The Swedish Wikipedia () is the Swedish-language 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 ...

, started in 2001. A

free content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content for which there are very minimal copyright and other legal limi ...

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 ...

, it is the largest

reference work A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...

in Swedish history, while consistently ranked as the most visited or one of the most visited Swedish-language websites. With articles in a ''depth'' of , it is the largest Wikipedia by article count. It counts active

users Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...

, including one year-elected

administrators Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...

. Editing collaborations with other interintelligable Scandinavian languages editions is organised by the ''Skanwiki'' project. In 2014, it topped relatively as the second largest after English Wikipedia. As with some other editions, the majority of articles are generated by

bots The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, ...

, nearly 68% by 2023. Since its beginning in the early 2000s, the content quality assessments have generally gradually improved along with the rest of Wikipedia. Shortly after the creation of 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 ...

on 15 January 2001, more language editions were discussed. The decision to create the Swedish Wikipedia is estimated to around April 2001, then as the 4th language. The Swedish Wikipedia was started on 21 May 2001 as the 13th Wikipedia edition. Instrumental Swedish co-founders were Linus Tolke, who partook in the prototype launch, and Dan Koehl, first

system operator A sysop (, an abbreviation of system operator) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system (BBS) or an online service virtual community.Jansen, E. & James, V. (2002). NetLingo: the Internet dictionary. Ne ...

who pioneered the contemporary installment, corpus, and community. The ''" Thing"'', Wikipedia's first akin to an arbitration committee, effectively made the Swedish Wikipedia its first independent franchise. The Swedish Wikipedia is owned by 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 ...

, an American

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, along with the other language editions. It is supported locally by the national chapter Wikimedia Sweden, founded in 2007 by among others Lennart Guldbrandsson, and Lars Aronsson.

History

in English was founded 15 January 2001 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 ...

and

Larry Sanger Lawrence Mark Sanger (; born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined Wikipedia's name, and provided initial drafts for many of its early guidelines, ...

. Soon, more language versions were discussed, including with foreign language speakers. Jimmy Wales installed the Swedish Wikipedia on ''sv.wikipedia.com'' 21 May 2001 as Wikipedia's 4th language version. All of Wikipedia was still in its early stage in terms of

web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, ...

, translations, as well as establishing the

community. Jimmy Wales delegated the creation to two Swedes: initially in 2001 t
Linus Tolke
a Swedish

systems architect The systems architect is an information and communications technology professional. Systems architects define the architecture of a computerized system (i.e., a system composed of software and hardware) in order to fulfill certain requirements ...

tasked with translating the prototype software, and subsequently in 2002 to Dan Koehl, previously creator of one of the first

s in 1995, who concluded the translations and whom Jimmy Wales appointed as the Swedish Wikipedia's first

. The prototype "Phase I" UseModWiki software for ''sv.wikipedia.com'' was translated in May 2001 by Linus Tolke and the conclusive "Phase III"

MediaWiki MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,mailarchive:wikipedia-l/2001-August/000382.html, Magnus Manske's announc ...

for ''sv.wikipedia.org'' in November 2002 by Dan Koehl. The "Phase III"

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

-engined MediaWiki Swedish interface premiered on ''sv.wikipedia.org'' 1 December 2002, where the Swedish Wikipedia has remained ever since, becoming the foundation for subsequent, contemporary versions. After initiating prototype translations and having started a few articles, Linus Tolke left, while Dan Koehl translated the concluding software foundation and went on to pioneer the fundamental corpus of articles and categorisation. Besides editing, Dan Koehl set up the early organisational, maintenance and community functions, such as the Swedish Wikipedia:Meta mainsite, '' Bybrunnen'' user forums, sabotage deterrence, and called to the first ''Tinget''. This wiki " thing" of 24 November 2002 became the first instance akin to an arbitration committee on any Wikipedia language version, effectively making the Swedish Wikipedia the first decentralised franchise while the rest of Wikipedia was still under Jimmy Wales' direct personal supervision. SvWikipedia

In the early 2000s, the Swedish Wikipedia's prototype instantiation functioned as a small, foreign-franchised competitor to the independently Swedish UseModWiki Susning.nu created 1 October 2001 by Lars Aronsson, inspired by the

. However, the founder's introduction of

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

on the website from 20 November 2002, led its contributors to gradually abandon it for the Swedish Wikipedia. Although Susning.nu became the world's second largest

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

28 May 2003, in April 2004, its editing features were closed down to all but a handful of users, which further increased the flow to the Swedish Wikipedia. On 14 January 2005, Wikipedia's article count surpassed that of Susning.nu. Susning.nu was shut down entirely in August 2009. In March 2006, the Swedish newspaper ''

Svenska Dagbladet (, "The Swedish Daily News"), abbreviated SvD, is a daily List of Swedish newspapers, newspaper published in Stockholm, Sweden. History and profile The first issue of appeared on 18 December 1884. During the beginning of the 1900s the pap ...

'' published a comparative evaluation of the Swedish Wikipedia, Susning.nu and the online version of

Nationalencyklopedin (; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary Swedish-language encyclopedia with several hundred thousand articles. It is available both online and via a printed version. History The project was ...

. The evaluation was done by giving a selection of articles to independent subject matter experts for grading. While Nationalencyklopedin came out on top with respect to factuality and neutrality, the Swedish Wikipedia received a good overall grade and came out on top with respect to being up to date and having a broad coverage, also including popular culture subjects.

Wikimedia Sweden

Since the beginning, the Swedish Wikipedia like the other language editions is owned by the

, an American

, located in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It is supported locally by the national chapter Wikimedia Sweden, since 2007. Wikimedia Sweden was founded by among others Lennart Guldbrandsson, and Lars Aronsson, the latter from the former Susning.nu after it declined. Lennart Guldbrandsson was appointed its first president in the first meeting at the Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

Massive deletions in robot-made articles

On 27 September 2012 it reached 500,000 articles. On 15 June 2013 it reached 1,000,000 articles and rose from 8th to 5th place. This is in large part due to a community project where

bot Bot or BOT may refer to: Sciences Computing and technology * Chatbot, a computer program that converses in natural language * Internet bot, a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet **Spambot, an internet bot ...

s were used in producing articles for all existing species of plants and animals. When finished, this project alone created more than a million articles, most short and sourced through available online databases on the subject. In 2014 about half of its articles were created by a single bot. During 2015 and 2016, Lsjbot wrote more than 1 million geographical articles, increasing the number of articles to nearly 3.8 million by November 2016 when it stopped. While this practice allowed the Swedish Wikipedia to become the second largest worldwide, quality suffered from a lack of sourcing, shallow articles, duplicates, and outdated information. Facing these problems, tide turned against the bots and article deletions started outpacing new creations. From the 2016 maximum of 3.8 million articles, the count to below 3.3 million articles in March 2021, and as of December 2021, the count dropped below 2.8 million articles.

Gallery

Wikipedia-logo-v2-sv-500k.svg, Swedish Wikipedia's 500,000 article logo (September 2012) Wikipedia-logo-vLLen-sv-1M.svg, Swedish Wikipedia's 1,000,000 article logo (June 2013) Wikipedia-logo-v2-se-2-million.svg, Swedish Wikipedia's 2,000,000 article logo (September 2015) Wikipedia-logo-v2-se-3-million.svg, Swedish Wikipedia's 3,000,000 article logo (April 2016)

References

External links

*
Swedish Wikipedia
*
Swedish Wikipedia mobile version
{{Wikipedias in Germanic languages

Wikipedias in Germanic languages