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Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

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Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia (abbreviated sh-WP) is the Serbo-Croatian-language Wikipedia.

Facts

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Areas of strength

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  • Language standard (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian) and script flexibility (Latin and Cyrillic, with preference on the former) that accomodates diverse contributions and can (potentially) have a more diverse base of contributors than HR, SR or BS Wikipedia instances. All spelling and pronunciation preferences are acceptable and welcome.
  • There are few to no tensions over political and identitarian issues compared to others. Controversial articles and titles are debated and attempted to be balanced out.
  • Can serve to fill in the gaps between individual BS, HR and SR instances that lack content in one field and boast content in another. Can also serve as a mold for NPOV articles that can be coordinated and adapted to local variants.
  • Strives to not be contaminated with pseudohistory, historical denialism and revisionism that exists on other instances. Non-oriented and not representative of any particular nation from the former Yugoslavia. Focus is rather oriented at inclusivity.
  • Editors that have been wrongfully exiled from one of the instances are welcome to contribute to the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia.

Areas of weakness

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  • Not many new and regular contributors for growth, but also not many maintainers of existing content.
  • Not much technical and outreach (methodological) development for engagement.
  • SEO on search engines favorizes local varieties (BS, HR, SR) when displaying pages from Wikipedia, when browsing from their respective countries.

Who are the competitors (print, online)?

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There are no obvious competitors outside of other Wikipedia instances:

Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia of its kind, a rare example of cooperation between otherwise isolated online communities.

Prominent milestones/events

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  • 2005-02-20[1] to 2005-06-23[2] SH Wikipedia was abruptly locked and it took a new effort to reopen it by the same person.[3][4]
  • 2014-02-26[5] and 2014-10-07[6] several failed attempts to close or delete SH Wikipedia.
  • 2014-09-26[7] SH Wikipedia's rapid growth, starting from 2011, eventually placed it ahead of SR Wikipedia as the largest South Slavic as well as amongst 20 largest Wikipedias overall. It has since 2016 slowed down and fallen behind SR Wikipedia, thus is presently the second largest South Slavic and 30th largest Wikipedia overall.
  • 2022-12-01[8] transliterator of the Latin script to Cyrillic finally implemented, becoming a Wikipedia in two writing systems

Features

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What language features are challenging?

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  • Usage of Latin and Cyrillic scripts. While both are acceptable, Cyrillic is not taught all accross the area where the common language is spoken, while Latin is. Even where both Cyrillic and Latin scripts are taught, such as Serbia, Latin is the more commonly used script of the two.
  • An Ijekavian and Ekavian pronunciation converter does not yet exist, and could be difficult to develop and maintain.

What would surprise the outside reader about the community?

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  • Foreign article titles are mostly left in the original languages, not to favorize any specific translation. Content itself in these articles is freely written in any of the standard varieties of the language.

What are some unique practices/characteristics?

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  • As all spelling and pronunciation preferences are acceptable, titles and content written in one or the other are almost never changed, unless given a reasonable revamp to justify changing it.

Who were the earliest participants, who started it?

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  • Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia was started on 16 January 2002 by User:Pingos, a 33-year old from Canada, formerly from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was followed by Bosnian Wikipedia which started out on 12 December 2002 with early contents of SH Wikipedia. Serbian Wikipedia and Croatian Wikipedia were both created on 16 February 2003.

Static versions

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Statistics

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Detailed statistics are available on Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Wikimedia Statistics and Pageviews Analysis.

Administrators

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References

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