Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español (English: Universal Free Encyclopedia in Spanish) is a Spanish language wiki encyclopedia, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. It uses the MediaWiki software. It started as a fork of the Spanish Wikipedia.

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español
Screenshot of Main Page on 1 April 2006
Type of site
Wiki Internet encyclopedia
Available inSpanish
OwnerUniversity of Seville
Created byEdgar Enyedy
URLenciclopedia.us.es
Alexa rank 15,172
CommercialNo
RegistrationNot required (although in some events unregistered users have to register to view and edit)
Users4 active contributors (May 2020)[1]
Launched26 February 2002 (2002-02-26)
Current statusOnline
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 3.0
Written inMediaWiki, made in PHP

History

The Enciclopedia Libre was founded by contributors to the Spanish-language Wikipedia who decided to start an independent project. Led by Edgar Enyedy, they left Wikipedia on 26 February 2002, and created the new website, provided by the University of Seville for free, with the freely licensed articles of the Spanish-language Wikipedia.[2]

The reasons for the split are explained on Enciclopedia Libre.[3] Key issues included concerns about censorship and the possibility of advertising on Wikipedia.[4] From the interview with Edgar Enyedy,[2] the main reasons for splitting at that time were:

  • Perceived expectation that Wikipedia would soon start hosting advertisements.[2]
  • Non-English Wikipedias were running older, less featured versions of MediaWiki. When national groups offered help in software development and maintenance, access to the servers was denied.
  • The downloadable database dumps of Wikipedia content were highly outdated.
  • Wikipedia was hosted on a .com rather than a .org domain.

Post-split history

In 2011, Enyedy said that the sole reason for the failure of Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español as a long term project was because it "was not intended to last. It was merely a form of pressure. Some of the goals were achieved, not all of them, but it was worth the cost."[5]

In 2011, Enyedy said "Nowadays, the romantic point of view is that EL survived and is still going strong."[5] He argued that while the viewpoint is positive, it is not factual.[5]

Statistics

While Enciclopedia Libre initially grew much more rapidly than the Spanish Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia overtook it in 2004. Since then, the Spanish Wikipedia has grown at a much greater rate. As of December 2016, the Spanish Wikipedia hosts approximately twenty-six times as many articles as Enciclopedia Libre.

Historical article counts. The Spanish Wikipedia is shown in red; Enciclopedia Libre is blue.
DateApproximate number of entries in Enciclopedia LibreApproximate number of entries in the Spanish Wikipedia
11 March 20023,0361,300
2 April 20025,9721,300
1 May 20027,5401,400
27 May 20027,8371,500
13 June 20028,1251,500
13 July 20028,519
4 August 20028,6581,500
31 August 20028,9961,500
3 October 20029,3621,600
26 October 200210,2581,900
17 June 200314,2503,700
8 July 200314,428
2 August 200314,6624,600
6 September 200315,1165,900
2 November 200315,5728,900
6 December 200316,03911,000
20 March 200419,68819,000
6 November 200425,03833,573
25 September 200528,70966,984
27 February 200630,45597,568
9 April 200630,776108,012
3 July 200631,980130,939
1 October 200633,367157,061
3 January 200734,342186,022
1 April 200734,551218,690
1 July 200735,703248,775
2 October 200736,860283,630
1 January 200838,012315,611
2 April 200839,478348,217
4 July 200840,424376,664
3 October 200841,096403,280
1 January 200941,852430,159
1 April 200942,366458,301
1 July 200942,533488,905
1 October 200943,035516,333
1 January 201044,156546,487
1 April 201044,592581,486
1 July 201045,170615,232
1 October 201045,947653,596
1 January 201146,374692,451
2 April 201146,775745,694
3 July 201147,150785,900
2 October 201147,315832,243
1 January 201247,638856,400
2 April 201247,797880,230
2 July 201247,937900,861
2 October 201248,082924,293
1 January 201348,050945,476
2 April 201348,238981,012
1 July 201348,1161,026,688
1 October 201348,8901,048,876
1 January 201448,9531,068,019
1 April 201448,9711,091,704
3 July 201449,0261,110,208
10 October 201449,0531,130,161
1 January 201549,0551,147,397
2 April 201549,3211,168,559
10 December 201649,9231,302,340
Todaystatisticsstatistics
DateApproximate number of entries in Enciclopedia LibreApproximate number of entries in Spanish Wikipedia

See also

References

  1. "Lista de usuarios activos". Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español. Retrieved 2015-08-24.
  2. Tkacz, Nathaniel (20 January 2011). "The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's ad-fuelled mutiny". Wired UK.
  3. Enciclopedia: Por qué estamos aquí y no en es.wikipedia.org (in Spanish)
  4. Lih, Andrew (2009). The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. London: Aurum. p. 9. ISBN 9781845134730. OCLC 280430641.
  5. Tkacz, Nathaniel. "The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's ad-fuelled mutiny." Wired. 20 January 2011. p. 2 Archived 2016-05-04 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved on 26 June 2013.
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