Dutch Wikipedia

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox website The Dutch Wikipedia (Template:Langx) is the Dutch-language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It was founded on 19 June 2001.

As of August 2025, the Dutch Wikipedia is the Template:Ordinal to word-largest Wikipedia edition, with Template:NUMBEROF articles. It was the fourth Wikipedia edition to exceed one million articles, after the English, German, and French editions. Many articles however have been created by bots and are only a few lines of length, the article depth is very low.<ref>For instance 781.604 stumps on biology:Template:Citation</ref><ref>Article depth of Dutch Wikipedia is 18.89 (Wikipedia article depth - Meta (wikimedia.org)) That of the English version for instance is 1220.82, of the German version is 93.42</ref> In April 2016, 1154 active editors made at least five edits in that month.

English is the most popular Wikipedia in the Netherlands, followed by Dutch.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In Belgium, Dutch is sometimes the most popular Wikipedia, but French is usually the most popular;Template:Clarify in Suriname however, the only Dutch-speaking country outside Europe, Dutch Wikipedia is second after English.

In Curaçao and Aruba, as well in Caribbean Netherlands, it has a presence, but has fewer pageviews than English.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

HistoryEdit

File:Wikipedia nl - Page views by country over time.png

Evolution of the origin of viewers on the Dutch Wikipedia

The Dutch Wikipedia was started on 19 June 2001, and reached 100,000 articles on 14 October 2005. It briefly surpassed the Polish Wikipedia as the sixth-largest edition of Wikipedia, but then fell back to the eighth position. On 1 March 2006, it overtook the Swedish and Italian editions in one day to rise back to the sixth position. The edition's 500,000th article was created on 30 November 2008.<ref>500.000e artikel (in Dutch). Retrieved 7 December 2008.</ref> In a 2006 Multiscope research study, the Dutch Wikipedia was rated the third-best Dutch-language website, after Google and Gmail, with a score of 8.1.<ref>"Nederlandse Wikipedia groeit als kool" (in Dutch). Multiscope.nl. Retrieved 27 December 2006.</ref>

The Dutch language Wikipedia has the largest ratio of Wikipedia pages per native speaker of all of the top 10 largest Wikipedia editions. Its rate of daily article creations spiked in March 2006, rapidly growing to an average of 1,000 a day in early May 2006. After this number was reached, growth dropped to an average of only about 250 a day, comparable to the averages around December 2005. Since then, there have been more article-creation surges, one of the largest peaking at 2,000 new articles per day in September 2007, but the growth rate has always returned to the lowest average of around 250.

In 2008, Dutch businessman Bob Sijthoff attempted to sue "the Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland" and "the Stichting Wikimedia Nederland" to force the removal of his Dutch Wikipedia article, which he stated contained "false and abusive" information.<ref>'Ik wil niet op Wikipedia!' Template:Webarchive, DAG, 25 November 2008</ref> On 10 December 2008, the court rejected his request. The judge ruled that he had sued the wrong entity and that legal responsibility for the content of the articles would not lie in the Netherlands, but with the American Wikimedia Foundation.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Internet botsEdit

The majority of articles in Dutch Wikipedia (59%) were created by internet bots.<ref>Wikipedia Statistics</ref> In October 2011, several bots created 80,000 articles (then equivalent to 10% of the entire edition's article count) in only 11 days.<ref>List of Wikipedias on 20 October 2011 (archived). Wikimedia. Retrieved 24 June 2013.</ref><ref>List of Wikipedias on 31 October 2011 (archived). Wikimedia. Retrieved 24 June 2013.</ref>

The Dutch Wikipedia's one-millionth article was created in December 2011, after another surge of bot activity saw 100,000 added articles in only 10 days. In late March 2013, the Dutch Wikipedia surpassed the French Wikipedia to become the third-largest edition of Wikipedia. In June 2013, it overtook the German Wikipedia to become the second-largest Wikipedia edition.

QualityEdit

DepthEdit

The depth or editing depth of Wikipedia is a rough indicator of the encyclopedia's collaborative quality, showing how frequently its articles are updated.<ref>Wikipedia article depth; Wikimedia</ref> The depth is measured by taking the average number of edits per article multiplied by the extent in which articles are supported by discussion (among other things, talk pages). Among the nine language editions with one million articles, the Dutch, Swedish, and Polish Wikipedias in that order have depth parameters much lower than the other six.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:As of, for the English version the article depth is 666, for the German 88, for the French 153, for the Spanish 160, for the Dutch only 18.<ref>Find out more-Wikipedia; Utrecht University Library</ref>

Bytes per articleEdit

Compared to most other Wikipedia editions with a similar number of articles, articles on the Dutch Wikipedia have less content with an average of 1,598 bytes per article (Template:As of). This is roughly 40% of that of the French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish editions (3,986–4,277 bytes/article Template:As of).<ref>Wikimedia Statistics, Wikipedia statistics, bytes per article. Retrieved 18 February 2015</ref>

CultureEdit

Dutch Wikipedians responding to a Wikimedia survey described the atmosphere on the Dutch Wikipedia as quarrelsome and distrustful, with ego and stubbornness named as the premier causes of conflict. There is a small hardcore group of users in effective control. New users are discouraged by moderators from joining discussions in the Dutch equivalent of the "Village pump".<ref>de Volkskrant: Leve de Wikipediaan sympathieke online betweter (Dutch), published on 30 November 2015, Retrieved 7 August 2020.</ref><ref>NRC Handelsblad: De grote Wikipedia bewerkingsoorlogen (Dutch), published 4 February 2019, Retrieved 7 August 2020.</ref>

Article growthEdit

File:Groei wikipedia nl.png

Graph showing article growth of the Dutch Wikipedia between June 2001 and December 2018

Date	Number of articles<ref>"Statistics of the Dutch Wikipedia" (in Dutch). Nl.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 18 June 2013.</ref>	New articles per day (avg.)
19 June 2001	1	1
08/03/2003	10,000	13
02/07/2004	20,000	53
27 January 2005	50,000	125
14 October 2005	100,000	270
24 May 2006	200,000	625
26 December 2006	250,000	250
28 May 2007	300,000	250
17 January 2008	400,000	435
30 November 2008	500,000	344
30 April 2010	600,000	167
19 June 2011	700,000	625
18 September 2011	750,000	175
22 October 2011	800,000	10,000
12 July 2011	900,000	10,000
17 December 2011	1,000,000	10,000
14 September 2012	1,100,000	3,333
3 September 2013	1,200,000	10,000
18 March 2013	1,250,000	3,333
22 March 2013	1,300,000	10,000
4 January 2013	1,400,000	10,000
4 December 2013	1,500,000	10,000
14 June 2013	1,600,000	10,000
14 October 2013	1,700,000	127
8 March 2020	2,000,000	254