Bengali Wikipedia

Bengali Wikipedia
Screenshot
The homepage of the Bengali Wikipedia.
Type of site
 Internet encyclopedia project
Available in Bengali
Headquarters Dhaka & Kolkata
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Website bn.wikipedia.org
Commercial No
Registration Optional
Users 202,896
Launched January 27, 2004 (2004-01-27)
Current status online

The Bengali Wikipedia or Bangla Wikipedia (Bengali: বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া, Bānglā u'ikipiḍiẏā) is the Bengali language version of Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It also has a phonetic Latin alphabet to Bengali script tool so Latin alphabet keyboards can be used to type Bengali without downloading any software.

Launched in January 27, 2004, it surpassed 10,000 articles in October 2006, becoming the second South-Asian language to do so.[1] In 16 October 2018, total article crossed 61,452 articles.[2][3] Community-produced news publications include ‘WikiBarta’.

History

Bengali Wikipedia started its journey in January 27, 2004.[4][5] Back then, the people of Bangladesh had a little interest in Wikipedia. A few students and scholars used the English Wikipedia, but it was not accountable. Besides that, there were various difficulties contributing in Bengali. The whole scenario has been changed in 2006.[6] During that time, the Bengali blogging world was growing slowly, and many people became accustomed to Bengali computing where a free and open-source Bengali typing tool, Avro Keyboard played a key role. On March 25, 2006, a Wiki team was created by the ‘Bangladesh Open Source Network’ (BdOSN) to popularize Wikipedia throughout the country.[6] The aim was to represent the country to the world through Wikipedia and build a complete encyclopedia in Bengali.

At that time, Bengali Wikipedia had only 500 articles. ‘BdOSN wiki team’ managed to spread the word through some newspapers and start a Bengali Wiki mailing list. Soon, many Bengali-speaking people from Bangladesh and abroad joined them in this dynamic project. As a result, by the end of the October, Bengali Wikipedia got to 10,000 articles.[6] Among the South Asian language Wikipedias, Bengali Wikipedia reached that milestone first, and many of these articles were illustrated with photos from the demonstrator of Bengali Language Movement Dr. Rafiqul Islam, who donated all his historical photographs taken during the language movement to Wikimedia Commons.[6]

One of the pioneer of the Bengali Wikipedia, Dr. Ragib Hasan said that

“The biggest challenge was writing something on internet in Bengali. The Bengali Unicode was not supported on most operating systems, only few websites on the internet supported Bengali Unicode, and users had difficulties configuring it. Moreover, the idea of writing something with Bengali Unicode was new. … in the beginning, the idea of a Wikipedia in Bengali was not actually workable.”[6]

Between 2009 and 2010, Bengali speakers from West Bengal, India also started to contribute to Bengali Wikipedia.[6] In the meantime, the Wikimedia Foundation started their operations and in October 3, 2011 a local chapter named Wikimedia Bangladesh was approved in Bangladesh[4] by the Foundation to promote educational content in Bengali. On February 26, 2015, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia—visited Bangladesh for a celebration program that was organized by Wikimedia Bangladesh[7][8][9] to mark the tenth year of Bengali Wikipedia.[8][9][10][11][12][13] In his keynote, Jimmy said that according to the article depth, Bengali Wikipedia is rated quite well.[8]

Bengali Wikipedia now has 61,452 articles on various topics with 1,123 active editors per month. As of September 2018, Bengali Wikipedia is the only online free encyclopedia written in Bengali language.[14] It is also one of the largest Bengali content related sites on the internet.[15]

Users and editors

Bengali Wikipedia statistics
Number of user accountsNumber of articlesNumber of filesNumber of administrators
20289661452492115

See also

References

  1. ↑ Noronha, Frederick (September 30, 2006). "Bengali Wikipedia crosses 10,000 articles". Indo-Asian News Service. Monsters and Critics. Archived from the original on 26 December 2013. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
  2. ↑ This prediction is based on {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|bn|N}} Wikipedia template that automatically updates article numbers. So this is not a permanent or fixed count. The number of articles shown here, change in real-time as soon as a new article is created or removed. Therefore, this is not a reliable source and the numbers shown here are subject to change without prior notice.
  3. ↑ "A decade of Bangla Wikipedia An open call". The Daily Star (Bangladesh). March 17, 2014. Archived from the original on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
  4. 1 2 Kantho, Kaler. "একনজরে বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া - কালের কণ্ঠ".
  5. ↑ Kantho, Kaler. "১৪ বছরে বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া - কালের কণ্ঠ".
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kantho, Kaler. "যুগ পেরিয়ে বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া - কালের কণ্ঠ".
  7. ↑ "Wikipedia co-founder arrive Dhaka".
  8. 1 2 3 "যে বার্তা দিয়ে গেলেন জিমি ওয়েলস".
  9. 1 2 webdesk@somoynews.tv. "ঢাকায় উইকিপিডিয়ার সহ-প্রতিষ্ঠাতা জিমি ওয়েলস". somoynews.tv.
  10. ↑ Times, The Dhaka. "গভীরতার বিচারে বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়ায় তৃতীয় ভাষা - The Dhaka Times".
  11. ↑ "উইকিপিডিয়ায় তৃতীয় ভাষা বাংলা".
  12. ↑ "বাংলাদেশে আসছেন জিমি ওয়েলস".
  13. ↑ ntv.com. "GP subscribers get free Wikipedia access".
  14. ↑ Kantho, Kaler. "জেনে রাখুন - কালের কণ্ঠ".
  15. ↑ Kantho, Kaler. "- কালের কণ্ঠ".


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