The Kazakh Wikipedia () is the Kazakh language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, founded on 3 June 2002.
History
The Kazakh Wikipedia was launched in June 2002. It experienced exceptionally rapid growth in 2011, expanding from 7,000 articles to over 100,000 in less than a year, largely as a result of the incorporation of material from the Kazakh Encyclopedia, which had been released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Licence (CC BY-SA). This rapid expansion was initiated by the non-profit Wikibilim Foundation. The Samruk Kazyna Foundation, Kazakhstan's sovereign oil wealth fund, sponsored the project, allocating 30 million tenge in 2011 for paid editing, digitisation, and the transfer of authors' rights. At the Wikimania 2011 conference, the president of WikiBilim, Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, was awarded the Wikipedian of the Year award by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for his work on the expansion of the Kazakh Wikipedia.
In April 2012, Tengrinews.kz reported that 'in 2011, the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund allocated a total of $204,000 to develop the Kazakh-language Wikipedia. This year, another $136,000 will be earmarked', citing the fund's press service. Wales expressed his gratitude to the Kazakh government for its support of the Kazakh Wikipedia at Wikimania 2012.
The Kazakh Wikipedia was previously viewable in three different scripts: Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic. In late 2023, the MediaWiki language conversion for Kazakh was removed. On 26 October 2011, it passed the 100,000-article threshold, and by early 2013 it contained just over 200,000 articles.
On 2–3 September 2023, the first Kazakh Wiki Conference was held at the Eurasian National University in Astana.
Features The Kazakh Wikipedia used ZhengZhu's character mapping programme to convert between Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic scripts, while its Latin script utilised Kazinform's own romanisation system.
The character conversion system was removed from the Kazakh Wikipedia in 2023.
Controversies Questions have been asked about WikiBilim's closeness to the Kazakh government, given that WikiBilim president Rauan Kenzhekhanuly had a long prior career as a Kazakh government official, and the government has been widely criticised for its crackdown on free speech. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales's friendship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who advises the Kazakh government, has also come under scrutiny, as has the neutrality of the Kazakh Wikipedia's content, much of which is a reproduction of the state-published national encyclopedia.
In 2015, Jimmy Wales stated on Reddit that at the time he gave Kenzhekhanuly the inaugural Wikipedian of the Year award, he had been unaware of Kenzhekhanuly's prior positions as first secretary at Kazakhstan's embassy in Moscow and as an adviser to the governor of Kazakhstan's Mangystau region; by 2015, Kenzhekhanuly had gone on to become deputy governor of Kazakhstan's Kyzylorda region and founding director of the Eurasian Council on Foreign Affairs, a think-tank funded by the Kazakh government.
Statistics As of , the Kazakh Wikipedia has about articles. The overwhelming majority of its readers originate from Kazakhstan.
As of April 2013, the Kazakh Wikipedia's number of articles accounted for approximately 14% of all articles written in a Turkic language, making it the second largest edition in the family after Turkish, which accounted for 28% of all Turkic articles.
Books contributed to the Kazakh Wikipedia
Kazakhstan: National Encyclopedia / Editor-in-Chief Ä. Nysanbaev – Almaty: Editorial Board of the Kazakh Encyclopedia, 1998. – 50,000 articles. Kazakh Culture: An Encyclopedic Reference. Almaty: "Aruna Ltd.", 2005. Kazakh Television: An Encyclopedia. Almaty: "QazAqparat", 2009. Vol. 1. The Traditional System of Kazakh Ethnographic Categories, Concepts and Names: An Encyclopedia. Almaty: DPS, 2011. Kazakhstan – A Land of Athletes: An Encyclopedic Reference. Almaty: "Sözdik-Slovar". Dictionary of Finance and Economics. Almaty: Institute of Economics of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan; "Ziyatker" LLP, 2007. Islam: An Encyclopedic Reference. Almaty: "Aruna Ltd.", 2010. Taraz Encyclopedia. Economic and Social Geography of Kazakhstan: A Textbook for the 9th Grade of General Education Schools / V. Usikov, T. Kazanovskaya, A. Usikova, G. Zöbenova. 2nd ed., revised. Almaty: Atamūra, 2009. Russian–Kazakh Explanatory Dictionary: Science Studies. General editorship supervised by E. Aryn, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor – Pavlodar: ECO SF, 2006. Tūrsyn Q., Nūsqabaiūly J. Dictionary of Television: A Reference for Television Journalists: A Study Guide. Almaty: "Bilim", 2001. Sectoral Scientific Explanatory Dictionary of Kazakh Terminology: Water Management. Almaty: Mektep, 2002. Encyclopedia of Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Sectoral Scientific Explanatory Dictionary of Kazakh Terminology: Geology / Scientific supervisor of the series of explanatory dictionaries A. Q. Qūsaiynov, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor, Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Almaty: "Mektep" JSC, 2003. , Russian–Kazakh Explanatory Dictionary of Pulmonology Terms. Almaty: Ana tili, 1996. Qanysh Satbaev: An Encyclopedia / Editor-in-Chief B.Ö. Jaqyp – Almaty: Kazakh Encyclopedia, 2011. Dictionary of Geological Terms. N. Seitov, A. Abdulin. Almaty: Qazaqstan, 1996. Mukhtar Auezov: An Encyclopedia. Almaty: Atamūra, 2011. Five Hundred and Five Words. Almaty: Rauan, 1994. Russian–Kazakh Explanatory Dictionary of Dentistry Terms. Almaty: Qazaqstan, 1991. Russian–Latin–Kazakh Explanatory Dictionary of Pathological Anatomy Terms. Aqtöbe. Explanatory Dictionary of Biomorphology Terms. Almaty: "Sözdik-Slovar", 2009. Sectoral Scientific Explanatory Dictionary of Kazakh Terminology: Informatics and Computer Technology / Scientific supervisor A. Q. Qūsaiynov – Almaty: "Mektep" JSC, 2002. Kazakh Language: An Encyclopedia. Almaty: Ministry of Education, Culture and Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan; Kazakhstan Development Institute, 1998. Russian–Kazakh Explanatory Dictionary of Petroleum and Gas Geology Terms. General editorship by T. N. Jūmağaliev and B. M. Kuandyqov, Honoured Oil Geologists of Kazakhstan, 2000. Kazakh–Russian Dictionary of Banking Terms and Concepts / Ğ. Seitqasymov, B. Beisenğaliev, J. Bekbolatūly – Almaty: Ekonomika, 2006. Rakhimbekova, Z. M. English–Russian–Kazakh Explanatory Dictionary of Materials Mechanics Terms. Russian–Kazakh General Explanatory Dictionary: Transport / Professor E. Aryn – Pavlodar: "ECO" SF, 2006. Russian–Kazakh Explanatory Geographical Dictionary. Edited by Academician of the Kazakh SSR Academy of Sciences, Prof. S. K. Kenesbaev and Candidate of Philological Sciences A. A. Abdrakhmanov. Alma-Ata: "Nauka", 1966. (Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, Institute...) Shañyraq: A Household Encyclopedia. Almaty: Editorial Board of the Kazakh Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990. Qarağandy: Encyclopedia of Qarağandy Region. Almaty: Atamūra, 2006.
Gallery
References
Sources Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Hyperion, New York City. 2009. First Edition. (alkaline paper).
External links
Kazakh Wikipedia Kazakh Wikipedia mobile version WikiBilim: About Foundation Wikimedia Community of Kazakh language User Group 27 March 2020