Number of viewed pages of Kazaksha Wikipedia increased to 5 mln

According to the information of the fund, presently, the number of articles in Kazaksha Wikipedia reached 136 thousand, the number of viewed pages exceeds 5 mln and the number of active editors participating in the project on the voluntary basis makes 250 people taking into account that there were only 4 of them when the project was launched.

The success of the project was noted at the recently held international conference "Wikimania-2012" where representatives of wiki-communities from more than 80 counties participated.

"Participants of the conference were interested in development of our project. For big language sections it bears special relevance as far as the number of active editors gradually reduces there over several years. Therefore, further growth and development of Wikipedias and the other wiki-projects are mainly conditioned by development of the other language sections such as the Kazakh language one," head of "Wikibilim" Foundation Rauan Kenzhekhanuly said in the interview for Pm.kz site.

R. Kenzhekhanuly emphasized that the motto of Wikipedia reading "free access to the sum of human knowledge was gradually transforming into a "free access to the sum of human knowledge in the native language".

Besides, at the conference the opportunities of using wiki-platforms for non-encyclopedic purposes were discussed. In particular, the examples of using such platforms for effective communication in the American education were demonstrated.

The head of "Wikibilim" noted that the most important thing was not the growth of the articles number but the growth of users number and the number of active editors writing, correcting and editing articles. He noted students and university communities as potential authors of the encyclopedia. "The point is that a great number of students' works such as different reports, term works, diploma works are stored somewhere without an opportunity to be seen but it can be done in a different way, they can be publically available. It will increase the level of responsibility of students and teachers for the quality of their works. It will also serve as a resource for development of the encyclopedia," R. Kenzhekhanuly said.

As earlier reported, "Kazaksha Wikipedia" project is implemented under the auspices of Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Karim Massimov. The project was launched in June 2011. 

Source: PM.kz