Telugu Wikipedia
 | |
 Telugu Wikipedia Logo | |
| Web address | te.wikipedia.org |
|---|---|
| Slogan | స్వేచ్ఛా విజ్ఞాన సర్వస్వము |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Internet encyclopedia project |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | Telugu |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
The Telugu Wikipedia was started on December 10, 2003 by Venna Nagarjuna, renowned for Padma, a system for transforming Indic text between various public and proprietary formats. As of Dec 7, 2013, the article count stood at 53,932 and is third among the Indian language Wikipedias, next to Hindi and Tamil.
Initial growth
In 2005, Telugu Wikipedia received a much needed initial thrust with the joining of pioneer Wikipedians like Chava Kiran, Makineni Pradeep, Vyzasatya, Veeven and Chaduvari (who later spearheaded e-Telugu campaign). Vyzasatya planned and executed a project to have stubs for districts, mandals and Telugu movies with the help of a bot. The stubs were expanded into articles with the help of several volunteers from Telugu online/blogging community. Chaduvari translated and drafted many of the initial working policies. Pradeep wrote scripts to automate many of the mundane tasks. The article count became 6000.
Promotion
A symbiotic relationship fostered by the initial Telugu blogger-Wikipedian members with the larger Telugu online community proved to be a big boon for Telugu Wikipedia's initial growth. Having gained initial momentum, it was furthered by committed members like Kasubabu, Dr. Rajasekhar, Chandrakantha Rao, Ravichandra, Rahamtulla and Sujatha. Wikipedia was promoted through book fairs at Hyderabad and Vijayawada with active support from e-Telugu organization and the local-language media. This generated a lot of interest among the general public
Telugu Wiktionary is another notable project, with major contribution from Sujatha. Brown's English-Telugu dictionary was incorporated into Telugu Wiktionary in its entirety using a bot script written by another pioneer Telugu Wikipedian, Makineni Pradeep.
In 2010, e-zine called Tewiki Vartha was started to share behind scenes stories of Telugu Wiki sites and wiki Editors.
Telugu wiki academies were initiated in 2009 to create more awareness in Engineering and MCA colleges in small towns of Andhra Pradesh.
In 2012, another effort was made to revitalize the Wikipedia. The community had for the first time organised a 2-day celebration in Hyderabad during April 10&11 2013, coinciding with the start of Telugu New year.[1]
HMTV broadcast a documentary on Wikipedia Celebrations[2]Rajasekhar, Rahimanuddin, Malladi and Vishnuvardhan participated in an phone in program about Wikipedia.[3][4]
Page views
Page views of Telugu Wikipedia for Oct 2013 are at 2.1M. The highest recorded page views of 4.5M were for Feb 2010.
References
- ↑ IBN report on the event
- ↑ Blogpost on CIS website with video link for the feature program on Wikipedia
- ↑ First part of Phone in program on Jun 1, 2013 by HMTV
- ↑ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr1Tk82EdKE. Second part of phone in program on Jun 1,2013 by HMTV]
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