The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedia), and with articles, at present () the -largest edition of Wikipedia by number of articles, behind English Wikipedia and the mostly bot-generated

Cebuano Wikipedia The Cebuano Wikipedia ( ceb, Wikipedya sa Sinugboanon) is the Cebuano-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. It currently contains articles, most of which were created by the automated program Lsjbot. There are active use ...

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/nowiki>Alternative language Wikipedias, 16 March 2001List of Wikipedias/Table
meta.wikimedia.org, Statistics It has the second-largest number of edits behind the English Wikipedia and over 260,000 disambiguation pages. On November 7, 2011, it became the second edition of Wikipedia, after the English edition, to exceed 100 million page edits. The German Wikipedia is criticized because of several ongoing political manipulations by paid editing who face a small and overwhelmed number of administrators.

Early history

The German edition of Wikipedia was the first non-English Wikipedia subdomain, and was originally named . Its creation was announced by

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipe ...

on 16 March 2001. One of the earliest snapshots of the home page, dated 21 March 2001 (revision #9), can be seen at the Wayback Machine site. Aside from the home page, creation of articles in the German Wikipedia started as early as April 2001, apparently with translations of Nupedia articles. The earliest article still available on Wikipedia's site is apparently Polymerase-Kettenreaktion, dated May 2001.

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
" verein'' concept solidified the German Wikipedia's culture. The geography of Europe facilitated face-to-face meetups among German Wikipedians.

Growth, coverage and popularity

Artikelwachstum in der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia

On 27 December 2009, the German Wikipedia edition exceeded 1,000,000 articles,Statistics
of German Wikipedia (English) becoming the first edition after the English-language Wikipedia to do so. The millionth article was

Ernie Wasson Ernie George Wasson (born January 10, 1950 in Berkeley, California) is an American gardener, horticulturist and author. Wasson studied from 1968 to 1974 at Humboldt State University, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Science in Geography in 1 ...

. In November 2008, 90% of the edition's articles had more than 512

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

s, 49% had more than 2

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix '' kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quant ...

s, and the average article size was 3,476 bytes. In the middle of 2009, this edition had nearly 250,000 biographies and in December 2006 more than 48,500 disambiguations. Compared to the English Wikipedia, the German edition tends to be more selective in its coverage, often rejecting small stubs, articles about individual fictional characters and similar materials. Instead, there is usually one article about all the characters from a specific fictional setting, usually only when the setting is considered important enough (for example, all characters from ''Star Wars'' are listed in a single article). A dedicated article about a single fictional entity generally exists only if the character in question has a very significant impact on popular culture (for example, Hercule Poirot). Andrew Lih wrote that German Wikipedia users believe that "having no article at all is better than a very bad article." Lih, p. 148. Therefore, growth on the German Wikipedia leveled before it did for the English Wikipedia, with accelerating growth in article count shifting to constant growth in mid-2006. The number of users signing up for accounts began to steadily decline in 2007 through 2008. Active editors on German Wikipedia over time

Active editors on German Wikipedia over time

The number of volunteer authors began to stagnate in 2007 and has decreased since that. In Germany, the number of regularly active authors fell by more than a third from the peak of 9254 at the beginning of 2008 to 5862 at the end of 2015. The January 2005,

Google Zeitgeist The following is a list of products, services, and apps provided by Google. Active, soon-to-be discontinued, and discontinued products, services, tools, hardware, and other applications are broken out into designated sections. Web-based produc ...

announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched query on www.google.de. In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind Firefox and

Valentine's Day Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, thr ...

. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first. , the size of the German Wikipedia database is about six gigabytes.

Language and varieties of German

Separate Wikipedias have been created for several other varieties of German, including

Alemannic German Alemannic, or rarely Alemannish (''Alemannisch'', ), is a group of High German dialects. The name derives from the ancient Germanic tribal confederation known as the Alamanni ("all men"). Distribution Alemannic dialects are spoken by approxi ...

( :als:),

Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...

( :lb:),

Pennsylvania German The Pennsylvania Dutch ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ), also known as Pennsylvania Germans, are a cultural group formed by German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They emigrated primarily from German-spe ...

