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Useful 08:53 30 Jan 2021

Ukrainian Wikipedia's birthday: we learned 2020 records that will surprise you

It turns 17 on January 30! We talked with the Ukrainian Wiki's administrator about last year's achievements. There's something to reminisce about

We're used to taking Wikipedia for granted. It's familiar to us: a huge encyclopedia in your pocket is available wherever the Internet is. But how often do we reflect on an enormous amount of work behind it, how many people are working to create content, and what is the Wikipedia growth dynamics? In this article, we'll explain how Ukrainian Wikipedia has grown over the past year.

For a start, why is it Ukrainian Wikipedia and not WikiUkraine, for instance? It's simple. The deal is that the entire encyclopedia is divided into 316 language sections; they can divide the Wiki into languages, not countries.

українська вікіпедія

Now about the statistics. Ukrainian Wikipedia appeared on January 30, 2004. It was then that the first article in the Ukrainian language appeared called "Atom." In our opinion, it's quite symbolic, since everything that exists in our world also begins with an atom. It was written by a Yurii Koval in Fuji, Japan. Since that time, the Ukrainian Wikipedia has developed rapidly. Now the encyclopedia has 1,067,826 articles in the Ukrainian language; that's 3,666,884 pages.

By the way, the jubilee millionth article was written in 2020. On March 23, it was dedicated to the American singer Odette Holmes. In total, 92,061 new articles appeared in 2020; on average, 252 new articles were created every day. Now Ukrainian Wikipedia ranks 17th in the world in terms of attendance and holds the same position in terms of the number of articles. In September, due to this indicator, we overtook the Portuguese Wikipedia, although according to preliminary estimates, made at the end of 2019, it should've happened in May.

українська вікіпедія

What's interesting that happened on Wikipedia in 2020?

It'd seem: what's so interesting one can find about encyclopedias? However, even at Wiki, there are achievements and even scandals every year. We asked the encyclopedia's "master," a Ukrainian, Nazar Tokar, the administrator of the Ukrainian Wiki, about achievements that occurred in 2020. So, among the most striking events are the following:

Broke all records

Not only the millionth article appeared in 2020 at the beginning of last year, but the Ukrainian Wiki also broke all attendance records in 16 years; what's more, it happened twice, in April and November. During the year, the articles were viewed 1 billion times, more than any Ukrainian media outlet.

українська вікіпедія

#KyivNotKiev 

This hashtag was used for an online campaign launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in cooperation with the Center for Strategic Communications "StratCom Ukraine" on October 2, 2018. Its goal is to convince English-language media and organizations to use Kyiv, which comes from the Ukrainian name instead of Kiev, derived from Russian. It was part of the larger CorrectUA campaign. The campaign itself, and 13 years of statements from hundreds of editors, bore fruit, and Kyiv appeared on the English-language Wikipedia instead of Kiev.

Blocking "unwanted" media

In 2020, 4 Russian media outlets were blacklisted on Ukrainian Wikipedia: the Federal News Agency (RIA FAN), the Zhurnalistskaya Pravda publication, Narodnye Novosti and Ekonomika Segodnya. In addition, there are Ukrainian publications that you cannot make a reference to in Wiki articles: Medvedchuk, 112, Strana.ua.

Links to these sites cannot be added to any article published in the vastness of the Internet encyclopedia. These publications are believed to be associated with the Russian pro-Kremlin Internet Research Agency, which allegedly tried to influence the course of the 2016 US presidential election through social media. The Wikipedia editors announced the bias and incorrectness of some of their materials being submitted by these publications, and also emphasized the "threat" coming from them: "By blocking these 4 sites, we will lose nothing. It's extremely unlikely to find a real exclusive in the materials of the listed media, which we can't find in other popular media," says Mikhail Gruznov, one of the Wikipedia editors and initiators of blocking.

Thus, the Ukrainian Wikipedia is growing more and more every year: its own rules and censorship appear, it breaks new records, and the encyclopedia itself is becoming more popular among the Ukrainian-speaking population, both here and abroad.

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