The French Wikipedia (french: Wikipédia en français) is the French-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 ...

, the free

online encyclopedia An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Digitization of old content In January 199 ...

. This edition was started on 23 March 2001, two months after the official creation of Wikipedia. It has

articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

as of , making it the -largest Wikipedia overall, after the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

-, Cebuano-,

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

- and

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 ...

-language editions, the largest Wikipedia edition in a

Romance language The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...

. It has the third-most edits, and ranks 6th in terms of depth among Wikipedias. It was also the third edition, after the English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia, to exceed 1 million articles: this occurred on 23 September 2010. In April 2016, the project had 4657 active editors who made at least five edits in that month. In 2008, the French encyclopaedia '' Quid'' cancelled its 2008 edition, citing falling sales on competition from the French edition of Wikipedia. As of , there are users, admins and files on the French Wikipedia. On 2 December 2014, the French-language Wikipedia encyclopedia became the 3rd linguistic edition by number of registered users since its creation, overtaking for the first time the German edition, with registered users, behind the English () and Spanish () language editions. According to a 2013 study by

Taha Yasseri , birth_date = , birth_place = , nationality = British , region = , workplaces = University of OxfordOxford Internet Institute Alan Turing Institute , alma_mater = Sharif University of Technology (MSc)Taha Yasseri's University of Götting ...

et al., from

Oxford Internet Institute The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is a multi-disciplinary department of social and computer science dedicated to the study of information, communication, and technology, and is part of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford ...

Ségolène Royal Marie-Ségolène Royal (; born 22 September 1953) is a French politician who was the Socialist Party candidate for the Presidency of France in the 2007 election. Royal was president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council from 2004 to 2014 ...

( FR) and

unidentified flying object An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

( objet volant non identifié) were the most controversial articles on the French Wikipedia.

Statistics

Most popular edition of Wikipedia by country

Wikipedia fr - Page views by country over time

The audience measurement company

Médiamétrie Médiamétrie, established in 1985, is a public limited company specialising in audience measurement and research into audio-visual and digital media usage in France. It is especially well known for its Audimat brand whose name is now part of ev ...

questioned a

sample Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...

of 8,500 users residing in France with access to

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

at home or at their place of work. Médiamétrie found that in June 2007, French Wikipedia had: 7,910,000 unique visitors that visited the site at least once during the month of June 2007 (compared to 4,355,000 unique visitors in June 2006); 2.7 visits per visitor during the period (2.0 visits in June 2006); had held the 12th position (21st in 2006) in "the Top 30 most visited sites in France, ''excluding'' Internet applications," according to the criterion of the number of unique visitors and 12th position in "the Top 30 most visited sites in France, ''including'' Internet applications," like

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 ...

Real Networks RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of artificial intelligence and computer vision based products. RealNetworks was a pioneer in Internet streaming software and services. They are based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company also p ...

(22nd position in June 2006). By August 2011, French Wikipedia was the 7th most visited site in France, with nearly 16 million unique visitors a month (according to Médiamétrie). In April 2012, it had 20 million unique visitors per month, or 2.4 million per day with over 700 million page views. For the majority of the external links referenced in the articles, a program running on French Wikipedia automatically generates a link titled '' rchive/nowiki>'', which is the union of two parts: the first one starts with ''http://archive.kiwix.com/cache/?url='', and the second is derived from the referenced URL.e.g. in the article of the President

François Mitterrand François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he ...

, reference n. 1 contains the link ''http://www.mitterrand.org/Lieux-de-recueillement-et-de.html'', for which the French Wikipedia has generated the link ''http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20200814221716/http://www.mitterrand.org/Lieux-de-recueillement-et-de.html''. This feature has been created for the long-term

digital preservation In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods an ...

of the external references (so that the archive stays accessible even if the original reference is deleted).

References

External links

French Wikipedia websitemobile version
{{Portal bar, Internet Wikipedias by language Internet properties established in 2001

French encyclopedias Wikipedias in Romance languages