German Wikipedia
Encyclopedia
The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia
, a free and mostly publicly editable online encyclopedia
.
Founded in March 2001, it is the second-oldest and, with over articles, the second-largest edition of Wikipedia, behind the English Wikipedia
. Sue Gardner
, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation
, said in a January 2011 interview that the German Wikipedia is "the best" language edition, indicating that it is accurate, comprehensive, well-referenced and well-maintained. On 7 November 2011, it became the second edition of Wikipedia (after the English edition) to exceed 100 million page edits.
on 16 March 2001. One of the earliest snapshots of the home page, dated 21 March 2001 (revision #9), can be seen at the Wayback Machine site. Aside from the home page, creation of articles in the German Wikipedia started as early as April 2001, apparently with translations of Nupedia
articles. The earliest article still available on Wikipedia's site is apparently Polymerase-Kettenreaktion, dated May 2001.
to do so. The millionth article was Ernie Wasson
. In November 2008, 90% of the edition's articles had more than 512 byte
s, 49% had more than 2 kilobyte
s, and the average article size was 3,476 bytes. In the middle of 2009 this edition had nearly 250,000 biographies and in December 2006 more than 48,500 disambiguations.
Compared to the English Wikipedia
, the German edition tends to be more selective in its coverage, often rejecting small stubs, articles about individual fictional characters and similar materials. Instead, there is usually one article about all the characters from a specific fictional setting, usually only when the setting is considered important enough (for example, all characters from Star Wars are listed in a single article). A dedicated article about a single fictional entity is only allowed if the character in question has a very significant impact on popular culture (for example, Hercule Poirot).
The January 2005, Google Zeitgeist announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched query on Google.de. In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind Firefox and Valentine's Day
. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first.
(:als:), Luxembourgish
(:lb:), Pennsylvania German
(:pdc:), Ripuarian (formerly Kölsch
; :ksh:), and Bavarian
(:bar:).
" on a trial basis. The system went live in May 2008. Certain users are now able to mark article versions as "reviewed", indicating that the text contains no obvious vandalism. A note in the top right corner of the screen indicates to the reader whether or not the present version of an article has already been reviewed, and provides access to the most recent reviewed version or a more current, unreviewed version as needed.
. As a result of this meeting regularly striking round tables (called “Wikipedia-Stammtisch”) established themselves at various places in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The round tables have become an important aspect of collegial exchange within the german speaking community.
Each spring and autumn, the German Wikipedia organizes a writing contest, where a community-elected jury rates nominated articles. Prizes are sponsored by individual community members and companies. The first contest was held in October 2004 - the article Kloster Lehnin (Lehnin Abbey) was selected as the winner from 44 nominated articles. The second contest, held in March 2005, saw 52 contributions, and the third, in September 2005, 70. A trial to extend the contest to an international level met with limited success, with only the Dutch, English and Japanese Wikipedias participating.
For the March 2006 writing contest, the 150 nominated articles were split into three sections: history and society (56 nominations), arts and humanities (36), and science (46). The article on the Brown Bear (German
: Braunbär) won, and of the nominated 27 articles reached featured status a few weeks after the contest. In March 2007, the sixth contest was held, with the winner being the article on the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (German
: Haager Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten).
German Wikipedians organized the first international Wikipedia conference, Wikimania
2005, in August 2005 in Frankfurt
. Some 300 people from over 50 countries attended the three-day conference.
From 17 March to 15 April 2006, the Göttingen State and University Library
held a special exhibition documenting the first five years of Wikipedia.
In 2006, the University of Göttingen hosted the first Wikipedia Academy. The Academy was intended to familiarize the academic world with Wikimedia projects. In 2007, the second such meeting took place, organized in conjunction with the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Academy of Science and Literature) in Mainz
as part of the German Jahr der Geisteswissenschaften (Year of the Humanities
), which was decreed by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research
. A third meeting was organized on 20–21 June 2008 in Berlin
, during the Jahr der Mathematik (Year of Mathematics); the meeting was hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
.
German Wikipedians have since organised the Foto-Workshop meeting of photographers, with participants from 10 countries.
on 1 July 2004. The friendly meeting saw a lively discussion of the differing approaches to writing an encyclopedia; it became clear that Brockhaus had closely observed Wikipedia for quite some time.
s (WikiProjekt Nachwachsende Rohstoffe) was initiated, the goal being to write and improve articles on the topic. The project was run for three years and was subsidized by the German Ministry of Agriculture with approximately €80,000 a year. It was organised and managed by the private company "nova-Institut GmbH". Nova GmbH and Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. fund the project with approximately €60,000 a year in addition, so the budget is approximately €420,000 in total.
These funds were mainly used to organise the project and also to search for experts in the field who have not contributed to Wikipedia yet. Nova may also have paid expense allowances to authors.
compared the German Wikipedia with the Brockhaus Multimedia encyclopedia and the German edition of Microsoft
's Encarta
. On a scale from 0 to 5, Wikipedia "won" with a total score of 3.4.
