French Wikipedia
Encyclopedia
The 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. It was also the third edition, after the English Wikipedia
and German Wikipedia
, to exceed 1 million articles.
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
edition of Wikipedia
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,...
, 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
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and German-language
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....
editions. It was also the third edition, after 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...
and German Wikipedia
German Wikipedia
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...
, to exceed 1 million articles.
Timeline
2001- 19 May: First recorded date: http://web.archive.org/web/20010730122133/fr.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?action=browse&id=HomePage&revision=4
- 6 June: First known main page: http://web.archive.org/web/20010606095656/http://fr.wikipedia.com (Including the participation of Valéry Beaud and Buzz).
2002
- June: A new logo (in green colour and quite different from the logo used on the other Wikipedias) is displayed in an initiative from Rinaldum. This autonomist move is criticised because all French Wikipedians had not been consulted, but the logo is kept.
- August: The first sysops, Anthere, Aoineko and Shaihulud are appointed after a disagreement with user Mulot. The first IP is blocked.
- 31 October: Phase III began.
- December: A strong increase of activity is reported. It can be analysed as serial vandalism from a bot, and all subsequent corrections. After this new kind of vandalism, the software is changed in order to enable quicker reverts (rollback link available for sysops only).
2003
- January: A strong decrease in activity, essentially due to the slowing down of servers, thus limiting participation.
- 6 February: Coloured "Putsch" on the main page: Before → After. The new design, authored by Aoineko, is subsequently reused by other language versions (including 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...
and EnglishEnglish WikipediaThe 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...
Wikipedias). - 7 February: 5,000 articles.
- 19 February: 6,000 articles.
- 7 March: 7,000 articles.
- 27 March: 8,000 articles.
- 13 April: Overtakes Polish WikipediaPolish 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...
to become the third largest Wikipedia, behind the English WikipediaEnglish WikipediaThe 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...
and German WikipediaGerman WikipediaThe 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...
with 9,051 articles. - 15 May: 10,000 articles.
- 18 May: The main page has been viewed 100,000 times since the counter was implemented.
- 7 July: Wikipédia has 20,000 pages, including about 12,800 articles.
- mid-July: The number of pages calculation is modified. According to the old calculation mode detecting at least a comma, 13,058 encyclopaedia articles are present, and the new calculation that detects at least one link, indicates 13,789 articles.
- 5 August: 15,000 articles; over 20,000 changes have been recorded since the implementation of phase III software.
- 20 August: Inhibition of some functions in order to increase performance.
- 4 September: 16,000 articles.
- ? October: New logo.
- 3–11 November: Papotages is the first user blocked forever as the author of severe and repeated vandalism.
- 17 November: Lorraine is the first article of the week. 38 users participated in its redaction.
- 22 November: 20,000 articles.
2004
- 26 January: 25,000 articles.
- 14 March: 30,000 articles.
- End of March: Switch to UTF-8UTF-8UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
. - 1 May: 35,000 articles.
- 16 June: 40,000 articles.
- 23 July: 45,000 articles.
- 29 August: 50,000 articles with nèfle.
- 2 November at 23:33: 60,000 articles with Lord Yarborough.
- 22 December: 70,000 articles with Borée.
2005
- 6 February: 80,000 articles.
- 14 March: 90,000 articles.
- 21 April: 100,000 articles with Pierre Séguier.
- June : Opening of the first Atelier graphique (Graphic Lab), with wikigraphists improving submitted images.
- 4 December: 200,000 articles with George Corliss.
2006
- 4 March: 250,000 articles with John Anglin.
- 10 June: 300,000 articles with Federal Government (Germany).
- 24 November: 400,000 articles with Neuropathie.
2007
- 2 May: During the 2007 French presidential debatesFrench presidential debatesFrench presidential debates traditionally occur between the two rounds of the presidential elections, and are broadcast on TV.- 1974 :The role of TV in French presidential election became prominent after Charles de Gaulle's decision to propose a referendum on the establishment of the election of...
, the article about the EPRsEuropean Pressurized ReactorThe EPR is a third generation pressurized water reactor design. It has been designed and developed mainly by Framatome , Electricité de France in France, and Siemens AG in Germany...
(Réacteur pressurisé européen) undergoes numerous edits after a mistake of Nicolas SarkozyNicolas SarkozyNicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
on the generation number (4 instead of 3). - 28 May: 500,000 articles with Aitken (cratère).
- 28 December: 600,000 articles with Python birman (the first author is the same as the 250,000th article).
2008
- 20 February: The popular French encyclopaedia, QuidQuid (encyclopedia)Quid is a French encyclopedia, established in 1963 by Dominique Frémy. It was published annually between 1963 and 2007, first by Plon and later by Éditions Robert Laffont , and was the most popular encyclopedic reference work in France.The presentation is very compressed, and abbreviations are...
, cancels its 2008 edition, blaming falling sales on competition from the French Wikipedia. - 30 August: 700,000 articles.
2009
- 14 January: 750,000 articles.
- 6 May: 800,000 articles.
2010
- 14 January: 900,000 articles.
- 21 September: 1,000,000 articles with Louis Babel.
2011
- 13 September: 1,150,000 articles.