French Wikipedia
French Language Wikipedia is a French language edition of Wikipedia, spelled Wikipédia. Started in August 2001, this edition has over 120,000 articles as of July 2005 and is the third largest one after English language and German language editions. One area in which the French Wikipedia has more vast areas is with article relating to the communes. A bot, DasBot, the French version of Rambot, has/is in the process of creating articles on all the communes of France, e.g. fr:Rochefort-en-Valdaineand also some of the smallest administrative areas (cantons), . Another way in which the French version differentiates itself from the English one is in formatting. In :fr, interlanguage links and categories are usually put at the top of the edit page, although this doesn't make any difference on the article screen.
History
23 March 2001: Official creation date of French language Wikipedia.
19 May 2001: First recorded date: [1]
6 June 2001: First known main page: [2] Including the participation of Valéry Beaud and Buzz
June 2002: A new logo (in green colour and quite different from the logo used on the other Wikipedias) is displayed in an initiative from Rinaldum. This autonomist move is criticized as all the French wikipedians had not been consulted, but this logo is kept.
August 2002: The first sysops, Anthere, Aoineko and Shaihulud are appointed after a disagreement with user Mulot. First IP blocking.
31 October 2002: Move into Phase III.
December 2002: A quite strong increase of activity is reported. It can be analysed as serial vandalism from a bot, and all subsequent corrections. After this new kind of vandalism, the software is changed in order to anable quicker reverts (rollback link available for sysops only).
January 2003: A strong decrease of activity, essentially due to the slowing down of servers, limiting thus participation.
6 February 2003: Coloured "Putsch" on the main page
Before => After
The new design, authored by Aoineko, is reused subsequently by other language versions (including Polish Wikipedia and English Wikipedia).
7 February 2003: The 5,000 article figure is reached
19 February 2003: The 6,000 article figure is reached
7 March 2003: The year fr:1045 is the 7000th page on Wikipédia francophone.
27 March 2003: 8,000th article.
13 April 2003: Wikipédia francophone overtakes Polish Wikipedia and becomes the third biggest Wikipedia with 9,051 articles, behind English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia.
15 May: 10,000th article.
18 May: The main page has been watched 100,000 times since the counter was implemented.
7 July: Wikipédia has 20,000 pages, including about 12,800 articles.
mid-July: The number of pages calculation is modified. According to the old calculation mode detecting at least a comma, 13,058 encyclopaedia articles are present, and the new calculation that detects at least one link, indicates 13,789 articles.
5 August: Wikipédia francophone has 15,000 articles. Over 20,000 changes have been recorded since the implementation of phase 3 software.
20 August 2003: Inhibition of some functions in order to increase performance.
4 September 2003: The 16,000 figure is reached
? October 2003: Wikipédia francophone uses the new logo
3-11 November 2003: Papotages is the first user blocked forever as the author of severe and repeated vandalism.
17 November 2003: Article fr:Lorraine is the first article of the week. 38 users participated in its redaction.
22 November 2003: 20,000 articles
26 January 2004: 25,000 articles
14 March 2004: 30,000 articles
end of March 2004 : Wikipédia en français switches to UTF-8
1st May 2004: 35,000 articles
16 June 2004: 40,000 articles
23 July 2004: 45,000 articles
29 August 2004: 50,000 articles with fr:nèfle
2 November 2004 at 23:33, 60,000 articles with fr:lord Yarborough
22 December 2004 : 70,000 articles with fr:Borée
6 February 2005 : 80,000 articles
14 March 2005 : 90,000 articles
21 April 2005 : 100,000 articles
