Armenian Wikipedia sees dramatic progress since last year (photos)

Over the past year, Armenia has significantly improved its positions in Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia operating content in about 200 languages.

“Just a few days ago, the Armenian articles crossed the boundary of 100,000. And we have seen this in the past year,” Samvel Martirosyan, an Armenian media expert, told Tert.am.

With a total of 104,253 articles, Armenian is now in the second group of languages. The list also includes Bulgarian, the Czech language, Danish, Romanian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Serbian. The languages in this category have “100,000 +” articles concerning the corresponding country, its culture, history etc.

The official languages of Armenia’s neighbors, Georgia and Azerbaijan, are represented in the “10,000 +” group, with an estimated 70,000 and 90,000 articles, respectively.

The “1 million +” group includes naturally the world’s most widespread tongues: English, Russian, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese,

The smallest is the “1,000+” group which includes less known languages such as Kuala Lumpur, Bahamian, and African tongues and dialects.

Speaking to Tert.am, Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan said their agency attaches a great importance to the enriched Armenian content in online resources.

“And we are happy that due to public support and the society’s initiative, we managed at this moment to attain quite a remarkable result. We are hopeful the activities won’t stop,” he added.

The Ministry of Education and Science had earlier called upon universities and students to be actively involved in developing Wikipedia’s Armenian content, contributing materials from different research papers and theses.

As for the materials’ content, Ashotyan said topics relating to history and culture, as well as outstanding Armenian intellectuals are predominant. But the minister noted that articles on scientific and technical issues would be also highly valuable for the Armenian Wikipedia.