A few weeks later, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit
also compared content from Wikipedia with other reference works and found that Wikipedia only has to "share its lead position in the field of natural science."
The DVD version of Spring 2005 received a rather negative review by Björn Hoffmann — product manager working for the Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus
in July 2005.
In November 2005 the OpenUsability project in cooperation with the Berlin-based Relevantive AG conducted a usability test of the German Wikipedia. The study focused on finding information and included a set of recommendations to change the MediaWiki interface. In February 2006 the open usability project led a second test which focused on the experience of new editors. The reports were published in English.
A second test by c't in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias: Bertelsmann
Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. With respect to concerns about the reliability of Wikipedia
, it concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors".
In December 2007, German magazine Stern
published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie
. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on the average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for Brockhaus with lower = better). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date, however Brockhaus was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy.
started distributing a CD-ROM containing a German Wikipedia snapshot. Some 40,000 CD
s were sent to registered customers of directmedia. The price was 3 euros per CD.
The display and search software used for the project, Digibib, had been developed by Directmedia Publishing for earlier publications; it ran on Windows
and Mac OS X
(and now also on Linux
). The Wikipedia articles had to be converted to the XML
format used by Digibib.
To produce the CD, a dump of the live Wikipedia had been copied to a separate server, where a team of 70 Wikipedians vetted the material, deleting nonsense articles and obvious copyright violations. Questionable articles were added to a special list, to be reviewed later. The final CD contained 132,000 articles and 1,200 images.
The ISO image
was distributed for free via eMule
and BitTorrent. In December, the CHIP computer magazine
placed the Wikipedia data on the DVD that it distributes with every issue.
The Wikipedia materials are published under GFDL
while the Digibib software may only be copied for non-commercial use, except the Linux version which is GPLed
.
s (specifically, the Mobipocket
and TomeRaider
formats).
The production of the DVD motivated the Personendaten project (see above).
The vetting process was similar to the one for the CD described above and took place on a separate MediaWiki server. The process took about a week and involved 33 Wikipedians, communicating on IRC
. To prevent duplication of work, editors would protect every article that they had reviewed; links to protected articles were shown in green. Lists of potential spammed or vandalized articles had been produced ahead of time with SQL queries. Unacceptable articles were simply deleted on the spot. While the XML articles for the earlier CD version had been produced from HTML, this time a script was used to convert Wiki markup directly to the Digibib format. The final DVD contained about 205,000 articles, with every article linking to a list of contributors.
Directmedia sold 30,000 DVDs, at €9.90 each. This price included 16% taxes and a one-euro donation to Wikimedia Deutschland; production costs were about €2.
The DVD image can also be downloaded for free.
Following the successful launch of the DVD, Directmedia donated high-resolution pictures of 10,000 public domain paintings to Wikimedia Commons
(see related Signpost story).
The vetting process for this version was different and did not involve human intervention. A "white list
" of trusted Wikipedians was assembled, the last 10 days of every article's history were examined, and the last version edited by a white-listed Wikipedian was chosen for the DVD. If no such version existed, the last version older than 10 days was used. Articles nominated for cleanup or deletion were not used.
, bicycle
s, Antarctica, the solar system
, and Hip hop
, amongst others, were released, and other books on topics as diverse as Whales, Conspiracy theories, Manga
, Astrophysics
, and the Red Cross were in the works. Due to lack of interest, the project was ended after a few books.
In March 2006, Zenodot organized a "community day" to meet with Wikipedians and discuss the project. Groups of Wikipedians had already begun to polish articles with titles Aa-Af in selected topics. In late March it was announced that the project was put on hold and no books would be published in 2006; the reason given was that community support was lacking.
announced that it planned to publish a one-volume encyclopedia in September using content from the German-language Wikipedia. The volume was planned to include abbreviated entries for the 50,000 most commonly used search terms of the prior two years. The book is priced at 19.95 euros, with one euro from every sale going to the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation
. It was released on 15 September 2008 in hardcover, containing 992 pages and many illustrations.
That procedures have made authors leave Wikipedia; new authors, who just saw their first contribution deleted after a few days of work, as well as long-standing authors that are disappointed about deletions of articles that have been online and worked on since years. It also led to some projects which try to save deleted Wikipedia articles in an alternative Wiki.
s (see Creative Commons licenses
and GNU Free Documentation License
for details).
In March 2005, the German news magazine Der Spiegel
published an article on the Rwandan Genocide
in its online edition; it was a copy of Wikipedia's article. The article was taken down soon after and replaced with an apology.
In April 2005, the encyclopedia Brockhaus published an article about the new pope Josef Ratzinger in its online edition. Because of its close similarity to Wikipedia's article, suspicion arose right away that the Brockhaus article might have been plagiarism. The article was removed soon after but Brockhaus did not apologize or admit guilt (see the Wikipedia Signpost's coverage.)
