Catalan Wikipedia
The Catalan Wikipedia is the Catalan-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was created on 16 March 2001, just a few minutes after the first non-English Wikipedia, the German edition. With more than articles, it is currently the -largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, 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. The edition is most notable for its large number of quality articles, which illustrates the Catalan language's important online presence despite being a minority language.
Creation
On March 16, 2001, Jimmy Wales announced that he wanted to create Wikipedias in other languages and mentioned that there was interest in creating a Catalan version. The first tests were made on the deutsche.wikipedia.com, and a few minutes later, the Catalan Wikipedia was created in the catalan.wikipedia.com domain.The first edit on a non-English Wikipedia was at 21:07 UTC, March 16, 2001, made to the Catalan Main Page. The first contribution in a non-English article dates from March 17 at 01:41 UTC in the article :ca:Àbac|Àbac. Despite being created after the German Wikipedia, for about two months it was the only non-English Wikipedia that contained articles.
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 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. The main page avoids making reference to a particular nomenclature, by simply stating aquesta versió, "this version".
Milestones and historical main pages
Evolution of the number of articles ImageSize = width:130 height:600 PlotArea = width:35 height:500 left:50 bottom:40 AlignBars = early Colors = id:linecolor value:rgb id:rg value:red DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy Period = from:17/03/2001 till:08/01/2019 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:1 start:2002 PlotData= bar:Articles width:25 mark: align:left fontsize:9 shift: from:17/03/2001 till:end color:rg at:17/03/2001 shift: align:right text:1 at:08/03/2003 shift: align:right text:1.000 at:01/02/2004 shift: align:right text:5.000 at:16/11/2004 shift: align:right text:10.000 at:19/11/2005 shift: align:right text:20.000 at:06/05/2006 shift: align:right text:30.000 at:20/09/2006 shift: align:right text:40.000 at:04/01/2007 shift: align:right text:50.000 at:31/08/2007 shift: align:right text:75.000 at:18/01/2008 shift: align:right text:100.000 at:12/08/2008 shift: align:right text:125.000 at:28/12/2008 shift: align:right text:150.000 at:21/09/2009 shift: align:right text:200.000 at:29/06/2010 shift: align:right text:250.000 at:22/12/2010 shift: align:right text:300.000 at:25/08/2011 shift: align:right text:350.000 at:12/04/2013 shift: align:right text:400.000 at:02/02/2015 shift: align:right text:450.000 at:11/03/2016 shift: align:right text:500.000 at:08/01/2019 shift: align:right text:600.000 |