Wikimedia News

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Please avoid including article-count milestones other than 100,500,1k,2k,5k,10k,15k, and 10k increments up to 100k and multiples of 25k. Try mixing things up with other milestones (active users, new articles/day).

See Wikipedia languages for summaries of community pages and key statistics on the Wikipedia languages.

See also : Wikimedia hardware status, Goings-on

July 2004

July 25th 2004

July 22nd, 2004

• Wikibooks now has separate subdomains for the different languages. The German Wikibooks at http://de.wikibooks.org already exists and is in the transfer process. The French and Japanese Wikibooks are well on their way, too.

• The luxembourgish Wikipedia says hello to the world !

• Wikipedia.org now listed on as a 'Reference' site ranking #12 and as #1 in 'Reference > Encyclopedias'.

• The Khmer (Cambodian) Wikipedia gets its first article, on the topic of Sin Sisamouth by . It has been started using Romanized letters until more native Khmer script writers can contribute. A village pump equivalent has been set up at Wikipedia:Kalein Teak by .

July 9th, 2004

• The reached 10 000 articles. The 10 000th article is .
• The Dutch Wikipedia finished its first article writing contest between the contributors. A three-person jury selected the best article among a number of nominations. In total 7 people took part, and the jury chose by as the winner, with honourable mention for by and by . And of course the Dutch Wikipedia won by getting seven very high-quality articles. See:

A meeting was held in Paris with Jimbo, Angela and about 40 Wikipedians from France, Belgium and Switzerland. To see some photos, go to and here interview http://wikimedia.org/media/paris_meeting_2004.ogg (Jimbo, Anthere, Angela, Yann)

The first Wikimedia Board meeting was held at this occasion.

June 2004

June, 2004

Wikipedia's Prix Ars Electronica award for Digital Communities was officially accepted by in New York City at the first ever PAE award ceremony held there. It is a beautiful golden statue of Nike. Quoth Danny in his acceptance speech, "Wikipedia shows that everyone can be a learner, but also that everyone can be a teacher too... In five years I want more people around the world in more languages and of all ages to become teachers and learners."

Pictures and the story at Golden Nica Awards 2004.

• Access to the Chinese Wikipedia has now been restored for users in Mainland China.

• Ukrainian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles. The 5000th article was Сікорський Ігор Іванович (, the designer of the first modern helicopter) by Gutsul. I would be interested to know whether Gutsul is a human or a bot. It is the second massive growth spurt by Ukrainian in three weeks that has brought it to the 5000-article milestone. Congratulations to them.

• Access to Wikimedia sites has been restored for users in Mainland China, though the Chinese Wikipedia remains inaccessible for some users.

• The official announcement was made on Foundation-l regarding the foundation of the German Wikimedia Association, "Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens". For boardmembers and other details, see the post.

• German Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles. We are having a party tonight at C-Base in Berlin, Germany to celebrate!
• The elections for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees have ended. and have been chosen.

• The English version of Wikipedia was rendered inaccessible in China, coinciding with a national campaign by the Government to remove content deemed unsuitable by Beijing from public access in China. News of the crackdown has been officially verified by Xinhua, [1]. See news reports in: English; Esperanto.

• Wikimedia servers were down for about 36 hours due to a database crash [1] [1].

• Seven months after the 100th article, the with the article has reached the milestone of the 1000th article.
• Wiktionary reaches 40,000 entries. Entry 40,000 was Luka.

Jimbo meeting wikipedians

• met a group of Wikipedians in person for the first time ever . He spoke for an hour and a half about current Wikimedia issues, the Wikiholicspedians socialised and we had a Wikipedia quiz. Then we went to the pub. Report and pictures by  
• Holopedia, born in July 2003, is undergoing reincarnation as the Minnan Wikipedia. As a standardizing , is here written in the traditional , as practiced in Taiwan. Current priorities include bringing onboard the 180 off-site articles, localizing the interface to grow the community, and negotiating an appropriate subdomain name.
• All Wiktionaries have been upgraded to MediaWiki 1.3.

• met in person for the first ever international meeting between two wikipedians.
• The Hungarian Wikipedia has passed the 1000 article milestone. Looking forward to further growth.
• In the mainland China a part of users are unable to visit the Chinese Wikipedia. Other languages' Wikipedia and other projects are still accessible. It is strongly suspected the Chinese government might have blocked the access to the Chinese Wikipedia.

June 3, 2004

• The Norwegian Wikipedia has adopted a new main page, based on the new German design.

May 31, 2004

• The Bulgarian Wikipedia has exploded. As of June 2, 2004, its article count stood at 5715 - a gain of almost four thousand on the 1896 articles registered on 22 May. The 5000th article, created on 31 May, was Сухозем, about a city in central . The "author" was Robo5, a bot operated by Borislav. This bot, very similar to the (dormant) which Anglowikipedians know so well, has been responsible for the vast majority of the four thousand new articles.

