We use Intlwiki-L, to coordinate Wikipedia across different languages. Please take a look at the Wikipedia Embassy and join if you're interested in the coordination project.
The Wikipedia community is committed to including any and all languages for which there are Wikipedians willing to do the work. We are aware that many of the world's 6,500 languages are not well-represented on computers or the web, and we are committed to working with language speakers and computing organizations to support as many languages as possible.
Each language Wikipedia currently has a separate set of user accounts. Links
between articles in different languages are called interlanguage links.
The URL of the wikipedia for a given language is xx.wikipedia.org, where xx is the 2-letter language code as per ISO 639. (On the mailing list and in discussion, people often write xx: to mean the xx-language wikipedia, as in I'm a regular on fr:.)
See also: Wikipedia:Complete list of language wikis available for a full list.
Wiki encyclopedias that are at least somewhat active have been started in various languages:
- These are other, non-Bomis, free Wiki-based encyclopedia projects independent of Wikipedia
See also: Wikipedia:Create a new language in Wikipedia for a tutorial how to get a Wikipedia in your language running.
A certain amount of "critical mass" is necessary in order for a wiki to "take off". Without 5-10 people eagerly writing and arguing and playing with each other, it wouldn't be as much fun. So we encourage anyone who wants to build a wiki in their own language to also go out and announce/recruit for it. :-)
See also Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics for a more complete overview.
The 20 largest Wikipedias (June 22, 2003):
- English (http://en.wikipedia.org/) (134938)
- German (Deutsch) (http://de.wikipedia.org/) (19281)
- French (Français) (http://fr.wikipedia.org/) (12003)
- Polish (Polska) (http://pl.wikipedia.org/) (10981)
- Swedish (Svenska) (http://sv.wikipedia.org/) (9674)
- Dutch (Nederlands) (http://nl.wikipedia.org/) (7026)
- Japanese (Nihongo) (http://ja.wikipedia.org/) (6851)
- Esperanto (http://eo.wikipedia.org/) (6789)
- Danish (Dansk) (http://da.wikipedia.org/) (6389)
- Spanish (Español) (http://es.wikipedia.org/) (4294)
- Catalan (Català) (http://ca.wikipedia.com/) (2937)
- Italian (Italiano) (http://it.wikipedia.com/) (2088)
- Finnish (Suomi) (http://fi.wikipedia.com/) (913)
- Portuguese (Português) (http://pt.wikipedia.com/) (885)
- Interlingua (http://ia.wikipedia.com/) (659)
- Latin (Latina) (http://la.wikipedia.com/) (597)
- Czech (Česká) (http://cs.wikipedia.org/) (500)
- Norwegian (Norsk) (http://no.wikipedia.com/) (494)
- Estonian (Eesti) (http://et.wikipedia.com/) (437)
- Low Saxon (Nedersassisch) (http://za.wikipedia.com/) (250)
For an overview of the world's biggest wiki websites (Wikipedia or not), see MeatBall:BiggestWiki
what can I do to help ?
I have just noticed the fact that the top and bottom bars are in English. Can something be done about that?
- Those lines come from a configuration file that the public can't access (I believe). Please see the embassy for the ongoing effort to translate Wikipedia into different languages.
Here are some "international Wikipedia" policy questions. To a certain extent, these questions will resolve themselves, though.
- How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have several quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca?
- In the embassy we are coordinating efforts between languages.
- What are some suggestions about what can be put on new language Wikipedia home pages?
- Is there going to be an easy way to link from one language to another?
- Anything else?