Catalan Wikipedia

The Catalan Wikipedia ( ca, Viquipèdia en català) is the Catalan-language edition of the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia. It was created on March 16, 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 '' 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(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.See debate in the decision making process about usage of the names of the language The main page avoids making reference to a particular nomenclature, by simply stating ''aquesta versió'', "this version".

Milestones and historical main pages

Image:Portada del març del 2001.png, 2001 March
Image:Portada del maig del 2003.png, 2003 May
Image:Portada del març del 2004.png, 2004 March
Image:Portada del juny del 2004.png, 2004 June
Image:Portada de l'octubre del 2004.png, 2004 October
Image:Portada del novembre del 2005.png, 2005 November
Image:Portada de l'octubre del 2006.png, 2006 October
Image:Portada del gener del 2007.png, 2007 January
Image:Catalan_wiki_20131211.png, 2013 December
Image:Catalan Wikipedia main page screenshot 2019-03-16.png, 2019 March

See also

* Spanish Wikipedia

Notes

References

External links

Catalan Wikipedia mobile version


Internet Archive
– Catalan Wikipedia main page, March 27, 2001
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List of Wikipedias by sample of articlesOfficial Twitter account of Catalan WikipediaOfficial Instagram account of Catalan Wikipedia

{{Wikipedias in Romance languages

Catalan-language encyclopedias
Wikipedias by language
Internet properties established in 2001
Catalan-language websites
2001 establishments in Catalonia
Wikipedias in Romance languages