Enciclopedia Libre
Encyclopedia
Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español is a Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

 encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...

. It uses the MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

 software. It started as a fork
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...

 of the Spanish Wikipedia
Spanish Wikipedia
The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, online encyclopedia. It currently has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006. Currently, it is the 6th largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, having surpassed Polish...

.

History

The Enciclopedia Libre was founded by contributors to the Spanish-language Wikipedia
Spanish Wikipedia
The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, online encyclopedia. It currently has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006. Currently, it is the 6th largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, having surpassed Polish...

 who decided to start an independent project. Led by Edgar Enyedy, they left Wikipedia on February 26, 2002, and created the new website, provided by the University of Seville
University of Seville
The Universidad de Sevilla or University of Seville, in English, is a top-ranked European university in Seville, Spain. Founded under the name of Colegio Santa María de Jesús in 1505, the University of Seville, with a student body of over 50,000, is one of the top-ranked universities in the country...

 for free, with the freely licensed articles of the Spanish-language Wikipedia.

Reasons for the split

The reasons for the split are explained on Enciclopedia Libre. Key issues included concerns about censorship and the possibility of advertising on Wikipedia. From the interview with Edgar Enyedy, the main reasons for splitting at that time were:
  • Perceived expectation that Wikipedia would soon start hosting advertisements.
  • Non-english Wikipedias were running older, less featured versions of MediaWiki
    MediaWiki
    MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

    . 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 .com rather than .org domain.

As later this situation improved, there was less necessity of forking and the project started to slow down.

Possibility of a merger

In October 2002, an effort led by 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,...

 editor Daniel Mayer (who goes by the username Maveric149) and others was made to reunite the projects, but the participants of Enciclopedia Libre voted against reunification before Wikipedia could offer a reunification proposal. The users of Enciclopedia Libre did, however, leave open the possibility for a future merger and expressed an interest in maintaining lines of communication.

Several talks have been made to make a merger. There also have been changes on Wikipedia and Enciclopedia Libre that may contribute to a merger:
  • Creation of a non-profit Wikipedia organization, known as 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...

    ;
  • Multilingual portal
  • Installation of MediaWiki
    MediaWiki
    MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

     software on Enciclopedia Libre

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 October 2011, the Spanish Wikipedia hosts approximately eighteen times as many articles as Enciclopedia Libre.

Date Approximate number of entries in Enciclopedia Libre Approximate number of entries in Spanish Wikipedia
Spanish Wikipedia
The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, online encyclopedia. It currently has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006. Currently, it is the 6th largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, having surpassed Polish...

11 March 2002 3,036 1,300
2 April 2002 5,972 1,300
1 May 2002 7,540 1,400
27 May 2002 7,837 1,500
13 June 2002 8,125 1,500
13 July 2002 8,519
4 August 2002 8,658 1,500
31 August 2002 8,996 1,500
3 October 2002 9,362 1,600
26 October 2002 10,258 1,900
17 June 2003 14,250 3,700
8 July 2003 14,428
2 August 2003 14,662 4,600
6 September 2003 15,116 5,900
2 November 2003 15,572 8,900
6 December 2003 16,039 11,000
20 March 2004 19,688 19,000
6 November 2004 25,038 33,573
25 September 2005 28,709 66,984
27 February 2006 30,455 97,568
9 April 2006 30,776 108,012
3 July 2006 31,980 130,939
1 October 2006 33,367 157,061
3 January 2007 34,342 186,022
1 April 2007 34,551 218,690
1 July 2007 35,703 248,775
2 October 2007 36,860 283,630
1 January 2008 38,012 315,611
2 April 2008 39,478 348,217
4 July 2008 40,424 376,664
3 October 2008 41,096 403,280
1 January 2009 41,852 430,159
1 April 2009 42,366 458,301
1 July 2009 42,533 488,905
1 October 2009 43,035 516,333
1 January 2010 44,156 546,487
1 April 2010 44,592 581,486
1 July 2010 45,170 615,232
1 October 2010 45,947 653,596
1 January 2011 46,374 692,451
2 April 2011 46,775 745,694
3 July 2011 47,150 785,900
2 October 2011 47,315 832,243
Today statistics [ statistics]
Date Approximate number of entries in Enciclopedia Libre Approximate number of entries in Spanish Wikipedia
Spanish Wikipedia
The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, online encyclopedia. It currently has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006. Currently, it is the 6th largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, having surpassed Polish...


See also

Other wiki and wiki-like encyclopedias:
  • Susning.nu
    Susning.nu
    Susning.nu was a Swedish language wiki, started in October 2001 by Lars Aronsson . In its first three years , Susning.nu ran as an open wiki that anyone could edit...

     
  • Hudong 
  • Baidu Baike
    Baidu Baike
    Baidu Encyclopedia is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Like Baidu itself, the encyclopedia is heavily self-censored in line with government regulations....

     
  • List of online encyclopedias

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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