The Telugu Wikipedia () was begun on 10 December 2003 by Venna Nagarjuna, who is known for Padma (a system for transforming text in

Indic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

among open-source and proprietary formats). On 26 September 2024, its article count reached the 100k milestone and it is the fifth largest Indian-language Wikipedia by article count, after

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

, and

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

Background

In 2005, the Telugu Wikipedia received a boost when Chava Kiran, Makineni Pradeep, Vyzasatya, Veeven and Chaduvari joined; Chaduvari later spearheaded the Telugu campaign. Satya planned and executed a project to add stubs for districts,

mandals A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluk, or taluka () is a local unit of administrative division in India and Pakistan. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administrative ce ...

and Telugu films with the aid of a bot. The stubs were expanded into articles with the help of volunteers from the Telugu online and blogging communities. Chaduvari translated and drafted many of the initial policies, Pradeep wrote scripts automating mundane tasks and the article count increased to 6,000.

History

A symbiotic relationship between the early Telugu blogger-Wikipedians with the larger Telugu online community was a big boon for the Telugu Wikipedia. Its initial momentum was furthered by committed members such as Kasubabu, Dr Rajasekhar, Chandrakantha Rao, Ravichandra, Veeven, Kasyap, Rahamtulla and Sujatha. Wikipedia was promoted at book fairs in

Hyderabad Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...

and

Vijayawada Vijayawada ( ), formerly known by its colonial name Bezawada, is the second largest city and a major commercial hub in the Andhra Pradesh state of India. The city forms an integral part of the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region and is situated on th ...

and supported by the e-Telugu organization and the local-language media, sparking interest from the general public. Telugu Wiktionary has had a major contribution from Sujatha.

Charles Phillip Brown Charles Philip Brown (10 November 1798 – 12 December 1884) was a British official of the East India Company. He worked in what is now Andhra Pradesh, and became an important scholarly figure in Telugu language literature. Background Telugu li ...

's English-Telugu dictionary was added to the Telugu Wiktionary in its entirety with a bot script written by Telugu Wikipedian Makineni Pradeep. Telugu wiki-academies were established in 2009 to heighten awareness at engineering and MCA colleges in small towns in

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (ISO 15919, ISO: , , AP) is a States and union territories of India, state on the East Coast of India, east coast of southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, seventh-largest state and th ...

. '' Tewiki Vartha'', an e-zine, was created in 2010 to share behind-the-scenes stories of Telugu Wikipedia pages and editors. In 2012, another effort was made to revitalize the Telugu Wikipedia. The community organized a two-day celebration in

on 10–11 April 2013, coinciding with the Telugu New Year. The Telugu Wikipedia is now available offline in

Kiwix Kiwix is a free and open-source offline web browser created by Emmanuel Engelhart and Renaud Gaudin in 2007. It was first launched to allow offline access to Wikipedia, but has since expanded to include other projects from the Wikimedia Foundati ...

HMTV HMTV is an Indian 24-hour Telugu news channel launched on 12 February 2009. The channel is operated by Hyderabad Media Pvt. Ltd, which also runs the English newspaper ''The Hans India''. HMTV is a part of Kapil Group, promoted by K. Vaman Rao. ...

broadcast a documentary about Wikipedia celebrations, and Rajasekhar, Rahimanuddin, Malladi and Vishnuvardhan participated in a phone-in program about the encyclopedia. In October 2013, the Telugu Wikipedia had 2.1 million page views. The greatest number of page views was 4.5 million, recorded in February 2010. Telugu Wikipedian Pranayraj Vangari wrote 365 Wiki Articles in 365 days under ''WikiVastaram'' concept. He started on 8 September 2016, writing a wiki article every day, he completed ''WikiVastaram'' on 7 September 2017. On this occasion,

Vice President of India The vice president of India (ISO: ) is the deputy to the head of state of the Republic of India, i.e. the president of India. The office of vice president is the second-highest constitutional office after the president and ranks second in t ...

Venkaiah Naidu Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu (born 1 July 1949) is an Indian politician who served as the vice president of India from 2017 to 2022. He has also served as the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, minister of Housing and Urban Pover ...

congratulated Pranayraj through his Twitter Account. Telangana State Minister K.T.R along with congratulating him through his Twitter and Facebook Account, felicitated Pranayraj in his chamber at

Pragathi Bhavan The Praja Bhavan, officially known as Jyotirao Phule Praja Bhavan and formerly known as Pragathi Bhavan is the official residence and principal workplace of the Chief Minister of Telangana. It is located at Greenlands Road, Punjagutta, Hyderab ...

. Continuing that trend, he completed 1000 articles in 1000 days as of 4 June 2019.

Fonts and input methods

Any Unicode Telugu font input system may be used for the Telugu Wikipedia. Although some editors use the

InScript keyboard InScript (short for Indic Script) is the decreed standard keyboard layout for Indian scripts using a standard 104- or 105-key layout. This keyboard layout was standardised by the Government of India for inputting text in languages of India writ ...

, many use Google phonetic transliteration or the Telugu Wikipedia's Universal Language Selector. The latter offers phonetic and InScript keyboards.

References

External links

Wikimedia India Community Newsletter
{{Wikipedias in Dravidian languages Wikipedias in Dravidian languages

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 ...

Indian encyclopedias Wikipedia in India Articles containing video clips