Wikimedia project

The Wikimedia projects logo family

A Wikimedia project is a wiki-based project run by the Wikimedia Foundation,^[1] a nonprofit organization founded in San Francisco, California in 2003. The Foundation operates many free software and free content projects, which are listed below.

List

Content on most Wikimedia Foundation websites is licensed for redistribution under v3.0 of the Attribution and Share-alike Creative Commons licenses. This content is sourced from contributing volunteers and from resources unrestricted by copyright, such as copyleft material and works in the public domain.

The order in the table below is as listed in the Wikimedia SiteMatrix.

Logo	Name	Web address	Launched	Description	Editions
	Wikipedia	wikipedia.org	2001-01-15	Encyclopedia articles	291 languages
	Wiktionary	wiktionary.org	2002-12-12	Dictionary, including etymologies, synonyms, and translations	172 languages
	Wikibooks	wikibooks.org	2003-07-10	Educational textbooks and learning materials	121 languages
	Wikinews	wikinews.org	2004-11-08	News source	33 languages
	Wikiquote	wikiquote.org	2003-07-10	Collection of quotations	89 languages
	Wikisource	wikisource.org	2003-11-23	Library of source documents and translations	65 languages
	Wikiversity	wikiversity.org	2006-08-15	Educational and research materials and activities	15 languages
	Wikivoyage	wikivoyage.org	2006-12-10 (2013-01-15 as a WMF project)	Travel guide	17 languages
	Wikimedia Commons	commons.wikimedia.org	2004-09-07	Repository of images, sounds, videos, and other media files	1 (multilingual)
	Wikimedia Incubator	incubator.wikimedia.org	2006-06-02	Testing possible new languages for existing projects	1 (multilingual)
	Meta-Wiki	meta.wikimedia.org	2001-11-09	Coordination of the other Wikimedia projects	1 (multilingual)
	Wikispecies	species.wikimedia.org	2004-09-14	Directory of species data on all forms of life	1 (multilingual)
	Wikidata	wikidata.org	2012-10-30	Knowledge base	1 (multilingual)
	Wikimania	wikimania.wikimedia.org	2005-08-04	Wikimania conference websites	1 for each year

Language codes

Wikimedia projects use language codes to identify language specific editions of a Wikimedia project. The codes are often used as a subdomain, e.g. for the Wikipedia editions it is a subdomain below wikipedia.org. Interlanguage links in the English Wikipedia are sorted by that code.

The codes mostly correspond to the language codes defined by ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-3, and the decision of which language code to use is mostly in accordance with the IETF language tag policy.

One code is not a language code ('be-x-old') but refers to a specific orthography.

Codes that do not agree with the ISO 639 meaning or are deprecated

Several codes are used for project editions where the ISO 639 meaning is different from the content contained in the project.^[2]

This makes the codes partially "not useful".^[3]

Project codes

WP edition name	WP code	ISO 639 code	Meaning of WP code if read as ISO 639 code	Note
Albanian	sq	als	Broader meaning than edition content: Macrolanguage, Albanian with four individual languages, but Tosk Albanian is mainly used.	'als' is the individual code for Tosk Albanian, but this code is already used for Alemannic Wikipedia.
Alemannic	als	gsw	Unrelated language: Tosk Albanian.[4]	'gsw' is the ISO 639-2 and -3 code for Swiss German, Alemannic and Alsatian. 'gct' is the ISO 639-3 code for Colonia Tovar dialect, 'swg' is for Swabian German and 'wae' is for Walser German.
Arabic	ar		Broader meaning than edition content: Macrolanguage 'ara'/'ar' [5] is Arabic in general.	Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia uses code 'arz'. Modern Standard Arabic has the code 'arb'.
Aromanian	roa-rup	rup	(Not an ISO code.)	'roa' in ISO is Romance (Other).
Banyumasan	map-bms	–	(Not an ISO code.)	'map' is Austronesian (Other), bms is Bilma Kanuri, a language of Niger.
Dutch Low Saxon	nds-nl	(several)	(Not an ISO code.)	'nds' is 'Low Saxon', restricted to Germany in Ethnologue. The Low Saxon dialects in the Netherlands have their own ISO codes.
Belarusian (Taraškievica)	be-x-old	–	(Not an ISO code.)	Valid would be 'be-tarask'.
Bihari	bh	(several)	Broader meaning than edition content: collective code 'ISO 639:bih' includes Bhojpuri bho, Maithili mai, Magahi mag and nine others[6]
Yue	zh-yue	yue	(Not an ISO code.)	This is a Chinese Wikipedia in written Cantonese.
Chinese	zh	cmn	Broader meaning than edition content: Macrolanguage 'zho'/'zh' [7] is Chinese in general.	Chinese Wikipedia is written in modern written vernacular Chinese with four standard forms.[lower-alpha 1] Modern written vernacular Chinese is based on modern Mandarin (cmn).
Classical Chinese	zh-classical	lzh	(Not an ISO code.)
Min Nan	zh-min-nan	nan	(Not an ISO code.)	'min' is unrelated. This is a Chinese Wikipedia in written Hokkien POJ.
Malay	ms	–	Broader meaning than edition content: Macrolanguage that includes more than 30 individual languages/dialects	Wiki excludes Indonesian because Indonesian Wikipedia (id) exists independently.
Norman	nrm	–	Unrelated language: Narom [8]
Norwegian Bokmål	no	nb	Broader meaning than edition content: Norwegian in general, i.e. Bokmal ('nb'/'nob') and Nynorsk ('nn'/'nno').	Nynorsk correctly uses 'nn'.
Ripuarian	ksh	–	Narrower meaning than edition content: Kölsch, one variety of the Ripuarian languages
Samogitian	bat-smg	sgs	(Not an ISO code.)	'bat' is Baltic (Other), 'smg' is Simbali language.
Serbo-Croatian	sh	hbs	Deprecated: 'sh' for the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia has been deprecated.[9]
Simple English	simple	en	(Not an ISO code.)
Syriac	arc	syc	not the best match.	'syc' is better suited for the content [10]
Tarantino	roa-tara	–	(Not an ISO code.)	'roa' is Romance (Other).
Võro	fiu-vro	vro	(Not an ISO code.)
Zamboanga Chavacano	cbk-zam	–	(Not an ISO code.)	'cbk' is Chavacano. zam is unrelated Miahuatlán Zapotec.

