The Urdu Wikipedia (), started in January 2004, is the Standard Urdu-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-content encyclopedia. As of , it has articles, registered users and files, and it is the largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, and ranks 8th in terms of depth among Wikipedias. There were 6 million page views in January 2024. On 7 January 2024, the Urdu Wikipedia became the first South Asian-language Wikipedia to surpass 200,000 articles, and on 12 June 2026, Urdu Wikipedia became the first South Asian-language Wikipedia to cross 500,000 articles.
History Wikipedia started being multilingual in May 2001. At first, Urdu Wikipedia faced technical problems with the Urdu script font, but now this matter is mostly settled; some unsolved areas remain. Urdu is written in Perso-Arabic script, a right-to-left writing system. As a result, users sometimes need to configure their operating systems and web browsers accordingly.
Currently, Urdu Wikipedia uses the "Urdu Naskh Asiatype" font, which was introduced and is freely distributed by the BBC at BBC Urdu Service website. The font is primarily used for article bodies and headings. Urdu variation of Times New Roman is used for navigation links. Both of these fonts are variations of Naskh style. Some Pakistani variations of complex Nasta'liq script are also supported only as a secondary choice in class definitions of CSS, i.e. if default font is not found on client system, then Nasta'liq script is used. The translation of the Wikipedia interface and project information pages into Urdu is still in progress. Some pages about how to edit have been translated.
In January 2016, Urdu Wikipedia ranked first in the number of articles as compared to other Indian languages. In India, Urdu Wikipedia activities are hosted and promoted by the Dehalvi Wikimedia User Group. The group hosted its first educational program in Deoband in February 2020.2019-2020 Annual report for the Dehalvi Wikimedia User Group Urdu is the second most popular Wikipedia in Pakistan, behind English. It receives approximately 2 million pageviews in the country, and around 610 thousand in India as of November 2022.
In India, Urdu tops the list of constitutionally recognized languages in terms of the number of articles available on Wikipedia.
Milestones timeline Date Milestonem:Wikimedia News 19 June 2006 1,000 13 August 2006 2,000 15 March 2007 5,000 29 March 2009 10,000 28 October 2012 20,000 9 April 2014 40,000 24 April 2014 50,000 12 August 2015 75,000 29 December 2015 100,000Wikipedia:Milestone statistics December 2017 125,000 23 November 2019 150,000 7 January 2024 200,000 19 April 2026 300,000 12 May 2026 400,000 12 June 2026 500,000
Users and editors
+ Urdu Wikipedia statistics Number of user accounts Number of articles Number of files Number of administrators Urdu Wikipedia has approximately 320 contributors per month. Most users are from Pakistan, although there are many users from India as well. There are also notable users from Saudi Arabia. Much like the rest of Indic languages, Urdu suffers from an acute shortage of contributors due to various reasons. Ahmed Nisar, a contributor to Urdu Wikipedia from India, claims that some of the reasons are the preference of the people for English-language media, as well as the lack of Urdu-speaking experts which are well versed in various aspects of current affairs.
Differences from Hindi Wikipedia
Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi are considered to be standardized registers of the Hindustani language. The difference between Urdu and Hindi Wikipedia in terms of the content's language is mostly in their writing systems and the literary language from which each of the variety derives their non-colloquial vocabulary. Urdu is written in Nastaliq-style of the Perso-Arabic alphabet and derives a significant amount of formal vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and to a lesser extent from Turkic (Chagatai, etc.). Hindi is written in the standardized-Devanagari alphabet of the Nagari script and derives a significant amount of formal vocabulary from Sanskrit majorly in tatsama form.
See also Kashmiri Wikipedia History of Wikipedia Wikipedia community
References
External links
Official handle of Urdu Wikipedia on Facebook Official handle of Urdu Wikipedia on Twitter Official handle of Urdu Wikipedia on Instagram Urdu Wikipedia Urdu Wikipedia mobile version