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Portuguese Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Favicon of Wikipedia Portuguese Wikipedia
Logo of the Portuguese Wikipedia
Screenshot
Main Page of the Portuguese Wikipedia in May 2016
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
Available inPortuguese
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
URLpt.wikipedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationRequired except for reading articles[1]
Users3.44 million (as of 23 June 2026)
Launched11 May 2001; 25 years ago (2001-05-11)
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/
Share-Alike 4.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL)
Media licensing varies

The Portuguese Wikipedia (Portuguese: Wikipédia em português) is the Portuguese-language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 11 May 2001.[2]

Wikipedia is the 19th most accessed website in Brazil[3] and the 10th most accessed in Portugal.[4] As of June 2026, it is the 18th largest Wikipedia by article count, containing 1,175,903 articles. The Portuguese edition is one of the Wikipedias that does not allow edits from unregistered users. It disabled edits from IP editors in 2020.

History

[edit]

The Portuguese Wikipedia was the third edition of Wikipedia to be created, simultaneously with other languages. It started its activities on 11 May 2001,[5] having reached the mark of one hundred thousand articles on 26 January 2006.[6]

Logo commemorating 500,000 articles
Logo commemorating one million articles

From late 2004, the edition grew rapidly. In May 2005, it overtook both the Spanish and Italian language Wikipedias. By comparison, in May 2004 it was only the 17th Wikipedia by the number of articles.

Portuguese articles can contain variations of writing, as European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese have differences in vocabulary and usage. Articles can contain written characteristics of one or the other variant depending on who wrote the article.

The Portuguese Wikipedia community decided not to split a separate Brazilian Portuguese version off from the Portuguese Wikipedia.[7] In 2005, a proposal to fork Portuguese Wikipedia and create a Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br) version was voted down by the Wikimedia community.[8][better source needed] In 2007 another one to create a European Portuguese version was rejected too by the Wikimedia community.[9][better source needed] In 2009 another one to create in Brazilian Portuguese was rejected, but this time by the language committee, according to new policies to create new Wikipedia editions,[10][better source needed] with the following explanation: "Brazilian Portuguese is not a separate language.. this is a requirement."[11][better source needed]

Beginning in January 2007,[12] the project experienced a decrease of the share of edits by unregistered users (from around 20 to around 15%) and an increase of the share of such edits being reverted, from about 15% to a peak of 25% in late 2008,[13] which suggests an increase in disruptive editing. In the same month, a JavaScript was added that forced all unregistered users to preview their edit before saving it.[14][better source needed]

In December 2010, the Portuguese Wikipedia overtook the Dutch language Wikipedia in number of articles, but in the first quarter of 2011, it was surpassed by the Russian and Dutch language Wikipedias, ranking in the tenth position. In April 2016, the project had 1388 active editors who made at least five edits in that month.

In August 2012, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes accused the Portuguese Wikipedia of being "partisan and highly controlled." According to him, his article was being targeted by an "ideological attack" and, as an encyclopedia, the entry should only be informative about the subject, without incorporating third-party opinions or journalistic denunciations. This criticism was motivated by the reaction to the article about him containing accusations from CartaCapital magazine, which Gilmar Mendes is contesting in court.[15][16]

On 8 August 2014, an article on the O Globo website stated that a device connected to the internet via the wireless network of the Planalto Palace altered information on Miriam Leitão and Carlos Alberto Sardenberg [pt]'s Portuguese Wikipedia pages in May 2013, with the aim of defaming them. The information inserted into Miriam's article described her economic analyses and forecasts as "disastrous," and accused her of having "passionately" defended banker Daniel Dantas when he was arrested by the Federal Police.[17]

Faced with the controversy generated by the episode, the government initially claimed that it was "impossible" to identify those responsible for the criticism.[18] Later, President Dilma Rousseff ordered an investigation to try to identify those responsible for the editing.[19] After a month of investigations, the Civil House reported that the investigation committee established to investigate the critical changes to journalists concluded that the edits were made by civil servant Luiz Alberto Marques Vieira Filho, from the Secretariat of Institutional Relations. The civil servant admitted authorship of the changes and requested resignation from the leadership position he held in the Ministry of Planning. There was a record at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of a person with the same name affiliated with the Workers' Party (PT) in Ourinhos, since October 1999. The party's press office reported having located the membership form of Luiz Alberto Marques Vieira, but not that of Luiz Alberto Marques Vieira Filho.[20]