• The Norwegian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles. The 5000th article was IPod, about the new digital music software packaged with Apple computers, by Profoss.

• The Toki Pona Wikipedia reaches 100 articles. The 100th article was Jan Juta.

• The Aromanian Wikipedia has been set-up, after a long period of waiting and anticipation. Although Aromanian is a small language, the Aromanian Wikipedia has big hopes for the future, hoping to become an important Wikipedia. The Aromanian Wikipedia has been started up by the folks at the , since Aromanian is very similar to Romanian. To find out more about the Aromanian language, click .

• reaches 1,000 articles. The 1000th article is 15 Ιουνίου by ; a link page for June 15th.
• A new page tracking Wikimedia's bank account history now exists at Wikimedia bank account history for 2004. Wikimedia PayPal donations for 2004 has also been updated. Both pages are updated as of the end of quarter 1 2004.

Among the smaller Wikis, Portuguese and Hebrew have shown strong growth over the past couple of months. As always, the Romanian wiki has shown consistent growth. A particular surprise is Ukrainian: after months of steady but unspectacular growth, it has suddenly put on a phenomenal growth spurt and added almost a thousand articles in a mere seven days; only English, German, and Japanese have done better. Time will tell whether this new surge is just a solar flare, or something lasting, as one certainly hopes.

Defying the general growth trend, the Interlingua Wikipedia continues to shrink - but that is for the better. and have gone on a deleting spree to clean up the rubbish dumped by vandals. Shorn of its cancerous growths, it should soon be able to resume its former healthy growth.

• has reached 30,000 articles, becoming the 6th to do so.

• System administrators intend to release MediaWiki version 1.3 today. This version of the software incorporates many new features introduced the 1.2 branch. See MediaWiki roadmap for details. Report new bugs and make any comments at MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports.

• Wikipedia.org's daily rank hits 426 - the best daily rank for Wikipedia.org yet.[1]
• has reached 10,000 articles, the 12th to do so.

• Wikipedia has been awarded with the in the category Community. [1]
• The server was down for maintenance from 02:00 to 03:00 UTC. See hardware status and this mailing list post for details.

May 5, 2004

• Preparations for the Elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation have started.

• The Malay Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles. The 2,000th article in the Indonesian Wikipedia is about love or Cinta ;-)
• The Italian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.

Hardware upgrades taking place from 18:30 (UTC) onwards on both these days. Expect some editing downtime. See Wikimedia hardware status for details.

May 2, 2004

May 1, 2004

• New Wiktionary are set up. The url is http://XX.wiktionary.org You have to change XX by the code of the language.

• Introduction of the new main page.

April 23, 2004

• Wikipedia.org's daily Alexa rank hits 503 - a new record.[1] See Wikipedia.org is more popular than.

• Wikipedia.org's daily Alexa rank hits 521 - a new record.[1] See Wikipedia.org is more popular than.

• Wikipedia has been nominated for Webby Awards in two categories.

• • http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/cat_defs.html

• http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html#best_practices
• http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html#community

Winners will be announced online May 12, 2004.

April 19, 2004

• The English Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
• The German Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles.

• The Hebrew Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.

• The Welsh Wikipedia reached 1,000 articles at 00.01 BST. The 1000th article was , about a member of the Welsh National Assembly.
• The Dutch Wikipedia reached 25,000 articles. The 25.000th was , about a battle in the Seven Years' War.

• The Simple English Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.

• Romanian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.

• As per the Foundation-L Proposal, a new mailing list, foundation-l, is created for the purpose of discussing issues related to the Wikimedia Foundation, such as the creation of new Wikimedia projects, or fundraising ideas. Please subscribe if you are interested in these issues.
• The mailing list wikilegal-l is proposed to be merged into foundation-l.

• Japanese Wikipedia now has over 40,000 articles.
• Wikipedia.org nominated by www.google.com for deletion as a collection of unrelated items put together by non-professionnels and therefore clearly worthless.
• On the Dutch Wikipedia an article announces the introduction by Philips and Matsushita of a completely new disk, the Multi Purpose Disk, using Röntgen Radiation to get a storage capacity of 5 Terabyte. The page has been kept after April 1 ended at http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multi_Purpose_Disc.

March 31, 2004

• Cashubian Wikipedia has been started.
• Angry that the first site to be shown on for the search 'Jew' is an anti-Semitic site, someone has start an action to with the page . The page is already up from nowhere to place 4 (now place 1/2 - April 19) for this search. See: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1080707285901
• The has 25.000 articles.

• French Wiktionary, and Polish Wiktionary has been developed creating the first two multilingual Wiktionaries.
• Geoffrin, the computer that was the database server from November to January, has (finally) been returned after repairs.

