간체자
Originally, there were virtually two Chinese Wikipedias under the names of "zh" (or "zh-cn") and "zh-tw". Generally, users from regions that used Traditional Chinese characters (such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau) wrote and edited articles using Traditional Chinese characters whereas those from regions that used Simplified Chinese characters (such as mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia) wrote using Simplified Chinese characters. Many articles had two uncoordinated versions; for example, there was both a Traditional (法國) and Simplified () article on France. Further exacerbating the problem were differences in vocabulary (particularly nouns) and writing systems, between mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For example, a computer printer is called in mainland China, but in Taiwan.