Latvian Wikipedia

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Favicon of Wikipedia Latvian Wikipedia
Logo of the Latvian Wikipedia
The main page of the Latvian Wikipedia on 9 May 2014
Web address lv.wikipedia.org
Slogan Brīva enciklopēdija
Commercial? No
Type of site
 Internet encyclopedia
Registration Optional
Users 59,118 registered accounts
1,435 contributors[lower-alpha 1] (July 2014)
Content license
 CC Attribution / Share-Alike 3.0
Most text also dual-licensed under GFDL. Media licensing varies.
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Launched 6 June 2003; 20 years ago (2003-06-06)

The Latvian Wikipedia (Latvian: Vikipēdija latviešu valodā [ˈvikipɜːdija] ( listen)) is the Latvian-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was created on 6 June 2003.[2][3][4] With about 69,000 articles, it is currently the 67th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles[5] and the second-largest Wikipedia in a Baltic language.[6]

History

The Latvian Wikipedia was created alongside the Serbian, Kannada, Walloon, Wolof, and Xhosa Wikipedias.[3] The oldest article is "Psihologija", which was published on 6 June 2003 and redirected to "Psiholoģija" (psychology) on 7 December 2004.[7] The main page was added four months after the first article, on 6 October 2003.[8]

The edition's initial growth was slow and some articles about important aspects of Latvian culture were missing at first.[2] The article about Jāņi, for instance, was not written until March 2008.[9] The Latvian Wikipedia's growth rate has been very stable since 2006.[10]

On 30 September 2013, the VisualEditor was made available to logged-in users, and by 7 October 2013, it was available to all users on the Latvian Wikipedia.[11]

The Latvian Wikipedia turned 10 years old on 6 June 2013. A commemorative logo was uploaded for the occasion, and small parties among the community's "Wikiholics" ensued, as it is customary whenever a new milestone is reached.[12] The edition surpassed 50,000 articles on 17 August 2013.[4]

As of July 2014, according to the list of Wikipedias by sample of articles at Meta-Wiki, which is based on the list of articles every Wikipedia should have, the Latvian Wikipedia ranks 52nd out of 287 editions, with a score of 20.83/100. It lacks almost no article from the list of vital articles, but contains generally short articles.

On 22 September 2004, the first Latvian "Wikipēdija" logo was uploaded, and on 1 June 2005, the name was changed to "Vikipēdija".[13] In Latvian media, the words "Wikipedia" and "Vikipēdija" are used interchangeably to refer to both Wikipedia in general and to the Latvian edition specifically, but "Vikipēdija" is more common.[14][15]

In response to the Zolitūde shopping centre roof collapse disaster of 21 November 2013, the Latvian Wikipedia, just as several other Latvian websites, changed its logo for three days to include black and the image of a candle.

Related projects

A separate Latgalian Wikipedia (ltg) has been created on 18 March 2011.[16] Latgalian is spoken in Latgale, the eastern part of Latvia, and its standardized form is recognized and protected as a variety of Latvian language by Latvian law,[17] although it is debated whether it is a dialect of Latvian or a separate language.[18]

Since 11 June 2014, there is "!Bang" command available on DuckDuckGo giving users the ability to redirect a search to the Latvian Wikipedia or to access it directly by typing !wlv.[19]

Milestones

<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>
2
 Number of articles on the Latvian Wikipedia

Policies

Since 31 October 2012, the Latvian Wikipedia displays a notice encouraging users to sign a petition on the Latvian social initiative platform ManaBalss.lv in an effort to change the Latvian copyright law, which permits taking pictures of architectural works and monuments, but only for non-commercial purposes. According to the petition, "such restrictions are not reasonable for buildings, monuments, sculptures and other three-dimensional works that cannot be fully reproduced in two dimensions".[2][20] If the law changed, pictures of Latvian public buildings would become valid on Wikimedia Commons.

