Wikipedia timeline

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2001

Language creations

March 17: German Wikipedia1
March NA: Swedish Wikipedia
May 11:2

Catalan Wikipedia
Chinese Wikipedia
Esperanto Wikipedia
French Wikipedia
Hebrew Wikipedia
Italian Wikipedia
Japanese Wikipedia
Portuguese Wikipedia
Spanish Wikipedia
Russian Wikipedia

June 19: Dutch Wikipedia
September 26: Polish Wikipedia
November 16: Afrikaans Wikipedia
November 26: Norwegian Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 15: Wikipedia begins
January 16: First edit is made to the main page
date NA but prior to November (NPOV) Neutral Point of View is formally introduced as Wikipedia's core non-negotiable editorial policy
November: Meta-Wikipedia (now simply meta) was created. See also, en:WP:Meta.

Article Milestones

February 12: English Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles


2002

Language creations

March NA: Slovenian Wikipedia
May NA: Czech Wikipedia
October NA: Korean Wikipedia
October NA: Turkish Wikipedia
October NA: Bosnian Wikipedia
December 1: Greek Wikipedia
December 21 Malayalam Wikipedia
date NA: Finnish Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 25: English Wikipedia switched to Phase II software, the precursor to MediaWiki; Jimmy Wales declares it "Magnus Manske Day", for the coder who released the update.
February NA: Participants of the Spanish Wikipedia "fork" and establish the Enciclopedia Libre
July 20: The English Wikipedia switched to MediaWiki, then known as the Phase III software.
August NA: URL is changed from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org
August 27: The German Wikipedia introduces the concept of "Featured articles" (German: "Exzellente Artikel"). The first article to be promoted to featured article status is the article "Mark Twain" on August 27, 2002. The English Wikipedia adopts the concept in October 2003. An early copy of Wiktionary can be found here (Web Archive
December 12: Wiktionary, the first Wikipedia sister project is created. The pages created the first day include the talk page of the main page, dictionary, dog, free, What Wiktionary is not. And perhaps the first ever created page was the Home page
December 27: First real life meetup of Wikipedians in Berlin at the Chaos Communication Congress

Article Milestones

September NA: Finnish Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles


2003

Language creations

February 16: Serbian Wikipedia
February 22: Lithuanian Wikipedia
March 8: Galician Wikipedia
June NA: Romanian Wikipedia
July 8: Hungarian Wikipedia
July NA: Arabic Wikipedia
July NA: Hindi Wikipedia
August 12: Malay Wikipedia
September 4: Macedonia Wikipedia
October NA: Slovak Wikipedia
October 12: Albanian Wikipedia
November 7: Indonesian Wikipedia
November 13: Alemannic Wikipedia
December NA: Thai Wikipedia
December 1: Tagalog Wikipedia
December 5: Icelandic Wikipedia
December 18: Estonian Wikipedia
December 23: Romash Wikipedia
date NA: Simple English Wikipedia
date NA: Latvian Wikipedia
date NA: Vietnamese Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

April 23: Second real life meetup of Wikipedians in Warsaw, Poland
June 20: The Wikimedia Foundation is founded
October 12: The finalized Wikipedia puzzle logo is adopted
October 28: Foundation of the first Wikipedia-"Stammtisch" in Munich, Germany
December 8: Wikipedia:Mediation Committee is created by Jimmy Wales

Article Milestones

January 22: English Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
January 24: German Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles


2004

Language creations

January 7: Kurdish Wikipedia
January 30: Ukrainian Wikipedia
January NA: Urdu Wikipedia
January NA: Persian Wikipedia
June NA: Klingon language wikipedia (tlhIngan Hol) is created, later dissolved
July 31: Nynorsk-specific Norwegian Wikipedia
August 12: Belarusian Wikipedia
November 28: Yiddish Wikipedia
December NA: Azerbaijani Wikipedia (Azərbaycan) آذربایجان
date NA: Georgian Wikipedia
date NA: Luxembourgish Wikipedia
date NA: Ido Wikipedia
date NA: Kannada Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 10: The articles "Krautinsel" and "Herrenchiemsee" were the first spoken articles in the German Wikipedia. A project page on spoken articles started at January 20.
February 22: On the English Wikipedia, the first "Did you know" article, the pencil sharpener, is posted to the main page. (See diff.)
May 12: Wikipedia wins the Annual Webby Award in the "Community" category
May 14: The first "Picture of The Day" is posted to the main page of the English Wikipedia
May 30: The categorization scheme is introduced to Wikipedia articles
October: The German Wikipedia starts its first writing competition (German: "Schreibwettbewerb"). Between October 2004 and September 2010, more than 500 articles participating in the competition reach "featured" and "good" article status
October 14: Directmedia Publishing, a German publishing house, produces the first Wikipedia version on CD.

Formal Chapters Created

June 13: Wikimedia Germany
October 23: Wikimedia France

Article Milestones

January NA: English Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles
February 25: Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles in 50 languages
April 20: English Wikipedia reaches 250,000 articles
June 9: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles
June 13: In the night before the chapter founding the German Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles (with "Opel Laubfrosch" was nominated as #100,000 by Jimbo Wales in Berlin)
September 20: Wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 articles in 105 languages
November 16: Catalan Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles
November 20: English Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles


2005

Language creations

February NA: Armenian Wikipedia (Armenian (Հայերեն))
June 22: Cebuano Wikipedia
June 22: Kapampangan Wikipedia
June 23: Scots Wikipedia
September 25: Waray-Waray Wikipedia
October 7: Ilokano Wikipedia
date NA: Neapolitan Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 10: The first issue of the English Wikipedia Signpost, a newspaper for the Wikipedia community, is published.
March 22: The German Wikipedia introduces the concept of "Good articles". The first article being marked as good article is "Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2006" (engl. 2006 FIFA World Cup)
June 26: Wikimedia Germany yearly meeting in c-base, Berlin
October 14: The first German Wikipedia version on DVD was produced by Directmedia Publishing (after the CD version in October 2004).
Aug 4-8: First Wikimania is held in Frankfurt, Germany
December 5: User registration becomes obligatory for the creation of new articles in the English Wikipedia, as a result of the Wikipedia biography controversy
December 20: "Languageicon" is introduced to unify language icon templates
December 22: English Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy is implemented
December 25: cite.php (the citation and referencing system) added [1].
This one extension possibly more than any other caused a seismic shift in quality within the year. Prior to 2005 most "ordinary" articles had occasional "ref" tags or inline bare hyperlinks and their maintenance was patchy. Cite.php meant that even ordinary articles were routinely bristling with formatted cites in a standard location within a year or two.
date NA: First formal fundraiser raises $94,000 for system upgrades
date NA: "Semi-protection" feature is introduced

Formal Chapters Created

July 17: Wikimedia Italy
August 14: Wikimedia Poland
December 3: Wikimedia Serbia

Article Milestones

March 18: English Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
May 21: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 50,000 articles
June 5: Korean Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles


2006

Language creations

September 30: Pangasinan Wikipedia
October 2: Zamboanga Chavacano Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 10: Wikipedia® becomes a registered trademark
February 25: Wikimedia Germany yearly meeting in Haus der Jugend, Frankfurt/Main
February 28: The millionth user account is registered for the English language edition
March 17: The first Wikipedia exhibition opens at the Göttingen University Library, Germany
April 1: The featured article seen on the Main Page ("Spoo") is a factually accurate, yet unusual article, starting a new April Fools' Day tradition on Wikipedia
June 16/17: The first Wikipedia Academy takes place in Göttingen, Germany
June 17: The first Wikipedia Day in Switzerland takes place at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
August 4-6: The second Wikimania is held in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
August 19: A private party of the User jcornelius in Berlin became one of the biggest community events of the German Wikipedia. More than 70 wikipedians joined the party. In the following years 2007 and 2008 he continued with it with great success.
Augest 26-27: The first Chinese Wikimedia Conference 2006 was held in Hong Kong.
October: The German Wikipedia establishes editorial boards for specific topic areas (German: "Redaktionen"). The Redaktionen act as contact points for people who have subject-related questions and they also systematically monitor and improve the quality of articles in their topic area. Other than WikiProjects, Redaktionen have quality management pages, where Wikipedians, who are both members of the editorial board and admins can delete articles without going through the normal request for deletion process
November 27: First real life meetup of Wikipedians in Macedonia
November 29: Russian Wikipedia wins the Russian national Internet award, the Runet Prize, in the Science and Education category
December 8: Wikimedia Foundation releases to public its first ever financial audit, covering years 2004-2006
December NA: Japanese Wikipedia wins the Web of the Year, 2006 from Yahoo! Japan Internet Guide

