The Malayalam Wikipedia ( ml, മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ) is the

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...

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, and was launched on December 21, 2002. The project is the leading Wikipedia among other South Asian language Wikipedias in various quality matrices. It has grown to be a wiki containing articles , and ranks 13th in terms of depth among Wikipedias.

History

Beginning

Malayalam language Wikipedia is available in the wikipedia.org domain from 2002 December 21. User Vinod M. P. had taken initiatives for it. For the two years following its creation, he had been the key person striving to keep the wiki active. Almost all the early users of Malayalam Wikipedia were non-resident

Malayalees The Malayali people () (also spelt Malayalee and also known by the demonym Keralite) are a Dravidian ethnolinguistic group originating from the present-day state of Kerala in India, occupying its southwestern Malabar coast. They are predomina ...

. The growth of the Wikipedia during these times was heavily constrained due to OS and browser related issues, rendering issues,

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

related issues, and so on.

Initial growth phase

By the middle of 2002, unicode and input tools had become popular. Blogging in Malayalam became widespread. Wikipedians started to use these tools and the Wikipedia reached 100 articles by December 2004. More users joined by the middle of 2005 and the wiki had its first sysop by September 2005. He became the first bureaucrat of the wiki after a month and the wiki became self-sufficient in terms of administration. The year 2006 saw a number of users joining the wiki, following the widespread usage of Malayalam computing tools. 500th article was born on April 10, 2006; the following September the article count reached 1000. On January 15, 2007, this became 2000 and on June 30 it became 3000.

Media coverage and increased growth

The first major Media coverage about the Malayalam Wikipedia was on September 2, 2007, when Malayalam daily newspaper ''

Mathrubhumi ''Mathrubhumi'' is a Malayalam newspaper that is published from Kerala, India. It was founded by K. P. Kesava Menon, an active volunteer in the Indian freedom struggle against the British. The word "Mathrubhumi" translates to 'mother land'. ...

'' covered Malayalam Wikipedia project extensively in its Sunday Supplement. This generated significant interest in the Wikipedia project and large number of users joined the project and started to contribute. The subsequent growth was exponential. While the article count increased, extreme care was taken to maintain the quality of articles. The page depth of the wiki remains high at 301 ().

List of Wikipedias Wikipedia is a free content, free multilingualism, multilingual open source wiki-based online encyclopedia open collaboration, edited and maintained by a Wikipedia community, community of volunteer editors, started on as an English Wikipedia, E ...

When the Wikipedia crossed 10,000 articles on June 1, 2009, a number of print and online newspapers covered the story. Malayalam daily newspaper

Madhyamam ''Madhyamam'' (meaning ''Medium'') is a Malayalam-language newspaper published in Kerala, India, since 1987.Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

fonts are available for old and new Malayalam lipi, most users opt for fonts like AnjaliOldLipi, Rachana and Meera which follows the traditional Malayalam writing style. Early editors adopted specialized Malayalam Unicode input tools based on the ''Varamozhi keyboard'', a phonetic transliteration device. The project has an inbuilt input tool integrated to it.

Users and editors

References

External links

Main page
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Malayalam Wikipedia mobile versionDownload Malayalam Fonts
{{wikipedias Wikipedias by language Malayalam-language mass media Malayalam encyclopedias Internet properties established in 2002 Wikipedia in India