A press release was issued and numerous editors started to remove the copyright protected materials. This was made difficult by the fact that the old encyclopedias were not online and not easily available from many West German libraries, and that the user had used numerous different IP addresses. The Directmedia DVD had to be updated.
(creator of the Eiffel programming language
) was edited by an anonymous user, falsely reporting that Meyer had died four days earlier. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker
and the article was immediately corrected. Many major news media in Germany and Switzerland picked up on the story, creating the German Wikipedia's (admittedly negligible) version of the Seigenthaler incident. Meyer himself went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, concluding "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."
, was drawn into a legal dispute between the parents of the deceased German computer hacker Boris "Tron" Floricic
and the Foundation. The parents did not wish Floricic's real name to be publicly mentioned, and in December 2005 they obtained a preliminary injunction in a Berlin
court against the American Wikimedia Foundation
, requiring removal of Floricic's name from Wikipedia. The name was not removed. On 19 January 2006 they obtained a second injunction, this time against Wikimedia Deutschland, prohibiting the address
, a member of the German parliament, obtained a preliminary injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland e. V., forbidding the forwarding of
, Heilmann objected to claims that he had not completed his university degree, and that he had participated in a business venture involving pornography
. The report also suggests that the Wikipedia article had been repeatedly altered in line with his claims by an anonymous user operating within the Bundestag building
, but Heilmann denied having been involved in an edit war. Wikimedia Germany displayed a page explaining the situation. Heilmann announced on November 16 that he would drop the legal proceedings against Wikimedia Deutschland, regretting that many uninvolved users of the encyclopedia had been affected.
, created in December 2004, and the German version of Uncyclopedia
, created in August 2005.
Ulrich Fuchs, a longtime contributor to the German Wikipedia, produced a fork known as Wikiweise in April 2005. It is ad-supported, uses its own software (but a similar wiki markup), admits only registered editors, and prominently displays the real names of every article's major contributors.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, a free and mostly publicly editable online encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
.
Founded in March 2001, it is the second-oldest and, with over articles, the second-largest edition of Wikipedia, behind the English Wikipedia
English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next...
. Sue Gardner
Sue Gardner
Sue Gardner is the current Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, and previous director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website and online news outlets.- Life and journalism career :...
, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
, said in a January 2011 interview that the German Wikipedia is "the best" language edition, indicating that it is accurate, comprehensive, well-referenced and well-maintained. On 7 November 2011, it became the second edition of Wikipedia (after the English edition) to exceed 100 million page edits.
Early history
The German edition of Wikipedia was the first non-English Wikipedia subdomain, and was originally named deutsche.wikipedia.com. Its creation was announced by Jimmy WalesJimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
on 16 March 2001. One of the earliest snapshots of the home page, dated 21 March 2001 (revision #9), can be seen at the Wayback Machine site. Aside from the home page, creation of articles in the German Wikipedia started as early as April 2001, apparently with translations of Nupedia
Nupedia
Nupedia was an English-language Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief...
articles. The earliest article still available on Wikipedia's site is apparently Polymerase-Kettenreaktion, dated May 2001.
Growth, coverage and popularity
On 27 December 2009, the German Wikipedia edition exceeded 1,000,000 articles, becoming the first edition after the English-language WikipediaEnglish Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next...
to do so. The millionth article was Ernie Wasson
Ernie Wasson
Ernie George Wasson is an American gardener, horticulturist and author.Wasson studied from 1968 to 1974 at Humboldt State University, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Science in Geography in 1974.From 1978 to 1981, Wasson was a partner in the Northwoods Nursery in Arcata, California, and from...
. In November 2008, 90% of the edition's articles had more than 512 byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s, 49% had more than 2 kilobyte
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
s, and the average article size was 3,476 bytes. In the middle of 2009 this edition had nearly 250,000 biographies and in December 2006 more than 48,500 disambiguations.
Compared to the English Wikipedia
English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next...
, the German edition tends to be more selective in its coverage, often rejecting small stubs, articles about individual fictional characters and similar materials. Instead, there is usually one article about all the characters from a specific fictional setting, usually only when the setting is considered important enough (for example, all characters from Star Wars are listed in a single article). A dedicated article about a single fictional entity is only allowed if the character in question has a very significant impact on popular culture (for example, Hercule Poirot).
The January 2005, Google Zeitgeist announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched query on Google.de. In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind Firefox and Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day
Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first.
Language and dialects
Separate Wikipedias have been created for several German dialects, including Alemannic GermanAlemannic German
Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. It is spoken by approximately ten million people in six countries: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France and Italy...
(:als:), Luxembourgish
Luxembourgish language
Luxembourgish is a High German language spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 320,000 people worldwide speak Luxembourgish.-Language family:...
(:lb:), Pennsylvania German
Pennsylvania German language
The Pennsylvania German language is a variety of West Central German possibly spoken by more than 250,000 people in North America...
