The Telugu Wikipedia ( te, తెలుగు వికీపీడియా) was begun on 10 December 2003 by Venna Nagarjuna, who is known for Padma (a system for transforming text in
Indic scripts among open-source and proprietary formats). On 28 August 2016, its article count was 65,048—fifth among the Indian-language Wikipedias, after
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
,
,
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
and
Newar.
Background
In 2005, the
Hindi Wikipedia
The Hindi Wikipedia ( , ) is the Modern Standard Hindi edition of Wikipedia. It was launched in July 2003. As of , it has articles, and ranks 10th in terms of depth among Wikipedias.
In October 2021, there were 72 million page views. It ...
received a boost when Chava Kiran, Akkineni Pradeep, Vyzas Satya, Veeven and Charivari joined; Charivari later spearheaded the Telugu campaign. Satya planned and executed a project to add stubs for districts,
mandals
A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluka, or taluk) is a local unit of administrative division in some countries of South Asia. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administr ...
and Telugu films with the aid of a bot. The stubs were expanded into articles with the help of volunteers from the Telugu online and blogging communities. Charivari translated and drafted many of the initial policies, Pradeep wrote scripts automating mundane tasks and the article count increased to 6,000.
History
A symbiotic relationship between the early Telugu blogger-Wikipedians with the larger Telugu online community was a big boon for the Telugu Wikipedia. Its initial momentum was furthered by committed members such as Kasubabu, Dr Rajasekhar, Chandrakantha Rao, Ravichandra, Veeven, Kasyap, Rahamtulla and Sujatha. Wikipedia was promoted at book fairs in
Hyderabad
Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...
and
Vijayawada
Vijayawada, formerly known as Bezawada, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and is a part of the state's Capital Region. It is the administrative headquarters of the NTR district. Its metropolitan region comprises N ...
and supported by the e-Telugu organization and the local-language media, sparking interest from the general public.
Telugu Wiktionary has had a major contribution from Sujatha.
Charles Phillip Brown's English-Telugu dictionary was added to the Telugu Wiktionary in its entirety with a bot script written by Telugu Wikipedian Makineni Pradeep.
Telugu wiki-academies were established in 2009 to heighten awareness at engineering and
MCA colleges in small towns in
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
. ''
Tewiki Vartha'', an e-zine, was created in 2010 to share behind-the-scenes stories of Telugu Wikipedia pages and editors. In 2012, another effort was made to revitalize the Telugu Wikipedia. The community organized a two-day celebration in
Hyderabad
Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...
on 10–11 April 2013, coinciding with the Telugu New Year.
The Telugu Wikipedia is now available offline in
Kiwix
Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007. It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundati ...
.
HMTV
HMTV is an Indian 24-hour Telugu news channel launched on 12 February 2009. The channel is operated by Hyderabad Media Pvt. Ltd, which also runs the English newspaper ''The Hans India''. HMTV is a part of Kapil Group, promoted by K. Vaman Rao. ...
broadcast a documentary about Wikipedia celebrations, and Rajasekhar, Rahimanuddin, Malladi and Vishnuvardhan participated in a phone-in program about the encyclopedia. In October 2013, the Telugu Wikipedia had 2.1 million page views. The greatest number of page views was 4.5 million, recorded in February 2010.
Telugu Wikipedian Pranayraj Vangari wrote 365 Wiki Articles in 365 days under ''WikiVastaram'' concept. He started on 8 September 2016, writing a wiki article every day, he completed ''WikiVastaram'' on 7 September 2017.
On this occasion,
Vice President of India
The vice president of India (IAST: ) is the deputy to the head of state of the Republic of India, i.e. the president of India. The office of vice president is the second-highest constitutional office after the president and ranks second in the ...
Venkaiah Naidu
Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu (born 1 July 1949) is an Indian politician who served as the 13th vice president of India from 2017 to 2022. He is the first Indian vice president born in independent India. He has also served as the minister of Hous ...
congratulated Pranayraj through his Twitter Account.
Telangana State Minister
K.T.R along with congratulating him through his Twitter and Facebook Account, facilitated Pranayraj in his chamber at
Pragathi Bhavan.
Continuing that trend, he completed 1000 articles in 1000 days as of 4 June 2019.
Fonts and input methods
Any Unicode Telugu font input system may be used for the Telugu Wikipedia. Although some editors use the
InScript keyboard
InScript (short for Indic Script) is the decreed standard keyboard layout for Indian scripts using a standard 104- or 105-key layout. This keyboard layout was standardised by the Government of India for inputting text in languages of India writ ...
, many use
Google phonetic transliteration or the Telugu Wikipedia's
Universal Language Selector. The latter offers phonetic and InScript keyboards.
References
External links
Wikimedia India Community Newsletter
{{Wikipedias in Dravidian languages
Wikipedias by language
Telugu-language websites
Articles containing video clips
Indian encyclopedias
Wikipedia in India