[Wikimedia Announcements] Hungarian Wikipedia Celebrates 200, 000 Article Milestone

[Bence Damokos]

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/Wikipédia:200_000.