Early history[edit]

The German edition of Wikipedia was the first non-English Wikipedia subdomain, and was originally
named deutsche.wikipedia.com. Its creation was announced by Jimmy Wales on 16 March
2001.[3] One of the earliest snapshots of the home page, dated 21 March 2001 (revision #9), can be
seen at the Wayback Machine site.[6] Aside from the home page, creation of articles in the German
Wikipedia started as early as April 2001, apparently with translations of Nupedia articles.[7] The
earliest article still available on Wikipedia's site is apparently Polymerase-Kettenreaktion, dated May
2001.[8]
Andrew Lih wrote that the hacker culture in Germany and the verein concept solidified the German
Wikipedia's culture. The geography of Europe facilitated face-to-face meetups among German
Wikipedians.[9]

Growth, coverage and popularity[edit]

Article growth, 2001 - December 2016

On 27 December 2009, the German Wikipedia edition exceeded 1,000,000 articles,[10] becoming the
first edition after the English-language Wikipedia to do so. The millionth article was Ernie Wasson. In
November 2008, 90% of the edition's articles had more than 512 bytes, 49% had more than
2 kilobytes, and the average article size was 3,476 bytes.[11] In the middle of 2009 this edition had
nearly 250,000 biographies and in December 2006 more than 48,500 disambiguations.[12]
Compared to the English Wikipedia, the German edition tends to be more selective in its coverage,
often rejecting small stubs, articles about individual fictional characters and similar materials.
Instead, there is usually one article about all the characters from a specific fictional setting, usually
only when the setting is considered important enough (for example, all characters from Star
Wars are listed in a single article). A dedicated article about a single fictional entity generally exists
only if the character in question has a very significant impact on popular culture (for
example, Hercule Poirot).[citation needed] Andrew Lih wrote that German Wikipedia users believe that
"having no article at all is better than a very bad article."[13] Therefore, growth on the German
Wikipedia leveled before it did for the English Wikipedia, with accelerating growth in article count
shifting to constant growth in mid-2006. The number of users signing up for accounts began to
steadily decline in 2007 through 2008.[13]
The January 2005, Google Zeitgeist announced that "Wikipedia" was the eighth most-searched
query on Google.de. In February 2005, Wikipedia reached third place behind Firefox and Valentine's
Day. In June 2005, Wikipedia ranked first.

Language and varieties of German[edit]

The countries in which the German Wikipedia is the most popular language version of Wikipedia are shown in
blue. Other countries are shown in yellow.[14]

Number of registered users, 2001 - May 2006

Separate Wikipedias have been created for several other varieties of German, including Alemannic
German (als:), Luxembourgish (lb:), Pennsylvania
German (pdc:), Ripuarian (including Kölsch; ksh:), Low German (nds:) and Bavarian (bar:). These
however, have less popularity than the German Wikipedia.[15]

Characteristics[edit]

Daily requests for deletion, de facto deleted articles and the ratio of these two values
The German Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of aspects.
 Compared to the English Wikipedia, different criteria of encyclopedic notability are expressed
through the judgments of the editors for deciding if an article about a topic should be allowed.
The criteria for notability are more specific, each field has its own specific guidelines.[16]
 There are no fair use provisions. Images and other media that are accepted on the English
Wikipedia as fair use may not be suitable for the German Wikipedia.[17] However, the threshold of
originality for works of applied art is set much higher, which often allows the use of company
logos and similar icons, too.
 The use of scholarly sources, in preference over journalistic and other types of sources, is more
strongly encouraged. The German Verifiability (Belege) guideline classifies scholarly sources as
inherently more reliable than non-academic sources; the latter's use is – in theory at least – only
permitted if there is a lack of published academic sources covering a topic.[18]
 In September 2005, Erik Möller voiced concern that "long term page protection is used
excessively on the German Wikipedia":[19] on 14 September 2005, 253 pages were fully
protected (only editable by admins) for more than two weeks (compared to 138 in the English
Wikipedia). This was the highest number of such blocks of all Wikipedias.[20] As of May 2008, the
German Wikipedia still had the highest percentage of semi-protected articles - 0.281% - among
the ten largest Wikipedias (articles not editable by unsubscribed or recently subscribed users),
but with respect to the fraction of fully protected articles (0.0261%) it actually ranks fourth,
behind the Japanese, Portuguese and English Wikipedias.[21]
 Vandalism and other abuse is often handled in a less formal way. Vandals may get blocked on
their first edit and without warning if their edit clearly shows lack of interest for actual
encyclopaedic work. This is especially true if the added text includes unlawful statements, such
as holocaust denial.
Similarly, the Checkuser function is rarely used to determine multiple accounts, as "suspicious"
accounts are often blocked on sight.
 Articles on indisputably notable subjects may be deleted if they are deemed too short. While the
requirements for minimal articles (called stubs) are equivalent, the German and the English
Wikipedia differ greatly in the way they are put into practice.[22]
 On 28 December 2005 it was decided to eliminate the Category "stub" (and the corresponding
template identifying articles as stubs) from the German Wikipedia.[23]
 Users do not have to create an account in order to start a new article.
 Unlike the French, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Swedish or many other Wikipedias, the German one
does not contain large collections of bot-generatedgeographical stubs or similar articles.
 The German Wikipedia version did not have an Arbitration Committee until May 2007. Currently,
German Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee plays only a minor role in Wikipedia politics.
 Categories are singular and are not differentiated for gender. Categories are usually introduced
only for a minimum of ten entries and are not always subdivided even for larger numbers of
items, so that current categories often describe only one property (e.g., nationality). Other
categories are subdivided, but differently from in the English Wikipedia. For example, "chemists"
are subdivided by century, not by nationality. A university professor, on the other hand, will
usually be categorized according to where he or she teaches.
 The equivalent to the English Wikipedia's featured articles and good articles are exzellente
Artikel (excellent articles) and lesenswerte Artikel (good articles; literally: articles "worth
reading").
 In 2005, there was a discussion and poll resulting in the decision to phase out the use of local
image uploads and to exclusively use Wikimedia Commons for images and other media in the
future.[24] The attempt to implement this lasted for about a year and the German "Upload file"
page displayed a large pointer to Commons in this time, but since December 2006, there is
again a local image upload page without any pointer to Wikimedia Commons. This was
prompted by the deletion of images on Commons that are acceptable according to German
Wikipedia policies.[25]
 Starting in December 2004, German Wikipedians pioneered Persondata ("Personendaten"), a
special format for meta data about persons (name, birth date and place etc.), introduced in the
English Wikipedia in December 2005. In the beginning, the main aim of this system was to aid
the search features of the DVD edition of the German Wikipedia (see below). During its
introduction in January 2005, Personendaten were added to some 30,000 biographical articles
on the live Wikipedia, partly aided by a somewhat automatic tool. The template is currently
deprecated and is no longer on any pages.[26]
 Like The Signpost in the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia also has its own internal
newspaper, the Kurier. However, the Kurier is laid out on a single page and is not issued weekly
but is continually updated by interested Wikipedians, with older articles being archived.
 In German Wikipedia is pronounced [ˌvɪkiˈpeːdia].