You're reading: Ukrainian Wikipedia first in world in terms of growth among top 40 sites

The Ukrainian language Wikipedia has become first in the world in terms of growth in popularity among the online encyclopedia’s top 40 language sites.

From March 2012 to March 2013, the number of overall users of the online
crowd-sourced Ukrainian language encyclopedia jumped by 76 percent – to 85.3 million views last
month. Also this March, the site saw 4,416 new articles published, or about 143
per day.

The integrity and quality of Wikipedia articles is measured by the
number of edits made by the site’s editors.

According to Andriy Makukha, a
Wikimedia Ukraine board member, on average said there are 20.3 edits per
article published on the Ukrainian language Wikipedia site. And that number
continues to grow, he told the Kyiv Post.

There were about 2,250 people last month who made at
least one edit to articles on the Ukrainian Wikipedia.

Makukha believes the main
reason for its rapid rise in popularity is improving Internet access of
Ukrainians.

“First of all, Ukrainians started to use wireless Internet on tablet
computers and smartphones widely.
For example, my friends even from small cities of Ukraine started to check in
on Foursquare regularly,” he said. “Therefore, people access Wikipedia more
easily and frequently now.”

“Secondly, Ukrainian villagers get much better Internet access these days.
And people in Ukrainian villages use Ukrainian language as their primary
(language),” he added.

The improving quality and size of Ukrainian Wikipedia is another reason for
its growth in popularity. The necessity of using Russian Wikipedia for
Ukrainians also is gradually diminishing. 

In terms of the number of articles published, the Ukrainian Wikipedia
site ranks 14th in the world, with more than 438,000 total articles. However,
at the rate its popularity is rising, it could soon overtake the Vietnamese
Wikipedia, which currently occupies the 13th position. The Southeast Asian country’s
site saw an improvement of 52 percent in popularity over the past year, but
March visits to the site fell dramatically.

Besides the Ukrainian and Vietnamese Wikipedia sites, others saw serious
growth in the last year. The Arabic language site saw a 64 percent increase in
popularity, while  the Russian site saw a
48 percent rise and the Turkish site rose by 47 percent.

Kyiv Post staff writer
Christopher J. Miller can be reached at
[email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.