# விக்கிப்பீடியா:Tamil Wikipedia: A Case Study

## History

—the earliest of extant works in Tamil, which described the grammar of written Tamil.]]
Extant Tamil literature consists of works on poetics, philosophy, ethics, grammar, etc. Notable among the early Tamil encyclopaedias were *Abidhaanakosam*, written by Muthuthambiyaar and published in Jaffna in 1902, and *Abidhaana Chindhaamani*, a 1050 page work which took 42 years of determined work by Singaravelanar and published in Chennai in the year 1910. Later, a 18-volume encyclopaedia on science and a 15-volume work on humanities were published by the Thanjavur Tamil University, in an intended series of 20 and 15 volumes respectively. The first comprehensive modern encyclopaedia was published from 1954 to 1968 as a 10 volume set. It was a collaborative effort by scholars, philanthropists and the Government of Tamil Nadu. More recently, in 2007, a collection of 28,000 articles from the concise edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was translated and published in Tamil by Vikatan Publishers.  
, Tamil Wikipedia visionary, is an architect living in the United Arab Emirates.]]Tamil Wikipedia was started on September 30, 2003 by an anonymous person by posting a link to their Yahoo! Group and the text *manitha maembaadu* (மனித மேம்பாடு), fittingly, a phrase that means *human development*, on the Main Page. However, for several weeks after that, the site had an all-English interface with little activity. Mayooranathan, in response to a request posted in a mailing list, completed 95% of the localisation between November 4, 2003 and November 22, 2003. He made some anonymous edits alongside. On November 12, 2003 Amala Singh from the United Kingdom wrote the first article in Tamil, but with an English title * Shirin Ebadi*. The earliest editor who continues to edit actively, Mayooranathan, has written more than 2760 articles and has kept the project alive during an intervening period when practically nobody else was editing. Around five active editors including the author joined the project in the second half of 2004. Some occasional editors turned out to become regular editors and the Wiki started growing steadily. Bugs were reported to fix the interface, policies partially deriving from the English Wikipedia were initiated, and editors started to specialise in tasks like stub sorting, creating templates, copyediting, wikifying, translation, original writing etc. Even at this early stage, the Tamil Wikipedia had a global editorial team representing almost every continent.  
After registering a period of high linear growth in several metrics on a lower base, the Tamil Wikipedia started witnessing, around April 2007, a low linear growth on a higher base in several quantitative metrics. This period, however, also showed a perceivably super-linear growth in article quality aspects like length, standard of prose, image use, inline citation usage, etc. Late 2008 to early 2009 was a period characterised by a near constant number of active and very active editors, a steady influx of new and occasional editors, a healthy, enthusiastic and continuity-preserving churn, and, above all, optimism for a promising future.