Catalan Wikipedia

Catalan Wikipedia
Main Page of the Catalan Wikipedia in August 2023
Type of site
Online encyclopedia
Available inCatalan
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLca.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Users557,819 registered accounts
9,638 contributors[a] (July 2014)
Launched16 March 2001 (2001-03-16)
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/
Share-Alike 4.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL)
Media licensing varies

The Catalan Wikipedia (Catalan: Viquipèdia en català) is the Catalan-language edition of the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia.[2][3] It was created on 16 March 2001, just a few minutes after the first non-English Wikipedia, the German edition. For two months it was the only active one to have articles in a language other than English, while the German version remained dormant.[4][5]

With 790,838 articles, it is the 21st-largest Wikipedia and the fifth-largest Wikipedia in a Romance language. In April 2016, the project had 582 active editors who made at least five edits in that month.

Creation

On 16 March 2001, Jimmy Wales announced that he wanted to create Wikipedias in other languages and mentioned that there was interest in creating a Catalan version.[6] The first tests were made on the deutsche.wikipedia.com,[7] and a few minutes later, the Catalan Wikipedia was created in the catalan.wikipedia.com domain.[8]

The first edit on a non-English Wikipedia was at 21:07 UTC, 16 March 2001, made to the Catalan main page. The first contribution in a non-English article dates from 17 March at 01:41 UTC in the article Àbac. Despite being created after the German Wikipedia, for about two months it was the only non-English Wikipedia that contained articles.[9]

After some time, the domain changed to ca.wikipedia.com and later to ca.wikipedia.org. About 2003 its community started to use the name "Viquipèdia" when talking about this edition of Wikipedia. Nowadays, this word is used in Catalan language to refer to the whole Wikipedia. About 2005, the domain www.viquipedia.net was registered and it redirects to ca.wikipedia.org. In 2007, www.viquipedia.cat was also registered and redirected.

The first registered user was probably AstroNomer, presumably used only to make some registration tests, but the first registered user to make lasting contributions was Cdani, the same user cited in Jimbo Wales' message.

In 2005 the Catalan Wikipedia community debated on which name(s) of the Catalan language to present in the main page and other policy pages, either català, "Catalan", valencià, "Valencian", or a combination of both català-valencià and català o valencià. Although there was not a consensus on any of the proposals, users agreed that in articles relevant to the Valencian Community, the name "Valencian" was to be used; on all other articles "Catalan" is preferred.[10] The main page avoids making reference to a particular nomenclature, by simply stating aquesta versió, "this version".

Milestones and historical main pages

Milestone Date Article
1 article 17 March 2001 Àbac (Abacus)
10,000 articles 16 November 2004 Unknown[11]
20,000 articles 19 November 2005 Diputat (Member of Parliament)[12]
30,000 articles 6 May 2006 Lunitari (Lunitari)
40,000 articles 20 September 2006 Enginyeria d'aliments (Food engineering)
50,000 articles 4 January 2007 Puerto Real (Puerto Real)[13][14]
75,000 articles 31 August 2007 Eutidem (filòsof) (Euthydemus (Socratic literature))[15]
100,000 articles 18 January 2008 Arrel cúbica (Cubic root)[16]
125,000 articles 12 August 2008 Llúdria gegant (Giant otter)
150,000 articles 28 December 2008 Guerra dels Ossos (Bone Wars)
175,000 articles 7 May 2009 Spilocuscus (Spilocuscus)
200,000 articles 21 September 2009 Carnaval de Solsona (Solsona Carnival)[17][18][19][20]
250,000 articles 29 June 2010 Mare de Déu del Claustre (Mare de Déu del Claustre)
300,000 articles 21 December 2010 Pastítsio (Pastitsio)
400,000 articles 12 April 2013 Heli-4 (Helium-4)
450,000 articles 3 February 2015 L'executor (The Executioner (1970 film))
500,000 articles 11 March 2016 Oda Krohg (Oda Krohg)
600,000 articles 8 January 2019 Pura Velarde (Pura Velarde)
700,000 articles 24 April 2022 Hey, Hey, Rise Up! (Hey, Hey, Rise Up!)
Evolution of the number of articles
  • 2001 March
  • 2003 May
  • 2004 March
  • 2004 June
  • 2004 October
  • 2005 November
  • 2006 October
  • 2007 January
  • 2013 December
  • 2019 March
  • 2023 August

Reception

In an academic study published in 2017, seventy-seven university students, most with Catalan and/or Spanish as their native languages, made contributions to the English, Catalan and Spanish Wikipedias as part of assessed work and responded to questionaries.[21] The students preferred the English Wikipedia when looking for general information despite the fact that English was the language they reported being less proficient at: "In many of the open comments on the differences between language editions, the students suggested that the English version was better, more complete or more reliable." Specifically, the participants were asked, "If an article is available in Catalan, Spanish and English, which version are you most likely to read first?" The majority responded that they read articles in English first: "The English version was seen by many of the students as the main reference page, and they stated that they used it 'by default', ... The students responded to this question after having written a Wikipedia article and undergoing the process of publishing it (and thus of the strict peer review curation of the Wikipedia community of volunteers)."[21]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Contributors are users who edited at least 10 times since they registered.[1]

References

  1. ^ "Wikipedia Statistics — Tables — Contributors". stats.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 19 April 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  2. ^ Aguilera, Jordi; Novella, Antonio (2 October 2009). "El català, un exemple d'èxit a Internet" (in Catalan). Espai Internet. Archived from the original on 8 March 2010. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  3. ^ Dalby, Andrew (2007). "Wikipedia(s) on the languages map of the world". English Today. 23 (2). Cambridge Univ Press: 3–8. doi:10.1017/S0266078407002027. S2CID 145231651.
  4. ^ Estadístiques de les viquipèdies en diferents idiomes (2001)
  5. ^ "La Viquipèdia en anglès celebra 15 anys d'intel·ligència col·lectiva". 324.cat. 15 January 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  6. ^ Jimbo Wales' message about creating first foreign Wikipedias. lists.wikimedia.org.
  7. ^ Message confirming the creation of the German domain. lists.wikimedia.org.
  8. ^ First history of the Catalan Wikipedia Main Page, hours in Pacific time zone
  9. ^ Multilingual monthly statistics (2001). English Wikipedia.
  10. ^ See debate in the decision making process about usage of the names of the language. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  11. ^ 10,000 articles. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  12. ^ 20,000 articles. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  13. ^ 50,000 articles. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  14. ^ Technically, Lesbianisme was article 50,000; nevertheless, it was shortly after merged with Lesbiana according to the project guidelines.
  15. ^ 75,000 articles. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  16. ^ 100,000 articles. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  17. ^ ca:200.000 articles en català. Catalan Wikipedia (in Catalan).
  18. ^ La Viquipedia en català que ja té 200000 entrades, segona en la classificació de qualitat 3cat24.cat, TV3 news portal (in Catalan).
  19. ^ Viquipèdia 200000 i creixent Archived 11 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine TV3, self service video survey (in Catalan).
  20. ^ La viquipèdia en català arriba als 200.000 articles Deprecated link archived 1 January 2013 at archive.today, Tribuna de Mallorca, September 21, 2009 (in Catalan).
  21. ^ a b Soler-Adillon, Joan; Freixa, Pere (15 December 2017). "Wikipedia access and contribution: Language choice in multilingual communities. A case study". Anàlisi (57): 63–80. doi:10.5565/rev/analisi.3109. hdl:10230/33516.
Catalan edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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