Croatian Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Croatian Wikipedia
Web address hr.wikipedia.org
Commercial? No
Type of site Internet encyclopedia project
Registration Optional
Available language(s) Croatian
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Launched February 16, 2003

The Croatian Wikipedia (Croatian: Wikipedija na hrvatskom jeziku) is the Croatian version of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, started on February 16, 2003.[1] This version has more than 140,000 articles as of August 2013, making it the 39th largest edition of Wikipedia.[2]

As of September 2013, the Croatian Wikipedia had more than 116,000 registered user accounts, out of which 466 were active (defined as having performed an action on Wikipedia in the last 30 days)[2] and 27 were administrators.[3] Throughout the first half of 2013, fewer than two dozen editors made more than 100 edits a month; around 150 made more than 5 edits a month.[4] As of September 2013, there were 430 featured articles (Croatian: Izabrani članci).[5]

2013 controversy

In September 2013 complaints about right-wing bias of administrators and editors on the Croatian Wikipedia arose. Those complaints were already present, but they started receiving media attention after the launch of a Facebook page titled Razotkrivanje sramotne hr.wikipedije (Exposing the Disgraceful hr.Wikipedia) whose creators warned the media about the bias. Notable examples of bias include historical revisionism such as watering-down and even denial of the crimes committed by the Ustaše regime, while equating anti-fascism with forms of totalitarianism.[6] Other examples include the bias against Serbs of Croatia and the LGBT population.[7][8] Editors who tried to remove the bias were reportedly being harassed by administrators and quickly received permanent blocks under some pretext.[9] The issue was reported by Croatia's daily Jutarnji list and even made its print edition's front page on 11 September 2013.[10]

On 13 September 2013 Croatia's Minister of Science, Education and Sports, Željko Jovanović, called for pupils and students in Croatia to avoid using the Croatian Wikipedia.[11] In an interview given to Novi list, Jovanović said that "the idea of openness and relevance as a knowledge source that Wikipedia could and should represent has been completely discredited – which, for certain, has never been the goal of Wikipedia's creators nor the huge number of people around the world who share their knowledge and time using that medium. Croatian pupils and students have been wronged by this, so we have to warn them, unfortunately, that a large part of the content of the Croatian version of Wikipedia is not only dubious but also [contains] obvious forgeries, and therefore we invite them to use more reliable sources of information, which include Wikipedia in English and in other major languages of the world."[11] Jovanović has also commented on the Croatian Wikipedia editors – calling them a "minority group that has usurped the right to edit the Croatian-language Wikipedia".[11]

Sitenotice that translates to "official and public refutation of yellow journalism by Jutarnji list"

In an interview given to Index.hr, Robert Kurelić, a professor of history at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, has commented that "the Croatian Wikipedia is only a tool used by its administrators to promote their own political agendas, giving false and distorted facts".[12] As two particularly prominent examples he listed the Croatian Wikipedia's coverage of the term Istrijanstvo (Istrian regionalism), defined as a "movement fabricated to reduce the number of Croats", and antifašizam (anti-fascism), which according to him is defined as the opposite of what it really means.[12] Kurelić further advised "that it would be good if a larger number of people got engaged and started writing on Wikipedia", because "administrators want to exploit high-school and university students, the most common users of Wikipedia, to change their opinions and attitudes, which presents a serious issue".[12]

In an interview with Croatian news agency HINA, Snježana Koren, a historian at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, has judged the disputed articles as "biased and malicious, partly even illiterate".[13] She further added that "These are the types of articles you can find on the pages of fringe organizations and movements, but there should be no place for that on Wikipedia", expressing doubts on the ability of its authors to distinguish good from evil.[13] Koren concludes that the ulterior motive of such writings is to rehabilitate the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi Germany puppet state, and that "there is no other way to characterize such efforts than as Ustashi movement".[13]

Reliability

A 2011 study has compared the reliability of Croatian Wikipedia to the Croatian Encyclopedia - the Croatian national encyclopedia.[14] 24 reviewers, experts in specific fields, analyzed a representative selection of articles according to the parameters of informativeness, accuracy of presented information, sufficiency, direction and objectivity. Articles were analyzed in 11 thematic categories: arts and culture, history and biographies, medicine and health, technology and applied science, geography, religion, science, mathematics and logic, philosophy, sport and society and social sciences. Articles were sorted into categories using machine learning techniques, and feature weight statistics were calculated using tf–idf. 500 articles in 250 pairs were randomly chosen and sorted into categores to serve as representative samples.[15]

