Greek Wikipedia

Greek Wikipedia

Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Available in	Greek
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
URL	el.wikipedia.org
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional
Launched	December 2002; 18 years ago (2002-12)
Current status	Active

The Greek Wikipedia (also Hellenic Wikipedia, Elliniki Vikipedia, Greek: Ελληνική Βικιπαίδεια) is the Greek-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. It was started on December 1, 2002. It surpassed the 10,000 article mark on May 16, 2006 and the 100,000 article mark on April 9, 2014. As of March 27, 2021, it is the 49th largest Wikipedia, behind Lithuanian and ahead of Simple English.

Greek Wikipedia is the main free internet encyclopedia written in Greek. Its main competitor, , started on 2004, had more than 100.000 articles. Many articles of Livepedia were republished articles from donations of various publishing houses and the site was also a wiki. Approximately 250 articles are coming at least partially from Livepedia, thanks to the Livepedia's use of GFDL until November 1, 2008. As of 2018, Greek Wikipedia's pageviews surpassed the 250 million annually. The daily pageviews of Greek Wikipedia vary within the year; peaking in the winter period (late November to mid March), while the months with the least pageviews are usually June, July and August.^[1] The active users are more than 1,400 today (as of March 27, 2021). The highest and lowest active users' numbers are recorded in the same period.

The community of Greek Wikipedia has organized some meetups as well. Since 2011, the Wikimedia User Group Greece has aided in the organization of various promotional activities, as well and some article contests.

Statistics[]

Origin of views (January 2021) [2] Greece   72% Cyprus   3% Germany   1% Other   24%

As of May 2020, the Greek Wikipedia:^[3]

• was 48th largest by number of articles (177,786)
• had 22 administrators
• had 302,201 registered users, of whom 1,289 were active
• had been edited 8,208,725 times

As of May 2019, Greek Wikipedia is usually visited by 5,500,000 to 6,500,000 unique devices per month,^[4] while the unique devices per day are approximately 440,000.^[5]

The origin of pageviews is mainly from Greece. The remainder of the pageviews comes from Cyprus, Germany, United States, United Kingdom and other countries.^[6] As of May 2019, Greece is the source for the bulk of the pageviews, being the source for nearly 27,000,000 pageviews out of 32,500,000 on the same month.^[7]

As of May 2019, Greek Wikipedia receives approximately 30,000,000 pageviews per month, with a peak at winter months.^[8] Together with an increasing number of articles and improvements on quality, the pageviews have improved substantially in the last three years.^[8]

Since 2017, the annual article growth amounts to 15,000 articles annually, while the average monthly growth amounts to 1,020-1,300 articles per month.

History[]

Early years[]

Greek Wikipedia was created on 1 December 2002. At the first months of existence, the new articles were very small and a handful of users were contributing, some of them just adding interwikis to other Wikipedias.^[9] The first Wikiproject were launched in November 2005.^[9]

Article count[]

The Greek Wikipedia was created on 4 December 2002. On 16 May 2006 it reached 10,000 articles. On 10 October 2006 it reached 15,000 articles, while on 17 March 2007 it reached 20,000 articles. On this period there were 30 new articles being created every day, while there were 50 active users.^[10] In December of that year the Greek Wikipedia reached 30,000 articles,^[11] while on 14 February 2009 it reached 40,000 articles. Fourteen months later, on 10 April 2010, it reached 50,000 articles; eleven months later, on 8 March 2011 it reached 60,000 articles. In February 2012 it had 70,000 articles, while 252 days later it reached 80,000 articles.

In July 2013, it reached 90,000 articles, while 271 days later it reached 100,000 articles, while 195 days later it reached 110,000 articles. On 11 July 2016, after 629 days, it reached 120,000 articles, due to the general recount of late March 2015 which removed several thousand redirects from the mainspace.^[12] As a result, the article count fell to 105,500 articles, while before the recount the article count was 119,500 articles.^[13] Greek Wikipedia is maintaining a pace of growth of around 15,000 articles per year. This trends are generally stable since 2017, when previously Greek Wikipedia had usually 10,000 to 12,000 articles.

Number of articles	Date	Days intervening
1	1 December 2002
10,000	16 May 2006	1262
20,000	17 March 2007	305
30,000	27 December 2007	285
40,000	14 February 2009	415
50,000	10 April 2010	420
60,000	8 March 2011	332
70,000	22 February 2012	351
80,000	1 November 2012	254
90,000	12 July 2013	252
100,000	9 April 2014	271
110,000	21 October 2014	195
120,000	11 July 2016	629
130,000	18 April 2017	281
140,000	23 November 2017	219
150,000	1 August 2018	250
160,000	17 March 2019	227
170,000	9 November 2019	238
180,000	24 July 2020	259
190,000	21 March 2021	249

Users and editors[]

Greek Wikipedia statistics

Number of user accounts	Number of articles	Number of files	Number of administrators
340397	197566	18105	22

Logos[]

• 

  Greek Wikipedia's 20,000 articles special logo

• 

  Greek Wikipedia's 30,000 articles special logo

• 

  Greek Wikipedia's 50,000 articles special logo

• 

  Greek Wikipedia's 100,000 articles special logo (9 April 2014)

• 

  Special logo for the 10-year anniversary since the foundation of Greek Wikipedia

In the press[]

In the press, Wikipedia has been referred as a good source of information;^[14] however, periodically it has been criticised for having a non-neutral point of view in politics-related articles. Also, Greek Wikipedia has received extensive coverage from the Greek-language press for some of its actions, such as the anniversary of 10 years since its opening.^[15][16] In addition to, full articles of Greek Wikipedia or parts of them are often included in news articles and other websites in the Greek language.

Notes[]

Further reading[]

Press[]

• Εύη Γκολώνη (Evi Goloni), Wikipedia. Η διαδικτυακή εγκυκλοπαίδεια ενηλικιώνεται (Wikipedia. The Internet encyclopedia becomes an adult), Popular Science, τ. (volume) 44, page 23, May 2006).
• Ανδρονίκη Κολοβού (Androniki Kolovu), "Wikipedia" Η ελεύθερη διαδικτυακή εγκυκλοπαίδεια για τους λάτρεις της γνώσης (Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia for knowledge lovers), τεύχος (volume) "Η ζωή μας" (our life), ΠΡΩΤΟ ΘΕΜΑ (Proto Thema), 2 July 2006.
• Ηλίας Μαγκλίνη (Ilias Maglini), Η παγκόσμια κοινότητα της Wikipedia, Ελληνικά: πλούτος και σκουπίδια (The global community of Wikipedia, Hellenic: wealth and trash), Η Καθημερινή (I Kathimerini), ένθετο (submagazine) Τέχνες και Γράμματα (Arts and letters), 20 August 2006).
• Εύη Ελευθεριάδου (Evi Eleftheriadu), Οι Έλληνες της Βικιπαίδειας (The Hellenes of Wikipedia), ένθετο (submagazine) "Ορίζοντες" (Horizons), Τα Νέα, 13 December 2006.

External links[]

Greek edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Greek Wikipedia mobile version (in Greek)
• Statistics for Greek Wikipedia (Deprecated) by Erik Zachte
• Wikimedia Statistics - Greek Wikipedia Archived 2020-01-24 at the Wayback Machine
• Tell us about Greek Wikipedia
• Wikimedia User Group Greece official website (in Greek)

Other Wikipedias in Hellenic languages[]

• Pontic Wikipedia
• Ancient Greek Wikipedia (test-wiki, Wikimedia Incubator) (in Ancient Greek)