The Million Award recognizes editors who bring one of Wikipedia's most-viewed articles or lists to
good article (GA),
featured article (FA) or
featured list (FL) status, serving hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers. The award has two primary goals:
to recognize editors who improve important, high-traffic articles
to encourage all Wikipedians by reminding them of the huge volume of readers helped by our work
The award is partly inspired by
User:TCO's essay "
Improving Wikipedia's important articles", which observes that most Wikipedia incentives value the quantity of promoted content over the importance of promoted content.[a] The Million Award seeks to balance these incentives by recognizing editors who sometimes produce fewer articles, but who serve vast numbers of readers by writing about topics of broad interest.
The "million" in Million Award refers to the article receiving at least one million views per year. Other tiers of Million Award also exist: Quarter-Million Award, Half Million Award, and Three-Quarter Million Award.
Qualifying articles
Any article with sufficient readership, calculated independently of
Main Page appearances, qualifies for the Million Award. This includes most
Vital Articles (e.g.,
Buddhism,
Joan of Arc,
Moon) as well as some contemporary topics (e.g.,
One Direction, The Walking Dead). Somewhere between 3000 to 4000 articles have sufficient readership to qualify for the top tier of the award—approximately one tenth of one percent of Wikipedia's total content. See the
lists of popular pages by WikiProject for potential candidates.
An article's readership can be determined with the
page view statistics tool, accessible through the "View History" tab of an article. Simply enter the article's name and choose a one-year date range, such as 1/1/YYYY - 12/31/YYYY for the previous calendar year. If the article appeared on the Main Page during that one-year period, or if most of the article's views came during an unusual 1- or 2-day spike, then exclude those days or select another one-year period if possible, or use the readership for a recent 90-day period and multiply by 4. (Or multiply by 4.06, if you have a calculator handy and/or want to be more precise.) If you find yourself doing more math than this, or searching your article's history for the highest-readership 90-day period, you're taking this award much too seriously.
The exact method of calculation is ultimately up to the editor awarding it (including self-awarding), and should be guided by
personal honor and common sense. Like any user page
bling, the Million Award exists only for editor encouragement and fun, and should never be subject to dispute over who "deserves" it. The Million Award should generally only be given for an article's current readership, not for past spikes. However, a Million Award is not revoked if an article's popularity later declines.
The Million Award is intended only for editors, and confers no special status on the article itself.
Tiers
Four tiers of the Million Award exist:
The Quarter-Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than 250,000 to GA or FA status
The Half-Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than 500,000 to GA or FA status
The Three-Quarter Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than 750,000 to GA or FA status
The Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than a million to GA or FA status
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 1,000,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 750,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Three-Quarter Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 500,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Half Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 250,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Quarter Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
The table below lists some of the articles and editors who have been awarded the highest tier of the Million Award. Editors are welcome to add themselves or others to the list. Entries should be removed only by the user themselves, except in extreme cases of dishonesty (such as listing an article never promoted to GA or FA) or vandalism. Like the award itself, this list exists only for encouragement, not for strict record-keeping.
If you believe one of your articles qualifies for a Million Award, but would prefer that another editor double-check and give the award, please leave a request on
the talk page.
See also
WP:5000 – a weekly count of Wikipedia's most popular pages
^Importance is, of course, a subjective measure. Possible ways to evaluate it include
the Vital Articles list, WikiProject rankings, or the readership of an article. Though this award focuses on the latter for simplicity, this isn't to say other measures of "importance" are less valid.
The Million Award recognizes editors who bring one of Wikipedia's most-viewed articles or lists to
good article (GA),
featured article (FA) or
featured list (FL) status, serving hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers. The award has two primary goals:
to recognize editors who improve important, high-traffic articles
to encourage all Wikipedians by reminding them of the huge volume of readers helped by our work
The award is partly inspired by
User:TCO's essay "
Improving Wikipedia's important articles", which observes that most Wikipedia incentives value the quantity of promoted content over the importance of promoted content.[a] The Million Award seeks to balance these incentives by recognizing editors who sometimes produce fewer articles, but who serve vast numbers of readers by writing about topics of broad interest.
The "million" in Million Award refers to the article receiving at least one million views per year. Other tiers of Million Award also exist: Quarter-Million Award, Half Million Award, and Three-Quarter Million Award.
Qualifying articles
Any article with sufficient readership, calculated independently of
Main Page appearances, qualifies for the Million Award. This includes most
Vital Articles (e.g.,
Buddhism,
Joan of Arc,
Moon) as well as some contemporary topics (e.g.,
One Direction, The Walking Dead). Somewhere between 3000 to 4000 articles have sufficient readership to qualify for the top tier of the award—approximately one tenth of one percent of Wikipedia's total content. See the
lists of popular pages by WikiProject for potential candidates.
An article's readership can be determined with the
page view statistics tool, accessible through the "View History" tab of an article. Simply enter the article's name and choose a one-year date range, such as 1/1/YYYY - 12/31/YYYY for the previous calendar year. If the article appeared on the Main Page during that one-year period, or if most of the article's views came during an unusual 1- or 2-day spike, then exclude those days or select another one-year period if possible, or use the readership for a recent 90-day period and multiply by 4. (Or multiply by 4.06, if you have a calculator handy and/or want to be more precise.) If you find yourself doing more math than this, or searching your article's history for the highest-readership 90-day period, you're taking this award much too seriously.
The exact method of calculation is ultimately up to the editor awarding it (including self-awarding), and should be guided by
personal honor and common sense. Like any user page
bling, the Million Award exists only for editor encouragement and fun, and should never be subject to dispute over who "deserves" it. The Million Award should generally only be given for an article's current readership, not for past spikes. However, a Million Award is not revoked if an article's popularity later declines.
The Million Award is intended only for editors, and confers no special status on the article itself.
Tiers
Four tiers of the Million Award exist:
The Quarter-Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than 250,000 to GA or FA status
The Half-Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than 500,000 to GA or FA status
The Three-Quarter Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than 750,000 to GA or FA status
The Million Award – Awarded for bringing an article with an annual readership of more than a million to GA or FA status
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 1,000,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 750,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Three-Quarter Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 500,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Half Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
For your contributions to bring
Article X (estimated annual readership: 250,000) to
Good Article status, I hereby present you the
Quarter Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! ~~~~
The table below lists some of the articles and editors who have been awarded the highest tier of the Million Award. Editors are welcome to add themselves or others to the list. Entries should be removed only by the user themselves, except in extreme cases of dishonesty (such as listing an article never promoted to GA or FA) or vandalism. Like the award itself, this list exists only for encouragement, not for strict record-keeping.
If you believe one of your articles qualifies for a Million Award, but would prefer that another editor double-check and give the award, please leave a request on
the talk page.
See also
WP:5000 – a weekly count of Wikipedia's most popular pages
^Importance is, of course, a subjective measure. Possible ways to evaluate it include
the Vital Articles list, WikiProject rankings, or the readership of an article. Though this award focuses on the latter for simplicity, this isn't to say other measures of "importance" are less valid.