The French Wikipedia (Wikipédia francophone, Wikipédia en français) is the French language edition of Wikipedia, spelled Wikipédia. Started in March 2001, this edition has over 700,000 articles as of August 2008 and is the third largest Wikipedia after the English language and German language editions. Thus it is the largest Wikipedia in a Romance language.

A bot, Utilisateur:DasBot, the French equivalent of the English Wikipedia's Rambot, has created a fair percentage of the articles on the site, adding articles for all the communes of France, e.g. Rochefort-en-Valdaine, and also on some of the smallest administrative areas (cantons). This data has been copied onto other Wikipedias, also via bots.

Timeline

2001

• 19 May: First recorded date:
• 6 June: First known main page: (Including the participation of Utilisateur:Valéry Beaud and Utilisateur:Buzz). 2002
• June: A new logo (in green colour and quite different from the logo used on the other Wikipedias) is displayed in an initiative from Utilisateur:Rinaldum. This autonomist move is criticized because all French Wikipedians had not been consulted, but the logo is kept.
• August: The first sysops, Utilisateur:Anthere, Utilisateur:Aoineko and Utilisateur:Shaihulud are appointed after a disagreement with user Utilisateur:Mulot. The first IP is blocked.
• 31 October: Phase III began.
• December: A strong increase of activity is reported. It can be analysed as serial vandalism from a bot, and all subsequent corrections. After this new kind of vandalism, the software is changed in order to enable quicker reverts (rollback link available for sysops only). 2003
• January: A strong decrease of activity, essentially due to the slowing down of servers, thus limiting participation.
• 6 February: Colored "Putsch" on the main page: Before → After The new design, authored by Utilisateur:Aoineko, is subsequently reused by other language versions (including Polish and English Wikipedias).
• 7 February: 5,000 articles.
• 19 February: 6,000 articles.
• 7 March: 7,000 articles.
• 27 March: 8,000 articles.
• 13 April: Overtakes Polish Wikipedia to become the third largest Wikipedia, behind the English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia with 9,051 articles.
• 15 May: 10,000 articles.
• 18 May: The main page has been viewed 100,000 times since the counter was implemented.
• 7 July: Wikipédia has 20,000 pages, including about 12,800 articles.
• mid-July: The number of pages calculation is modified. According to the old calculation mode detecting at least a comma, 13,058 encyclopaedia articles are present, and the new calculation that detects at least one link, indicates 13,789 articles.
• 5 August: 15,000 articles; over 20,000 changes have been recorded since the implementation of phase III software.
• 20 August: Inhibition of some functions in order to increase performance.
• 4 September: 16,000 articles.
• ? October: New logo.
• 3-11 November: Utilisateur:Papotages is the first user blocked forever as the author of severe and repeated vandalism.
• 17 November: Lorraine is the first Wikipédia:Article de la semaine. 38 users participated in its redaction.
• 22 November: 20,000 articles. 2004
• 26 January: 25,000 articles.
• 14 March: 30,000 articles.
• End of March: Switch to UTF-8.
• 1st May: 35,000 articles.
• 16 June: 40,000 articles.
• 23 July: 45,000 articles.
• 29 August: 50,000 articles with nèfle.
• 2 November at 23:33: 60,000 articles with Lord Yarborough.
• 22 December: 70,000 articles with Borée. 2005
• 6 February: 80,000 articles.
• 14 March: 90,000 articles.
• 21 April: 100,000 articles with Pierre Séguier.
• June : Opening of the first WP:AG (Graphic Lab), with wikigraphists improving submitted images.
• 4 December: 200,000 articles with George Corliss. 2006
• 4 March: 250,000 articles with John Anglin.
• 10 June: 300,000 articles with Gouvernement fédéral.
• 24 November: 400,000 articles with Neuropathie. 2007
• 2 May: During the 2007 French presidential debates, the article about the EPRs (Réacteur pressurisé européen) undergoes numerous edits after a mistake of Nicolas Sarkozy on the generation number (4 instead of 3).
• 28 May: 500,000 articles with Aitken.
• 28 December: 600,000 articles with Python birman (the first author is the same as the 250,000th article)2008
• 20 February: The popular French encyclopedia, Quid, cancels its 2008 edition blaming falling sales on competition from the French Wikipedia.
• 30 August: 700,000 articles.

References

External links

• French Wikipedia