( :pdc:), Ripuarian (including Kölsch; :ksh:),

Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle ...

( :nds:) and Bavarian ( :bar:). These however, have less popularity than the German Wikipedia. There are also the Dutch Low Saxon ( :nds-nl:) and th
Mennonite Low German Wikipedia

Characteristics

The German Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of aspects. * Compared to the English Wikipedia, different criteria of encyclopedic notability are expressed through the judgments of the editors for deciding if an article about a topic should be allowed. The criteria for notability are more specific; each field has its own specific guidelines. * There are no fair use provisions. Images and other media that are accepted on the English Wikipedia as fair use may not be suitable for the German Wikipedia. However, the threshold of originality for works of applied art is set much higher, which often allows the use of company logos and similar icons, too. * The use of scholarly sources, in preference over journalistic and other types of sources, is more strongly encouraged. The German Verifiability (''Belege'') guideline classifies scholarly sources as inherently more reliable than non-academic sources; the latter's use is – in theory at least – only permitted if there is a lack of published academic sources covering a topic. * In September 2005, Erik Möller voiced concern that "long term page protection is used excessively on the German Wikipedia": on 14 September 2005, 253 pages had been in a fully protected state (only editable by admins) for more than two weeks. This was the highest total of any of the Wikipedias, with the second-highest being 166 pages in the Japanese Wikipedia and 138 in the English Wikipedia. , the German Wikipedia still had the highest percentage of semi-protected articles (articles not editable by unregistered or recently registered users)—0.281%—among the ten largest Wikipedias, but in terms of the fraction of fully protected articles (0.0261%) it ranked fourth, behind the Japanese, Portuguese and English Wikipedias. * Handling of vandalism and other abuse is less structured: vandals are sometimes blocked on their first edit and without warning if their edit clearly shows lack of interest for actual encyclopaedic work. This is especially true if added text includes unlawful statements, such as

holocaust denial Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: ...

.
Similarly, the Checkuser function is rarely used to confirm usage of multiple accounts by the same person, as suspicious accounts are often blocked on sight. * Articles on indisputably notable subjects may be deleted if they are deemed too short. While the requirements for minimal articles (called stubs) are equivalent, the German and the English Wikipedia differ greatly in the way they are put into practice. * On 28 December 2005, it was decided to eliminate the Category "stub" (and the corresponding template identifying articles as stubs) from the German Wikipedia. * Users do not have to create an account in order to start a new article. * Unlike the Cebuano, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Swedish or many other Wikipedias, the German one does not contain large collections of bot-generated geographical stubs or similar articles. * The German Wikipedia version did not have an Arbitration Committee until May 2007. Currently, German Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee plays only a minor role in Wikipedia politics. * Categories are singular and are not differentiated for gender. Categories are usually introduced only for a minimum of ten entries and are not always subdivided even for larger numbers of items, so that current categories often describe only one property (e.g., nationality). Other categories are subdivided, but differently from in the English Wikipedia. For example, "chemists" are subdivided by century, not by nationality. University professors, on the other hand, will usually be categorized according to where they teach. * The equivalent to the English Wikipedia's featured articles and

good articles __NOTOC__ Click any of the topics above for a list of good articles on that topic. Good Articles ...

are exzellente Artikel (''excellent articles'') and lesenswerte Artikel (''good articles''; literally: ''articles "worth reading"''). * In 2005, there was a discussion and poll resulting in the decision to phase out the use of local image uploads and to exclusively use Wikimedia Commons for images and other media in the future. The attempt to implement this lasted for about a year and the German "Upload file" page displayed a large pointer to Commons in this time, but since December 2006, there is again a local image upload page without any pointer to Wikimedia Commons. This was prompted by the deletion of images on Commons that are acceptable according to German Wikipedia policies. * Starting in December 2004, German Wikipedians pioneered Persondata ("Personendaten"), a special format for meta data about persons (name, birth date and place etc.), introduced in the English Wikipedia in December 2005. In the beginning, the main aim of this system was to aid the search features of the DVD edition of the German Wikipedia (see below). During its introduction in January 2005, ''Personendaten'' were added to some 30,000 biographical articles on the live Wikipedia, partly aided by a somewhat automatic tool. The template is currently deprecated and is no longer on any pages. * Like ''

The Signpost ''The Signpost'' (formerly ''The Wikipedia Signpost'') is the Wikimedia movement's online newspaper. Managed by the volunteer community, it is published online with contributions from Wikimedia editors. The newspaper reports on the Wikimedia c ...

