Kazakh Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kazakh Wikipedia
Web address kk.wikipedia.org
Commercial? No
Type of site Internet encyclopedia project
Registration Optional
Available language(s) Kazakh
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Created by Kazakh wiki community
Launched June 2002

The Kazakh Wikipedia is a Wikipedia in the Kazakh language.

History

The Kazakh Wikipedia was started in June 2002. The Kazakh Wikipedia had a very high growth rate in 2011, going from 7000 articles to over 100,000 in less than one year,[1] largely due to the incorporation of materials from the Kazakh Encyclopedia, which have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA). This rapid expansion was initiated by the non-profit Wikibilim Foundation.[2] The Samruk Kazyna Foundation, Kazakhstan's sovereign oil wealth fund, sponsored the expansion, with 30 million tenge spent in 2011 for paid editing, digitalization, and author rights transfer.[3][4] At the Wikimania 2011 conference WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly was awarded the "Wikipedian of the Year" award by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for his work on the Kazakh Wikipedia expansion.[4]

In April 2012 Tengri News reported that "in 2011, the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund allocated a total of $204 thousand to develop the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. This year, another $136 thousand will be earmarked", citing the Fund’s Press Service.[5] Wales thanked the Kazakh government for its support of the Kazakh Wikipedia at Wikimania 2012.[6]

The Kazakh Wikipedia's unique[citation needed] feature is that it is written in three different scripts: Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic. On 26 October 2011, it passed the 100,000 articles threshold, and by early 2013 had just over 200,000 articles.[1]

Features

The Kazakh Wikipedia uses ZhengZhu's character mapping program to convert between Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic scripts.[7]

Relationship between WikiBilim and the Government of Kazakhstan

Questions have been asked about WikiBilim's closeness to the Kazakh government, given that WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly had a long prior career as a Kazakh government official and the Kazakh government has been widely criticised for its crackdown on free speech.[4][8] Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' friendship with ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who advises the Kazakh government, has also come under scrutiny,[4][8] as has the neutrality of the Kazakh Wikipedia's content, much of which is a reproduction of the state-published national encyclopedia.[9][10]

Statistics

Origin of views (2012/03 - 2013/02) Source
Kazakhstan
  
 94.7%
Other
  
 5.3%

As of February 2014, the Kazakh Wikipedia counts about 205,000 articles. The overwhelming majority of its readers originate from Kazakhstan.

As of April 2013, the Kazakh Wikipedia's number of articles accounts for approximately 14% of all the articles written in a Turkic language, making it the second largest edition in the family after Turkish, which accounts for 28% of all Turkic articles.[11]

Gallery

  • The letter from the Kazakh Encyclopedia stating the release of its materials under a CC BY-SA license.

  • The Kazakh Wikipedia's 100K commemorative logo. (Fall 2011)

  • Kazakh Wikipedia logo at the time of the Turkic Wikimedia Conference. (April 2012)

  • The Kazakh Wikipedia's 200K commemorative logo. (Nov 2012)

References

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Wikipedia Statistics Kazakh". Wikimedia Foundation. 
  2. ↑ "Проект по расширению казахскоязычной части "Википедии" стартовал в Казахстане" (in Russian). gazeta.kz. Retrieved 27 April 2012. 
  3. ↑ "На развитие "Казахской Википедии" выделили 50 миллионов тенге" (in Russian). Tengri News. Retrieved 27 April 2012. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Williams, Christopher (24 December 2012). "Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship". The Telegraph. Retrieved 8 September 2013. 
  5. ↑ "$136 thousand channeled into development Kazakh-language Wikipedia. Internet. Tengrinews.kz". En.tengrinews.kz. Retrieved 2013-12-25. 
  6. ↑ Lotto Persio, Sofia (23. Juli 2012). "Kazakh Wikipedia awarded for its impressive development". netprophet.tol.org. Retrieved 8 September 2013. 
  7. ↑ Lih, p. 156-157.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Morris, Kevin (25 December 2012). "The Daily Dot – Wikipedia's odd relationship with the Kazakh dictatorship". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 8 September 2013. 
  9. ↑ Hermans, Steven (8 January 2013). "Critics question neutrality of Kazakh Wikipedia". NET PROPHET. Retrieved 8 September 2013. 
  10. ↑ Smith, Myles G. (27 December 2012). "Kazakhstan Wikipedia Controversy Raises Questions About the Crowd". EURASIANET.org. Retrieved 8 September 2013. 
  11. ↑ "List of Wikipedias by Language Group". Meta.wikimedia.org. 2013-12-13. Retrieved 2013-12-25. 

External links

Kazakh edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of Wikipedias by article count
4,000,000+
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200,000+
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