The German Wikipedia () is the

German-language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is a ...

edition of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

, a free and publicly editable

online encyclopedia An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Some examples include pre-World Wide Web services that offered the '' Academic American Encyclopedia'' beginning in 1980, Enc ...

. Founded on 16 March 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia edition (after the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

). It has articles, making it the -largest edition of Wikipedia by number of articles , behind the English Wikipedia and the mostly bot-generated Cebuano Wikipedia. Wikimedia list of Wikipedias and their statistics. Retrieved 5 January 2025.Jimmy Wales [Wikipedia-l
/nowiki>">ikipedia-l">Jimmy Wales [Wikipedia-l
/nowiki>Alternative language Wikipedias, 16 March 2001List of Wikipedias/Table
meta.wikimedia.org, Statistics It has the second-largest number of edits and of active users behind the English Wikipedia. On 7 November 2011, the German Wikipedia became the second edition of Wikipedia, after the English edition, to exceed 100 million page edits.

History

Early history

The German edition of Wikipedia was the first non-English Wikipedia subdomain, and was originally named . Its creation was announced by

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

on 16 March 2001. One of the earliest snapshots of the home page, dated 21 March 2001 (revision #9), can be seen at the Wayback Machine site. Aside from the home page, creation of articles in the German Wikipedia started as early as April 2001, apparently with translations of

Nupedia Nupedia was a multi-language online encyclopedia whose articles were written by volunteer contributors with relevant subject-matter expertise, reviewed by expert editors before publication, and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy ...

articles. After the Catalan Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia was the second non-English edition to contain articles. The earliest article still available on Wikipedia's site is apparently Polymerase-Kettenreaktion, dated May 2001.

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

English-language Wikipedia to do so. The millionth article was Ernie Wasson. In March 2014, 88% of the edition's articles had more than 512

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

s, 57% had more than 2

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage, digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo-, kilo'' as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000&nbs ...

s, and the average article size was 4,298 bytes. As of August 2024, the German Wikipedia has nearly 950,000 biographies and 350,000 disambiguation pages. As of January 2025, the German Wikipedia is the fourth most viewed language edition of Wikipedia, after the English, Japanese and

Russian Wikipedia The Russian Wikipedia () is the Russian language, Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of , it has :ru:Special:Statistics, articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of ar ...

s. The German edition tends to be selective in its coverage, often rejecting small stubs, articles about individual fictional characters and similar materials. Instead, there is usually one article about all the characters from a specific fictional setting, usually only when the setting is considered important enough (for example, all characters from ''Star Wars'' are listed in a single article). A dedicated article about a single fictional entity generally exists only if the character in question has a very significant impact on popular culture (for example,

Hercule Poirot Hercule Poirot (, ) is a fictional Belgian detective created by the English writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is Christie's most famous and longest-running character, appearing in 33 novels, two plays (''Black Coffee (play), Black Coffee'' and '' ...

). Andrew Lih wrote that German Wikipedia users believe that "having no article at all is better than a very bad article." Lih, p. 148. Therefore, growth on the German Wikipedia leveled before it did for the English Wikipedia, with accelerating growth in article count shifting to constant growth in mid-2006. The number of users signing up for accounts began to steadily decline in 2007 through 2008. Active editors on German Wikipedia over time

Active editors on German Wikipedia over time

The number of volunteer authors began to stagnate in 2007 and has decreased since then. In Germany, the number of regularly active authors fell by more than a third from the peak of 9,254 at the beginning of 2008 to 5,862 at the end of 2015. The January 2005 Google Zeitgeist announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched query on . In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

and

Valentine's Day Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a Christian martyrs, martyr named Saint Valentine, Valentine, and ...

. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first.

Lack of diversity, decline of authors and paid editing

On the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia, the German-language edition faced a number of problems. According to German media the most significant are a lack of diversity, a decline in active users and the influence of paid editing. While in 2006 there were 8,614 active authors in the German Wikipedia, in December 2018 there were only 5,262. Active Wikipedians only saw about 300 people as the "hard core" of the German Wikipedia who write articles. As the number of authors decreases, the influence of a few increases, researchers found. The scientist Taha Yasseri describes those authors as "super editors" who write an excessive number of Wikipedia articles and thus keep the community project alive. It is problematic when "super editors" dominate much-discussed articles, build up an elite circle among themselves and "defend" their area. German Wikipedia has been criticized for conflict-of-interest manipulations by paid editors who overwhelm a small number of administrators. With the withdrawal of users and an interpretation of the rules that is not always perceived as appropriate, German Wikipedia can hardly counter the influence of lobby groups and paid editing. the size of the German Wikipedia database is about 6 gigabytes.