'' in the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia also has its own internal newspaper, the ''

Kurier ''Kurier'' is a German-language daily newspaper based in Vienna, Austria. History and profile ''Kurier'' was founded as ''Wiener Kurier'' by the United States Forces in Austria (USFA) in 1945, during the Allied occupation after World War I ...

''. However, the ''Kurier'' is laid out on a single page and is not issued weekly but is continually updated by interested Wikipedians, with older articles being archived. * In German Wikipedia is pronounced �vɪkiˈpeːdia

Reviewed versions

Wikimania 2006 Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software ...

announced that the German Wikipedia would soon institute a system of " stable article versions", also known as sighting, on a trial basis. The system went live in May 2008. Certain users, so-called ''"active sighters"'', are now able to mark article versions as "reviewed", indicating that the text contains no obvious vandalism. A note in the top right corner of the screen indicates to the reader whether or not the present version of an article has already been reviewed, and provides access to the most recent reviewed version or a more current, unreviewed version as needed. The German Wikipedia has two levels of ''sighting'' status which act like the English Wikipedia's pending changes protection: ''Passive sighter'' and ''Active sighter''. The former is able to make changes to articles go live immediately if the last edit is marked as sighted, while only the latter allows manually reviewing pending changes.

Miscellanea

Events

The first real-life meetup of Wikipedians took place in October 2003 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

. As a result of this meeting regularly striking round tables (called “Wikipedia-Stammtisch”) established themselves at various places in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The round tables have become an important aspect of collegial exchange within the German-speaking community. Each spring and autumn, the German Wikipedia organizes a writing contest, where a community-elected jury rates nominated articles. Prizes are sponsored by individual community members and companies. The first contest was held in October 2004 - the article

Kloster Lehnin Kloster Lehnin, or just Lehnin, is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the Germany, German state of Brandenburg. It lies about west-south-west of Potsdam. Overview Kloster Lehnin was established on 1 April 2002 by the merger of 14 villag ...

(Lehnin Abbey) was selected as the winner from 44 nominated articles. The second contest, held in March 2005, saw 52 contributions, and the third, in September 2005, 70. A trial to extend the contest to an international level met with limited success, with only the Dutch, English and Japanese Wikipedias participating. For the March 2006 writing contest, the 150 nominated articles were split into three sections: history and society (56 nominations), arts and humanities (36), and science (46). The article on the

Brown Bear The brown bear (''Ursus arctos'') is a large bear species found across Eurasia and North America. In North America, the populations of brown bears are called grizzly bears, while the subspecies that inhabits the Kodiak Islands of Alaska is k ...

(

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

: ''Braunbär'') won, and of the nominated 27 articles reached featured status a few weeks after the contest. In March 2007, the sixth contest was held, with the winner being the article on the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (

: ''Haager Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten''). German Wikipedians organized the first international Wikipedia conference, Wikimania 2005, in August 2005 in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

. Some 300 people from over 50 countries attended the three-day conference. From 17 March to 15 April 2006, the

Göttingen State and University Library The Göttingen State and University Library (german: Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen or SUB Göttingen) is the library for Göttingen University as well as for the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and is the state l ...

held a special exhibition documenting the first five years of Wikipedia. In 2006, the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

hosted the first Wikipedia Academy. The academy was intended to familiarize the academic world with Wikimedia projects. In 2007, the second such meeting took place, organized in conjunction with the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Academy of Science and Literature) in

Mainz Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-west, with Ma ...

as part of the German Jahr der Geisteswissenschaften (Year of the

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...

), which was decreed by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. A third meeting was organized on 20–21 June 2008 in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, during the Jahr der Mathematik (Year of Mathematics); the meeting was hosted by the

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin ...

. German Wikipedians have since organised the Foto-Workshop meeting of photographers, with participants from 10 countries.

Contacts with ''Brockhaus''

In April 2004, a complete list of article titles from the leading German encyclopedia '' Brockhaus'' was uploaded to the German Wikipedia, in an apparent attempt to facilitate the creation of still missing articles. A representative of ''Brockhaus'' asked for and obtained the deletion of what was believed to be a copyright infringement. As a result of the developing email conversation, a group of five Wikipedians visited the "new media" group of ''Brockhaus'' in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's ...

on 1 July 2004. The friendly meeting saw a lively discussion of the differing approaches to writing an encyclopedia; it became clear that ''Brockhaus'' had closely observed Wikipedia for quite some time.

Subsidies from the German government

In June 2007, a project on

renewable resource A renewable resource, also known as a flow resource, is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of ti ...

s ( WikiProjekt Nachwachsende Rohstoffe) was initiated, the goal being to write and improve articles on the topic. The project was run for three years and was subsidized by the German Ministry of Agriculture with approximately €80,000 a year. It was organised and managed by the private company "nova-Institut GmbH". Nova GmbH and Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. fund the project with approximately €60,000 a year in addition, so the budget is approximately €420,000 in total. These funds were mainly used to organise the project and also to search for experts in the field who have not contributed to Wikipedia yet. Nova may also have paid expense allowances to authors.

Most-disputed articles

Donauturm Vienna top from S on 2013-06-14

According to a 2013

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

study, the article on

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = " Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capi ...

was the most disputed article on the German Wikipedia. The top ten most disputed articles then also included

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...

, Scientology, and Rudolf Steiner.Gross, Doug.
Wiki wars: The 10 most controversial Wikipedia pages
"

'' CNN''. 24 July 2013. Retrieved on 26 July 2013. One of the largest disputes among a simple sentence was however about the Donauturm in Vienna. While the observation tower shares some architectural aspects with the Fernsehturm Stuttgart, it was never planned for TV broadcasting purposes. The German Wikipedia had a rather lengthy (about 600,000 characters) discussion about the suitable title and categories, as (often Austrian authors) denied the description of Donauturm as a "TV tower".Spiegel 19.04.2010, INTERNET, Im Innern des Weltwissens
Mathieu von Rohr The '' Spiegel'' coverage of the issue cited a participant with "On good days, Wikipedia is better than any TV soap".

Reviews and research

In September 2004, the computer magazine '' c't'' compared the German Wikipedia with the Brockhaus Multimedia encyclopedia and the German edition of

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

's '' Encarta''. On a scale from 0 to 5, Wikipedia ranked first with a score of 3.4. A few weeks later, the weekly newspaper ''

Die Zeit ''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History Th ...

'' also compared content from Wikipedia with other reference works and found that Wikipedia only has to "share its lead position in the field of natural science." The DVD version of Spring 2005 received a rather negative review by Björn Hoffmann—product manager working for the Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus in July 2005. In November 2005 the OpenUsability project in cooperation with the Berlin-based Relevantive AG conducted a usability test of the German Wikipedia. The study focused on finding information and included a set of recommendations to change the MediaWiki interface. In February 2006, the open usability project led a second test which focused on the experience of new editors. The reports were published in English. A second test by ''c't'' in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias:

Bertelsmann Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA () is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, and is also active in the service sector and ...

Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. With respect to concerns about the

reliability of Wikipedia The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online ...

, it concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors". In December 2007, German magazine ''

Stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Or ...

'' published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of '' Brockhaus Enzyklopädie''. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for ''Brockhaus'' with lower = better). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date; however, ''Brockhaus'' was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy. In 2015, a group of young historians reviewed the Massaker von Katyn article, which was deemed "excellent" by Wikipedia authors. They pointed out more than 130 factual errors and remarked that the article completely ignores the new scientific literature.

Off-line publication

CD November 2004

In November 2004, Directmedia Publishing GmbH started distributing a CD-ROM containing a German Wikipedia snapshot. Some 40,000 CDs were sent to registered customers of directmedia. The price was 3 euros per CD. The display and search software used for the project, ''Digibib'', had been developed by Directmedia Publishing for earlier publications; it ran on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...