Formal Chapters Created

May 14: Wikimedia Switzerland
March 27: Wikimedia Netherlands

Article Milestones

January 23: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
January NA: Wikipedia exceeds 1 billion words in all languages
February 12: Korean Wikipedia reaches 20,000 articles
March 1: English Wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 articles
March 8: Spanish Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
August 16: Russian Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
November 24: English Wikipedia reaches 1,500,000 articles
November 23: German Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
November 12: Chinese Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
November 27: French Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles
November 29: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles


2007

Language creations

November 24: Bikol Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

May 4-5: The second Wikipedia Day in Switzerland takes place at the University of Lugano
June NA: The German article project on renewable raw materials (German: "Projekt Nachwachsende Rohstoffe") started as the first project funded by a national ministry. It ended in April 2010.
August 3-5: Wikimania 2007 in Taipei
August 24: The second German Wikipedia Academy takes place in Mainz. At the event, Wikimedia Germany and the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature introduce the "Zedler medal" for distinguished encyclopedic contributions. The 2007 Academy in Germany is the first Wikipedia related event being sponsored by a national government (the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung).
September 29: The third Wikipedia Day in Switzerland takes place at the University of Teacher Education Bern
October NA: The German Wikipedia introduces the first mini-grant program for Wikipedia authors (German "Literaturstipendium"): Wikipedians can apply for a grant to buy a book that they need for writing articles on a specific topic; the first book was bought in November ("The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants"). By 2010, more than 1,500 articles have been written based on books funded by this project.
December 30: First Malayalam Wiki Meetup held in Thrissur, Kerala
date NA: 5 million registered editor accounts.
date NA: Wikipedia reaches 7.5 million articles in approximately 250 languages

Formal Chapters Created

Feb 11: Wikimedia Taiwan
June 23: Wikimedia Norway
July 14: Wikimedia Hong Kong
July 15: Wikimedia Israel
October 20: Wikimedia Sweden
December 11: Wikimedia Argentina

Article Milestones

June 22: Macedonian Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles
September 9: English Wikipedia reaches 2,000,000 articles
October 10: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 300,000 articles
October 17: Malayalam Wikipedia reaches 1,00,000 edits
October 20: Tagalog Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles
November 18: Spanish Wikipedia reaches 300,000 articles
December 12- Malayalam Wikipedia reaches 5,000 articles
December 14: Korean Wikipedia reaches 30,000 articles



2008

Language creations

November 24: Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
May 26: Extremaduran Wikipedia
May 26: Gan Wikipedia
May 26: Fiji Hindi Wikipedia
May 26: Karakalpak Wikipedia
May 26: Moksha Wikipedia
May 26: Erzya Wikipedia
May 26: Sakha Wikipedia
May 26: Sranan Tongo Wikipedia
May 26: Silesian Wikipedia
January 12: Lower Sorbian Wikipedia
January 12: Crimean Tatar Wikipedia
January 12: Saterland Frisian Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 10: Multilingual portal at Wikipedia.org replaces direct link to English-language Wikipedia
May 6: German Wikipedia implements "flagged revisions"
July 16: First "featured pictures" is introduced to the Main Page of the English Wikipedia
July 17-19: Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt
December 4: Wikimedia Commons received more than 80,000 files from a donation from the German Federal Archives to use in the wikipedia projects. Other projects focussed on picture grants followed in the forthcoming years.

