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French language edition of Wikipedia

The French Wikipedia is the French language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. This edition was started on 23 March 2001, two months after the official creation of Wikipedia. It has articles as of , making it the largest Wikipedia overall, after the English , Cebuano and German language editions, and is the largest Wikipedia edition in a Romance language. It has the third most edits, and ranks 6th in terms of depth among Wikipedias. It was also the third edition, after the English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia, to exceed 1 million articles: this occurred on 23 September 2010. As of , there are users, admins and files on the French Wikipedia. On 2 December 2014, the French language Wikipedia encyclopedia became the 3rd linguistic edition by number of registered users since its creation, overtaking for the first time the German edition, with registered users, behind the English and Spanish language editions.

The audience measurement company Médiamétrie questioned a sample of 8,500 users residing in France with access to Internet at home or at their place of work. Médiamétrie found that in June 2007, French Wikipedia had: 7,910,000 unique visitors that visited the site at least once during the month of June 2007 (compared to 4,355,000 unique visitors in June 2006); 2.7 visits per visitor during the period (2.0 visits in June 2006); had held the 12th position (21st in 2006) in "the Top 30 most visited sites in France, excluding Internet applications", according to the criterion of the number of unique visitors and 12th position in "the Top 30 most visited sites in France, including Internet applications", like eMule or Real Networks (22nd position in June 2006). By August 2011, French Wikipedia was the 7th most visited site in France, with nearly 16 million unique visitors a month (according to Médiamétrie). In April 2012, it had 20 million unique visitors per month, or 2.4 million per day with over 700 million page views.

According to a 2013 study by Taha Yasseri et al., from Oxford Internet Institute, Ségolène Royal (FR) and unidentified flying object (objet volant non identifié) were the most controversial articles on the French Wikipedia.

An important difference with the English Wikipedia is that like the Spanish Wikipedia, or the Portuguese Wikipedia in the past, following a community vote in 2006 the French Wikipedia does not accept any images posted under fair use, with the only exception being logos. As of 2023, this exact ban is still in effect. Another important difference is that while Wikipedia administrators are elected for an indefinite period, anybody can start a formal "motion of no confidence" contesting their status, with the community thereby invited to vote for or against removing their privileges. This also exists on the Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia, but not on the English Wikipedia.