Kazakh Wikipedia

The Kazakh Wikipedia (Kazakh: Qazaqsha Ýıkıpedııa; Қазақша Уикипедия) is the Kazakh language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, founded on 2 June 2002.

Kazakh Wikipedia
Screenshot
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
Available inKazakh
HeadquartersMiami, Florida
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
Created byKazakh wiki community
URLkk.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Launched2 June 2002

History
WikiBilim

The Kazakh Wikipedia was started in June 2002. The Kazakh Wikipedia had a very high growth rate in 2011, going from 7,000 articles to over 100,000 in less than one year,[1] largely due to the incorporation of materials from the Kazakh Encyclopedia, which have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA). This rapid expansion was initiated by the non-profit Wikibilim Foundation.[2] The Samruk Kazyna Foundation, Kazakhstan's sovereign oil wealth fund, sponsored the expansion, with 30 million tenge spent in 2011 for paid editing, digitalization, and author rights transfer.[3][4] At the Wikimania 2011 conference WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly was awarded the Wikipedian of the Year award by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for his work on the Kazakh Wikipedia expansion.[4]

In April 2012 Tengri News reported that "in 2011, the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund allocated a total of $204 thousand to develop the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. This year, another $136 thousand will be earmarked", citing the Fund's Press Service.[5] Wales thanked the Kazakh government for its support of the Kazakh Wikipedia at Wikimania 2012.[6]

The Kazakh Wikipedia can be viewed and written in three different scripts: Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic. On 26 October 2011, it passed the 100,000 articles threshold, and by early 2013 had just over 200,000 articles.[1]

Features

The Kazakh Wikipedia uses ZhengZhu's character mapping program to convert between Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic scripts. Its Latin script is of that of Kazinform's.

Relationship between WikiBilim and the Government of Kazakhstan

Questions have been asked about WikiBilim's closeness to the Kazakh government, given that WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly had a long prior career as a Kazakh government official and the Kazakh government has been widely criticised for its crackdown on free speech.[4][7] Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' friendship with ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who advises the Kazakh government, has also come under scrutiny,[4][7] as has the neutrality of the Kazakh Wikipedia's content, much of which is a reproduction of the state-published national encyclopedia.[8][9]

In 2015, Jimmy Wales stated on Reddit that at the time he gave Kenzhekhanuly the inaugural Wikipedian of the Year award, he'd been unaware of Kenzhekhanuly's prior positions as first secretary at Kazakhstan's embassy in Moscow and as an adviser to the governor of Kazakhstan's Mangystau region; by 2015, Kenzhekhanuly had gone on to become deputy governor of Kazakhstan's Kyzylorda region and founding director of Eurasian Council on Foreign Affairs, a think-tank funded by the Kazakh government.[10]

Recognised User Group

Statistics
Origin of views (2012/03 - 2013/02) Source
Kazakhstan
 
 94.7%
Other
 
 5.3%

As of February 2021, the Kazakh Wikipedia counts about 228,000 articles. The overwhelming majority of its readers originate from Kazakhstan.

As of April 2013, the Kazakh Wikipedia's number of articles accounts for approximately 14% of all the articles written in a Turkic language, making it the second largest edition in the family after Turkish, which accounts for 28% of all Turkic articles.[11]

  • The letter from the Kazakh Encyclopedia stating the release of its materials under a CC BY-SA license.
  • The Kazakh Wikipedia's 100K commemorative logo. (Fall 2011)
  • Kazakh Wikipedia logo at the time of the Turkic Wikimedia Conference. (April 2012)
  • The Kazakh Wikipedia's 200K commemorative logo. (Nov 2012)

References
  • Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Hyperion, New York City. 2009. First Edition. ISBN 978-1-4013-0371-6 (alkaline paper).

Notes
  1. "Wikipedia Statistics Kazakh". Wikimedia Foundation.
  2. Проект по расширению казахскоязычной части "Википедии" стартовал в Казахстане (in Russian). gazeta.kz. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
  3. На развитие "Казахской Википедии" выделили 50 миллионов тенге (in Russian). Tengri News. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
  4. Williams, Christopher (24 December 2012). "Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship". The Telegraph. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  5. "$136 thousand channeled into development Kazakh-language Wikipedia. Internet. Tengrinews.kz". En.tengrinews.kz. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
  6. Lotto Persio, Sofia (23 July 2012). "Kazakh Wikipedia awarded for its impressive development". netprophet.tol.org. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  7. Morris, Kevin (25 December 2012). "The Daily Dot – Wikipedia's odd relationship with the Kazakh dictatorship". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  8. Hermans, Steven (8 January 2013). "Critics question neutrality of Kazakh Wikipedia". NET PROPHET. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  9. Smith, Myles G. (27 December 2012). "Kazakhstan Wikipedia Controversy Raises Questions About the Crowd". EURASIANET.org. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  10. Michel, Casey G. (2 April 2015). "Wikipedia Founder Distances Himself from Kazakhstan PR Machine". EURASIANET.org. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  11. "List of Wikipedias by Language Group". Meta.wikimedia.org. 13 December 2013. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
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