[WikiEN-l] 500k press release

Sat Mar 12 00:48:20 UTC 2005

I've put up a draft press release to celebrate the English WP's
500,000th article here:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/March_2005

It is not quite like our previous press releases; see what you think,
edit and improve on it.
It should eventually mention the 500,000th article by name, so see if
you can spot it as it zooms by.

Here is a meta-page for translating the release (though you should
wait until the end of the weekend, say, once it has been edited a
bit):
  http://tinyurl.com/58dnq

Why translate an EN-centered press release?  For one thing, it is not
*only* an English-language press release; it is celebrating the
project as a whole.  For another, all major project announcements
should be multilingual.  For instance, I would like to see it sent to
the many spanish- and chinese-language newspapers (among others) in
the US.  Skimming through the circulation numbers in Bacon's media
directory, it is surprising to see how broad their audiences are; I
have no doubt that the bulk of their readers read English to some
extent, and could both benefit from EN: and help bridge the gap
between it and their native language-edition.

-- 
+sj+