(:pdc:), Ripuarian (formerly Kölsch
Kölsch language
Kölsch is a very closely related small set of dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian Central German group of languages. Kölsch is spoken in and partially around Cologne in the area covered by the Archdiocese and former Electorate of Cologne reaching from Neuss in the north to just south of Bonn,...
; :ksh:), and Bavarian
Austro-Bavarian
Bavarian , also Austro-Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the south east of the German language area.-History and origin:...
(:bar:).
Characteristics
The German Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of aspects.- Compared to the English Wikipedia, there are stricter rules of encyclopedic notabilityNotability in WikipediaNotability is a term used within the English version of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It is as an editorial metric used to determine topics meriting a dedicated encyclopedia article...
for deciding if an article about a topic should be allowed. The criteria for notability are more specific, each field has its own specific guidelines. - There are no fair useFair useFair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
provisions. Images and other media that are accepted on the English Wikipedia as fair use may not be suitable for the German Wikipedia. However, the threshold of originalityThreshold of originalityThe threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether or not a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not...
for works of applied art is set much higher, which often allows the use of company logos and similar icons, too. - The use of scholarly sources, in preference over journalistic and other types of sources, is more strongly encouraged. The German Verifiability (Belege) guideline classifies scholarly sources as inherently more reliable than non-academic sources; the latter's use is – in theory at least – only permitted if there is a lack of published academic sources covering a topic.
- In September 2005, Erik MöllerErik MöllerErik Möller is a German freelance journalist, software developer, author, and Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation , based in San Francisco, California...
voiced concern that "long term page protection is used excessively on the German Wikipedia": On 14 September 2005, 253 pages were fully protected (only editable by admins) for more than two weeks (compared to 138 in the English Wikipedia). This was the highest number of such blocks of all Wikipedias. , the German Wikipedia still had the highest percentage of semi-protected articles - 0.281% - among the ten largest Wikipedias (articles not editable by unsubscribed or recently subscribed users), but with respect to the fraction of fully protected articles (0.0261%) it actually ranks fourth, behind the Japanese, Portuguese and English Wikipedias. - Vandalism and other abuse is often handled in a less formal way. Vandals may get blocked on their first edit and without warning if their edit clearly shows lack of interest for actual encyclopaedic work. This is especially true if the added text includes unlawful statements, such as holocaust denialHolocaust denialHolocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
.
Similarly, the Checkuser function is rarely used to determine multiple accounts, as "suspicious" accounts are often blocked on sight. - Articles on indisputably notable subjects may be deleted if they are deemed too short. While the requirements for minimal articles (called stubs) are equivalent, the German and the English Wikipedia differ greatly in the way they are put into practice.
- On 28 December 2005 it was decided to eliminate the Category "stub" (and the corresponding template identifying articles as stubs) from the German Wikipedia.
- Users do not have to create an account in order to start a new article.
- Unlike the FrenchFrench WikipediaThe French Wikipedia is the French language edition of Wikipedia, spelt Wikipédia. This edition was started in March 2001, and has about articles as of , making it the third-largest Wikipedia overall, after the English-language and German-language editions...
, PolishPolish WikipediaPolish Wikipedia is the Polish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. The ninth-oldest edition of Wikipedia, it was started on September 26, 2001. With about articles, it is the seventh-largest Wikipedia edition, after the English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish...
, ItalianItalian WikipediaThe Italian Wikipedia is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was created on May 11, 2001 and first edited on June 11, 2001. As of 2011 it has over articles and more than registered accounts...
or many other Wikipedias, the German one does not contain large collections of botInternet botInternet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone...
-generated geographical stubs or similar articles. - The German Wikipedia version did not have an Arbitration Committee until May 2007. However their power differ widely from the English version and they now play only a minor role in Wikipedia politics.
- Categories are singularGrammatical numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and are not differentiated for gender. Categories are usually introduced only for a minimum of ten entries and are not always subdivided even for larger numbers of items, so that current categories often describe only one property (e.g., nationality). Other categories are subdivided, but differently than in the English Wikipedia. For example, "chemists" are subdivided by century, not by nationality. A university professor, on the other hand, will usually be categorized according to where he or she teaches. - The equivalent to the English Wikipedia's featured articles and good articles are exzellente Artikel (excellent articles) and lesenswerte Artikel (good articles; literally: articles "worth reading").
- In 2005, there was a discussion and poll resulting in the decision to phase out the use of local image uploads and to exclusively use Wikimedia CommonsWikimedia CommonsWikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
for images and other media in the future. The attempt to implement this lasted for about a year and the German "Upload file" page displayed a large pointer to Commons in this time, but since December 2006, there is again a local image upload page without any pointer to Wikimedia Commons. This was prompted by the deletion of images on Commons that are acceptable according to German Wikipedia policies. - Starting in December 2004, German Wikipedians pioneered Persondata ("Personendaten"), a special format for meta data about persons (name, birth date and place etc.), introduced in the English Wikipedia in December 2005. In the beginning, the main aim of this system was to aid the search features of the DVD edition of the German Wikipedia (see below). During its introduction in January 2005, Personendaten were added to some 30,000 biographical articles on the live Wikipedia, partly aided by a somewhat automatic tool.