Formal Chapters Created

March 6: Wikimedia Czech Republic
May 2: Wikimedia Austria
August 6: Wikimedia Australia
September 5: Wikimedia Indonesia
September 27: Wikimedia Hungary
November 5: Wikimedia United Kingdom
November 11: Wikimedia Russia

Article Milestones

January 4: Korean Wikipedia reaches 50,000 articles
January 11: Romanian Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
March NA: Wikipedia reaches 10,000,000 articles in all languages
March 28: Ukrainian Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
May 11: Malayalam Wikipedia crosses Page Depth of 100
May 14: Polish Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
June 22: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles
June 25: Japanese Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
July 16: Wikimedia Commons reaches 3,000,000 uploaded files
July 18: Russian Wikipedia reaches 300,000 articles
August 8: Malayalam Wikipedia reaches 5,000 uploaded files, Top among the Indian Wikipedias
October 3: Italian Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
November 1: Tagalog Wikipedia reaches 20,000 articles
November 5: Macedonian Wikipedia reaches 20,000 articles
November 18: Korean Wikipedia reaches 80,000 articles
November 30: Dutch Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
December 4: A massive upload of ~100,000 images donated by the German Federal Archive to Wikimedia Commons, the single largest donation to date.
December 13: Norwegian bokmål Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles
December NA: Swedish Wikipedia reaches 300,000 articles

2009

Language creations

December 24: Picard Wikipedia
August 12: Kurdish (Sorani) Wikipedia
August 12: Western Panjabi Wikipedia
August 12: Mirandese Wikipedia
August 12: Acehnese Wikipedia
July 9: Meadow Mari Wikipedia
March 5: Pontic Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

January 16: Italian Wikipedia wins the Premiolino award
February NA: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art, a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide happens aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles, coordinated by the Brooklyn Museum
February 26: Wikipedia starts testing the "Books" feature, a functionality to print books from collections of Wikipedia articles
April NA: The German writing competition (German: "Schreibwettbewerb") takes place for the 10th time – TUI sponsors a journey to Turkey for the winner.
June 22: "Wiki Loves Art" event in Netherlands. The project is run by Creative Commons Netherlands and Wikimedia Netherlands, in collaboration with the Amsterdam Museum Night Foundation and the Netherlands Institute for Heritage
August 26-28: Wikimania 2009, Buenos Aires
August NA: The Wikipedia Mobile iPhone appplication is announced
September 21: Catalan Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles
October 13: OpenMoko launches the WikiReader, a dedicated reader device with an offline copy of the entire English Wikipedia (without images) stored on a chip
October 13: Polish Wikipedia is cited for "special recognition for social innovation" at the 2009 Jan Łukasiewicz Awards
October 26: A custom Google search extension for Wikipedia created

Formal Chapters Created

March 14: Wikimedia Denmark
May 31: Wikimedia Ukraine
July 7: Wikimedia New York City
June 14: Wikimedia Finland
September 21: Wikimedia Portugal

Article Milestones

April 25: Malayalam Wikipedia reaches 10,000 users
April 29: Macedonian Wikipedia reaches 30,000 articles
May 8: Alemannic Wikipedia reaches 5,000 articles
May 25: Arabic Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
June 1: Malayalam Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles
June 4: Korean Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
August 5: Spanish Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
August 12: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
August 17: English Wikipedia reaches 3,000,000 articles
August NA: All Wikipedia languages reaches 14 million articles
October 21: Malayalam Wikipedia reaches reaches 5,00,000 edits
December 25--Christmas Day: Hungarian Wikipedia reaches 150,000 articles
December 27: German Wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 articles

2010

Language creations

March 19: Karachay-Balkar Wikipedia
August 19: North Frisian Wikipedia
October 17: Hill Mari Wikipedia
October 17: Banjar Wikipedia
November 13: Gagauz Wikipedia
November 13: Palatinate German Wikipedia

