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Japanese Wikipedia

Wikipedia Japanese edition is a Japanese edition of a free encyclopedia, the wikipedia. As of February 28, 2003, it covers more than 3000 pages.

Table of contents

1 History

1.1 Japanization
1.2 Exposition at Wired News Japanese edition[?]
1.3 1000 pages milestone
1.4 Slashdotted

History It seems that wikipedia started being multilingual in May 2001. According to the announcement [1] (/wiki/Wikipedia:Announcements_May_2001), May, about 12 non-English editions have been created, including a Japanese one. The original site address was http://ja.wikipedia.com and all pages were written in a transcript or Romaji due to a software issue.

The first article was named "Nihongo No Funimekusu" (though incorrect, it was probably intented to mean onso taikei (phonemics.) and was written in entirely romaji. RoseParks, who is one of the initial members of wikipedia, posted it in late March to early April. It seems the site had been in the test stage.

Until late december in that year, there were only two pages.

Japanization

In September 1, 2002, the software (called wikipedia software) hosting wikipedia was changed into so-called Phase III[?] and articles in the old version were moved into the new one. From that articles can be traced. As old articles show, there were articles posted by several non-native-Japanese speakers. The major coverage in that time includes Japanese culture, Language, Geography, and programming related stuff.

In the same month, the translation into Japanese of the interface of wikipedia sofware began. Until the end of year, pages about how to edit or about GNU FDL were translated.

In the middle of December, the number of registered user was about 10 and the number of articles was around 10.

Exposition at Wired News Japanese edition[?]

In January 31, 2003, a Japanese online media, Wired News Japanese edition[?] covers wikipedia. It seems that it was the first time that wikipedia is introduced in Japanese media.

After that, the number of participants started to increase considerably and many pages about the wikipedia project were translated or created.

There have been a handful of articles about cartoonists, Japanese prefectures as well as stock trades.

1000 pages milestone

In February 12, 2003, Wikipedia Japanese edition reached 1000 pages milestone. Interestingly, the English edition reached the same milestone in the same day two years before.

Slashdotted

Given that accomplishment, Slashdot Japan[?] posted a story about the Wikipedia, Japanese edition. Several days after that, the number of participants doubled and it attested the slashdot effect though smaller than that in the United States.

Because of this exposition, a variety of articles started to appear. Such include Physics, Biology, Information technology, Literature, Music, Game, Manga, Celebrity.