Language and varieties of German

Separate Wikipedias have been created for several other varieties of German, including

Alemannic German Alemannic, or rarely Alemannish (''Alemannisch'', ), is a group of High German dialects. The name derives from the ancient Germanic tribal confederation known as the Alemanni ("all men"). Distribution Alemannic dialects are spoken by approxi ...

( :als:),

Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. The language is standardized and officiall ...

( :lb:), Pennsylvania German ( :pdc:), Ripuarian (including Kölsch; :ksh:),

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

( :yi:),

Low German Low German is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language variety, language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. "Low" ...

( :nds:) and Bavarian ( :bar:). These however, have less popularity than the German Wikipedia. There are also the

Dutch Low Saxon Dutch Low Saxon ( or ''Nederlaands Nedersaksies''; ) are Low Saxon dialects from the Low German language that are spoken in the northeastern Netherlands and are mostly, but not exclusively, written with local, unstandardised orthographies base ...

( :nds-nl:) and th
Mennonite Low German Wikipedia

Characteristics

The German Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of aspects. * Compared to the English Wikipedia, different criteria of encyclopedic notability are expressed through the judgments of the editors for deciding if an article about a topic should be allowed. The criteria for notability are more specific; each field has its own specific guidelines. * There are no

fair use Fair use is a Legal doctrine, doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to bal ...

provisions. Images and other media that are accepted on the English Wikipedia as fair use may not be suitable for the German Wikipedia. However, the

threshold of originality The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently originality, original to warrant copyright protection from tho ...

for works of applied art is set much higher, which often allows the use of company logos and similar icons, too. * The use of

scholarly The scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars and academics to make their claims about their subjects of expertise as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly pu ...

sources, in preference over journalistic and other types of sources, is more strongly encouraged. The German Verifiability (''Belege'') guideline classifies scholarly sources as inherently more reliable than non-academic sources; the latter's use is – in theory at least – only permitted if there is a lack of published academic sources covering a topic. * In September 2005, Erik Möller voiced concern that "long term page protection is used excessively on the German Wikipedia": on 14 September 2005, 253 pages had been in a fully protected state (only editable by admins) for more than two weeks. This was the highest total of any of the Wikipedias, with the second-highest being 166 pages in the Japanese Wikipedia and 138 in the English Wikipedia. , the German Wikipedia still had the highest percentage of semi-protected articles (articles not editable by unregistered or recently registered users) – 0.281% – among the ten largest Wikipedias, but in terms of the fraction of fully protected articles (0.0261%) it ranked fourth, behind the Japanese, Portuguese and English Wikipedias. * Handling of vandalism and other abuse is less structured: vandals are sometimes blocked on their first edit and without warning if their edit clearly shows lack of interest for actual encyclopaedic work. This is especially true if added text includes unlawful statements, such as

Holocaust denial Historical negationism, Denial of the Holocaust is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the genocide of Jews by the Nazi Party, Nazis is a fabrication or exaggeration. It includes making one or more of the following false claims: ...

.
Similarly, the Checkuser function is rarely used to confirm usage of multiple accounts by the same person, as suspicious accounts are often blocked on sight. * Articles on indisputably notable subjects may be deleted if they are deemed too short. While the requirements for minimal articles (called stubs) are equivalent, the German and the English Wikipedia differ greatly in the way they are put into practice. * On 28 December 2005, it was decided to eliminate the Category "stub" (and the corresponding template identifying articles as stubs) from the German Wikipedia. * Users do not have to create an account in order to start a new article. * Unlike the Cebuano, Polish, Dutch,

