The Esperanto Wikipedia ( eo, Vikipedio en Esperanto, or ) is the

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

version 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 ...

, which was started on 11 May 2001, alongside the

Basque Wikipedia The Basque Wikipedia ( eu, Euskarazko Wikipedia or ''Euskal Wikipedia'') is the Basque language edition of Wikipedia. Founded on December 6, 2001, although its main page was created in November 2003, it reached 58,124 articles by August 19, 201 ...

. With over articles , it is the - largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, and the largest Wikipedia in a

constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

Origin and influence of the Esperanto Wikipedia

Chuck Smith, an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

Esperantist An Esperantist ( eo, esperantisto) is a person who speaks, reads or writes Esperanto. According to the Declaration of Boulogne, a document agreed upon at the first World Esperanto Congress in 1905, an Esperantist is someone who speaks Esperanto ...

, is considered to be Esperanto Wikipedia's founder. The encyclopedia started off when he imported the 139 articles of the by Stefano Kalb, which took him three weeks following 15 November 2001. Later on, he undertook a journey to

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

with the goal of popularizing Wikipedia among the speakers of

in European countries. For instance, in November 2002 he gave a talk about Wikipedia at the 10th

Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology The Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology ( eo, Konferenco pri Aplikoj de Esperanto en Scienco kaj Tekniko, KAEST) is a biennial conference on the application of the constructed international auxiliary language Esp ...

Dobřichovice Dobřichovice is a town in Prague-West District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Au ...

(

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

). Esperanto speakers have also been involved in the founding of several other language versions of Wikipedia (

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

, Slovak, Ossetian, Swahili). The introduction of support for the

Esperanto alphabet Esperanto is written in a Latin-script alphabet of twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. This is supplemented by punctuation marks and by various logograms, such as the digits 0–9, currency signs such as $ € ¥ £ ₷, and mathema ...

Brion Vibber MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...

, an Esperanto speaker and later

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 kno ...

's first employee, in January 2002 has paved the way for

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

s of languages other than

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 ...

and initiated the transition of the whole Wikipedia to

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

Quality of the Esperanto Wikipedia

As of January 2022, the Esperanto Wikipedia has 309 articles of feature quality () and a further 279 considered worth reading (). Weekly community projects include a Collaboration of the Week () which improves neglected articles and an Article of the Week featuring good-quality articles on the front page. The

Esperanto community Esperantujo () or Esperantio () is the Esperanto community; the community of speakers of the Esperanto language and their Esperanto culture, culture, as well as the places and institutions where the language is used. The term is used "as if it wer ...

is a frequent contributor to the Meta project, Translation of the week. According to the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles at Meta, a list based on List of articles every Wikipedia should have, Esperanto ranks 36th, lacking almost none of the list of vital articles, but having in general relatively short articles. On 18 November 2008, the Esperanto Wikipedia implemented the

Flagged Revisions Flagged Revisions, also known as FlaggedRevs, is a software extension to the MediaWiki software that allows moderation of edits to Wiki pages. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation for use on Wikipedia and similar wikis hosted on its serve ...

extension. As of February 2012, the Esperanto Wikipedia had the 5th greatest number of articles per speaker among Wikipedias with over 100,000 articles, and ranked 11th overall. These figures were based on ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

''s estimate of 2,000,000 Esperanto speakers. Due to the geographical spread of its editors (see the box on the right), the Esperanto Wikipedia has a varied list of countries of origin of its editors. On 13 August 2014, Esperanto Wikipedia reached 200,000 articles.

Notability within the Esperanto community

Wikipedia eo - Page views by country over time

At least three editors are members of the

Academy of Esperanto The Akademio de Esperanto (AdE; en, Academy of Esperanto, link=yes) is an independent body of Esperanto speakers who steward the evolution of said language by keeping it consistent with the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'' in accordance with the Decla ...

: Gerrit Berveling,

John C. Wells John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics. Career Wells ea ...

, and

Bertilo Wennergren Bertilo Wennergren ( sv, Bertil Wennergren; ; born 4 October 1956) is a 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 p ...

, a notable Esperanto grammarian and the director of the Academy's section about Esperanto

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

. incorporates, with permission, the content of the 1934 and also content from several reference books and the monthly periodical . The Esperanto Wikipedia has been featured in many Esperanto news media, including a radio interview at

Radio Polonia Radio Poland (until January 2007 as Radio Polonia, later "Polish Radio External Service" ( pl, Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy), in Polish legislation also named as Polskie Radio Program V) is the official international broadcasting station of Pola ...

, and articles at , , and . The Esperanto Wikimania, a gathering held in 2011 to celebrate the encyclopedia's 10th anniversary, has been subsidized by the host city of

Svitavy Svitavy (; german: Zwittau) is a town in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 16,000 inhabitants. It is the birthplace of Oskar Schindler and the centre of the Czech Esperanto movement. The historic town centre is well preser ...

(

) and the

Pardubice Region Pardubice Region ( cs, Pardubický kraj; , ; pl, Kraj pardubicki) is an administrative unit ( cs, kraj) of the Czech Republic, located mainly in the eastern part of its historical region of Bohemia, with a small part in northwestern Moravia. It ...

and covered by

Czech Television Czech Television ( cs, Česká televize, italics=no ; abbreviation: ČT) is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic, broadcasting seven channels. Established after the Velvet Revolution in 1992, it is the successor to Czechoslov ...

. Esperanto organisations like

Universal Esperanto Association The Universal Esperanto Association ( eo, Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA), also known as the World Esperanto Association, is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with 5501 individual members in 121 countries and 9215 th ...

do not contribute to but support it by providing chambers at Esperanto conventions for presentations and trainings. At the

World Esperanto Congress The World Esperanto Congress ( eo, Universala Kongreso de Esperanto, UK) is an annual Esperanto convention. It has the longest tradition among international Esperanto conventions, with an almost unbroken run for 113 years. The congresses have be ...

in Rotterdam, summer 2008, there were two Wikipedian meetups and a lecture at the Esperantology Conference. In April 2013,

ELiSo ''Eliso'' is a 1928 Soviet silent adventure film directed by Nikoloz Shengelaia and loosely based on the short story by Alexander Kazbegi. It was made in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was released in the United States in 1929 by ...

(''Esperanto and Free Knowledge'') was established as one of the first

Wikimedia 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 ...

user groups.

Wikipedia handbook in Esperanto

The Esperanto Wikipedia community has created and published a 40-page ''Wikipedia: Practical Handbook'' (Esperanto: ), which is sold online and at conventions. The manual is intended to give new Wikipedians advice and information on how to edit Wikipedia in Esperanto. It is currently in its second printing.

Gallery

File:Wikipedia-training.jpg, Wikipedia training at an Esperanto convention in Antwerp, May 2007 File:Eo Vikipedio 10000.png, The Esperanto Wikipedia's 100K commemorative logo. (June 2008) File:Vikipedio 150000.png, The Esperanto Wikipedia's 150K commemorative logo. (August 2011) File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-eo-200k.png, The Esperanto Wikipedia's 200K commemorative logo. (August 2014) File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-eo-250k.png, The Esperanto Wikipedia's 250K commemorative logo. (September 2018) File:VMEO-300k-artikoloj.webm, thumbtime=3, Video with congratulations on 300k articles. (January 2022)

References

External links

Esperanto Wikipedia

Esperanto Wikipedia mobile version

Manual at ''Vikilibroj'' (Wikibooks)

Report at ''Libera Folio'', March 2008

Clip at Youtube.com
{{Wikipedias Wikipedias by language

Esperanto encyclopedias Internet properties established in 2001