• The now has 100 articles.
• The English Wikipedia has a group of members who have started a Wikipedian voluntary association to help members in the dispute resolution process there. The organization is called the . They are exercising their democratic rights and are conducting an online election for ; nominations, open to all (even non-members of the association), close at 07:15, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC).
• A new mailing list, Foundation-L, for Wikimedia issues is proposed. The proposal is at Foundation-L Proposal. Please vote by March 31, 20:00 UTC.
• The now has over 70,000 articles.

• Wikipedia.org's daily rank hits 541 - the best daily rank for Wikipedia.org yet.[1] See Wikipedia.org is more popular than
• The Russian wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles

• The Latin wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles
• Enciclopedia Libre has switched to Phase III. The new adress is http://enciclopedia.us.es/
• Wikipedia in French has switched to unicode.
• Please vote on Mailing list merge

Please vote on Edit summary prefill poll.

March 18, 2004

• The Spanish Wikipedia has reached the 20,000 articles milestone.
• Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.

• French Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
• Korean Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.

• Galician Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles.

• Wikipedia today had perhaps its worst vandalism attack yet, as a vandalbot using multiple IPs added a link to a Chinese commercial webpage to hundreds of pages on the Frisian, Galician, Guarani, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian and Albanian Wikipedias.

• Wikipedia.org's daily Alexa rank breaks a new record! It is now at 568. [1] See Wikipedia.org is more popular than

• Hebrew Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.

• The Indonesian Wikipedia reaches 500 articles.

• The Polish Wikipedia reaches 25,000 articles.

February 25, 2004

• The press release for 500,000 articles is a great success in Germany. There is an article in the online magazine Der Spiegel and an item on the Tagesthemen in the national television station ARD.
• Wikipedia.org's one day Alexa rank drops to 593 - its best daily score ever. [1] See Wikipedia.org is more popular than

• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• Wikipedia in Portuguese has reached 2,000 articles.

• 500,000 articles have been reached! Please see Wikimedia's first press release and start to distribute your language version of the press release.

• the Afrikaans Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles

• the Norwegian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles

• The English Wikipedia has grown from 200,000 to 210,000 articles in only 17 days.

• A first-draft translation of LanguageGa.php has been completed.

• Wikipedia is now running fully on the new servers; see Wikimedia servers.
• A link to Wikipedia's Cafe Press page has been added to the foundation's fund-raising page.
• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles. Hopefully they will soon catch up with the Malay wikipedia and we can have a friendly, collaborative race!

• The Croatian Wikipedia has reached its 2,000th article - about the Serbian language. Let's hope this becomes a sign of tolerance and cooperation!
• The changeover to the new Wikimedia servers has begun.

• The Japanese Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles

• Yippeee!! The has reached its first 1,000 articles! Yep, watch out, English Wikipedia, we're coming!
• German Wikipeda has reached 50,000 articles - just seconds prior the server freeze

• Malay Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• Dutch Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles. This is almost precisely half a year after reaching 10,000.

• Wikimedia PayPal donation summary and detail for January available at Wikimedia PayPal donations for 2004.

• Wikipedia.org's 3-month Alexa rank goes to 868, passing Slashdot.org's 3-month rank (897) for the first time in Wikipedia history. [1] See also: Wikipedia.org is more popular than

• The English Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.

January 30, 2004

• The new server farm have been delivered to the new colocation facility. [1]

• Danish Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.

• The new server farm is scheduled to arrive on Friday and should be installed in some form by Monday. [1]
• French language Wikipedia reached 25,000 articles.

• Happy Magnus Manske Day! Two years ago today Wikipedia began switching from the old spartan UseModWiki to a new wiki system custom written by specifically for the needs of a large online encyclopedia. Over time, bug fixes, and a rewrite or two, this transmogrified into the MediaWiki software that drives Wikipedia today.

• All remaining wikipedias that had been on the old wiki software have now been transferred to the new software. Many of them have just a few pages, some have several hundred; all need work -- help make Wikipedia the most thoroughly multilingual encyclopedia in town!

• Swedish Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.

• The Wikimedia Foundation bylaws have been posted for the first time. [1]
• Server update: A powerful database server on loan from Bomis is scheduled to be installed today and the shipment of the new server farm is scheduled to arrive in late January. [1]

• Wikipedia has been growing for 3 years. Where's the cake ?
• Want to see how Wikipedia looked on March 30, 2001? Go here and click around (even RecentChanges works!). (although it is from 2 June rather than 30 March)

• Polish Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
• Catalan Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.

January 13, 2004

• A link to Wikimedia PayPal donations for 2003 has been added to the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising page (at the bottom of the 'Account balances table).

• Japanese Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles, making it the 3rd largest Wikipedia in terms of number of articles.
• Spanish Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.

• All wikis and mailing lists should be working, but some features may be disabled because we're on a slower backup database server for now. New database backup dumps are now available at http://download.wikimedia.org/

• Wikimedia News/2003
• Wikimedia News/2002