Internal code changes

The following codes have been changed for the mark-up:^[11]

• bat-smg -> sgs (Wikipedia)
• fiu-vro -> vro (Wikipedia)
• zh-classical -> lzh (Wikipedia)
• zh-min-nan -> nan (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource)
• zh-yue -> yue (Wikipedia)
• be-x-old -> be-tarask (Wikipedia)
• als -> gsw (Wikipedia, wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote)
• roa-rup -> rup (Wikipedia, Wiktionary)

Redirects

• 'dk' redirects to 'da' ^[12]

First Day of Issue Cover of the "Wikimania 2011 - Haifa, Israel" stamp, issued by Israel Post on August 2, 2011 - The first-ever stamp dedicated to a Wikimedia-related project.

Usage in Wikimedia projects

Project specific codes

• Wiktionary uses further codes to represent content.^[13]

Wikidata

In Wikidata a property named "Wikimedia language code" exists.^[14]

Software projects and other backstage projects

• Mediawiki – a free software open source wiki package and its documentation
• Phabricator – A bug tracker and project management system for MediaWiki
• Wikitech – Wikimedia technical documentation
• Wikimedia Labs (aka Labs) – provides cloud computing infrastructure for supporting development and operations engineering
• Wikimedia Tool Labs (aka tools) – for community developers working on tools and bots that help users maintain and use wikis
• Test Wikipedia – For testing software changes
• Server status – Current status Wikimedia Foundation – Core services
• WikiStats – Wikimedia statistics
• Wikimedia Mailservices – Wikimedia Mailing Lists

The Foundation also hosts various private wikis – such as those for the Chapters Committee, Board of Trustees, OTRS, and Wikimedia Foundation Office – and various public wikis – for specialized groups such as Outreach, the regional Chapters, and thematic organizations.

See also

• List of Wikipedias
• List of wikis

References

1. They are the standards for Mainland Chinese and Singaporean (written in simplified Chinese characters), and Taiwanese and Hong Kong/Macau (in traditional Chinese characters). They are automatically converted by the wiki machine. See Chinese Wikipedia.

1. "Our projects". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
2. Nonstandard language codes and Language codes
3. "This leads to a situation where the Wikimedia Foundation project codes are not useful". Translatewiki.net. 2012-09-03. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
4. "ISO 639 code tables". Sil.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
5. "ISO 639 code sets". 01.sil.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
6. "Invalid id". Ethnologue.com. 1999-02-19. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
7. "ISO 639 code sets". 01.sil.org. 2009-01-16. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
8. "ISO 639 code sets". Sil.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
9. "ISO 639 code sets". 01.sil.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
10. "Bug 26725 – Renaming the Aramaic (arc) Wikipedia to the Syriac (syc) Wikipedia". Bugzilla.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
11. "Bug 34866 – Change wgLanguageCode of several wikis to be renamed". Bugzilla.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
12. "Bug 15357 – Redirect dk.wiktionary and dk.wikibooks to da.wiktionary and da.wikibooks respectively". Bugzilla.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
13. "Wiktionary:List of languages – Wiktionary". En.wiktionary.org. 2013-08-02. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
14. "Wikimedia language code". Wikidata. Retrieved 2013-09-01.