The Tamil Wikipedia (Tamil: தமிழ் விக்கிப்பீடியா) is the Tamil language edition of Wikipedia established in September 2003, run by the Wikimedia Foundation.[1] The Tamil Wikipedia is the largest Wikipedia among Indian languages and the 60th largest Wikipedia by article count (as of 1 November 2024).[1] It is also the first and only Wikipedia of Dravidian origin to possess more than 150,000+ articles (as of 2022). The project is one of the leading Wikipedia among other South Asian language Wikipedia's in various quality matrices.[2] It has 168,978 articles and 237,723 registered users as of November 2024[update].[3] It crossed 100,000 articles in May 2017.[4]
Cultural significance
Contrary to common academic criticism of Wikipedia in the Western countries, the Tamil Wikipedia is widely regarded as an important source of information in the Tamil language on the Internet.[5] The encyclopedia undergoes far less vandalism compared to larger Wikipedia projects, largely because the project has slower growth, mainly due to the lack of computers or Internet service in rural areas of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Most of the project's development comes from the overseas Tamil diaspora.[5][6]
In April 2010, the Tamil Internet Conference held a contest for college students across the state of Tamil Nadu, India for increasing content on the Tamil Wikipedia.[7] The contest was made with regards to the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010, a meeting of Tamil scholars across the world who discuss modern development of the language. With over 2000 contestants enrolled, the contest concluded with the creation of 1,200 new academically reviewed articles on the Tamil Wikipedia in various subjects.[8]
In September 2013, the Tamil Wikipedia celebrated its 10th anniversary.[9]
For Tamil Wikipedia, 2017 was a very productive year. More than 27,000 articles were written; the majority of them were written in the period between May and July.[10] In June and July, a teacher education program took place, in 3 districts of Tamil Nadu, giving thousands of articles in Tamil Wikipedia.
