Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español

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The Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español is a Spanish language Wiki encyclopedia, released under the GFDL. It uses the MediaWiki software.

Contents

History

The Enciclopedia Libre was founded by contributors to the Spanish-language Wikipedia (Spanish Wikipedia), who decided to start an independent project. Led by Edgar Enyedy, they left Wikipedia on February 26, 2002, bringing with them all the articles of the Spanish-language Wikipedia at that time to a new website, provided by the University of Seville for free.

Reasons for the split

The reasons for the split as explained on Enciclopedia Libre are at Why we are here and not in Wikipedia (in Spanish, under GFDL). Key issues included concerns about censorship and the threat of advertising on Wikipedia.

Below is a translation of this page from Enciclopedia Libre:

The principal motive for the project's separation lies in our rejection of censorship, of an editorial line, and of including advertising.
Critical voices were censored and the opinions of editors with administrative power continually used personal wording.
The commercial venture Bomis, Inc., owner of the Wikipedia.com domain name, announced the possibility of hosting advertisements on Wikipedia's pages. Moreover, this idea struck us as unfortunate, as it implied the existence of a commercialization of the selfless work of volunteers to profit Bomis, Inc.
Bomis, Inc. was asked for explanations, and for a promise not to include advertising in the Spanish wikipedia.
They neither gave explanations nor made any sort of promise and, in addition, they maintained an arrogant attitude out of line with what we understand should be respect among people and cultures, given that it was based on a supposed superiority.
In the face of this attitude, we have preferred to abandon that project and begin another from scratch, basing it on the following platform:
  • This encyclopedia is protected under GFDL.
  • This encyclopedia will not host any advertising.
  • This encyclopedia will not be directed by editors who censor and impose an editorial line.
  • Culture should not be a commercial object.
  • Everybody has the right to access culture freely.
  • Having been born in a one society or another depends not on individual merit, but only on chance.
  • The chance of place and time of birth cannot serve as basis for any negative discrimination.
  • No culture is superior to any other.

Possibility of a merger

In October 2002, an effort led by Wikipedia editor Daniel Mayer (who goes by the username 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. The users of Enciclopedia Libre did, however, leave open the possibility for a future merger and expressed an interest in maintaining lines of communication. This episode also sparked a great deal of discussion about the role of the non-English speaking Wikipedias and has led to several changes and planned changes wanted by the non-English speaking Wikipedia communities.

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 Phase III software on Enciclopedia Libre

Like Wikipedia, the Enciclopedia Libre uses the GNU Free Documentation Licence, so material can be freely copied between the two provided attribution is preserved. In October and November 2003, the Spanish Wikipedia used a wikipedian-designed bot to import articles from a dump of Enciclopedia Libre but when the creator of this bot left Wikipedia due to a personal conflict, she took the bot with her. The Spanish section of Wikipedia had 120,779 articles on Wikipedia and the Enciclopedia Libre 31,339 articles on May 5, 2006.

Statistics

Date Approximate number
of entries 		Approximate number of
entries in Wikipedia 		Month
11 March 20023036  
20 March 200241161300March 2002
2 April 200259721400April 2002
1 May 20027540  
27 May 200278371500May 2002
13 June 200281251500June 2002
13 July 200285191500July 2002
4 August 20028658  
31 August 200289961500August 2002
13 September 200292371600September 2002
3 October 20029362  
26 October 2002102581900October 2002
17 June 2003142503700June 2003
8 July 2003144284600July 2003
2 August 2003146625900August 2003
6 September 2003151166500September 2003
2 November 20031557211000November 2003
6 December 20031603913000December 2003
20 March 20041968819000March 2004
6 November 20042503835000November 2004
25 September 20052870969000September 2005
27 February 200630455101000February 2006
9 April 200630776117000April 2006
3 July 200631980  
25 July 200632259145000July 2006

By comparison the Spanish Wikipedia had 137,040 on July 25, 2006. (source)

External links and references



References

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