Translation requests/workspace
All major projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by its users using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5), meaning that their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license. See also our link to all projects.
- Please note that whilst other sites may also use MediaWiki software and therefore look similar to our projects, or may have a name that includes 'Wiki-' or '-pedia', or a similar domain name, the only projects which are part of the Wikimedia Foundation are those listed below.
Wikipedia
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Wikipedia is a project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Virtually anyone with Internet access is free to contribute, by contributing neutral, cited information.
The project started in January 2001 in one language, English, and currently has over 5,000,000 articles in over 200 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in the English language, with over 1,600,000 articles; it's followed by the German (500,000+) and French editions (500,000+). Nine other languages have at least 100,000 articles, over 100 other languages have at least 1,000 articles. New language editions are proposed and launched every month.
Wikipedia is also known for its community. In 2004 Wikipedia won the Webby Award for "Community" and the Prix Ars Electronica's Golden Nica for "Digital Communities". Since the start of the project, over 100,000 registered users have made at least ten edits.[1] The total number of accounts created on the English Wikipedia alone exceeds 3.4 million. However, most edits on that language edition come from around one thousand of the most dedicated users.
Some Wikipedias release or plan to release regular snapshots. The German Wikipedia is released twice a year as a DVD, in collaboration with Directmedia Publishing, and the Polish Wikipedia has released one DVD of content.
Wiktionary
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Wiktionary is a project to create free content dictionaries and thesauri in every language. The project started in December 2002, and is now available in over 100 languages with over 1,500,000 entries in all. The largest language edition is English, followed by French, Vietnamese and Russian, all four of them having more than 100,000 entries each. 40 other languages have at least 1,000 entries.
Recently, Wiktionary has collaborated with the Wikimedia Commons. Many sound files have been uploaded to Commons, to provide Wiktionary and other projects with examples of pronounciation.
Wikiquote
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Wikiquote is a repository of quotations taken from famous people, books, speeches, films or any intellectually interesting materials. Proverbs, mnemonics or slogans are also included in Wikiquote.
The project started in July 2003; As of May 2007, it includes over 60,000 pages in over 30 languages. The largest Wikiquote is in English with over 10,000 pages. The German, Polish, Italian and Slovak, each over 4,000 articles.
Wikibooks
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Wikibooks aims to build a collection of free e-book resources, including textbooks, language courses, manuals, and annotated public domain books. It aims to help both (self-)instruction of students, and teachers in high-schools and universities.
The largest Wikibooks is in the English language, with over 26,000 modules. The project started in July 2003 and has over 70,000 modules from 1000 developing books, across 50 languages.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is a multilingual project, started in November 2003, to archive a collection of texts that could be distributed as free and open content. It is not only a superior format for storing classics, laws, and other free works as hypertext, but it also serves as base for translating these texts. At the beginning, source texts in all languages (except Hebrew) were all on one wiki. However, Wikisource now has several editions in many individual languages.
As of July 2007, Wikisource offers 260,000 source texts in total. The largest is the English Wikisource, with over 65,000 works.
Wikispecies
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Wikispecies is an open, wiki-based project to provide a central, more extensive species database for taxonomy. Wikispecies is aimed specifically at the needs of scientific users, and as of July 2007, has over 106,000 entries.
Wikinews
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The Wikinews project was launched in December 2004 with the mission to report the news on a wide variety of subjects. As of February 2006, Wikinews is active in 22 languages, and has produced more than 25,000 news articles in total as of December 2006. As of January 2007, over 30,000 people subscribed to the English Wikinews through RSS feeds.
Contributors from around the world write news articles collaboratively. Reports are ranged from original reports to summaries of news from external sources. All of them are required to be written from a neutral point of view.
Currently Wikinews has two aims: providing a free content alternative to commercial news sites and making sure that articles are fact-checked and reviewed thoroughly.
Wikiversity
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Wikiversity is a project dedicated to learning materials and learning communities - of all learner levels. It was set up as a Wikimedia project (in "beta" phase), on 15th August, 2006, which is subject to a review after six months. Work is ongoing to determine guidelines for its scope, including on research, at the multilingual co-ordination Wikiversity project (to clarify the scope originally approved by the board). A finalised colour scheme for the logo is also being finalised - as are the project's motto and slogan.
Wikimedia Commons
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Wikimedia Commons was launched in September 2004 to provide a central repository for free video, images, music, spoken texts, and other free media that can be easily reused by all Wikimedia projects. In November 2006, it reached 1,000,000 multimedia files.
Wikimedia Commons received an honorary mention for Digital Community at the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica awards in May 2005.
For more information on Commons, please see Spotlight on Wikimedia Commons.
Related projects
editMediaWiki
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MediaWiki is a wiki engine released under the GPL. The MediaWiki software is used by all Wikimedia projects and many other sites.
In 2005 MediaWiki won the prize at les Trophées du Libre in the category special php prize.
See MediaWiki, its Wikipedia article, or its website for more information.
Meta
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"Meta" is a central wiki for coordination and development of all Wikimedia projects. The Meta site includes project proposals, project discussions, policies, development issues, and administration of all of Wikimedia's wikis.
References
edit- ↑ It is unknown how many users have registered on multiple projects at once.