(for example, Hercule Poirot). Andrew Lih wrote that German Wikipedia users believe that "having no article at all is better than a very bad article." Therefore, growth on the German Wikipedia leveled before it did for the English Wikipedia, with accelerating growth in article count shifting to constant growth in mid-2006. The number of users signing up for accounts began to steadily decline in 2007 through 2008. The number of volunteer authors began to stagnate in 2007 and has decreased since that. In Germany, the number of regularly active authors fell by more than a third from the peak of 9254 at the beginning of 2008 to 5862 at the end of 2015. The January 2005, Google Zeitgeist announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched query on www.google.de. In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind Firefox and Valentine's Day. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first. the size of the German Wikipedia database is about six gigabytes. Language and varieties of German Separate Wikipedias have been created for several other varieties of German, including Alemannic German (:als:), Luxembourgish (:lb:), Pennsylvania German (:pdc:), Ripuarian (including Kölsch; :ksh:), Low German (:nds:) and Bavarian (:bar:). These however, have less popularity than the German Wikipedia. There are also the Dutch Low Saxon (:nds-nl:) and the Mennonite Low German Wikipedia. Characteristics The German Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of aspects. Compared to the English Wikipedia, different criteria of encyclopedic notability are expressed through the judgments of the editors for deciding if an article about a topic should be allowed. The criteria for notability are more specific; each field has its own specific guidelines. There are no fair use provisions. Images and other media that are accepted on the English Wikipedia as fair use may not be suitable for the German Wikipedia. However, the threshold of originality for works of applied art is set much higher, which often allows the use of company logos and similar icons, too. The use of scholarly sources, in preference over journalistic and other types of sources, is more strongly encouraged. The German Verifiability (Belege) guideline classifies scholarly sources as inherently more reliable than non-academic sources; the latter's use is – in theory at least – only permitted if there is a lack of published academic sources covering a topic. In September 2005, Erik Möller voiced concern that "long term page protection is used excessively on