Simple English Wikipedia

Favicon of Wikipedia Simple English Wikipedia
Screenshot
The website of the Main Page on the Simple English Wikipedia
Type of site
Online encyclopedia
Available inSimple English
OwnerWikimedia Foundation (non-profit)
URLsimple.wikipedia.org Edit this at Wikidata
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Users1,870,528 (registered) users and 22 administrators as of 22 October 2026
LaunchedSeptember 18, 2001; 25 years ago (2001-09-18)

The Simple English Wikipedia is a Simple English language or Learning English version of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, written in a language that is easy to understand, but still is natural and correct.

Overview

The articles in the Simple English Wikipedia use shorter sentences and easier words and grammar than the regular English Wikipedia. This makes articles easier to understand and change.

History

When Simple English Wikipedia started making pages and allowing changes in 2003, the English Wikipedia already had 150,000 articles. Seven other Wikipedia in other languages also had over 15,000 articles.

Articles in Simple English Wikipedia are simpler versions of articles from the English Wikipedias. Right now, the Simple English Wikipedia has 285,887 articles. The Simple English Wikipedia started on September 18, 2001, and is the 43rd-largest Wikipedia, as of January 2026. It has 1,870,528 registered users, 3,320 active in the last month.

In 2012, Andrew Lih, someone who knows a lot about Wikipedia, told NBC News that the Simple English Wikipedia does not "have a high standing in the Wikipedia community", and that it had never had a clear purpose. The person he said this to was not sure whether the site was for younger users or meant to write simpler versions of difficult articles.

Common uses

The Simple English Wikipedia is intended to be used by:

References

  1. ↑ "History of Home Page". Simple English Wikipedia (in Simple English). Archived from the original on October 19, 2001. Retrieved January 13, 2025.
  2. 1 2 Tim Dowling (January 14, 2008). "Wikipedia too long-winded for you? Try the simple version". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 21, 2008. Retrieved May 17, 2009.
  3. ↑ Koen Smets. "Automatic Vandalism Detection in Wikipedia: Towards a Machine Learning Approach" (PDF). University of Antwerp. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 4, 2011. Retrieved May 17, 2009.
  4. 1 2 Special:Statistics. Retrieved October 22, 2026.
  5. ↑ "Simple English Wikipedia – Meta". meta.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on November 29, 2021. Retrieved November 23, 2021.
  6. ↑ Wikimedia list of Wikipedias and their statistics. Retrieved January 24, 2026.
  7. ↑ Popkin, Helen A.S. (December 7, 2012). "You're not smart enough to read Wikipedia". NBC News. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
  8. ↑ https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple%20English%20Wikipedia. Retrieved July 11, 2024.