Catalan Wikipedia

Creation

On 16 March 2001, Jimmy Wales announced that he wanted to create Wikipedias in other languages and mentioned that there was interest in creating a Catalan version. The first tests were made on the deutsche.wikipedia.com, and a few minutes later, the Catalan Wikipedia was created in the catalan.wikipedia.com domain.

The first edit on a non-English Wikipedia was at 21:07 UTC, 16 March 2001, made to the Catalan main page. The first contribution in a non-English article dates from 17 March at 01:41 UTC in the article Àbac. Despite being created after the German Wikipedia, for about two months it was the only non-English Wikipedia that contained articles.

After some time, the domain changed to ca.wikipedia.com and later to ca.wikipedia.org. About 2003 its community started to use the name "Viquipèdia" when talking about this edition of Wikipedia. Nowadays, this word is used in Catalan language to refer to the whole Wikipedia. About 2005, the domain www.viquipedia.net was registered and it redirects to ca.wikipedia.org. In 2007, www.viquipedia.cat was also registered and redirected.

The first registered user was probably AstroNomer, presumably used only to make some registration tests, but the first registered user to make lasting contributions was Cdani, the same user cited in Jimbo Wales' message.

In 2005 the Catalan Wikipedia community debated on which name(s) of the Catalan language to present in the main page and other policy pages, either català, "Catalan", valencià, "Valencian", or a combination of both català-valencià and català o valencià. Although there was not a consensus on any of the proposals, users agreed that in articles relevant to the Valencian Community, the name "Valencian" was to be used; on all other articles "Catalan" is preferred. The main page avoids making reference to a particular nomenclature, by simply stating aquesta versió, "this version".

Milestones and historical main pages

File:Portada del març del 2001.png|2001 March File:Portada del maig del 2003.png|2003 May File:Portada del març del 2004.png|2004 March File:Portada del juny del 2004.png|2004 June File:Portada de l'octubre del 2004.png|2004 October File:Portada del novembre del 2005.png|2005 November File:Portada de l'octubre del 2006.png|2006 October File:Portada del gener del 2007.png|2007 January File:Catalan wiki 20131211.png|2013 December File:Catalan Wikipedia main page screenshot 2019-03-16.png|2019 March File:Catalan Wikipedia main page screenshot 2023-08-29.png|2023 August

Reception

In an academic study published in 2017, seventy-seven university students, most with Catalan and/or Spanish as their native languages, made contributions to the English, Catalan and Spanish Wikipedias as part of assessed work and responded to questionaries. The students preferred the English Wikipedia when looking for general information despite the fact that English was the language they reported being less proficient at: "In many of the open comments on the differences between language editions, the students suggested that the English version was better, more complete or more reliable." Specifically, the participants were asked, "If an article is available in Catalan, Spanish and English, which version are you most likely to read first?" The majority responded that they read articles in English first: "The English version was seen by many of the students as the main reference page, and they stated that they used it 'by default', ... The students responded to this question after having written a Wikipedia article and undergoing the process of publishing it (and thus of the strict peer review curation of the Wikipedia community of volunteers)."

Notes

References

References

1. "Wikipedia Statistics — Tables — Contributors". stats.wikimedia.org.
2. (2 October 2009). "El català, un exemple d'èxit a Internet". Espai Internet.
3. Dalby, Andrew. (2007). "Wikipedia(s) on the languages map of the world". Cambridge Univ Press.
4. [[Wikipedia:Multilingual monthly statistics (2001). Estadístiques de les viquipèdies en diferents idiomes (2001)]]
5. (15 January 2016). "La Viquipèdia en anglès celebra 15 anys d'intel·ligència col·lectiva". [[324.cat]].
6. [http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000048.html Jimbo Wales' message about creating first foreign Wikipedias]. lists.wikimedia.org.
7. [https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/O3T5E3SW6NVND7DM5AJJIIBIPV4GNU57/ Message confirming the creation of the German domain]. lists.wikimedia.org.
8. [https://web.archive.org/web/20010413083954/http://catalan.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?action=history&id=HomePage First history of the Catalan Wikipedia Main Page, hours in Pacific time zone]
9. [[Wikipedia:Multilingual monthly statistics/2001. Multilingual monthly statistics (2001)]]. ''English Wikipedia''.
10. See debate in the [[:ca:Viquipèdia:Presa de decisions/2005/Sobre criteris d'ús dels noms de la llengua. decision making process about usage of the names of the language]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
11. [[:ca:Viquipèdia:Deu mil articles en català. 10,000 articles]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
12. [[:ca:Viquipèdia:Vint mil articles en català. 20,000 articles]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
13. [[:ca:Viquipèdia:Cinquanta mil articles en català. 50,000 articles]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
14. Technically, [[:ca:Lesbianisme. Lesbianisme]] was article 50,000; nevertheless, it was shortly after merged with [[:ca:Lesbiana. Lesbiana]] according to the project guidelines.
15. [[:ca:Viquipèdia:75.000 articles en català. 75,000 articles]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
16. [[:ca:Viquipèdia:Cent mil articles en català. 100,000 articles]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
17. [[:ca:200.000 articles en català]]. ''Catalan Wikipedia'' (in Catalan).
18. [http://www.3cat24.cat/noticia/405589/societat/La-Viquipedia-en-catala-que-ja-te-200000-entrades-segona-en-la-classificacio-de-qualitat La Viquipedia en català que ja té 200000 entrades, segona en la classificació de qualitat] 3cat24.cat, [[TV3 (Catalonia). TV3]] news portal (in Catalan).
19. [http://www.tv3.cat/videos/1509989/Viquipedia-200000-i-creixent Viquipèdia 200000 i creixent] {{Webarchive. link. (11 October 2012 TV3, self service video survey (in Catalan).)
20. [http://www.tribunamallorca.cat/not%EDcies/llengua/la-viquip%E8dia-en-catal%E0-arriba-als-200.000-articles/ La viquipèdia en català arriba als 200.000 articles] {{webarchive. link. (1 January 2013 , ''Tribuna de Mallorca'', September 21, 2009 (in Catalan).)
21. (2017-12-15). "Wikipedia access and contribution: Language choice in multilingual communities. A case study". Anàlisi.