The Danish Wikipedia started on 1 February 2002 and is the Danish-language

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

 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,...

. As of October 11, 2011 it has over 155,000 articles.

Characteristics

• No fair use: The Danish Wikipedia has no fair use
  Fair use
  Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
  
   provisions. No fair use claims are allowed and all images (except Wikimedia logos) must be available under a free license.
• Copyright law: Very few works are exempt from copyright under Danish law and the number of images available from third-party sources is much lower than for the English and German Wikipedias. Images excepted from copyright due to laws in the country of origin are accepted. Works by the Danish government are protected by copyright like other texts with the exception of laws and legal texts. However this exception does not apply to accompanying illustrations since these can be considered "works appearing as independent contributions" in these texts. Government publications and Danish insignia
  Insignia
  Insignia or insigne pl -nia or -nias : a symbol or token of personal power, status or office, or of an official body of government or jurisdiction...
  
   are consequently protected by copyright similar to ordinary works. It is likely that the text of heraldic blazon
  Blazon
  In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...
  
  s is free provided that they were printed in the National Gazette, Statstidende
  Statstidende
  Statstidende is a public danish daily newspaper, first published in 1904. Originally it was published by the Ministry of State, but since 1964 by the Ministry of Justice and since 2005, solemnly published on the Internet....
  
  (though the text may be free, an accompanying illustration is not). Composite works and joint works are protected until 70 years after the death of the last-living contributor. All photos are protected by copyright for at least 50 years and this protection is considered to also apply to photographs of works of art otherwise in the public domain. Photos with artistic merit are protected for 70 years p.m.a. No equivalent of Bridgeman v. Corel
  Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
  Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 , was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack...
  
   exists, but a similar situation exists for pre-1970 images since simple photos published before 1 January 1970 are still regulated by the pre-1995 rules which operated with a short protection span for such works. Freedom of panorama can be applied for images of buildings, but images of permanently installed works of art in public spaces are only exempt from copyright provided that such use is non-commercial. Photos of statues can consequently only be used on the Danish Wikipedia provided that the sculptor died more than 70 years ago. A notable work of art with this problem is the Little Mermaid
  The Little Mermaid (statue)
  The statue of The Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the harbour of the capital of Denmark. Based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and a major tourist attraction....
  
  statue.
• Commons: Files uploaded to the Danish Wikipedia must be used in article space within a week, or the file will be listed for deletion. This rule was introduced to discourage local uploads, given that all images used on the Danish Wikipedia are compatible with the requirements of Commons. Uploads to Commons are strongly encouraged.
• Article assessment: The Danish Wikipedia has not yet adopted ratings equivalent to the English Wikipedia's featured articles and A-grade. The highest grade is Anbefalede artikler (AA) (recommended articles) which is defined as an equivalent of the English Wikipedia's good articles grade. Raising an article to this level requires a process similar in form to the Featured Articles process on the English Wikipedia and many criteria are similar. In addition, any article nominated for AA must previously have been elevated to Lovende artikler (LA) (promising articles)-grade. Categories equivalent to Stub-class, Start-class and B-class are also used. Anbefalede artikler are tagged with the GA symbol known from the English Wikipedia and Lovende artikler are tagged with a blue version of the same symbol.
• Projects and portals: Wikiprojects and portals have both been introduced inspired by the English Wikipedia. Examples are the History portal and "Shoot a Church", a project aimed at creating free images of Danish churches.
• GA task forces. The first AA-Taskforce was introduced in 2007. The goal is to elevate entire groups of articles to AA status. The idea is similar to the English Wikipedia's Featured topics, but article quality will be lower than on the English project. Two taskforces currently exist: Capitals of Europe and heavy metal music.
• Article of the Week: Ugens artikel (UA) features prominently on the front page for a single week. The article is selected by a vote and editors are strongly encouraged to improve it in the week leading up to its prominent display.
• Since Danish is mutually intelligible with Swedish
  Swedish language
  Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
  
   and Norwegian
  Norwegian language
  Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
  
  , administrators of the site collaborate with those at the respective Wikipedias through the Skanwiki section of the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki site.

Wikimedia Danmark is a Danish membership association with the purpose to support Wikimedia's projects, in particular those in the Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, Faroese

Faroese language

Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...

 and Greenlandic languages, and aiming to become a national chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...

. The association was formed at a meeting at the Unitarerneshuset

Unitarisk Kirkesamfund

Unitarisk Kirkesamfund is the Danish Unitarian Church, founded May 18, 1900 as "Det fri Kirkesamfund" by a group of liberal Christians....

 in Copenhagen on March 14, 2009. The Wikimedia Foundation approved the chapter on July 3, 2009. The current chairman is Ole Andersen.

External links

Danish Wikipedia Danish Wikipedia mobile version

• Meta: Skanwiki
• Report from the Danish Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost, 25 September 2006.