Polish Wikipedia

This page is a descriptive article on the Polish Wikipedia, feel free to add any comment.

Facts

Started: 26 September, 2001 – first not on Bomis server but on rozeta. It was transferred to the Bomis server on 12 January 2002.

Current size: 1,640,610 articles

Total edits: 75,437,993

Active editors: 4,356 in the past month

Areas of strength

• Vibrant, large community
• History and geography of Poland and neighboring countries
• Informatics
• Chemistry and physics
• Biology
• Fantasy and computer games
• Many good photographers

Areas of weakness

• Chaotic structure - especially help and policy pages (although it is constantly improved)
• Very mixed quality - some areas are really good - some others are very poor
• General poor quality control - articles written by newbies and not improved by others

Who are the competitors (print, online)?

• Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN - and the selection of their printed, on DVDs and on-line encyclopedic products.
• Onet.pl - the most popular Polish portal and its "Portal of knowledge".
• Interia.pl - the most popular Polish portal devoted to young people and its "Q & A" service and encyclopedia.

Prominent milestones/events

• 12 January 2002 - transfer to the Bomis server
• 22 December 2002 - registering the www.wikipedia.pl domain by a group of 15 donators from community
• 22 May 2003 - 10 000 articles.
• 17 May 2004 - 30 000 articles.
• 4 September 2004 - first wikiportal was created (Fantastyka).
• 1 October 2004 - Polish Wikipedia reached 1 million visitors per month.
• 31 December 2004 - "50 000 articles by the end of the year action" - was successful (at least in terms of number of articles... not necessarily by the quality of them).
• 22 February 2005 - Polish Wikipedia ranked 18th most popular Polish webpage according to the Internet Standard.
• 16 September 2005 - 100 000 articles reached.
• 23 January 2006 - Polish Wikipedia ranked 9th most popular Polish webpage, and no. 1 in "educational" category, according to Internet Standard.
• 17 February 2007 - 350 000 articles.

• May 2003 - first "real life" meeting of Polish Wikipedians - Harenda Club in Warsaw (around 15 participants).
• 14 August 2005 - first Polish Wikimedia conference - where Polish Wikimedia Chapter was established - 33 participants.
• 15 September 2006 - 5th anniversary of Polish Wikipedia - a meeting and celebration with Jimbo's lecture given to the general public.

Features

What language features are challenging?

• Same as on German Wikipedia - linking is more complicated than in English as many words have prefixes and postfixes.
• Problems with sorting of articles which have Polish characters in the beginning of article's titles
• Some users complain that they cannot see Polish characters.

What would surprise the outside reader about the community?

• Many complicated regulations, or actually they have "to be approved" status

What are some unique practices/characteristics?

• There is no clear policy what it might or might not be put in articles.
• It is very difficult to become an admin (80%+1 votes for).

Who were the earliest participants, who started it?

• User:Kpjas and Ptj

Other prominent Wikipedians?

• Well - it is very delicate question :-)

Static versions

First static version on CD was issued by "Enter" magazine on August 2005. The issue was illegal. (Logo and name of Wikipedia were used without permission of Wikimedia Foundation).

Second static version on DVD has been prepared in cooperation with Helion.pl. It contains 239 000 articles and 59 000 pictures, based on clean-up dump from 4 June 2006. The final product preparation was finished on 20 January 2007. The final DVD ISO file takes around 8 GB. Official edition was released on the end of July 2007.