- Like the Signpost in the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia also has its own internal newspaper, the Kurier. However, the Kurier is laid out on a single page and is not issued weekly but is continually updated by interested Wikipedians, with older articles being archived.
Reviewed versions
At Wikimania 2006, Jimbo Wales announced that the German Wikipedia would soon institute a system of "stable article versionsFlagged revisions
Flagged revisions is a software extension to the MediaWiki wiki software that allows moderation of edits to Wiki pages. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation for use on Wikipedia and similar wikis hosted on its servers...
" on a trial basis. The system went live in May 2008. Certain users are now able to mark article versions as "reviewed", indicating that the text contains no obvious vandalism. A note in the top right corner of the screen indicates to the reader whether or not the present version of an article has already been reviewed, and provides access to the most recent reviewed version or a more current, unreviewed version as needed.
Miscellanea
Events
The first real-life meetup of Wikipedians took place in October 2003 in MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. As a result of this meeting regularly striking round tables (called “Wikipedia-Stammtisch”) established themselves at various places in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The round tables have become an important aspect of collegial exchange within the german speaking community.
Each spring and autumn, the German Wikipedia organizes a writing contest, where a community-elected jury rates nominated articles. Prizes are sponsored by individual community members and companies. The first contest was held in October 2004 - the article Kloster Lehnin (Lehnin Abbey) was selected as the winner from 44 nominated articles. The second contest, held in March 2005, saw 52 contributions, and the third, in September 2005, 70. A trial to extend the contest to an international level met with limited success, with only the Dutch, English and Japanese Wikipedias participating.
For the March 2006 writing contest, the 150 nominated articles were split into three sections: history and society (56 nominations), arts and humanities (36), and science (46). The article on the Brown Bear (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Braunbär) won, and of the nominated 27 articles reached featured status a few weeks after the contest. In March 2007, the sixth contest was held, with the winner being the article on the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Haager Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten).
German Wikipedians organized the first international Wikipedia conference, Wikimania
Wikimania
Wikimania is an annual international conference for users of the wiki projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation...
2005, in August 2005 in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
. Some 300 people from over 50 countries attended the three-day conference.
From 17 March to 15 April 2006, the Göttingen State and University Library
Göttingen State and University Library
The Göttingen State and University Library is the library for Göttingen University as well as the central library for the German State of Lower Saxony , and the library for the Göttingen Academy of Sciences...
held a special exhibition documenting the first five years of Wikipedia.
In 2006, the University of Göttingen hosted the first Wikipedia Academy. The Academy was intended to familiarize the academic world with Wikimedia projects. In 2007, the second such meeting took place, organized in conjunction with the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (Academy of Science and Literature) in Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
as part of the German Jahr der Geisteswissenschaften (Year of the Humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
), which was decreed by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research
Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is a ministry in the German cabinet. It is headquartered in Bonn, with an office in Berlin.-Functions and Responsibilities:...
. A third meeting was organized on 20–21 June 2008 in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, during the Jahr der Mathematik (Year of Mathematics); the meeting was hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
The Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften is the academy of sciences of the German states Berlin and Brandenburg. As the word "Wissenschaft", in German includes both the natural sciences and the humanities, the academy's title is best translated as Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of...
.
German Wikipedians have since organised the Foto-Workshop meeting of photographers, with participants from 10 countries.
Contacts with Brockhaus
In April 2004, a complete list of article titles from the leading German encyclopedia Brockhaus was uploaded to the German Wikipedia, in an apparent attempt to facilitate the creation of still missing articles. A representative of Brockhaus asked for and obtained the deletion of what was believed to be a copyright infringement. As a result of the developing email conversation, a group of five Wikipedians visited the "new media" group of Brockhaus in MannheimMannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
on 1 July 2004. The friendly meeting saw a lively discussion of the differing approaches to writing an encyclopedia; it became clear that Brockhaus had closely observed Wikipedia for quite some time.
Article-free Sunday
On 23 November 2006, the number of articles at German Wikipedia reached 500,000. As a response to this and to the perception that quality control was not keeping up with article creation, it was proposed to declare 10 December 2006 "Article-free Sunday", a day where participants voluntarily agree to post no new articles, but instead focus on improving existing ones. It was also proposed to declare 10 December "Counter-action to Article-free Sunday", a day where participants create missing articles and improve existing ones.Subsidies from the German government
In June 2007, a project on renewable resourceRenewable resource
A renewable resource is a natural resource with the ability of being replaced through biological or other natural processes and replenished with the passage of time...
s (WikiProjekt Nachwachsende Rohstoffe) was initiated, the goal being to write and improve articles on the topic. The project was run for three years and was subsidized by the German Ministry of Agriculture with approximately €80,000 a year. It was organised and managed by the private company "nova-Institut GmbH". Nova GmbH and Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. fund the project with approximately €60,000 a year in addition, so the budget is approximately €420,000 in total.
