Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español

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Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Espanol
A screenshot of Enciclopedia Libre includes a panel to navigate users around the site, a welcome message, and a picture of a featured article
Screenshot of Main Page on 1 April 2006
Web address enciclopedia.us.es
Commercial? No
Type of site
Wiki Internet encyclopedia
Registration Not required
Available in Spanish
Users 10 active contributors[1]
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 3.0
Written in MediaWiki, made in PHP
Owner University of Seville
Created by Edgar Enyedy
Launched 26 February 2002; 22 years ago (2002-02-26)
Alexa rank
Negative increase 15,172
Current status Online

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español is a Spanish language wiki encyclopedia, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. It uses the MediaWiki software. It started as a fork of the Spanish Wikipedia.

History

The Enciclopedia Libre was founded by contributors to the Spanish-language Wikipedia who decided to start an independent project. Led by Edgar Enyedy, they left Wikipedia on 26 February 2002, and created the new website, provided by the University of Seville for free, with the freely licensed articles of the Spanish-language Wikipedia.[2]

Reasons for the split

The reasons for the split are explained on Enciclopedia Libre.[3] Key issues included concerns about censorship and the possibility of advertising on Wikipedia. From the interview with Edgar Enyedy,[4] the main reasons for splitting at that time were:

  • Perceived expectation that Wikipedia would soon start hosting advertisements.[4]
  • Non-English Wikipedias were running older, less featured versions of MediaWiki. 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  • The downloadable database dumps of Wikipedia content were highly outdated.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 a .com rather than a .org domain.

Post-split history

In 2011, Enyedy said that the sole reason for the failure of Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español as a long term project was because it "was not intended to last. It was merely a form of pressure. Some of the goals were achieved, not all of them, but it was worth the cost."[5]

In 2011, Enyedy said "Nowadays, the romantic point of view is that EL survived and is still going strong."[5] He argued that while the viewpoint is positive, it is not factual.[5]

Possibility of a merger

In October 2002, an effort led by Wikipedia editor Daniel Mayer (whose username is 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.[citation needed] 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;
  • Multilingual portal
  • Installation of MediaWiki software on Enciclopedia Libre, so running the same wiki engine as Wikipedia.

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 January 2015, the Spanish Wikipedia hosts approximately twenty-three times as many articles as Enciclopedia Libre.

Historical article counts. The Spanish Wikipedia is shown in red; Enciclopedia Libre is blue.
Date Approximate number of entries in Enciclopedia Libre Approximate number of entries in the Spanish Wikipedia
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
1 January 2012 47,638 856,400
2 April 2012 47,797 880,230
2 July 2012 47,937 900,861
2 October 2012 48,082 924,293
1 January 2013 48,050 945,476
2 April 2013 48,238 981,012
1 July 2013 48,116 1,026,688
1 October 2013 48,890 1,048,876
1 January 2014 48,953 1,068,019
1 April 2014 48,971 1,091,704
3 July 2014 49,026 1,110,208
10 October 2014 49,053 1,130,161
1 January 2015 49,055 1,147,397
2 April 2015 49,321 1,168,559
Today statistics statistics
Date Approximate number of entries in Enciclopedia Libre Approximate number of entries in Spanish Wikipedia

See also

References

  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. Enciclopedia: Por qué estamos aquí y no en es.wikipedia.org (Spanish)
  4. 4.0 4.1 Nathaniel Tkacz (2011) The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's ad-fuelled mutiny
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Tkacz, Nathaniel. "The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's ad-fuelled mutiny." Wired. 20 January 2011. p. 2. Retrieved on 26 June 2013.

External links