There are two Belarusian Wikipedias ( be, Беларуская Вікіпедыя;

Taraškievica Taraškievica or Belarusian Classical Orthography (, be, тарашкевіца / клясычны правапіс) is a variant of orthography of the Belarusian language, based on the literary norm of the modern Belarusian language, the fir ...

: Беларуская Вікіпэдыя): one in the

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

of the

Belarusian language Belarusian ( be, беларуская мова, biełaruskaja mova, link=no, ) is an East Slavic language. It is the native language of many Belarusians and one of the two official state languages in Belarus. Additionally, it is spoken in some ...

which is official in modern

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

(''

Narkamaŭka Narkamaŭka ( be, наркамаўка, narkamaŭka, or be, наркомаўка, narkomaŭka, ) is a colloquial name for the reformed Belarusian orthography. Evolved from the Belarusian ''narkam'' (), abbreviated early Soviet name for the min ...

'', prefix "be:"), and another one in the pre-reform of 1933, classical orthography (''Taraškievica'', prefix "be-tarask:", formerly "be-x-old:"). As of March 2014, the most popular editions of Wikipedia within Belarus are the Russian Wikipedia (with 84.0% of all page views) followed by the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

(10.2%).

History

The first Belarusian Wikipedia was started on August 12, 2004. One of its creators and first administrators was Uladzimir Katkouski (user name: rydel)."To stand for the Belarusian – in Belarusian!" (“Калі адстойваць беларускае, то па-беларуску!”)
, an interview with the parents of Uladzimir Katkouski by ''

Radio Liberty Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

'', May 19, 2008 Katkouski/rydel (who died in 2007) created over 1,300 articles in the Belarusian Wikipedia alone. Articles in the Belarusian Wikipedia were inconsistently written in both variants of the orthography, leading to conflicts between the adherents of the two."Belarusian Language Encyclopedia amid of Scandal"
, March 27, 2007 A "clean" version in the official orthography was initiated in the Wikipedias "

incubator An incubator is anything that performs or facilitates various forms of incubation, and may refer to: Biology and medicine * Incubator (culture), a device used to grow and maintain microbiological cultures or cell cultures * Incubator (egg), a de ...

" at Wikimedia's

Meta-Wiki The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best know ...

. The application for a new Wikipedia was approved in March 2007. Upon approval, in the evening of the same day, over 6,000 articles written in the pre-reform orthography were transferred from the "be.wikipedia.org" domain to "be-x-old.wikipedia.org", while the 3,500 pages from "Incubator" were moved to "be.wikipedia.org". However, due to a software bug, the move did not go smoothly: in the morning the articles seemed to have disappeared, and users could not log in. This led to a number of news reports that articles in old Belarusian orthography were deleted from Wikipedia."Belarusian Wikipedia Has Been Destroyed"
SEOnews, March 28, 2007 In September 2015, the domain name of the classical orthography Belarusian Wikipedias was changed from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org, reflecting the official language subtag assigned by the

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Inte ...

in 2007. Including the time in the "incubator", the current variant of be-Wikipedia has existed since August 2006."Belarusian Encyclopedia Crossed the 10,000 Article threshold"

Rates of contributions

Initially the official Belarusian Wikipedia overtook the classical one, but in about a year, it slowed down, and in fall 2008, the classical one was ahead. Today, the official Belarusian Wikipedia has again surpassed the one in the classical orthography. On March 15, 2008, the official Belarusian encyclopedia reached 10,000 articles. On June 17, 2009, the classical Belarusian encyclopedia reached 20,000 articles, holding the 65th place among other Wikipedias. At that time, the official Belarusian Wikipedia had about 16,000 articles, holding the 71st place."20,000th article in the Belarusian Wikipedia in Classical Orthography"
, ''

Nasha Niva ''Nasha Niva'' ( be, Наша Ніва, Naša Niva, lit. "Our field") is one of the oldest Belarusian weekly newspapers, founded in 1906 and re-established in 1991. ''Nasha Niva'' became a cultural symbol, due to the newspaper's importance as a ...

Online'', June 17, 2009 On November 16, 2010, the official Belarusian encyclopedia reached 25,000 articles. In August 2015, the official Belarusian encyclopedia reached 100,000 articles.

References

External links

*
Belarusian Wikipedia in the official orthography
* (Belarusian (Taraškievica orthography)
Belarusian Wikipedia in Taraškievica orthography
*
Belarusian Wikipedia in the official orthography mobile version
(homepage not yet configured) * (Belarusian (Taraškievica orthography)
Belarusian Wikipedia in Taraškievica orthography mobile version
(not fully supported) * Statistics for the normative Belarusian Wikipedia * Statistics for the classical Belarusian Wikipedia {{Wikipedias Wikipedias by language

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