Thai Wikipedia

Infobox website
name = Thai Wikipedia



caption =
url = http://th.wikipedia.org/
commercial = No
location = Miami, Florida
type = Internet encyclopedia project
language = Thai
registration = Optional
owner = Wikimedia Foundation
author = Thai wiki community

The Thai Wikipedia ( _th. วิกิพีเดียภาษาไทย) is the edition of Wikipedia in the Thai language started in December 2003. As of December 6, 2007, it has more than 30,000 articles with 32,000 registered users. As of October 2007, Wikipedia (all languages combined) was ranked 26^th in Alexa "Top Sites Thailand" [ [http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=TH&ts_mode=country&lang=none Top sites Thailand] from Alexa] .

On January 31, 2006 Thai Wikipedia was first recognized along with English Wikipedia by a press coverage. In 2007 there is a thesis under the name "Thai Wikipedia and Communicating Knowledge to the Public" by a graduate student from Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University.

Thai Wikipedia was also mentioned during a public forum in 2005-2006 Thai political crisis telling that Thai people should read all facts about Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister. [ [http://www.managerradio.com/radio/DetailRadio.asp?program_no=1024&mmsID=1024/1024-1133.wma&program_ID=4872 audio file] on 26 July 2006]

Thai Wikipedia is the second online encyclopedia in Thai language after Thai Junior Encyclopedia Project under patronage of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Characteristics

The Thai Wikipedia is different from other Wikipedias in a number of ways:

* An edit is kept only if it is legal under both Thai and United States laws, to account for the fact that the vast majority of contributors live in Thailand especially Lèse majesté.
* The first line of each paragraph is indented in the same way as Thai writing style.

Timeline

* 25 December 2003: The Thai main page created after first created in 16 March 2003 with the word "Describe the new page here."
* 27 December 2003: The first article created containing only one word "ดาราศาสตร์" (astronomy) and 32 interwiki links. After that it became a stub in 31 May.
* 28 February 2004: The real first article created, Computer Science.
* 21 April 2004: 100 articles, Time & Time Travel (a fiction).
* 17 April 2004: 500 articles, Grevillea
* 10 March 2005: 1,000 articles, Harry Potter.
* 1 May 2005: The first featured article, Fractal.
* September 2005: More than 30 university students registered and wrote articles as their homework.
* 28 October 2005: 5,000 articles, Bao Qingtian.
* 31 January 2006: Press coverage in onopen.com
* March 2006: Mass contenting adding of the year articles from 543 BC (Buddhist Era 1) to about 1800 semi-manually by using . About 2,500 are added.
* 14 March 2006: 10,000 articles, Pennsylvania State University
* 16 March 2007: 20,000 articles, Aries Mu

See also

* Wikipedia

References

* Statistics page of Thai Wikipedia
* [http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaTH.htm Usage statistics from Wikimedia]

External links

* Thai Wikipedia th icon
* [http://www.onopen.com/2006/02/232 Press coverage in onopen.com] th icon