Wikipedia to set up base in India for Wikimedia Foundation
01 Nov 2010
Wikimedia Foundation, which publishes the popular website Wikipedia, today announced plans to set up an office in India, its second office in the world after San Francisco. The company said its focus was now on 'Goal 2015' to build a "strong and healthy India-based projects".
In his address to a packed house at Sophia College's Bhabha auditorium yesterday, Jimmy Wales, founder of the popular online encyclopedia said: "If Wikipedia was a country, it would be one of the largest tourist centres in the world."
Wales proudly announced that the website attracts 402 million unique visitors every day. He, however, ruled out inclusion of a video option on the website, saying, "We don't want to turn Wikipedia into YouTube. It'll be better with animations and illustrations."
Wales did not also divulge the name of the Indian city where the office would be set up. He said, "As a media project, for me India was the perfect place because we wish to work with a variety of people and India has a lot of communities. The community in India should lead and Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) will follow them."
The India project aims to expand Wikipedia's reach to 80 per cent of the Indian population, using top 10 Indian languages. The project hopes to have 100 million unique Indian visitors to Wikipedia ventures per month, including the involvement of 75 per cent schools in India either offline or via the internet.
Wales said he approved provision of increased access of Wikipedia to school-going children to expand their knowledge base.
The project would drive pan-India growth of Wikipedia across Indian languages. Currently the English Wikipedia gets higher page views than the options in 12 Indian languages, a trend exclusive to India, according to Wales who says in most other countries people view Wikipedia in their own language.
