Page with a logo in the top-left corner: a ball made of lines of text, with WIKIPEDIA and The Free Encyclopedia under it. The welcome paragraph now counts 48152 articles.

That text ball was not Wikipedia’s first logo. The first one was borrowed: according to Meta-Wiki’s logo history, Bjørn Smestad had sent it to a logo competition run by Nupedia, another encyclopedia project. Our July 2001 capture shows no logo at all. The text ball came next, as the winner of Wikipedia’s own first logo contest in November and December 2001, and it stayed until 2003.^[2]

In the top-right corner, where a signed-in user’s name would go, both captures show the same IP address, 209.237.238.158, more than four months apart.

The February 2003 capture counts 104155 articles in the English version, so the 2001 goal of 100,000 had been passed. In the news lists Shuttle disaster, and Ongoing events lists Plan to invade Iraq. A source comment at the very end of the code times the server: Time since request: 1.37 secs. From 2006 the English counter rises in each of our captures:

When the address returns, on January 10, 2005, it is a different page. The English encyclopedia is gone from the front. In its place sits a list of languages, sorted by size.

The top group, 50 000 + articles, holds six: Deutsch, English, Français, 日本語, Polski and Svenska. Polski is in the top group while Español sits a row below, in 10 000–50 000 articles, with Русский and 中文.

The names are in their own scripts now. Under the header, one line repeats the slogan in six languages: Die freie Enzyklopädie – The Free Encyclopedia – L'encyclopédie Libre – フリー百科事典 – Wolna Encyklopedia – Den Fria Encyklopedin. In the top-left corner sits the puzzle globe with the wordmark under it. It came from a community logo contest in 2003: Paul Stansifer drew it and David Friedland revised it.^[3]

On January 1, 2006, the globe is in the center. Ten languages surround it, each with its name, its own word for “free encyclopedia” and a count. English has 883 000+ articles. The tenth, Español, has 81 000+ artículos, while Polski sits fifth with 154 000+ haseł. Under the globe, the word for search runs in a row of languages, from search and suche to 検索, above one box with a language menu.

The rest of the languages sit lower down, in groups by size, and each group starts with a striped bar. The code calls these bars Bookshelves. Another comment at the top of the code speaks to Wikipedia’s own admins: Sysops: Please do not edit the main template directly; update /temp and synchronise. It stays in the code through 2015.

By January 2009 English shows 2 683 000+ articles. Svenska has dropped out of the ten and Русский has come in. And 日本語, with 550 000+, now sits in the top row beside English, above Deutsch with 847 000+.

Compare the two globes. In January 2010 the gap at the top of the ball, where pieces are missing, is black. In January 2011 the same gap is pale gray and the pieces have depth.

Between those captures, one puzzle piece changed language. In May 2010 the Wikimedia Foundation announced the globe had been rebuilt in 3D, and the Klingon character on it, from the language made up for Star Trek, was swapped for an Amharic one, from a language people speak.^[3]

The code now explains the order of the ten. A comment in the January 2010 capture names its source: Rankings from http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/ on 13 August 2009. In 2011 the comments list the ranking itself, starting with #1. en.wikipedia.org - 9,889,432 views/hr and ending with Dutch at #10. The places around the globe follow page views, which is why Japanese can sit above German with fewer articles.

In June 2012 中文 joins the ten, with 429 000+ 條目, and Nederlands drops out. The wordmark’s alt text changes too, from WIKIPEDIA to WikipediA, spelled the way the logo draws it, with a capital A at the end.

One comment had not kept up. Since 2008 it described the ten as the links to the largest language editions. In the June 2013 capture it reads the links to the most viewed language editions, which is what the rankings in the code had been measuring for years.

The 2013 capture adds a second search box, Find Wikipedia in a language, and three new names among the sister projects at the bottom: Wikidata, Wikivoyage and MediaWiki. English shows 4 240 000+ articles and Русский 1 000 000+ статей.

The English edition had passed four million a year earlier, in July 2012. The Foundation named the four-millionth article: Izbat Al Burj, a city in Egypt.^[4]

Scroll down this August 1, 2016 capture and the old page is still there: the bookshelves, then rows and rows of language names, small and blue, grouped as 1 000 000+, 100 000+, 10 000+ and 1 000+. The page’s code links to 281 language editions.

The top already shows part of the new page. The Free Encyclopedia sits under the wordmark, the ten languages have lost their slogans and keep only a count, and the search box has a small EN menu and a blue button with a magnifying glass. The new layout went into production on August 16, fifteen days after this capture.^[6]

It had been tested first. In June 2016, 3,019 users saw the new design and 2,560 saw the old page.^[6] The long list was the next thing to go.^[5]

In June 2017 the page ends much sooner. Under the search box there is one button, Read Wikipedia in your language, and the long list of languages opens from it. The Foundation’s post on the update says the portal also reads the browser’s language settings and reorders the languages around the globe to match.^[5] So the order can depend on the viewing browser, and these stills may not match what you saw.

Below the button, a new box reads Wikipedia apps are now available:, with links to the App Store and Google Play.

The 2018 and 2019 captures of wikipedia.org keep the 2017 arrangement. The languages trade a few places around the globe, and the search button’s styling changes slightly.

In June 2020 the app box gets a heading, Download Wikipedia for Android or iOS, two store badges and a line of sales copy: the app lets you Save your favorite articles to read offline, sync your reading lists across devices and customize your reading experience with the official Wikipedia app.

The ranking is still in the code, now counted per day. In 2020 it starts #1. en.wikipedia.org - 1 732 695 000 views/day, followed by #2. ja.wikipedia.org - 280 150 000 views/day. 日本語 holds the top-right place by the globe in each of our captures from 2020 to 2026.

2021 and 2022 keep the arrangement, with new counts and a few languages trading places. The 2021 capture shows one more line under the Foundation’s box: You can support our work with a donation. In June 2022 English shows 6 458 000+ articles and Polski, last of the ten, 1 512 000+.

In June 2023 a language in Arabic script appears by the globe for the first time in these captures: فارسی, Persian, with 965 000+ مقاله. Polski is gone from the ten, a year after it showed 1 512 000+. Persian is #9 in that capture’s view ranking.

In January 2023 the Foundation had announced a new desktop look for the encyclopedia’s articles.^[7] The portal at www.wikipedia.org kept its 2017 layout. In June 2024 its counts change how they are written. Each one follows its language’s own number style: English 6,796,000+, Español 1.938.000+, Русский 1 969 000+, and Persian in Persian digits, ۹۹۵٬۰۰۰+.

In June 2025 Polski is back by the globe, with 1 659 000+ haseł, and Persian is gone. The sister-project grid has kept a tile added in 2024, Wikifunctions, Free function library.

The June 2026 capture has English at 7,189,000+ articles. Wikinews, in the sister-project grid since 2006, is no longer in it. In January 2026 the Foundation marked Wikipedia’s 25th birthday with 65 million articles in more than 300 languages.^[8] The page’s code links to 344 language editions; in 2005 it linked to 80.

The ranking comment is still in the code. It starts #1. en.wikipedia.org - 1,502,942,000 views/day and ends with Polish at #9 and Portuguese at #10, a gap of under a million views a day.

In July 2001 the page wanted over 100,000 articles and reported over 6,000. In June 2026 the English counter alone says 7,189,000+, and nine other counters sit around it, each in its own language.

The double-dash list of 2001 had 12 other languages, written as [Japanese (Nihongo)]. In 2026 the first language next to English is written 日本語.