  • As opposed to the English Wikipedia, it is not required to be logged-in to create a new article on the Latvian Wikipedia.
  • Many users use personalized license templates on the images they upload locally to have them grouped.[21]
  • Unlike most major Wikipedias, the Latvian Wikipedia adopted gadgets very late, in May 2014.[22]

Images

The Latvian Wikipedia has an Exemption Doctrine Policy (Godprātīga lietošana) that allows local uploads of non-free, fair use images and audio/video files (with copyright restrictions). However, users are encouraged to release their work under a Creative Commons license and upload it on Wikimedia Commons instead, thus making it accessible throughout all editions of Wikipedia. This stance is similar to the English Wikipedia's, and in contrast to some other editions, which rely strictly on Wikimedia Commons for images, sound, and other media files, including i.a. the Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Basque, Czech, Danish, Volapük and Latin Wikipedias.[5][23][24]

Content and images from the Latvian Wikipedia often appear on Latvian news websites.[25][26][27][28]

Statistics

Shares of Baltic Wikipedias (April 2024)[6]
Lithuanian
  
 67.5%
Latvian
  
 26.2%
Samogitian
  
 6%
Latgalian
  
 0.3%

As of April 2024, the Latvian Wikipedia's 69,000 articles[5] account for approximately 26% of all the articles written in a Baltic language, making it the second-largest edition in the family after Lithuanian, which accounts for 68%.[6] The most popular articles are "Latvija" (Latvia), "Eiropa" (Europe), and "Latvijas vēsture" (History of Latvia).[29][30][2]

In terms of quality, as of July 2014, the Latvian Wikipedia has 49 featured articles (vērtīgi raksti),[31] 76 good articles (labi raksti),[32] 19 featured lists (vērtīgi saraksti),[33] and an average ratio of 0.9 featured articles per 1000 articles; on par with the Bulgarian, Spanish, and English Wikipedias. It currently has a high depth indicator of 87.3,[lower-alpha 2] which is not only greater than those of all other Wikipedias in the language family combined,[lower-alpha 3] but also than some of the largest editions such as German (102.1), Polish (22.2), and Dutch (11.6). As of March 2015, there are 17 Wikiprojects (Vikiprojekts) on the Latvian Wikipedia,[34] and 81 approved bots, assisting users in the editing process.[35]

Community

File:Vikialus 2013 01.jpg
Some of the most active contributors to the Latvian Wikipedian in 2013. From left to right: Laurijs, ScAvenger, Feens, IndulisMX, Treisijs, GreenZeb, Papuass, and Dainis.

The Latvian Wikipedia is the third most read edition in Latvia, after the English Wikipedia and the Russian Wikipedia.[36] It is also the seventh most read edition on the island of Guernsey,[36] where there is an emerging Latvian diaspora of approximately 1,500 to 2,000 migrant workers.[37] Despite Latvian having less than 2 million speakers, the edition enjoys a relatively high level of community participation, with 54 editors per million speakers, even though there is still no Wikimedia chapter in Latvia.[38] At around 34.5 articles per speaker, the Latvian Wikipedia has an above-average number of articles per speaker.[39] These figures were based on an estimate of 1.8 million speakers of Latvian.[40] Its editing community currently consists of 11 administrators (4.25% of all active users) and 259 active contributors, of which on average between 12 and 20 are very active every month,[lower-alpha 4] and there are in total 62 users with over 1,000 edits (excluding bots).[41][42] Around 90% of both views and edits originate from Latvia, where Wikipedia is the 14th most popular website.[43]

Gallery

  • Wikipedia-logo-lv-040922.png

    The Latvian Wikipedia's original logo. Note that "Wikipēdija" was spelled with a 'W' from 22 September 2004 to 1 June 2005

  • Wikipedia-logo-lv-50K.png

    The Latvian Wikipedia's 50,000 articles commemorative logo (17 August 2013)

  • Wikipedia-logo-v2-lv-131123.png

    The logo displayed in memory of the victims of the Zolitūde shopping centre roof collapse (23–26 November 2013)

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Contributors are users who edited at least 10 times since they registered.[1]
  2. ↑ Depth is a rough indicator of a Wikipedia's collaborative quality showing how frequently its articles are updated. A higher depth usually indicates that articles are more often edited.
  3. ↑ The Lithuanian, Samogitian, and Latgalian Wikipedias have a depth indicator of 21.3, 6.3, and 65.5 respectively.
  4. ↑ A very active user is one with 100+ edits in the main namespace of a given project over the last 30 days.

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Latvian_Wikipedia&oldid=1487211"