Available in Esperanto Website eo.wikipedia.org Registration Optional | Owner Wikimedia Foundation Commercial No | |
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Type of site Internet encyclopedia project | ||
The Esperanto Wikipedia (Esperanto: Vikipedio en Esperanto, [vikipeˈdio en espeˈɾanto] or Esperanta Vikipedio [espeˈɾanta vikipeˈdio]) is the Esperanto edition of Wikipedia, which was started on 11 May 2001, alongside the Basque Wikipedia. With over 238,000 articles as of June 2016, it is the 32nd-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, and the largest Wikipedia in a constructed language.
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Origin and influence of the Esperanto Wikipedia
Chuck Smith, an American Esperantist, is considered to be Esperanto Wikipedia's founder. The encyclopedia started off when he imported the 139 articles of the Enciklopedio Kalblanda by Stefano Kalb, which took him three weeks following November 15, 2001. Later on, he undertook a journey to Europe with the goal of popularizing Wikipedia among the speakers of Esperanto in European countries. For instance, already in November 2002 he gave a talk about Wikipedia at the 10th Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology in Dobřichovice (Czech Republic).
Esperanto speakers have also been involved in the founding of several other language versions of the Wikipedia (Czech, Slovak, Ossetian, Swahili). The introduction of support for the Esperanto alphabet by Brion Vibber, an Esperanto speaker and later Wikimedia Foundation's first employee, in January 2002 has paved the way for alphabets of languages other than English and initiated the transition of the whole Wikipedia to Unicode.
Quality of the Esperanto Wikipedia
As of August 2014, the Esperanto Wikipedia has 252 articles of feature quality (Elstaraj artikoloj) and a further 197 considered worth reading (Legindaj artikoloj). Weekly community projects include a Collaboration of the Week (Kunlaboraĵo de la semajno) which improves neglected articles and an Article of the Week featuring good-quality articles on the front page. The Esperanto community is a frequent contributor to the Meta project, Translation of the week.
According to the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles at Meta, a list based on List of articles every Wikipedia should have, Esperanto ranks 36th, lacking almost none of the list of vital articles, but having in general relatively short articles.
On 18 November 2008, the Esperanto Wikipedia implemented the Flagged revisions extension.
As of February 2012, The Esperanto Wikipedia has the 5th greatest number of articles per speaker among Wikipedias with over 100,000 articles, and ranks 11th overall. These figures were based on Ethnologue's estimate of 2,000,000 Esperanto speakers.
Due to the geographical spread of its editors (see the box on the right), the Esperanto Wikipedia may be considered the most international. In this regard it competes only with the Arabic Wikipedia, which, however, has 42.8% of its editors coming from just two countries.
On 13 August 2014 Esperanto Wikipedia reached 200,000 articles.
Notability within the Esperanto community
Along with learners and other Esperantists of all levels, many very experienced Esperantists and native Esperantists have joined the project. At least three editors are members of the Academy of Esperanto, Gerrit Berveling, John C. Wells, and Bertilo Wennergren, a notable Esperanto grammarian and the director of the Academy's section about Esperanto vocabulary.
Vikipedio incorporates, with permission, the content of the 1934 Enciklopedio de Esperanto and also content from several reference books and the monthly periodical Monato.
The Esperanto Wikipedia has been featured in many Esperanto news media, including a radio interview at Radio Polonia, and articles at Esperanto, Kontakto, Libera Folio and Raporto.info. The Esperanto Wikimania, a gathering held in 2011 to celebrate the encyclopedia's 10th anniversary, has been subsidized by the host city of Svitavy (Czech Republic) and the Pardubice Region and covered by Czech Television.
Esperanto organisations like Universal Esperanto Association do not contribute to Vikipedio but support it by providing chambers at Esperanto conventions for Vikipedio presentations and trainings. At the World Esperanto Congress in Rotterdam, summer 2008, there were two Wikipedian meetups and a lecture at the Esperantology Conference. In April 2013, ELiSo (Esperanto and Free Knowledge) was established as one of the first Wikimedia user groups.
Wikipedia handbook in Esperanto
The Esperanto Wikipedia community has created and published a 40-page "Wikipedia: Practical Handbook" (Vikipedio: Praktika Manlibro) which is sold on-line and at conventions. The manual is intended to give new Wikipedians advice and information on how to edit Wikipedia in Esperanto. It is currently in its second printing.