These funds were mainly used to organise the project and also to search for experts in the field who have not contributed to Wikipedia yet. Nova may also have paid expense allowances to authors.
Reviews and research
In September 2004, the respected computer magazine c'tC't
c't – Magazin für Computertechnik is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise publishing house. Originally a special section of the electronics magazine elrad, the magazine has been published monthly since December 1983 and biweekly since October 1997...
compared the German Wikipedia with the Brockhaus Multimedia encyclopedia and the German edition of Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Encarta
Encarta
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and...
. On a scale from 0 to 5, Wikipedia "won" with a total score of 3.4.
A few weeks later, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
also compared content from Wikipedia with other reference works and found that Wikipedia only has to "share its lead position in the field of natural science."
The DVD version of Spring 2005 received a rather negative review by Björn Hoffmann — product manager working for the Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus
Brockhaus Enzyklopädie
The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie is a German-language encyclopedia published by Brockhaus.The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Christian Wilhelm Franke, published in Leipzig 1796-1808...
in July 2005.
In November 2005 the OpenUsability project in cooperation with the Berlin-based Relevantive AG conducted a usability test of the German Wikipedia. The study focused on finding information and included a set of recommendations to change the MediaWiki interface. In February 2006 the open usability project led a second test which focused on the experience of new editors. The reports were published in English.
A second test by c't in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias: Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. With respect to concerns about the reliability of Wikipedia
Reliability of Wikipedia
The reliability of Wikipedia , compared to other encyclopedias and more specialized sources, is assessed in many ways, including statistically, through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in the editing process unique to Wikipedia.Several...
, it concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors".
In December 2007, German magazine Stern
Stern (magazine)
Stern is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. It was founded in 1948 by Henri Nannen, and is currently published by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. In the first quarter of 2006, its print run was 1.019 million copies and it reached 7.84 million readers according to...
published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie
Brockhaus Enzyklopädie
The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie is a German-language encyclopedia published by Brockhaus.The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Christian Wilhelm Franke, published in Leipzig 1796-1808...
. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on the average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for Brockhaus with lower = better). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date, however Brockhaus was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy.
CD November 2004
In November 2004, Directmedia Publishing GmbHDirectmedia Publishing
Directmedia Publishing is a German publishing house created in January 1995 by Ralf Szymanski and Erwin Jurschitza as a publisher of digital media...
started distributing a CD-ROM containing a German Wikipedia snapshot. Some 40,000 CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
s were sent to registered customers of directmedia. The price was 3 euros per CD.
The display and search software used for the project, Digibib, had been developed by Directmedia Publishing for earlier publications; it ran on Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
(and now also on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
). The Wikipedia articles had to be converted to the XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
format used by Digibib.
To produce the CD, a dump of the live Wikipedia had been copied to a separate server, where a team of 70 Wikipedians vetted the material, deleting nonsense articles and obvious copyright violations. Questionable articles were added to a special list, to be reviewed later. The final CD contained 132,000 articles and 1,200 images.
The ISO image
ISO image
An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...
was distributed for free via eMule
EMule
eMule is a free peer-to-peer file sharing application for Microsoft Windows. Started in May 2002 as an alternative to eDonkey2000, eMule now connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network...
and BitTorrent. In December, the CHIP computer magazine
CHIP (magazine)
CHIP is a computer and communications magazine published by the CHIP Holding in 15 countries of Europe and Asia...
placed the Wikipedia data on the DVD that it distributes with every issue.
The Wikipedia materials are published under GFDL
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
while the Digibib software may only be copied for non-commercial use, except the Linux version which is GPLed
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
CD/DVD April 2005
A new release of Wikipedia content was published by Directmedia on 6 April 2005. This package consisted of a 2.7 GB DVD and a separate bootable CDROM (running a version of Linux with Firefox). The CDROM did not contain all the data, but was included to accommodate users without DVD-drives. The DVD used Directmedia's Digibib software and article format; everything could be installed to a hard drive. In addition, the DVD contained an HTML tree, as well as Wikipedia articles formatted for use with PDAPersonal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
s (specifically, the Mobipocket
Mobipocket
Mobipocket SA is a French company incorporated in March 2000 which produces Mobipocket Reader software, an E-Book reader for some PDAs, phones and desktop operating systems....
and TomeRaider
TomeRaider
TomeRaider is an ebook reader and cross-platform reference viewer for handheld devices devices and Microsoft Windows PC. TomeRaider is created by Yadabyte, a UK software and web development company...
formats).
The production of the DVD motivated the Personendaten project (see above).
