Tell us about Greek Wikipedia

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia.

Questionaire

Contributors

• Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interprete. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?

• Around 100 on each moment (people come and go) --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• 50 up to 100 on very active days. I guess it'll take about a year or more to reach 50.000 articles.--Lady 6thofAu 14:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Usually there are around to 80-120 steady users in a given moment, as of February 2021. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Are your contributors mostly native speakers?

• Yes, all of them are native speakers although there are some rare exceptions. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, most of them, though there are some people from Turkey and FYROM that help with translations.--Lady 6thofAu 14:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, but there are periodically contributions from other users as well. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?

• Mostly in Greece and Cyprus, and Germany, UK, France and USA (students and 2nd generation immigrants) --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Most of them come from Greece, Germany and UK. There are some from Turkey, USA, Cyprus, France, FYROM.--Lady 6thofAu 14:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Most of them are from Greece. Some come from Cyprus and users from Germany, France, United Kingdom and United States also contribute in Greek Wikipedia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?

• Rarely. It's not common for Greek people to meet in real their net friends, and most want to keep their anonymity. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• There aren't usually organized events that Greek wikipedians could attend and meet each other. Administrators have aknowledged they have met. Also, meeting each other is common for students studying at the same university, or people that come from the same town.--Lady 6thofAu 14:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Very rarely. The last meeting of the community took place in 2013, however in the last two months we had the first two digital meetings of the Greek Wikipedia's community. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Other Wikipedias

• Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?

• The pnt (Pontic) wikipedia is in the incubator, started by users of the greek wikipedia but there is not any action between the two wikipedias. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• No.--Lady 6thofAu 14:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Any contact of this kind is very rare in Greek Wikipedia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?

• A lot of articles is translated from english and some less from the german wikipedia. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Many new users translate from the English wikipedia, translations though are usually found to lack sources. Usually foreign language wikipedias are used as a template to organise information.--Lady 6thofAu 14:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• We translate a lot of articles from English via the Content Translator and manually. Periodically there are translations from German, French, Italian and Russian Wikipedias, and more seldom some translations from other Wikipedias have also taken place. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Organization and support

• Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it?

• No. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• No. --Lady 6thofAu 14:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• No, but there is a User Group which organises various online and offline activities to support Wikipedia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia?

• No. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• There is some research in some govermental service in order to find ways to support wikipedia with content. --Geraki ^T_L 13:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
• No. --Lady 6thofAu 14:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• No as of 2021. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Your Wikipedia and the linguistic community

• Is there a language institution for your language, like an Academy, or a club of people interested in your language? Do you have contact with them?

• There is no official institution for greek language, de facto regulated by the Ministry of Education. There are some academic and private institutions studying greek language. There is no contact with any of them. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• There are institutions for the Greek language abroad. There is no contact with any of them.--Lady 6thofAu 14:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• There isn't any official institution and as of 2021 the topic is still in the same position. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Who (else) supports you?

• Nobody but the community. The press is supporting a little getting us known, but mostly motivated from the success of the english wikipedia. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Just the community. Fora, blogs and daily conversations bring new people. Lately media show interest about the existence of the Greek wikipedia, mainly reporting it as an English wikipedia Greek variant and/or as a translation of it.--Lady 6thofAu 14:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Nobody else but the community. There are some periodical articles on the media about the most popular articles of the year and some other news about Greek Wikipedia, but nothing more. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• How looks your public outreach for your edition? Do you have flyers, give lectures, trainings etc.?

• Blank :) --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• We have printed flyers and did presentations in free software events. --Geraki ^T_L 13:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
• There is no public outreach, apart from private conversations --Lady 6thofAu 14:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• We organise various seminars about Wikipedia in schools and other institutions, as well various educational seminars for the public (Wikipedia School). NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Do you get feedback from readers?

• Yes, it is clear that some minor edits and comments come from readers and not editors, there is some traffic in info-el mail and there are enough discussions about wikipedia content in blogs and forums [if they don't send the feedback we go and get it :-) ] --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Some readers express their opinions using the article talk pages. --Lady 6thofAu 14:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, we receive some but this isn't very common. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• What other encyclopedias exist in your language?

• There are less than a dozen encyclopedias currently in circulation including both paper and digital encyclopedias. There is only one proprietary online general encyclopedia and some very small special encyclopedias. There is one more wiki based encyclopedia licensed to the GFDL, inspired of course from wikipedia. Its content was imported from two proprietary digital encyclopedias/dictionaries. That makes it uneven as there are articles with great length and others that are only a word definition, but their count is over 100.000 articles. There is not much of a community in that wiki to edit the content. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• There are plenty of them in paper, an average Greek person doesn't usually have access to such material as they cost a lot. Libraries at small cities are extremely small and rarely people know them. Most people legally or illegally get access to proprietary encyclopedias in cd-rom format.--Lady 6thofAu 14:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• There are many print encyclopedias that have been published and are still available in many homes (or sold as used products) but the most of Greeks haven't access to a print encyclopedia. There is an ongoing digitisation of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which was published in Greek translation with additional articles about Greek topics. There was also another wiki-based encyclopedia, Livepedia which closed in 2017 (it was largely inactive for years). As of 2021, Wikipedia is the main encyclopedia in Greek. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by NikosLikomitros (talk)

Content

• Does your edition concentrates on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity?

• There is some systemic bias in preference of topics about greek cities and greek history but we try to fight it. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. Topics with growing number of articles have to do most of the time with Greek cities and villages, music groups and orthodox priests and/or saints.--Lady 6thofAu 14:31, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. We have coverage for many topics in the Greek Wikipedia. Some of the topics with the most coverage are Greek cities and villages, religious topics, Greek people, members of European royal houses and many many more. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Did your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopedias?

• No, at least not in much extent. Older encyclopedias are still under copyright and even if they weren't it would be very hard to get text from them (old style language etc.) Some articles were imported from the other wiki based encyclopedia (and vice versa) but not in big quantities. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Generally no.--Lady 6thofAu 14:31, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Generally there isn't any such activity, but some articles of Livepedia have been imported to Greek Wikipedia before November 2008, as Livepedia switched to a new license. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Language

• Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronunciation)?

• What is generally accepted is the language as it is taught at school. All government and public services follow the rules that are taught in education. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, normally only accented, modern greek language (demotiki) is accepted.--Lady 6thofAu 14:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, there is an accepted spelling norm for Greek Wikipedia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

  Additionally, more or less the spelling norms of Greek Wikipedians are the same with the generic populace. For example, foreign names kept in latin script (because, for example, the editor is not sure how to transliterate it), e.g. Schrödinger instead of Σρέντινγκερ, a norm that frequently appears in written Greek, also appears in Greek Wikipedia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 22:07, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

• How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?

• Usually the form that is used in education is accepted, except on some special cases there was a lot of critic from academics and in this cases we leave it on the preference of the main contributors. --Geraki ^T_L 08:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
• Dialects are rarely used in Greek wikipedia. Different spellings between old and new forms usually cause debates and edit wars (e.g. Χείλων-Χίλων, κτήριο-κτίριο), especially because a major dictionary supported "right" spellings that are quite odd and different to those learned in schools.--Lady 6thofAu 14:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• The form used in education is most common, but words with different spellings (e.g. εταιρεία-εταιρία) have their spellings both used in Greek Wikipedia. NikosLikomitros (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2021 (UTC)