(and now also on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

). The Wikipedia articles had to be converted to the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

format used by ''Digibib''. To produce the CD, a dump of the live Wikipedia had been copied to a separate server, where a team of 70 Wikipedians vetted the material, deleting nonsense articles and obvious copyright violations. Questionable articles were added to a special list, to be reviewed later. The final CD contained 132,000 articles and 1,200 images. The

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. ...

was distributed for free via

eMule eMule is a free peer-to-peer file sharing application for Microsoft Windows. Started in May 2002 as an alternative to eDonkey2000, eMule now connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network. The distinguishing features of eMule are th ...

and BitTorrent. In December, the CHIP computer magazine placed the Wikipedia data on the DVD that it distributes with every issue. The Wikipedia materials are published under

GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers th ...

while the ''Digibib'' software may only be copied for non-commercial use, except the Linux version which is GPLed.

CD/DVD April 2005

A new release of Wikipedia content was published by Directmedia on 6 April 2005. This package consisted of a 2.7 GB DVD and a separate bootable CDROM (running a version of Linux with Firefox). The CDROM did not contain all the data, but was included to accommodate users without DVD-drives. The DVD used Directmedia's ''Digibib'' software and article format; everything could be installed to a hard drive. In addition, the DVD contained an HTML tree, as well as Wikipedia articles formatted for use with

PDA PDA may refer to: Science and technology * Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books *Personal digital assistant, a mobile device * Photodiode array, a type of detector * Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting po ...

s (specifically, the

Mobipocket Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems. The Mobipoc ...

and TomeRaider formats). The production of the DVD motivated the ''Personendaten'' project (see above). The vetting process was similar to the one for the CD described above and took place on a separate MediaWiki server. The process took about a week and involved 33 Wikipedians, communicating on IRC. To prevent duplication of work, editors would protect every article that they had reviewed; links to protected articles were shown in green. Lists of potential spammed or vandalized articles had been produced ahead of time with SQL queries. Unacceptable articles were simply deleted on the spot. While the XML articles for the earlier CD version had been produced from HTML, this time a script was used to convert Wiki markup directly to the ''Digibib'' format. The final DVD contained about 205,000 articles, with every article linking to a list of contributors. Directmedia sold 30,000 DVDs, at €9.90 each. This price included 16% taxes and a one-euro donation to ''Wikimedia Deutschland''; production costs were about €2. The DVD image can also be downloaded for free. Following the successful launch of the DVD, Directmedia donated high-resolution pictures of 10,000 public domain paintings to Wikimedia Commons (see related ''Signpost'' story).

DVD/book December 2005

The next edition of Wikipedia content was issued in December 2005 by the publisher Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, a sister company of Directmedia. A 139-page book explaining Wikipedia, its history and policies was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles and 100,000 images. The book with DVD is sold for €9.90; both are also available for free download. The vetting process for this version was different and did not involve human intervention. A " white list" of trusted Wikipedians was assembled, the last 10 days of every article's history were examined, and the last version edited by a white-listed Wikipedian was chosen for the DVD. If no such version existed, the last version older than 10 days was used. Articles nominated for cleanup or deletion were not used.

DVD December 2006/2007 and 2007/2008

The December 2006 – 2007 and 2007–2008 edition can be downloaded from dvd.wikimedia.org.

Books

Wikipress series

The December 2005 book about Wikipedia was the first in a series titled ''Wikipress''. These books, published by Zenodot, consisted of a collection of Wikipedia articles about a common topic, selected and edited by so-called "Wikipeditors" who may receive compensation from Directmedia. The books were assembled on a separate server from those used for the regular German Wikipedia pages. Every ''Wikipress'' book was accompanied by an "edit card", a post card that readers could send in to edit the book's contents. ''Wikipress'' books about the

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. B ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

, the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

, and Hip hop, amongst others, were released, and other books on topics as diverse as

Whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

, Conspiracy theories,

Manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

Astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

, and the

Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...

were in the works. Due to lack of interest, the project was ended after a few books.