In a video posted to his official Facebook page in June 2018, Brazilian politician Levy Fidelix criticized Wikipedia for disapproving of the content in the entry about his biography. He stated that the encyclopedia should be "banned by national laws" and that the volunteer editors who contribute to the project are "scoundrels, bandits, and fakes." According to him, his biography includes "false" versions about the lawsuit against him for gender discrimination. "In the second [lawsuit], I won, and Wikipedia didn't put it there."[21]

On 25 March 2022, the Brazilian Press Association [pt] (ABI), in a statement signed by its president, journalist Paulo Jerônimo [pt], condemned "Wikipédia Brasil [sic]" for classifying the news websites Brasil 247 and Diário do Centro do Mundo [pt], which it classified as "progressive portals," as unreliable sources of information, expressing solidarity with these websites. According to the ABI, this decision was an attack on freedom of information and on "the importance of the diversity of viewpoints in a democratic regime," which it considered especially important in Brazil.[22]

Abraham Weintraub

[edit]
Main article: Abraham Weintraub–Wikipedia controversy

On 8 April 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro announced on his X account that Abraham Weintraub would succeed Ricardo Vélez Rodríguez as Brazil's Minister of Education. A Portuguese Wikipedia page for Weintraub was created about three hours later.[23] After multiple incidents of vandalism, the administrator of the Portuguese Wikipedia, Chronus, protected the page against edits by inexperienced users for 45 days.[24]

Up to June 27, the article listed several controversies in which the minister was involved, notably Weintraub and his brother's failed attempt to have their father declared legally incompetent in court and the budget cuts imposed by Weintraub on federal universities and institutes.[24][25][26][27] Other controversies included accusations of nepotism due to his family's positions at the Federal University of São Paulo,[26] his claim that there was "chaos" on federal university campuses,[24][28] a video on XWeintraub claims that the Ministry of Education is a victim of fake news to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain",[24][25] his stance on student protests against the government,[25] and his encouragement for teachers and students who supported the protests to be reported.[25] The article also mentioned that Weintraub's father was persecuted by the military dictatorship in Brazil and wrote a book defending the decriminalization of cannabis, a progressive position opposed to Weintraub's conservative views in the Bolsonaro government.[25][26] All information in the article was supported by reliable sources, as required by Wikipedia's policies.[24]

Characteristics

[edit]
The countries in which the Portuguese Wikipedia is the most popular language version of Wikipedia are shown in violet.
Origin of viewers on the Portuguese Wikipedia

The Portuguese language Wikipedia is different from the English one in a number of aspects.

  • Until 2009, fair use was not allowed on Portuguese Wikipedia. Debates have been raised before[29][better source needed][30][better source needed] concerning the fair use policy, all of them failing to have the uploading of such images allowed. Uploading pictures at the Portuguese Wikipedia was even fully disabled until then.[31][better source needed] In August 2009, though, a new debate was raised in order for users to approve or deny the creation of a policy of uploading fair use media (named "Uso Restrito de Conteúdo" there, which translates as Restricted Use of Contents). This debate resulted in 142 votes for "yes" against 120 votes for "no", which means the policy was approved and implemented.[32][better source needed][33][better source needed] Nowadays, fair use files are labeled as "Conteúdo restrito", meaning restricted content.
  • Like English, Portuguese has regional differences in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. It is widely accepted that an article written in Brazilian Portuguese should be kept as it is, and the same applies to articles in European Portuguese. However, if one rewrites the article in another variant (provided content was changed, not merely the language), but leaves some words in the former variant, these words should be rewritten in accordance with the new version's variant of the article.[34][better source needed]
  • In order to hinder spamming and trolling, completion of a CAPTCHA image was required for all unregistered users to make any edit. It was disabled on 1 January 2014.[35]
  • Since 2020, after a community vote that lasted from 4 September to 4 October, the Portuguese Wikipedia no longer allows edits from unregistered users (IP addresses).

