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This is the front page of the Simple English Wikipedia. Wikipedias are places where people work together to write encyclopedias in different languages. We use Simple English words and grammar here. The Simple English Wikipedia is for everyone! That includes children and adults who are learning English. There are 144,208 articles on the Simple English Wikipedia. All of the pages are free to use. They have all been published under both the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License. You can help here! You may change these pages and make new pages. Read the help pages and other good pages to learn how to write pages here. If you need help, you may ask questions at Simple talk.

When writing articles here:

Use Basic English vocabulary and shorter sentences. This allows people to understand normally complex terms or phrases.
Write good pages. The best encyclopedia pages have useful, well-written information.
Use the pages to learn and teach. These pages can help people learn English. You can also use them to make a new Wikipedia to help other people.
Simple does not mean short. Writing in Simple English means that simple words are used. It does not mean readers want basic information. Articles do not have to be short to be simple; expand articles, add details, but use basic vocabulary.
Be bold! Your article does not have to be perfect, because other editors will fix it and make it better. And most importantly, do not be afraid to start and make articles better yourself.

Selected article

Bloc Party are a British indie rock band. There are four people in the band. Kele Okereke does the vocals and plays rhythm guitar, Russell Lissack plays the lead guitar, Gordon Moakes plays bass guitar and Matt Tong plays the drums. Its music has been compared to bands like The Cure, Gang of Four and The Strokes.

The band formed at the 1999 Reading Festival. It went through many names before Bloc Party was chosen in 2003. Moakes joined after reading an advertisement in NME magazine. Tong was picked through an audition. Bloc Party was first noticed by giving BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq and Franz Ferdinand's lead singer Alex Kapranos a copy of its music demo, "She's Hearing Voices". This was later released as a single.

In February 2005, the band released its debut album Silent Alarm. Lots of good things were said about it. It made NME's Album of the Year list. The album was given platinum status in the UK a year later. The band released another album, A Weekend in the City, in 2007. This reached number two on the UK album chart and number twelve in the Billboard 200. In August 2008, the band released its third album, Intimacy.

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Did you know...

From a collection of Wikipedia's articles:

... that Leonard Cohen (pictured) wrote about eighty different drafts of the song "Hallelujah" before finalizing the original version in 1984?

... that Tetris has been downloaded over 170 million times, making it the best-selling video game of all time?

... that Martin Van Buren was the first President of the United States who was born as a citizen of the United States?

... that in May 2017, Puerto Rico filed for the largest government bankruptcy case in American history?

... that before acting, Academy Award winner Martin Landau was hired as a cartoonist for The New York Daily News when he was a teenager?

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