Wikimedia South Africa/Wikipedia's 18th Birthday

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Wikipedia's 18th Birthday

15th January 2019

Eighteen years ago today Wikipedia was born. Wikipedia first started out as Nupedia, launched on the 9th March 2000, which sought to provide a free online encyclopedia that was curated by experts similar to how traditional encyclopedias were written. Nupedia did not take off and as an experiment, before it was shut down Wikipedia was launched. Wikipedia allowed anyone to write and review encyclopedia articles. The English language version was launched on the 15th of January 2001 and has grown rapidly since then. Afrikaans language Wikipedia was started a few months later on the 16th of November 2001 and now has over 68,000 articles, edited by 910 people, and is viewed 1.6 million times a month.

Wikimedia South Africa celebrates this birthday by encouraging more people to edit and contribute their knowledge to Wikipedia in general and South African languages in particular. Today Wikipedia is available in almost 300 different languages including almost all official South African languages including isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga.