FamilySearch Research Wiki passes 50,000 article mark

Due to the dramatic growth in the past few months, the FamilySearch Research Wiki has now blown past the 50,000 article mark. The mark was reached early in morning of 9 March 2011. The count today, 10 March 2011, is already at 50,284 and rising rapidly. The access counter on the startup page read 235,731,413 this morning as I write this post. Why is this important? Wikis are only as good as their content.

If you compare the numbers on the FamilySearch Research Wiki with Wikipedia, for example, you might think that the Research Wiki is small potatoes. Today Wikipedia had more than 3,578,000 articles just in English with millions more in 279 other languages. The Research Wiki is available in Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish. But the comparison is far from fair. Wikipedia is a universal encyclopedia while the Research Wiki is focused only on genealogy/family history. Maybe another comparison would be the Ancestry.com Family History Wiki but that wiki has only been accessed 852,591 times.

What is on the Research Wiki that makes it such a draw? Loads of information about genealogical sources and methodology. OK, I probably need a disclaimer about this point. I am a Research Wiki fanatic. I am the moderator for Arizona and have been for a couple of years. I am currently on the Support Team for the entire Wiki. We are the folks who are trying to keep this rapidly growing resource relatively sane.

The Research Wiki is the first, go-to place to look for information about everything having to do with genealogy. What kinds of information are going onto the Wiki? Almost everything you can imagine in detail. Here is a brief selection of today's new articles:

Click on the image to see some of the today's new articles. Looking at the whole list of the last 50 pages, the subjects span the gamut from Texas to Finland with a lot of Sweden and England thrown in. With all these additions are the articles useful? Here is a screen shot of one of the most recent pages.

All of those blue entries are links. You may not be interested in Staffordshire, but what if you were? Have you looked for articles in your areas of interest?