BANGALORE, INDIA: There may be doubts about the future of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, which is said to be passing through a bad phase. However, the English version of the site has received its three millionth article on Monday, thus crossing a historic milestone.

And the honour of being the three millionth entry goes to Norwegian actress Beate Eriksen - a 48-year-old cast member of a popular local soap opera.

Beate Marie Eriksen, born October 19, 1960, is a both an actress and film director. She is also the daughter of World War II flying ACE, Marius Eriksen. Her biggest role to date has been Ingrid Iversen, a character in the popular Norwegian soap, Hotel Caesar.

Wikipedia has about 10 million registered users and over 17 million pages. Taken all the 271 languages together, the encyclopedia boasts 13 million articles in total.

Previously the Yongle Encyclopedia was the world’s largest encyclopedia, which was commissioned by the Chinese Ming Dynasty emperor, Yongle, in 1402 and completed by 1408.

Launched on January 15 in 2001 by Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman, the online encyclopedia is struggling hard to make its existence and it is surviving on contributions and help from well-wishers worldwide.