Hi all, It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the Hungarian Wikipedia has reached the 200 000 article milestone yesterday. To mark the event, we have issued the following press release and are planning a party on October 1 in Győr, where everyone is welcome to celebrate with us.

Best regards, Bence Damokos Wikimedia Hungary http://wikimedia.hu

Hungarian Wikipedia Celebrates 200,000 Article Milestone Hungarian Wikipedia editors say they need more people to join in and help continue to grow the encyclopedia

BUDAPEST, September 10, 2011 — Wikimedia Hungary today announced that Hungarian Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles, an important milestone in the history of the project. The 200,000th article was created by user: Pakos at 02:08 UTC, September 10, 2011.

The article Crankshaft is about a mechanical component of engines. Since its creation, the new article has already been edited more than 20 times by eight contributors within the first few hours of its existence. Pakos, Ákos Pásztor, is an editor from Dorog and his main areas of interest are astrology, motor sports and topics connected to his hometown.

“I visited Budapest in 2005, when the Hungarian Wikipedia broke 20,000 articles. Now, six years later, the encyclopedia is 10 times bigger and a hugely popular and vital public resource to Hungarian speakers all over the world,” said Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia. “It’s my hope that more people take an interest and join the mission and the dedicated group of people who helped Hungarian Wikipedia get this far. Congratulations on this exciting milestone!”

Hungarian-language Wikipedia, a top-20 language Wikipedia in the world, was founded eight years ago, the first entry created in July 2003. Since then, Hungarian-speaking contributors reached 100,000 entries on July 17, 2008, growing at an average pace of 2,600 articles a month.

Although this is an exciting milestone, there is still a lot of work to be done. Today there are only 125 very active editors (people contributing a hundred or more edits a month) and 600 active editors (people contributing at least five edits a month). The number one goal for Wikimedia Hungary, the local non-profit that supports Hungarian Wikipedia, is to increase the number of people who volunteer their time and contribute to making Wikipedia better. Comparatively, there are 205,000 articles in the Czech Wikipedia, 173,000 articles in Turkish Wikipedia, more than 3 million in English and 1 million in German-language Wikipedia.

“The wonderful thing about this accomplishment is that each bit of information found on Wikipedia has been included by volunteers– everyday people committed to changing the world by sharing free information with others,” said Péter Gervai, founder of the Hungarian Wikipedia and president of the Wikimedia Hungary Chapter. “But there’s so much more that needs to be done. For instance, when you look up something as basic as Academy Award-winning films, there’s almost nothing available. It’s important that more people join us and edit Wikipedia, because the information is only as good as the amount of people who take the time to contribute.”

Volunteers from all over Hungary will gather together on October 1 in Győr to celebrate the 200,000 article milestone. Anyone interested in learning more about Wikipedia is welcome to join the celebration. For more information, please visit http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:200_000.