The beginning of Wikipedia’s French article on the invasion of Ukraine
The liveliness of the reaction of Wikipedians around the world was equal to the brutality of the event: in a few hours, then a few days, the treatment of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was carried out in many languages in Wikipedia (which has a total of 323, including 285 with more than 1,000 articles per version).
Hundreds of contributors
– The Russian attack on its neighbor was launched very early on Thursday, February 24: at 12:40 p.m. (Paris time), the collaborative encyclopedia had an article “Invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022” in 43 languages.
– At 9 p.m. that same Thursday, the article was available in 61 languages.
– The next day, Friday February 25, at 7:30 p.m., it was available in 75 languages.
– And this Sunday, February 27 at 5 p.m., it exists in 89 languages.
This article was created in French on February 24, 2022 at 5:42 a.m., and in English on February 23 at 6:12 p.m. (Paris time) – for the latter, “invasion” first referred to Russian troops in the Donbass – region ruled by pro-Russian separatists – from February 21.
The French article currently has 197 different contributors, including 163 in the last 24 hours. 38.7% of its content was created by its 10 most important contributors – while it is common for a few Wikipedians to have done most of an article alone, these figures show a particularly collective work on this subject – this. In English, the Wikipedia article has 620 authors, and half of its content is due to its ten most important contributors.
Widely read in Ukrainian, French and Polish
Audiences: the article in English is the most viewed – 5.926 million pages viewed up to Saturday February 26 inclusive -, ahead of… the version in Russian, 2.145 million, then that in Chinese, 363,000, in Ukrainian, 224,000, in French, 203,000, in Polish, 195,000.
Two banners (placed at the bottom of the article) have been created to link the articles and present them together, one on the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, the other on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the previous years.
Last point: on Friday, the second most read article in Ukrainian Wikipedia was the one on the Molotov cocktail (see this article from BFM). Good luck to Putin’s cannon fodder…
Record audience for the Ukrainian Wikipedia article devoted to the Molotov cocktail. 60,000 views yesterday, this is the 2nd most viewed article (but at an exceptionally very high level). pic.twitter.com/ulllviRgNt
— Pierre-Yves Beaudouin (@Pyb75) February 26, 2022
Read also
In Ukraine, almost 8 years of cyber conflict – February 26, 2022
Ukraine calls on volunteer hackers to protect its critical infrastructure – February 25, 2022
Notre-Dame fire: Wikipedia has sounded the tocsin – April 21, 2019