Today, Wikidata reached a very visible milestone: the Item with the identifier Q100000001 has been created. That is the first nine digit identifier. Congratulations to the community, congratulations to the project!
The identifier, called a Q-ID due to the leading letter Q, is a unique identifier that helps us keep things with the same name that are different apart, and things with different names that are the same together, particularly across languages. Q-IDs are assigned consecutively whenever a new Item is created, starting with Q1, which was there when Wikidata launched eight years ago and refers to the Universe, now to Q100000001, which is about Franklin Early Childhood School, a primary school in the Australian Capital Territory, created by User:99of9.
Eight years ago? Indeed, this month we celebrate Wikidataâs 8th anniversary! This year, we will have a number of decentralized online events, and you are invited to join us in celebrating the project. It was never as easy as now to join the celebrations! So, just in time for the 8th birthday, as we enter our ninth year, we have the first Q-ID with nine digits.
This does not mean that Wikidata now has 100 Million Items, by the way – weâre still shy of 90 Million at the moment. The discrepancy comes sometimes from issues when creating an Item (just as it happened with Q100000000 itself), but also from creating Items that turn out to be duplicates and are then merged by the community. There might still be many duplicates lurking in Wikidata, and we invite you to join us in finding duplicates – or to take one of our tours of Wikidata and become a contributor!
Thanks to everyone in the community, thanks for working on this project together, and to many happy returns of more round Q-IDs and other, often more meaningful but less visible milestones!
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