Movement Milestones

The 1 billionth edit took place on April 16, 2010.
By 2010 researchers were no longer comparing Wikipedia's science articles to other encyclopedias, but to scientific reference databases. Peer reviewed studies compared English Wikipedia's entries on drugs (2008), toxicology (2009) and cancers (2010) to reputable media and science databases. Wikipedia's drug coverage had no errors compared to 4 in the professional database, although errors of omission were more common,[1] toxicology coverage was rated the second most accurate of all US national newspapers and media outlets,[2] and coverage of cancers "had similar accuracy and depth to the professionally edited database" for both common and uncommon cancers.[3]
January 2: Catalan Wikipedia scores first in the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles, the first one to displace English wikipedia from the top position
January 12–13: Under the name WikiWars the first Wikipedia conference focussed on a "Critical Point of View" (CPOV) took place in Bangalore, India. A second followed in Amsterdam on March 26–27 and a third in Leipzig on September 25–26.
March 11: The British Museum is the first organization to incorporate work with a "volunteer Wikipedian in residence"
March 21: First Malayalam Wiki Academy held in Bangalore
April 16: 1 billionth edit.
April 17: Third Malayalam Wiki Meetup held in Ernakulam, Kerala and releases Wiki C.D including 500 articles. This is the sixth among the world and first among a non latin language
May 13: Updated interface is introduced, including an updated logo
June, 4–6: Skillshare in Lüneburg organized by skillshare e.V. became the biggest community event of the German Wikipedia 2010.
July 9: Wikimania 2010 Gdansk, Poland
August: Wikipedia Ambassador Program introduced. Initially, the Ambassador Program consists of Campus Ambassadors and Online Ambassadors, who support students and instructors who use Wikipedia in university classrooms. The first Wikipedia Ambassador Training takes place in Washington D.C., on August 17th.
October (whole month): In a co-operation with the German Central Library for the Blind (German: Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Blinde, DZB) the articles of the day of the whole month were presented in a high quality spoken version. In December Wikimedia Germany published these versions on an audio CD ([2])
October 1: Start of the RENDER project, the first project with involvement of an European chapter (the German) funded by the European Union.
December 14: Developer Tim Starling finds the original backups, long believed lost, of every change made to Wikipedia from its creation in January 2001 to August 17, 2001.[3]

Formal Chapters Created

February 1: Wikimedia Macedonia
April 12: Wikimedia Philippines
July 25 or October 6: Wikimedia Estonia

Article Milestones

January 10: Hebrew Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles
February 17: Czech Wikipedia reaches 150,000 articles
February 25: Russian Wikipedia reaches 500,000 articles
March 28: Chinese Wikipedia reaches 300,000 articles
March 29: Finnish Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles
April 7: Ukrainian Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles
April 17: Macedonian Wikipedia reaches 40,000 articles
May 12: Polish Wikipedia reaches 700,000 articles
June 22: Italian Wikipedia reaches 700,000 articles
July 20: Tagalog Wikipedia reaches 30,000 articles
August 17: Portuguese Wikipedia reaches 600,000 articles
August 31: Japanese Wikipedia reaches 700,000 articles
September 21: French Wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 articles
October 6: Tamil Wikipedia reaches 25,000 articles
October 25: Tagalog Wikipedia reaches 40,000 articles
November 14: Belarusian Wikipedia reaches 25,000 articles
November 30: Estonian Wikipedia reaches 80,000 articles
December 15: Korean Wikipedia reaches 150,000 articles
December 21: Ukrainian Wikipedia reaches 250,000 articles

2011

Article Milestones

January 9: Vietnamese Wikipedia reaches 150,000 articles, Malay Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles.
January 12: Spanish Wikipedia reaches 700,000 articles.
January 15: Kannada Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles, Tagalog Wikipedia reaches 50,000 articles.

References

  1. Clauson et al - Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug information in Wikipedia (Ann Pharmacother, volume 42, issue 12, page 1814)
  2. S. Robert Lichter, Ph.D. - Are chemicals killing us? (Statistical Assessment Service, May 21, 2009)
  3. Rajagopalan et al, Accuracy of cancer information on the Internet: A comparison of a Wiki with a professionally maintained database. (Journal of Clinical Oncology 28:7s, 2010)