Wikipe-tan

Wikipe-tan is an open-source character created as the unofficial mascot of Wikipedia, used by several WikiProjects including WikiProject Anime and manga and WikiProject Holidays' Christmas task force; she was also the mascot for Admin coaching, the Counter-Vandalism Unit, and a contender for an official Wikipedia mascot. Wikipe-tan is often treated as the de-facto mascot of the Wikipedia community. In 2007, Jimbo Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, said that Wikipe-tan was a community mascot, although he has stated that he personally dislikes the character.
== License ==
Wikipe-tan is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License as well as the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. These are shortened as GFDL / CC-BY-SA. In short, these licenses mean that anybody can use the character, as long as they give appropriate credit to the creator and all derivative work uses the same licensing.
== History ==
In 2006, the mascot of WikiProject Anime and manga was deleted due to copyright issues. This prompted the user Kasuga to create Wikipe-tan as an alternative that could be used, and entered her into a competition for Wikipedia's mascot. She was inspired by the "OS-tan" internet meme. Kasuga said that when designing Wikipe-tan (and later her sisters, Commons-tan and Quote-tan), he kept in mind the advice of Fujiko F Fujio that characters should have recognizable silhouettes, as well as the advice of Scott McCloud that golden-age comic artists used symbolic color charts. Wikipe-tan lost the competition to the character "Wikipede", but is still considered much more recognizable to this day.
== Related characters ==
Wikipe-tan has two sisters, named Commons-tan and Quote-tan. Commons-tan was created as the mascot for Wikimedia Commons, and Quote-tan was created as the mascot for WikiQuote. The character that received more votes than Wikipe-tan in the inconclusive contest for Wikipedia mascot was Wikipede, but he has faded into obscurity and is not commonly seen nowadays.
== See also ==
* her meta page on the English Wikipedia
* a media gallery page on Wikimedia Commons
*SPNATI wiki (mature content)
Category:Manga Heroes
Category:Female
Category:Non-Action
Category:Internet Heroes