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, Swedish or many other Wikipedias, the German one does not contain large collections of bot-generated geographical stubs or similar articles. * The German Wikipedia version did not have an Arbitration Committee until May 2007. Currently, German Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee plays only a minor role in Wikipedia politics. * Categories are singular and are not differentiated for gender. Categories are usually introduced only for a minimum of ten entries and are not always subdivided even for larger numbers of items, so that current categories often describe only one property (e.g., nationality). Other categories are subdivided, but differently from in the English Wikipedia. For example, "chemists" are subdivided by century, not by nationality. University professors, on the other hand, will usually be categorized according to where they teach. * The equivalent to the English Wikipedia's

featured articles Feature article may refer to: * Feature story, a piece of non-fiction writing about news covering a single topic in detail * English Wikipedia#WikiProjects and assessment, English Wikipedia § Wikiproject and assessment, article quality on the Eng ...

and good articles are exzellente Artikel (''excellent articles'') and lesenswerte Artikel (''good articles''; literally: ''articles'' "''worth reading''"). * In 2005, there was a discussion and poll resulting in the decision to phase out the use of local image uploads and to exclusively use

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

for images and other media in the future. The attempt to implement this lasted for about a year and the German "Upload file" page displayed a large pointer to Commons in this time, but since December 2006, there is again a local image upload page without any pointer to Wikimedia Commons. This was prompted by the deletion of images on Commons that are acceptable according to German Wikipedia policies. * Starting in December 2004, German Wikipedians pioneered Persondata ("Personendaten"), a special format for meta data about persons (name, birth date and place, etc.), introduced in the English Wikipedia in December 2005. In the beginning, the main aim of this system was to aid the search features of the DVD edition of the German Wikipedia (see below). During its introduction in January 2005, ''Personendaten'' were added to some 30,000 biographical articles on the live Wikipedia, partly aided by a somewhat automatic tool. The template is currently deprecated and is no longer on any pages. * Like '' The Signpost'' in the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia also has its own internal newspaper, the ''

Kurier ''Kurier'' is a German-language daily newspaper based in Vienna, Austria. In 2023, it had an edition of approximately 103,000 copies. History and profile ''Kurier'' was founded as ''Wiener Kurier'' by the United States Forces in Austria (USFA) ...

''. However, the ''Kurier'' is laid out on a single page and is not issued weekly but is continually updated by interested Wikipedians, with older articles being archived. * In German "Wikipedia" is pronounced �vɪkiˈpeːdia

Reviewed versions

At Wikimania 2006,

announced that the German Wikipedia would institute a system of " stable article versions", also known as sighting, on a trial basis. The system went live in May 2008. Certain users, so-called "''active sighters''", are now able to mark article versions as "reviewed", indicating that the text contains no obvious vandalism. A note in the top right corner of the screen indicates to the reader whether or not the present version of an article has already been reviewed, and provides access to the most recent reviewed version or a more current, unreviewed version as needed. The German Wikipedia has two levels of ''sighting'' status which act like the

's pending changes protection: ''Passive sighter'' and ''Active sighter''. The former is able to make changes to articles go live immediately if the last edit is marked as sighted, while only the latter allows manually reviewing pending changes.

Miscellanea

Events

The first real-life meetup of Wikipedians took place in October 2003 in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. As a result of this meeting, regularly striking round tables (called "Wikipedia-Stammtisch") established themselves at various places in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The round tables have become an important aspect of collegial exchange within the German-speaking community. Each spring and autumn, the German Wikipedia organizes a writing contest, where a community-elected jury rates nominated articles. Prizes are sponsored by individual community members and companies. The first contest was held in October 2004 – the article

Kloster Lehnin Kloster Lehnin, or just Lehnin, is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the Germany, German state of Brandenburg. It lies about west-south-west of Potsdam. Overview Kloster Lehnin was established on 1 April 2002 by the merger of 14 villag ...

(Lehnin Abbey) was selected as the winner from 44 nominated articles. The second contest, held in March 2005, saw 52 contributions, and the third, in September 2005, 70. A trial to extend the contest to an international level met with limited success, with only the Dutch, English and Japanese Wikipedias participating. For the March 2006 writing contest, the 150 nominated articles were split into three sections: history and society (56 nominations), arts and humanities (36), and science (46). The article on the

Brown Bear The brown bear (''Ursus arctos'') is a large bear native to Eurasia and North America. Of the land carnivorans, it is rivaled in size only by its closest relative, the polar bear, which is much less variable in size and slightly bigger on av ...