The vetting process was similar to the one for the CD described above and took place on a separate MediaWiki server. The process took about a week and involved 33 Wikipedians, communicating on IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
. To prevent duplication of work, editors would protect every article that they had reviewed; links to protected articles were shown in green. Lists of potential spammed or vandalized articles had been produced ahead of time with SQL queries. Unacceptable articles were simply deleted on the spot. While the XML articles for the earlier CD version had been produced from HTML, this time a script was used to convert Wiki markup directly to the Digibib format. The final DVD contained about 205,000 articles, with every article linking to a list of contributors.
Directmedia sold 30,000 DVDs, at €9.90 each. This price included 16% taxes and a one-euro donation to Wikimedia Deutschland; production costs were about €2.
The DVD image can also be downloaded for free.
Following the successful launch of the DVD, Directmedia donated high-resolution pictures of 10,000 public domain paintings to Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
(see related Signpost story).
DVD/book December 2005
The next edition of Wikipedia content was issued in December 2005 by the publisher Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, a sister company of Directmedia. A 139 page book explaining Wikipedia, its history and policies was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles and 100,000 images. The book with DVD is sold for €9.90; both are also available for free download.The vetting process for this version was different and did not involve human intervention. A "white list
White list
Whitelist is a term used to describe a list or register of entities that, for one reason or another, are being provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to whitelist can mean to authorize access or grant membership...
" of trusted Wikipedians was assembled, the last 10 days of every article's history were examined, and the last version edited by a white-listed Wikipedian was chosen for the DVD. If no such version existed, the last version older than 10 days was used. Articles nominated for cleanup or deletion were not used.
DVD December 2006/2007 and 2007/2008
The December 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 edition can be downloaded from dvd.wikimedia.org.Wikipress series
The December 2005 book about Wikipedia was the first in a series titled Wikipress. These books, published by Zenodot, consisted of a collection of Wikipedia articles about a common topic, selected and edited by so-called "Wikipeditors" who may receive compensation from Directmedia. The books were assembled on a separate server from those used for the regular German Wikipedia pages. Every Wikipress book was accompanied by an "edit card", a post card that readers could send in to edit the book's contents. Wikipress books about the Nobel Peace PrizeNobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
, bicycle
Bicycle
A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....
s, Antarctica, the solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
, and Hip hop
Hip hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...
, amongst others, were released, and other books on topics as diverse as Whales, Conspiracy theories, Manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
, Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior...
, and the Red Cross were in the works. Due to lack of interest, the project was ended after a few books.
100 volume Wikipedia
The publisher Zenodot announced in January 2006 that they intend to publish the complete German Wikipedia in print, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in October 2006, followed by two volumes each month thereafter, to end with Z in 2010. The project, code named WP 1.0, was to be supported by 25 editors employed by Zenodot as well as a scientific advisory board. Changes made to articles before publication would also be available for incorporation into the online Wikipedia.In March 2006, Zenodot organized a "community day" to meet with Wikipedians and discuss the project. Groups of Wikipedians had already begun to polish articles with titles Aa-Af in selected topics. In late March it was announced that the project was put on hold and no books would be published in 2006; the reason given was that community support was lacking.
Bertelsmann
On 23 April 2008, the publisher BertelsmannBertelsmann
Bertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
announced that it planned to publish a one-volume encyclopedia in September using content from the German-language Wikipedia. The volume was planned to include abbreviated entries for the 50,000 most commonly used search terms of the prior two years. The book is priced at 19.95 euros, with one euro from every sale going to the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
. It was released on 15 September 2008 in hardcover, containing 992 pages and many illustrations.
Deletions
Huge controversies arise about deletions in the German Wikipedia. Many people think that far too many articles are being deleted, because they seem "irrelevant" to those who deleted them, even though they seem expedient, meaningful, well written and extensive enough to other people. These discussions received press coverage in computer magazines as well as in mainstream media.That procedures have made authors leave Wikipedia; new authors, who just saw their first contribution deleted after a few days of work, as well as long-standing authors that are disappointed about deletions of articles that have been online and worked on since years. It also led to some projects which try to save deleted Wikipedia articles in an alternative Wiki.
Unauthorized uses
While everyone is free to use Wikipedia content, there are certain conditions, such as attribution, a copy of the license text and no non-free derivative workDerivative work
In United States copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work .-Definition:...
s (see Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
and GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
for details).
In March 2005, the German news magazine Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
published an article on the Rwandan Genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
in its online edition; it was a copy of Wikipedia's article. The article was taken down soon after and replaced with an apology.
In April 2005, the encyclopedia Brockhaus published an article about the new pope Josef Ratzinger in its online edition. Because of its close similarity to Wikipedia's article, suspicion arose right away that the Brockhaus article might have been plagiarism. The article was removed soon after but Brockhaus did not apologize or admit guilt (see the Wikipedia Signpost's coverage.)
