The Greek Wikipedia (also Hellenic Wikipedia, Elliniki Vikipedia, Greek: Ελληνική Βικιπαίδεια) is the Greek-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. It was started on December 1, 2002. It surpassed the 10,000 article mark on May 16, 2006, the 100,000 article mark on April 9, 2014, and the 200,000 article mark on November 27, 2021. As of July 3, 2024, it is the 49th largest Wikipedia, behind Kazakh Wikipedia and ahead of Minangkabau Wikipedia.
The Greek Wikipedia community has organized some meetups as well. Since 2011, the Wikimedia User Group Greece has aided in the organization of various promotional activities, as well as some article contests. Greek Wikipedia is the main free internet encyclopedia written in Greek. As of 2018, Greek Wikipedia's pageviews surpassed the 250 million mark annually.[1]
has 426,163 registered users, of whom 1,012 were active
has 10,618,326 edits
As of May 2019, Greek Wikipedia is usually visited by 5,500,000 to 6,500,000 unique devices per month,[4] while the unique devices per day are approximately 440,000.[5]
The origin of pageviews is mainly from Greece. The remainder of the pageviews comes from Cyprus, Germany, United States, United Kingdom and other countries.[6] As of May 2019, Greece is the source for the bulk of the pageviews, being the source for nearly 27,000,000 pageviews out of 32,500,000 on the same month.[7]
As of May 2019, Greek Wikipedia receives approximately 30,000,000 pageviews per month, with a peak at winter months.[8] Together with an increasing number of articles and improvements on quality, the pageviews have improved substantially in the last three years.[8]
Since 2017, the annual article growth amounts to 15,000 articles annually, while the average monthly growth amounts to 1,020-1,300 articles per month. In 2021 a new record of new articles has been reached, as more than 17,000 articles have been created since the beginning of the year, while the previous record was with 16,510 in 2017. Users with at least one edit during 2021 are expected to surpass 8,500, while in 2020 it was 8,012 and 7,453 in 2019.
The daily pageviews of Greek Wikipedia vary within the year; peaking in the winter period (late November to mid March), while the months with the least page views are usually June, July and August.
Greek Wikipedia was created on 1 December 2002. At the first months of existence, the new articles were very small and a handful of users were contributing, some of them just adding interwikis to other Wikipedias.[9] The first Wikiproject was launched in November 2005.[9] Its main competitor at the time was LivePedia [el], started in 2004, which had more than 100,000 articles. Many articles of Livepedia were republished articles from donations of various publishing houses and the site was also a wiki. Approximately 250 articles are coming at least partially from Livepedia, thanks to the Livepedia's use of GFDL until November 1, 2008.
The Greek Wikipedia was created on 4 December 2002. On 16 May 2006 it reached 10,000 articles. On 10 October 2006 it reached 15,000 articles, while on 17 March 2007 it reached 20,000 articles. On this period there were 30 new articles being created every day, while there were 50 active users.[10] In December of that year the Greek Wikipedia reached 30,000 articles,[11] while on 14 February 2009 it reached 40,000 articles. Fourteen months later, on 10 April 2010, it reached 50,000 articles; eleven months later, on 8 March 2011 it reached 60,000 articles. In February 2012 it had 70,000 articles, while 252 days later it reached 80,000 articles.
In July 2013, it reached 90,000 articles, while 271 days later it reached 100,000 articles, while 195 days later it reached 110,000 articles. On 11 July 2016, after 629 days, it reached 120,000 articles, due to the general recount of late March 2015 which removed several thousand redirects from the mainspace.[12] As a result, the article count fell to 105,500 articles, while before the recount the article count was 119,500 articles.[13] Greek Wikipedia is maintaining a pace of growth of around 15,000 articles per year. This trends are generally stable since 2017, when previously Greek Wikipedia had usually 10,000 to 25,000 articles.
In the press, Wikipedia has been referred as a good source of information;[14] however, periodically it has been criticised for having a non-neutral point of view in politics-related articles. Also, Greek Wikipedia has received extensive coverage from the Greek-language press for some of its actions, such as the anniversary of 10 years since its opening.[15][16] In addition to, full articles of Greek Wikipedia or parts of them are often included in news articles and other websites in the Greek language.
Εύη Γκολώνη (Evi Goloni), Wikipedia. Η διαδικτυακή εγκυκλοπαίδεια ενηλικιώνεται (Wikipedia. The Internet encyclopedia becomes an adult), Popular Science, τ. (volume) 44, page 23, May 2006).
Ανδρονίκη Κολοβού (Androniki Kolovu), "Wikipedia" Η ελεύθερη διαδικτυακή εγκυκλοπαίδεια για τους λάτρεις της γνώσης (Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia for knowledge lovers), τεύχος (volume)『Η ζωή μας』(our life), ΠΡΩΤΟ ΘΕΜΑ (Proto Thema), 2 July 2006.
Ηλίας Μαγκλίνη (Ilias Maglini), Η παγκόσμια κοινότητα της Wikipedia, Ελληνικά: πλούτος και σκουπίδια (The global community of Wikipedia, Hellenic: wealth and trash), Η Καθημερινή (I Kathimerini), ένθετο (submagazine) Τέχνες και Γράμματα (Arts and letters), 20 August 2006).
Εύη Ελευθεριάδου (Evi Eleftheriadu), Οι Έλληνες της Βικιπαίδειας (The Hellenes of Wikipedia), ένθετο (submagazine)『Ορίζοντες』(Horizons), Τα Νέα, 13 December 2006.