(German: ''Braunbär'') won, and of the nominated 27 articles reached featured status a few weeks after the contest. In March 2007, the sixth contest was held, with the winner being the article on the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (German: ''Haager Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten''). German Wikipedians organized the first international Wikipedia conference, Wikimania 2005, in August 2005 in

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

. Some 300 people from over 50 countries attended the three-day conference. From 17 March to 15 April 2006, the Göttingen State and University Library held a special exhibition documenting the first five years of Wikipedia. In 2006, the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

hosted the first Wikipedia Academy. The academy was intended to familiarize the academic world with Wikimedia projects. In 2007, the second such meeting took place, organized in conjunction with the

Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur The Academy of Sciences and Literature () is a scientific academy in Mainz, Germany. It was established in 1949 on an initiative of Alfred Döblin. The academy's goal is to support science and literature, and in doing so to help preserve and pr ...

(''Academy of Science and Literature'') in

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

as part of the German Jahr der Geisteswissenschaften (''Year of the

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

''), which was decreed by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. A third meeting was organized on 20–21 June 2008 in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, during the Jahr der Mathematik (''Year of Mathematics''); the meeting was hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. German Wikipedians have since organised the Foto-Workshop meeting of photographers, with participants from 10 countries.

Contacts with ''Brockhaus''

In April 2004, a complete list of article titles from the leading German encyclopedia '' Brockhaus'' was uploaded to the German Wikipedia, in an apparent attempt to facilitate the creation of missing articles. A representative of ''Brockhaus'' asked for and obtained the deletion of what was believed to be a copyright infringement. As a result of the developing email conversation, a group of five Wikipedians visited the "new media" group of ''Brockhaus'' in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...

on 1 July 2004. The friendly meeting saw a lively discussion of the differing approaches to writing an encyclopedia; it became clear that ''Brockhaus'' had closely observed Wikipedia for quite some time.

Subsidies from the German government

In June 2007, a project on

renewable resource A renewable resource (also known as a flow resource) is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of t ...

s ( WikiProjekt Nachwachsende Rohstoffe) was initiated, the goal being to write and improve articles on the topic. The project was run for three years and was subsidized by the German Ministry of Agriculture with approximately €80,000 a year. It was organised and managed by the private company "nova-Institut GmbH". Nova GmbH and Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. funded the project with approximately €60,000 a year in addition, so the budget was approximately €420,000 in total. These funds were mainly used to organise the project and also to search for experts in the field who have not contributed to Wikipedia yet. Nova may also have paid expense allowances to authors.

Most-disputed articles

Donauturm Vienna top from S on 2013-06-14

According to a 2013

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

study, the article on

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

was the most disputed article on the German Wikipedia. The top ten most disputed articles then also included

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a scam, a Scientology as a business, business, a cult, or a religion. Hubbard initially develo ...

, and

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century ...

. One of the largest disputes about simple sentences, however, concerned the Donauturm in Vienna. Whilst the observation tower shares some architectural aspects with the Fernsehturm Stuttgart, it was never planned for TV broadcasting purposes. The German Wikipedia had a rather lengthy (about 600,000 characters) discussion about the suitable title and categories, inasmuch as numerous Austrian authors denied the description of Donauturm as a "TV tower".Spiegel 19.04.2010, INTERNET, Im Innern des Weltwissens
Mathieu von Rohr The '' Spiegel'' coverage of the issue cited a participant with "On good days, Wikipedia is better than any TV soap".

Reviews and research

In September 2004, the computer magazine '' c't'' compared the German Wikipedia with the Brockhaus Multimedia encyclopedia and the German edition of

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

's ''

Encarta Microsoft ''Encarta'' is a discontinued Digital data, digital multimedia encyclopedia and search engine published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available online via annual subscription, although ...

''. On a scale from 0 to 5, Wikipedia ranked first with a score of 3.4. A few weeks later, the weekly newspaper also compared content from Wikipedia with other reference works and found that Wikipedia only has to "share its lead position in the field of natural science." The DVD version of Spring 2005 received a rather negative review by Björn Hoffmann – product manager working for the Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus in July 2005. In November 2005 the OpenUsability project in cooperation with the Berlin-based Relevantive AG conducted a usability test of the German Wikipedia. The study focused on finding information and included a set of recommendations to change the MediaWiki interface. In February 2006, the open usability project led a second test which focused on the experience of new editors. The reports were published in English. A second test by ''c't'' in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias:

Bertelsmann The Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann (), is a German privately held company, private multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, ...

Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. With respect to concerns about the reliability of Wikipedia, it concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors". In December 2007, German magazine ''

Stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. O ...

'' published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of ''

Brockhaus Enzyklopädie The ( German for ''Brockhaus Encyclopedia'') is a German-language encyclopedia which until 2009 was published by the F. A. Brockhaus printing house. The first edition originated in the '' Conversations-Lexikon'' published by Renatus Gotthelf ...

''. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for ''Brockhaus'' with lower = better). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date; however, ''Brockhaus'' was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy. In 2015, a group of young historians reviewed the Massaker von Katyn article, which was deemed "excellent" by Wikipedia authors. They pointed out more than 130 factual errors and remarked that the article completely ignores new scientific literature.

Off-line publication

CD November 2004

In November 2004, Directmedia Publishing GmbH started distributing a CD-ROM containing a German Wikipedia snapshot. Some 40,000 CDs were sent to registered customers of directmedia. The price was 3

euros The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

per CD. The display and search software used for the project, ''Digibib'', had been developed by Directmedia Publishing for earlier publications; it ran on

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

(and later also on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

). The Wikipedia articles had to be converted to the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

format used by ''Digibib''. To produce the CD, a dump of the live Wikipedia had been copied to a separate server, where a team of 70 Wikipedians vetted the material, deleting nonsense articles and obvious copyright violations. Questionable articles were added to a special list, to be reviewed later. The final CD contained 132,000 articles and 1,200 images. The ISO image was distributed for free via

eMule eMule is a Free software, free peer-to-peer file sharing application for Microsoft Windows. Started in May 2002 as an alternative to eDonkey2000, eMule connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network. The distinguishing features of eM ...

and

BitTorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...

. In December, the CHIP computer magazine placed the Wikipedia data on the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

that it distributes with every issue. The Wikipedia materials are published under

GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights ...

while the ''Digibib'' software may only be copied for non-commercial use, except the Linux version which is GPLed.

CD/DVD April 2005

A new release of Wikipedia content was published by Directmedia on 6 April 2005. This package consisted of a 2.7 GB DVD and a separate bootable CDROM (running a version of Linux with Firefox). The CDROM did not contain all the data, but was included to accommodate users without DVD-drives. The DVD used Directmedia's ''Digibib'' software and article format; everything could be installed to a hard drive. In addition, the DVD contained an HTML tree, as well as Wikipedia articles formatted for use with PDAs (specifically, the Mobipocket and TomeRaider formats). The production of the DVD motivated the ''Personendaten'' project (see above). The vetting process was similar to the one for the CD described above and took place on a separate MediaWiki server. The process took about a week and involved 33 Wikipedians, communicating on

IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...

. To prevent duplication of work, editors would protect every article that they had reviewed; links to protected articles were shown in green. Lists of potential spammed or vandalized articles had been produced ahead of time with SQL queries. Unacceptable articles were simply deleted on the spot. While the XML articles for the earlier CD version had been produced from HTML, this time a script was used to convert Wiki markup directly to the ''Digibib'' format. The final DVD contained about 205,000 articles, with every article linking to a list of contributors. Directmedia sold 30,000 DVDs, at €9.90 each. This price included 16% taxes and a one-euro donation to ''Wikimedia Deutschland''; production costs were about €2. The DVD image can also be downloaded for free. Following the successful launch of the DVD, Directmedia donated high-resolution pictures of 10,000 public domain paintings to

(see related ''Signpost'' story).

DVD/book December 2005

The next edition of Wikipedia content was issued in December 2005 by the publisher Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, a sister company of Directmedia. A 139-page book explaining Wikipedia, its history and policies was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles and 100,000 images. The book with DVD is sold for €9.90; both are also available for free download. The vetting process for this version was different and did not involve human intervention. A " white list" of trusted Wikipedians was assembled, the last 10 days of every article's history were examined, and the last version edited by a white-listed Wikipedian was chosen for the DVD. If no such version existed, the last version older than 10 days was used. Articles nominated for cleanup or deletion were not used.

