The Tamil Wikipedia is the Tamil language

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 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,...

, run by 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...

. It was established in September 2003 and crossed 25,000 articles on 6 October 2010. The Tamil Wikipedia is the 68th largest Wikipedia by article count. It is also the second Wikipedia of Dravidian origin

Dravidian languages

The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...

 to possess more than 10,000 articles, only second to the Telugu edition

Telugu Wikipedia

Telugu Wikipedia was started on December 9th, 2003 by Venna Nagarjuna, renowned for Padma, a system for transforming Indic text between various public and proprietary formats...

.

Cultural significance

Contrary to common academic criticism of Wikipedia

Reliability of Wikipedia

The reliability of Wikipedia , compared to other encyclopedias and more specialized sources, is assessed in many ways, including statistically, through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in the editing process unique to Wikipedia.Several...

 in the Western countries, the Tamil Wikipedia is widely regarded as an important source of information in the Tamil language

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 on the Internet. The encyclopedia undergoes far less vandalism compared to larger Wikipedia projects, largely because the project has slower growth, mainly due to the lack of computers or Internet service in rural areas of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

 and Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

. Most of the project's development comes from the overseas' Tamil diaspora

Tamil diaspora

The Tamil diaspora is a demographic group of Tamil people of Indian or Sri Lankan origin who have settled in other parts of the world. Significant Tamil diaspora populations can be found in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Middle East, Réunion, South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Fiji, Guyana,...

.

In April 2010, the Tamil Internet Conference held a contest for college students across the state of Tamil Nadu, India for increasing content on the Tamil Wikipedia. The contest was made with regards to the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010

World Classical Tamil Conference 2010

The World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 was an international meet by Tamil Scholars, Poets, Political leaders and Celebrities from all around the world. It was held in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu between 23 June and 27 June, 2010.- Venue :...

, a meeting of Tamil

Tamil people

Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...

diplomats across the world who discuss modern development of the language. With over 2000 contestants enrolled, the contest concluded with the creation of 1,200 new academically reviewed articles on the Tamil Wikipedia in various subjects.

External links

Tamil Wikipedia Tamil Wikipedia mobile version (homepage not yet configured)

• Statistics for Tamil Wikipedia by Erik Zachte
• Tamil Wikipedia: A case study presentated at Wikimania 2009 by L.BalasundaraRaman