100 volume Wikipedia

The publisher Zenodot announced in January 2006 that they intend to publish the complete German Wikipedia in print, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in October 2006, followed by two volumes each month thereafter, to end with Z in 2010. The project, code named WP 1.0, was to be supported by 25 editors employed by Zenodot as well as a scientific advisory board. Changes made to articles before publication would also be available for incorporation into the online Wikipedia. In March 2006, Zenodot organized a "community day" to meet with Wikipedians and discuss the project. Groups of Wikipedians had already begun to polish articles with titles Aa-Af in selected topics. In late March it was announced that the project was put on hold and no books would be published in 2006; the reason given was that community support was lacking.

Bertelsmann

On 22 April 2008, the publisher

announced that it planned to publish a one-volume encyclopedia in September using content from the German-language Wikipedia. The volume was planned to include abbreviated entries for the 50,000 most commonly used search terms of the prior two years. The book is priced at 19.95 euros, with one euro from every sale going to the German chapter of the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

. It was released on 15 September 2008 in hardcover, containing 992 pages and many illustrations.

Legal issues and controversies

Deletions

The German Wikipedia has been criticized for the deletion of articles because they seem "irrelevant" to those who deleted them, even though they seem expedient, meaningful, well written and extensive enough to other people. These discussions received press coverage in computer magazines as well as in mainstream media.

Unauthorized uses

While everyone is free to use Wikipedia content, there are certain conditions, such as attribution, a copy of the license text and no non-free

derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in ...

s (see

Creative Commons licenses A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

and

GNU Free Documentation License The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the r ...

for details). In March 2005, the German news magazine ''

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' published an article on the

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...

in its online edition; it was a copy of Wikipedia's article. The article was taken down soon after and replaced with an apology. In April 2005, the encyclopedia ''Brockhaus'' published an article about the new pope

Josef Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereig ...

in its online edition. Because of its close similarity to Wikipedia's article, suspicion arose right away that the ''Brockhaus'' article might have been plagiarism. The article was removed soon after but ''Brockhaus'' did not apologize or admit guilt (see ''

'' .)

In mid-November 2005, it was discovered that an anonymous user had entered hundreds of articles from older encyclopedias that had been published in the 1970s and 1980s in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...

. The articles were mainly on topics in philosophy and related areas. The user had started in December 2003. A press release was issued and numerous editors started to remove the copyright protected materials. This was made difficult by the fact that the old encyclopedias were not online and not easily available from many West German libraries, and that the user had used numerous different IP addresses. The Directmedia DVD had to be updated.

Bertrand Meyer article hoax

On 28 December 2005, the article about

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

Bertrand Meyer (creator of the Eiffel programming language) was edited by an anonymous user, falsely reporting that Meyer had died four days earlier. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker and the article was immediately corrected. Major news media in Germany and Switzerland picked up on the story. Meyer himself went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, concluding, "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."

Naming Tron

In 2006, Wikimedia Deutschland, the German chapter of the US

, was drawn into a legal dispute between the parents of the deceased German computer hacker Boris "Tron" Floricic and the Foundation. The parents did not wish Floricic's real name to be publicly mentioned, and in December 2005 they obtained a preliminary injunction in a

court against the American

, requiring removal of Floricic's name from Wikipedia. The name was not removed. On 19 January 2006 they obtained a second injunction, this time against Wikimedia Deutschland, prohibiting the address www.wikipedia.de (which is under control of Wikimedia Deutschland) to redirect to the German Wikipedia at de.wikipedia.org (which is controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation and hosts the actual encyclopedia) as long as Wikipedia mentioned Floricic's name. Wikimedia Deutschland complied and replaced the redirect with a note explaining the situation, but without mentioning the Tron case specifically. The German Wikipedia remained accessible through de.wikipedia.org during this time. One day later, Wikimedia Deutschland achieved a suspension of the injunction, and linked from the note at www.wikipedia.de to the German Wikipedia. On 9 February, the court invalidated the injunction, ruling that neither the rights of the deceased nor the rights of the parents were affected by publishing the name; this ruling was upheld on appeal, decided 12 May.

