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 1 December 2002. It surpassed the 10,000 article mark on 16 May 2006, the 100,000 article mark on 9 April 2014, and the 200,000 article mark on 27 November 2021. As of November 4, 2024, it is the 48th largest Wikipedia, behind South Azerbaijani Wikipedia and ahead of Kazakh 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 435,711 registered users, of whom 921 were active
has 10,799,099 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.
History
Early years
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 1 November 2008.
Article count
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 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.
Number of articles
Date
Days intervening
1
1 December 2002
10,000
16 May 2006
1262
20,000
17 March 2007
305
30,000
27 December 2007
285
40,000
14 February 2009
415
50,000
10 April 2010
420
60,000
8 March 2011
332
70,000
22 February 2012
351
80,000
1 November 2012
254
90,000
12 July 2013
252
100,000
9 April 2014
271
110,000
21 October 2014
195
120,000
11 July 2016
629
130,000
18 April 2017
281
140,000
23 November 2017
219
150,000
1 August 2018
250
160,000
17 March 2019
227
170,000
9 November 2019
238
180,000
24 July 2020
259
190,000
21 March 2021
249
200,000
27 November 2021
251
Users and editors
Greek Wikipedia statistics
Number of user accounts
Number of articles
Number of files
Number of administrators
435711
242065
18788
22
Logos
Greek Wikipedia's 20,000 articles special logo
Greek Wikipedia's 30,000 articles special logo
Greek Wikipedia's 50,000 articles special logo
Greek Wikipedia's 100,000 articles special logo (9 April 2014)
Special logo for the 10-year anniversary since the foundation of Greek Wikipedia
Special logo for the 20-year anniversary since the foundation of Greek Wikipedia
In the press
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.