In both samples facts were manually enumerated - 3015 belonging to Croatian Encyclopedia and 3315 to Croatian Wikipedia. Comparison for factual accuracy showed that for every error in Crotian Encyclopedia 2.25 errors were found in Croatian Wikipedia.[16] Analysis by individual categories showed that most errors in Croatian Wikipedia were in the category philosophy where on average two errors in ten articles were found. The only category were Croatian Encyclopedia had more errors was natural sciences where the ratio is 1.25 : 0.75 in favor of Croatian Wikipedia.[17] Of those factul errors, the ratio was 21:12 for major errors, and 34:23 for minor errors. The overall ratio for minor factual errors was thus lower, the only exception being the category society and social sciences were the minor error ratio was 3:1.

Reliability analysis for Croatian Wikipedia indicated that 74% of articles were error-free, and 11% had minor errors. Major factual errors were found in 5% of articles, while 4% of articles had both major and minor errors. Overall 85% of articles were deemed "satisfactory" (error-free and containing minor errors), while in comparison 92% of articles in Croatian Encyclopedia achieved the same rating.[18]

40% of articles of Croatian Wikipedia were assessed as sufficiently informative, as opposed to 62% of articles in Croatian Encyclopedia. 16% of Croatian Wikipedia articles were assessed as "insufficiently informative", as opposed to 5% articles from Croatian Encyclopedia.[19]

The criterion of objectivity measured the neutral point of view in articles - 91% of articles in Croatian Wikipedia were assessed as being neutral, as opposed to 98% in Croatian Encyclopedia. 2% of Croatian Wikipedia articles were assessed as non-neutral, as opposed to zero in Croatian Encyclopedia.[19]

According to their subjective preference, reviewers chose 53% of articles in Croatian Encyclopedia as their preferred article version, while only 19.5% of Wikipedia articles were chosen as the preferred ones, with 27% of articles being assesed as equal in quality.[20]

Milestones

Jimmy Wales and Croatian Wikipedians at a conference in Zagreb, October 1, 2008
  • April 25, 2003 — The first article is created
  • February 8, 2004 — 1000 articles
  • October 8, 2005 — 10,000 articles
  • July 7, 2011 — 100,000 articles[21]

References

  1. ↑ "Glavna stranica". Wikipedia (in Croatian). Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2011-10-31. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "List of Wikipedias". Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2013-09-14. 
  3. ↑ "Statistike". Croatian Wikipedia (in Croatian). Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2013-02-26. 
  4. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation: Wikipedia Statistics Croation
  5. ↑ "Izabrani članci". Croatian Wikipedia (in Croatian). Wikimedia Foundation. February 18, 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-26. 
  6. ↑ "Fascist movement takes over Croatian Wikipedia?". InSerbia News. Retrieved 13 September 2013. 
  7. ↑ Trolls hijack Wikipedia to turn articles against gays, Gay Star News
  8. ↑ Tko prepravlja LGBT Hrvatsku na Wikipediji?
  9. ↑ "Kako je hrvatsku Wikipediju uzurpirala ustašoidna desnica" [How did pro-Ustasha right-wing editors take Croatian Wikipedia] (in Croatian). Tportal. Retrieved 11 September 2013. 
  10. ↑ "Desničari preuzeli uređivanje hrvatske Wikipedije" [Right-wing editors took over the Croatian Wikipedia] (in Croatian). Jutarnji list. Retrieved 11 September 2013. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "Jovanović: Djeco, ne baratajte hrvatskom Wikipedijom jer su sadržaji falsificirani" [Jovanović: "Children, do not use the Croatian Wikipedia because its contents are forgeries"] (in Croatian). Novi list. Retrieved 13 September 2013. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "Jovanovićeva poruka učenicima i studentima: Ne koristite hrvatsku Wikipediju!" [Jovanović's message to the pupils and students: Don't use Croatian Wikipedia!] (in Croatian). Index.hr. Retrieved 13 September 2013. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "Hr.wikipedija pod povećalom zbog falsificiranja hrvatske povijesti" [Croatian Wikipedia under a scrutiny for fabricating Croatian history!] (in Croatian). Novi list. Retrieved 15 September 2013. 
  14. ↑ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013.
  15. ↑ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 124-125.
  16. ↑ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 127.
  17. ↑ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 128.
  18. ↑ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 129.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 130.
  20. ↑ Kubelka & Šoštarić 2013, p. 131.
  21. ↑ "Aktualno". Croatian Wikipedia (in Croatian). Wikimedia Foundation. February 25, 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-26. 

External links

Croatian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Croatian Wikipedia.
List of Wikipedias by article count
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