DVD December 2006/2007 and 2007/2008

The December 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 edition can be downloaded from .

Books

Wikipress series

The December 2005 book about Wikipedia was the first in a series titled ''Wikipress''. These books, published by Zenodot, consisted of a collection of Wikipedia articles about a common topic, selected and edited by so-called "Wikipeditors" who may receive compensation from Directmedia. The books were assembled on a separate server from those used for the regular German Wikipedia pages. Every ''Wikipress'' book was accompanied by an "edit card", a post card that readers could send in to edit the book's contents. ''Wikipress'' books about the

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered transport, human-powered or motorized bicycle, motor-assisted, bicycle pedal, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two bicycle wheel, wheels attached to a ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

, the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

, and

Hip hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

, amongst others, were released, and other books on topics as diverse as

Whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...

Conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

Manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

Astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...

, and the

Red Cross The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...

were in the works. Due to lack of interest, the project was ended after a few books.

100 volume Wikipedia

The publisher Zenodot announced in January 2006 that they intend to publish the complete German Wikipedia in print, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in October 2006, followed by two volumes each month thereafter, to end with Z in 2010. The project, code named WP 1.0, was to be supported by 25 editors employed by Zenodot as well as a scientific advisory board. Changes made to articles before publication would also be available for incorporation into the online Wikipedia. In March 2006, Zenodot organized a "community day" to meet with Wikipedians and discuss the project. Groups of Wikipedians had already begun to polish articles with titles Aa-Af in selected topics. In late March it was announced that the project was put on hold and no books would be published in 2006; the reason given was that community support was lacking.

Bertelsmann

On 22 April 2008, the publisher

announced that it planned to publish a one-volume encyclopedia in September using content from the German-language Wikipedia. The volume was planned to include abbreviated entries for the 50,000 most commonly used search terms of the prior two years. The book is priced at 19.95 euros, with one euro from every sale going to the German chapter of the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

. It was released on 15 September 2008 in hardcover, containing 992 pages and many illustrations.

Legal issues and controversies

Deletions

The German Wikipedia has been criticized for the deletion of articles because they seem "irrelevant" to those who deleted them, even though they seem expedient, meaningful, well written and extensive enough to other people. These discussions have received press coverage in computer magazines as well as in mainstream media.

Unauthorized uses

While everyone is free to use Wikipedia content, there are certain conditions, such as attribution, a copy of the license text and no non-free

derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of a first, previously created original work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent from ...

s (see

Creative Commons licenses A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

and

GNU Free Documentation License The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights ...

for details). In March 2005, the German news magazine ''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' published an article on the

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...

in its online edition; it was a copy of Wikipedia's article. The article was taken down soon after and replaced with an apology. In April 2005, the encyclopedia ''Brockhaus'' published an article about the new pope Josef Ratzinger in its online edition. Because of its close similarity to Wikipedia's article, suspicion arose right away that the ''Brockhaus'' article might have been plagiarism. The article was removed soon after but ''Brockhaus'' did not apologize or admit guilt (see '' The Signpost'' ).

In mid-November 2005, it was discovered that an anonymous user had entered hundreds of articles from older encyclopedias that had been published from the 1960s to the 1980s in

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

. The articles were mainly on topics in philosophy and related areas. The user had started in December 2003. A press release was issued and numerous editors started to remove the copyright protected materials. This was made difficult by the fact that the old encyclopedias were not online and not easily available from many West German libraries, and that the user had used numerous different IP addresses. The Directmedia DVD had to be updated.

Bertrand Meyer article hoax

On 28 December 2005, the article about

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

Bertrand Meyer Bertrand Meyer (; ; born 21 November 1950) is a French academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language and the concept of design by contract. Education and academic career Meyer ...

(creator of the Eiffel programming language) was edited by an anonymous user, falsely reporting that Meyer had died four days earlier. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker and the article was immediately corrected. Major news media in Germany and Switzerland picked up on the story. Meyer himself went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, concluding, "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."