Large-scale copyright infringement (2003–2005)
In mid-November 2005, it was discovered that an anonymous user had entered hundreds of articles from older encyclopedias that had been published in the 1970s and 1980s in East Germany. The articles were mainly on topics in philosophy and related areas. The user had started in December 2003.A press release was issued and numerous editors started to remove the copyright protected materials. This was made difficult by the fact that the old encyclopedias were not online and not easily available from many West German libraries, and that the user had used numerous different IP addresses. The Directmedia DVD had to be updated.
Bertrand Meyer article hoax
On 28 December 2005, the article on well-known computer scientist Bertrand MeyerBertrand Meyer
Bertrand Meyer is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language.-Education and academic career:...
(creator of the Eiffel programming language
Eiffel (programming language)
Eiffel is an ISO-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer and Eiffel Software. The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method...
) was edited by an anonymous user, falsely reporting that Meyer had died four days earlier. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker
Heinz Heise
Heinz Heise is a publishing house based in Germany.- History :Heise was created in Hanover in 1949 as an address and telephone directory publisher, then later expanded to include magazines and loose leaf collections. In 2001, the company was divided into separate enterprises, all of which came...
and the article was immediately corrected. Many major news media in Germany and Switzerland picked up on the story, creating the German Wikipedia's (admittedly negligible) version of the Seigenthaler incident. Meyer himself went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, concluding "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."
Naming Tron
In 2006, Wikimedia Deutschland, the German chapter of the US Wikimedia FoundationWikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
, was drawn into a legal dispute between the parents of the deceased German computer hacker Boris "Tron" Floricic
Tron (hacker)
Boris Floricic, better known by his pseudonym Tron , was a German hacker and phreaker whose death in unclear circumstances has led to various conspiracy theories...
and the Foundation. The parents did not wish Floricic's real name to be publicly mentioned, and in December 2005 they obtained a preliminary injunction in a Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
court against the American Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
, requiring removal of Floricic's name from Wikipedia. The name was not removed. On 19 January 2006 they obtained a second injunction, this time against Wikimedia Deutschland, prohibiting the address
www.wikipedia.de (which is under control of Wikimedia Deutschland) to redirect to the German Wikipedia at de.wikipedia.org (which is controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation and hosts the actual encyclopedia) as long as Wikipedia mentioned Floricic's name. Wikimedia Deutschland complied and replaced the redirect with a note explaining the situation, but without mentioning the Tron case specifically. The German Wikipedia remained accessible through de.wikipedia.org during this time. One day later, Wikimedia Deutschland achieved a suspension of the injunction, and linked from the note at www.wikipedia.de to the German Wikipedia. On 9 February, the court invalidated the injunction, ruling that neither the rights of the deceased nor the rights of the parents were affected by publishing the name; this ruling was upheld on appeal, decided May 12.Lutz Heilmann controversy
In November, 2008, Lutz HeilmannLutz Heilmann
Lutz Heilmann is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. He was elected to the Bundestag in the 2005 federal election as a member of the party list in Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly thereafter it was revealed that he had worked for the Stasi...
, a member of the German parliament, obtained a preliminary injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland e. V., forbidding the forwarding of
www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org. According to Focus OnlineFocus (German magazine)
Focus is a German weekly news magazine published in Munich and distributed throughout Germany. It is the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany. It is considered conservative and leaned towards economic liberalism.- Overview :...
, Heilmann objected to claims that he had not completed his university degree, and that he had participated in a business venture involving pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
. The report also suggests that the Wikipedia article had been repeatedly altered in line with his claims by an anonymous user operating within the Bundestag building
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
, but Heilmann denied having been involved in an edit war. Wikimedia Germany displayed a page explaining the situation. Heilmann announced on November 16 that he would drop the legal proceedings against Wikimedia Deutschland, regretting that many uninvolved users of the encyclopedia had been affected.
Parodies and forks
Parodies of the German Wikipedia include Kamelopedia, created in April 2004, StupidediaStupidedia
Stupidedia is a German-language wiki featuring satirically themed and humorous articles. In 2010 it joined the Uncyclopedia family, becoming one of the site's German language wikis. Stupidedia is the largest German language wiki of this kind, with over 19,200 articles .- External links :* * *...
, created in December 2004, and the German version of Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
, created in August 2005.
Ulrich Fuchs, a longtime contributor to the German Wikipedia, produced a fork known as Wikiweise in April 2005. It is ad-supported, uses its own software (but a similar wiki markup), admits only registered editors, and prominently displays the real names of every article's major contributors.
External links and sources
German Wikipedia mobile version- Meta: German Wikipedia Wikimedia Deutschland
- Publication efforts on CD/DVD :
- General description of CD
- General description of first DVD
- General description of second DVD and WikiPress
- WP 1.0, publication in book form :
- WP 1.0, the project's home page (now redirects to zeno.org)
- WP 1.0, discussion of the project in the German Wikipedia Geschichte, a personal history of the German Wikipedia, written by one of the core Wikipedians Report from the German Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost, 2006-11-06.