Malayalam Wikipedia

The Malayalam Wikipedia (Malayalam: മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ) is the Malayalam edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia, and was launched on December 21, 2002. The project is the leading Wikipedia among other South East Asian language Wikipedias in various quality matrices.[1] It has grown to be a wiki containing more than 65,000 articles as of September 2019.

Malayalam Wikipedia
Screenshot
'
Screenshot of the Malayalam Wikipedia home page
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
Available inMalayalam
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLml.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Launched21 December 2002

History

Beginning

Malayalam language Wikipedia is available in the wikipedia.org domain from 2002 December 21. User Vinod M. P. had taken initiatives for it. For the two years following its creation, he had been the key person striving to keep the wiki active. Almost all the early users of Malayalam Wikipedia were non-resident Malayalees. The growth of the Wikipedia during these times was heavily constrained due to OS and browser related issues, rendering issues, Unicode related issues, and so on.

Initial growth phase

By the middle of 2002, unicode and input tools had become popular. Blogging in Malayalam became widespread. Wikipedians started to use these tools and the Wikipedia reached 100 articles by December 2004. More users joined by the middle of 2005 and the wiki had its first sysop by September 2005. He became the first bureaucrat of the wiki after a month and the wiki became self-sufficient in terms of administration.

The year 2006 saw a number of users joining the wiki, following the widespread usage of Malayalam computing tools. 500th article was born on April 10, 2006; the following September the article count reached 1000. On January 15, 2007, this became 2000 and on June 30 it became 3000.

Media coverage and increased growth
Jimmy Wales introduces Malayalam Wikipedia CD of 500 selected articles to WikiManians during his keynote address at Gdansk

The first major Media coverage about the Malayalam Wikipedia was on September 2, 2007, when Malayalam daily newspaper Mathrubhumi covered Malayalam Wikipedia project extensively in its Sunday Supplement.[2] This generated significant interest in the Wikipedia project and large number of users joined the project and started to contribute.[3] The subsequent growth was exponential.

While the article count increased, extreme care was taken to maintain the quality of articles. The page depth of the wiki remains high at 301 (as of March 2010).[4] When the Wikipedia crossed 10,000 articles on June 1, a number of print and online newspapers covered the story.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Recently, a Malayalam newspaper 'Madhyamam' spent an editorial for the contributors of Malayalam Wikipedia.[16] The mobile version of the Malayalam Wikipedia was launched in February 2010.

Fonts and input methods

Although many Malayalam Unicode fonts are available for old and new Malayalam lipi, most users opt for fonts like AnjaliOldLipi, Rachana and Meera which follows the traditional Malayalam writing style. Early editors adopted specialized Malayalam Unicode input tools based on the Varamozhi keyboard, a phonetic transliteration device. The project has an inbuilt input tool integrated to it.

Users and editors
Malayalam Wikipedia statistics
Number of user accountsNumber of articlesNumber of filesNumber of administrators
14657771899655616

See also

References
  1. "Wikipedia Statistics - Tables - Malayalam". stats.wikimedia.org.
  2. Sunday Supplement, Mathrubhumi, September 2, 2007
  3. ml:Special:Listusers
  4. List of Wikipedias
  5. "A milestone for Malayalam Wiki". The Hindu. 11 June 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
  6. Mathrubhumi print edition, June 1, 2009
  7. Joseph Antony (1 June 2009). "'മലയാളം വിക്കി'ക്ക്‌ പതിനായിരത്തിന്റെ നിറവ്‌" (in Malayalam). Mathrubhumi Online Edition. Archived from the original on 11 June 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
  8. Kerala Kaumudi print edition 4th June, 2009
  9. Asianet News, June 1, 2009
  10. "മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍ 10000 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍!" (in Malayalam). Webdunia. 1 June 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
  11. "മലയാളം വിക്കിയില്‍ 10000 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍" (in Malayalam). TechVidya. 1 June 2009. Archived from the original on 20 October 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
  12. Johann P (3 June 2009). "മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍ 10000 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍" (in Malayalam). e-Pathram. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
  13. Siraj Newspaper, Print Edition, 3rd June, 2009, Page 5
  14. "മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ" (in Malayalam). KottayamVartha. 2 June 2009. Archived from the original on 19 August 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009. , June 02, 2009
  15. "Malayalam Wikipedia completes 10,000 article milestone". kochivibe.com. 2 June 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2009.
  16. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-06-19. Retrieved 2013-05-28.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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