Naming Tron

In 2006, Wikimedia Deutschland, the German chapter of the US

, was drawn into a legal dispute between the parents of the deceased German computer hacker Boris "Tron" Floricic and the Foundation. The parents did not wish Floricic's real name to be publicly mentioned, and in December 2005 they obtained a preliminary injunction in a

court against the American

, requiring removal of Floricic's name from Wikipedia. The name was not removed. On 19 January 2006 they obtained a second injunction, this time against Wikimedia Deutschland, prohibiting the address www.wikipedia.de (which is under control of Wikimedia Deutschland) to redirect to the German Wikipedia at de.wikipedia.org (which is controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation and hosts the actual encyclopedia) as long as Wikipedia mentioned Floricic's name. Wikimedia Deutschland complied and replaced the redirect with a note explaining the situation, but without mentioning the Tron case specifically. The German Wikipedia remained accessible through de.wikipedia.org during this time. One day later, Wikimedia Deutschland achieved a suspension of the injunction, and linked from the note at www.wikipedia.de to the German Wikipedia. On 9 February, the court invalidated the injunction, ruling that neither the rights of the deceased nor the rights of the parents were affected by publishing the name; this ruling was upheld on appeal, decided 12 May.

Lutz Heilmann controversy

In November 2008, Lutz Heilmann, a member of the German parliament, obtained a preliminary injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland e. V., forbidding the forwarding of www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org. According to Focus Online, Heilmann objected to claims that he had not completed his university degree, and that he had participated in a business venture involving

pornography Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...

. The report also suggests that the Wikipedia article had been repeatedly altered in line with his claims by an anonymous user operating within the Bundestag building, but Heilmann denied having been involved in an edit war. Wikimedia Germany displayed a page explaining the situation. Heilmann announced on 16 November that he would drop the legal proceedings against Wikimedia Deutschland, regretting that many uninvolved users of the encyclopedia had been affected.

Superprotect and Media Viewer controversy

In 2014, the

(WMF) "''superprotected''" a JavaScript file on German Wikipedia so that no German editors, not even administrators, were allowed to edit it. This was in response towards controversy surrounding the new Media Viewer (see '' The Signpost'' ). Many German editors left over this dispute. An open letter to the WMF was signed by almost 1,000

Wikimedians The Wikimedia movement is the global community of contributors to the #Projects, Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia. This community directly builds and administers these projects with the commitment of achieving this using open standards and ...

. In April 2015 Erik Möller left the WMF; the "''superprotect''" feature was disabled in November.

Reiss Engelhorn Museum

In 2015, the Reiss Engelhorn Museum sued the WMF and its German chapter Wikimedia Deutschland for alleged copyright violations of 17 public domain pictures.

Parodies and forks

In the millennium years, parodies of the German Wikipedia include ''Kamelopedia'', created in April 2004, Stupidedia, created in December 2004, and the German version of Uncyclopedia, created in August 2005.Chip.de
Brockhaus für Kamele - Wikipedia-Parodien
, 11 March 2008 Ulrich Fuchs, an active early contributor to the German Wikipedia, produced a fork known as ''Wikiweise'' in April 2005. It was ad-supported, used its own software (but a similar wiki markup), admitted only registered editors, and prominently displayed the real names of every article's major contributors. It has since gone offline.

Copyright law

On 21 March 2019, the German Wikipedia went offline to inform users about the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

's copyright law reformation, the

Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, formally the Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 9 ...

, which had been voted on in the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

on 27 March 2019. Opponents of the reformation were concerned about the restriction of

fundamental rights Fundamental rights are a group of rights that have been recognized by a high degree of protection from encroachment. These rights are specifically identified in a constitution, or have been found under due process of law. The United Nations' Susta ...

including a free press and the freedom of speech and arts. The blackouts' purpose was to both inform and protest this controversial decision.

References

External links

*
German Wikipedia mobile version
* Meta: German Wikipedia
Wikimedia Deutschland
*Publication efforts on CD/DVD : :* General description of CD :* General description of first DVD :* General description of second DVD and WikiPress *WP 1.0, publication in book form :
WP 1.0
the project's home page ''(now redirects to zeno.org)'' :* WP 1.0, discussion of the project in the German Wikipedia * Geschichte, a personal history of the German Wikipedia, written by one of the core Wikipedians * Report from the German Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost, 6 November 2006 {{Wikipedias in Germanic languages Wikipedias in Germanic languages

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