Lutz Heilmann controversy

In November 2008,

Lutz Heilmann Lutz Heilmann (born 7 September 1966 in Zittau, East Germany) is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. He was elected to the Bundestag in the 2005 federal election as a member of the party list in Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly t ...

, a member of the

German parliament The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons ...

, obtained a preliminary injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland e. V., forbidding the forwarding of www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org. According to

Focus Online ''Focus'' (styled as ''FOCUS'') is a German-language news magazine published by Hubert Burda Media. Established in 1993 as an alternative to the ''Der Spiegel'' weekly news magazine, since 2015 the editorial staff has been headquartered in Germa ...

, Heilmann objected to claims that he had not completed his university degree, and that he had participated in a business venture involving

pornography Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

. The report also suggests that the Wikipedia article had been repeatedly altered in line with his claims by an anonymous user operating within the Bundestag building, but Heilmann denied having been involved in an edit war.

Wikimedia Germany Wikimedia chapters are national or sub-national not-for-profit organizations created to promote the interests of Wikimedia projects locally. Chapters are legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, entering into an agreement with the founda ...

displayed a page explaining the situation. Heilmann announced on 16 November that he would drop the legal proceedings against Wikimedia Deutschland, regretting that many uninvolved users of the encyclopedia had been affected.

Superprotect and Media Viewer controversy

In 2014, the

(WMF) ''"superprotected"'' a JavaScript file on German Wikipedia so that no German editors, not even administrators, were allowed to edit it. This was in response towards controversy surrounding the new Media Viewer (see ''

'' .) Many German editors left over this dispute. An open letter to the WMF was signed by almost 1,000

Wikimedians According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the Wikimedia projects. This community directly builds and administers the projects. It is committed to using open standards and software. ...

. In April 2015 Erik Möller left the WMF; the ''"superprotect"'' feature was disabled in November.

Reiss Engelhorn Museum

In 2015, the

Reiss Engelhorn Museum The Reiss Engelhorn Museum, or (rem for short), is a museum in Mannheim, Germany. It has an exhibition area of , and houses around 1.2 million objects. Facilities and collection The Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum is one of the major museums in Mannh ...

sued the WMF and its German chapter Wikimedia Deutschland for alleged copyright violations of 17 public domain pictures.

Parodies and forks

Parodies of the German Wikipedia include ''Kamelopedia'', created in April 2004, Stupidedia, created in December 2004, and the German version of

Uncyclopedia Uncyclopedia is a satirical online encyclopedia that parodies Wikipedia. Its logo, a hollow "puzzle potato", parodies Wikipedia's globe puzzle logo, and it styles itself "the content-free encyclopedia", parodying Wikipedia's slogan of "the free ...

, created in August 2005.Chip.de
Brockhaus für Kamele - Wikipedia-Parodien
, 11 March 2008 Ulrich Fuchs, a longtime contributor to the German Wikipedia, produced a fork known as ''Wikiweise'' in April 2005. It is ad-supported, uses its own software (but a similar wiki markup), admits only registered editors, and prominently displays the real names of every article's major contributors. It has since gone offline.

Copyright law

On March 21, 2019, the German Wikipedia went offline to inform users about the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

's copyright law reformation, the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which had been voted on in the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the Legislature, legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven Institutions of the European Union, institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and in ...

on March 27, 2019. Opponents of the reformation were concerned about the restriction of fundamental rights including a free press and the freedom of speech and arts. The blackouts' purpose was to both inform and protest this controversial decision.

References

External links

German Wikipedia mobile version
* Meta: German Wikipedia
Wikimedia Deutschland
*Publication efforts on CD/DVD : :* General description of CD :* General description of first DVD :* General description of second DVD and WikiPress *WP 1.0, publication in book form :
WP 1.0
the project's home page ''(now redirects to zeno.org)'' :* WP 1.0, discussion of the project in the German Wikipedia * Geschichte, a personal history of the German Wikipedia, written by one of the core Wikipedians * Report from the German Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost, 2006-11-06. {{Wikipedias in Germanic languages

German-language websites Internet properties established in 2001 Wikipedias by language Wikipedias in Germanic languages