[Foundation-l] happy birthday, Wikipedias

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
> On 5/10/2011 4:13 PM, ext phoebe ayers wrote:
>> Tomorrow (May 11) is another anniversary date: it's been 10 years
>> since the first group of non-English Wikipedias came online.
>
> Joan and Анатолій have mentioned this already but here goes a bit more
> detail:
>
> The first non-English Wikipedia created was the German on March 16, 2001
>
> The first edit on a non-English Wikipedia was at 21:07 UTC, March 16,
> 2001, made to the Catalan Main Page. The first contribution in a
> non-English article dates from March 17 at 01:41 UTC in the article
> http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80bac
>
> Sources:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Wikipedia#History
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Wikipedia#Creation
>
> fwiw I learned all this back in March when the Catalan Wikipedia was
> celebrating the 10th anniversary with a big banner in all
> ca.wikipedia.org pages.
>
> --
> Quim (son of German mother and Catalan father, based in USA)  ;)
>
>
> On 5/11/2011 4:34 AM, ext Анатолій Гончаров wrote:
>  > German and Catalan wikis was created on March 2001
>  >
>  > 2011/5/11<foundation-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org>
>  >
>  >> Happy birthday.
>  >>
>  >>   If you read carefully the mail you are pointing to there it says:
>  >>
>  >> "Toan and I added 9 new other-language wikis to the mix."
>  >>
>  >> But in the list there are 11 languages.
>  >>
>  >> The difference is because it was not the first group of non-English
>  >> Wikipedias coming online.

Thanks Quim & Анатолій, of course it was the *second* big group of
languages (I knew Catalan was early, but wasn't sure if it was created
before the rest -- it's not well documented). Thanks for the note
about the first edit to Catalan! At any rate, I am sorry to miss
marking March 16 as an anniversary as well -- though perhaps the
lesson is we should just celebrate all spring (and beyond).

-- phoebe

p.s. "The Wikipedia Revolution" does treat this topic briefly; though
I have to say, I am looking forward to the day a historian sits down
and produces a dry and scholarly multi-volume history of Wikipedia,
with appropriate exigesis & footnotes. It's a lovely subject, with
just enough of the records missing to be mysterious.