Urdu Wikipedia

Urdu Wikipedia, started in January 2004, is the Standard Urdu edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-content encyclopedia. As of , it has articles, registered users and files, and it is the largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, and ranks 20th in terms of depth among Wikipedias with over 150,000 articles. There were 5.9 million page views in June 2023.
History
Wikipedia started being multilingual in May 2001. At first, Urdu Wikipedia faced technical problems with the Urdu script font, but now this matter is mostly settled; some unsolved areas remain. Urdu is written in Perso-Arabic script, a right-to-left writing system. As a result, users sometimes need to configure their operating systems and web browsers accordingly.
Currently Urdu Wikipedia uses "Urdu Naskh Asiatype" font, which was introduced and is freely distributed by BBC at BBC Urdu Service website. The font is primarily used for article bodies and headings. Urdu variation of Times New Roman is used for navigation links. Both of these fonts are variations of Naskh style. Some Pakistani variations of complex Nasta'liq script are also supported only as a secondary choice in class definitions of CSS, i.e. if default font is not found on client system, then Nasta'liq script is used. The translation of the Wikipedia interface and project information pages into Urdu is still in progress. Some pages about how to edit have been translated.
In January 2016, Urdu Wikipedia ranked first in the number of articles as compared to other Indian languages. In India, Urdu Wikipedia activities are hosted and promoted by the Dehalvi Wikimedia User Group. The group hosted its first educational program in Deoband in February 2020. Urdu is the second most popular Wikipedia in Pakistan, behind English. It receives approximately 2 million pageviews in the country, and around 610 thousand in India, as of November 2022.
Milestones timeline
Users and editors
Urdu Wikipedia is having approximately 320 contributors per month. Most users are from Pakistan, although there are many users from India as well. There also notable users from Saudi Arabia. Much like the rest of Indic languages, Urdu suffers from an acute shortage of contributors due to various reasons. Ahmed Nisar, a contributor of Urdu Wikipedia from India, claims that some of the reasons is the preference of the people for English language media, as well the lack of Urdu speaking experts which are well versed in various aspects of the current affairs.
Differences from Hindi Wikipedia
Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi are considered to be standardized registers of the Hindostani language. The difference between Urdu and Hindi Wikipedia in-terms of the content's language is majorly in their writing systems and the literary language from which each of the variety derive their non-colloquial vocabulary from. Urdu is written in Nastaliq-style of the Perso-Arabic alphabet and derives significant amount of formal vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and to a lesser extent from Turkish. Hindi is written in the standardized-Devanagari alphabet of the Nagari script and derives significant amount of formal vocabulary from Sanskrit majorly in tatsama form.
See also
History of Wikipedia
Reliability of Wikipedia
Wikipedia community
References
External links
Official handle of Urdu Wikipedia on Facebook
Official handle of Urdu Wikipedia on Twitter
Official handle of Urdu Wikipedia on Instagram
Urdu Wikipedia
Urdu Wikipedia mobile version
Wikipedias by language
Internet properties established in 2004
Languages on Wikipedia
Urdu-language websites
Urdu-language encyclopedias
American online encyclopedias
Wikipedia in India