As of 2019, the Portuguese Wikipedia had 316,000 unique categories, 3.57% of them lacking an appropriate page in the category namespace. The average article in this language version has nine categories, while the ratio of unique categories per article is 0.314. The largest number of articles belong to Arts (16%) and Geography (14%) categories. Articles related to Crime and Events have the highest average quality. Those related to Health are read more often, and articles in the Business category have the highest average author interest.[citation needed]

In April 2022, the European Union's East StratCom Task Force published its findings that four pro-Russian disinformation outlets (SouthFront, NewsFront, InfoRos and Strategic Culture Foundation) were referenced in 45 articles of the Portuguese Wikipedia. This made it the Wikipedia edition that was the fourth most-affected by such disinformation, after the Russian, Arabic and Spanish Wikipedias.[36] The Task Force wrote:

On the English version of Wikipedia, there seems to be a consensus that state-sponsored disinformation sites aren't legitimate sources [...]. One can only guess whether other language versions will follow suit, but there is nothing stopping anyone from launching that debate, pointing out the English Wikipedia example as a best practice.

Notes

[edit]
  • Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Hyperion, New York City. 2009. First Edition. ISBN 978-1-4013-0371-6 (alkaline paper).

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Wikipédia em português passa a exigir login para editar verbetes". Tecnoblog. 10 October 2020. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  2. ^ "[Wikipedia-l] new language wikis". 11 May 2001.
  3. ^ "Top sites in Brazil". Archived from the original on 17 March 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  4. ^ "Most Visited Websites in Portugal". 12 February 2023. Retrieved 22 May 2024.
  5. ^ "[Wikipedia-l] new language wikis". 11 May 2001. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  6. ^ "Wikipédia em português alcança 100 mil artigos" (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  7. ^ Lih, p. 136.
  8. ^ meta:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Brazilian Portuguese
  9. ^ meta:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia European Portuguese
  10. ^ meta:Language proposal policy
  11. ^ meta:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Brazilian Portuguese 2
  12. ^ In coincidence with a stalling of editing activity rates across all projects combined, see stats:EN/PlotEditsZZ.png.
  13. ^ stats:EN/EditsRevertsPT.htm and in particular stats:EN/PlotRevertsTrendsPT.png; no data available after early 2010, as of June 2013.
  14. ^ MediaWiki:Monobook.js, 2007-01-31; removed from MediaWiki:Common.js in 2008-01-25, the same day of introduction of an "emergency captcha" for all edits.
  15. ^ Oliveira, Danilo (9 August 2012). "Gilmar Mendes pede investigação contra a Wikipédia por considerá-la "partidária"". Portal IMPRENSA (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 25 June 2024. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  16. ^ Bernardo, Kaluan (6 August 2012). "Gilmar Mendes pede investigação da Wikipédia - Olhar Digital". Olhar Digital (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on 29 November 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  17. ^ Pereira, Paulo Cesto (8 August 2014). "Planalto altera perfil de jornalistas na Wikipédia com críticas e mentiras". O Globo (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  18. ^ Matoso, Filipe (8 August 2014). "Planalto diz que é 'impossível' apontar quem criticou jornalistas na Wikipédia". G1 (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  19. ^ Matoso, Filipe (8 August 2014). "Governo decide apurar caso Wikipédia após considerar 'impossível'". G1 (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  20. ^ Matoso, Filipe; Mendes, Priscilla (11 September 2014). "Casa Civil aponta servidor que alterou perfis de jornalistas na Wikipédia". G1 (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  21. ^ Boletim, Redação (24 June 2018). "Levy Fidelix defende a proibição da Wikipedia no Brasil". Boletim da Liberdade (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  22. ^ "ABI condena ataque da Wikipédia à mídia independente no Brasil". Brazilian Press Association (in Brazilian Portuguese). 25 March 2022. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
  23. ^ Prudenciano, Gregory (3 July 2019). "MEC tenta excluir perfil de Weintraub na Wikipédia alegando 'interpretações dúbias'". Estadão (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  24. ^ a b c d e Esteves, Bernardo (31 July 2019). "Balbúrdia enciclopédica". Piauí (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  25. ^ a b c d e Basilio, Ana Luiza (4 July 2019). "Por que o MEC quer excluir a biografia de Weintraub no Wikipedia?". CartaCapital (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  26. ^ a b c Maia, Dhiego (9 September 2019). "Weintraub usa MEC em guerra contra Wikipédia para controlar seu verbete". Folha de S.Paulo (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  27. ^ Veiga, Edison (6 September 2019). ""Ministério da Educação tentou censurar a Wikipédia"". DW News (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  28. ^ Borges, Helena (4 July 2019). "Perfil de ministro da Educação na Wikipedia passa por 25 mudanças em três dias e MEC pede que seja tirado do ar". O Globo (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 15 May 2026.
  29. ^ Wikipedia:Votações/Imagens e copyright
  30. ^ Wikipedia:Votações/Revisão do uso do Fair Use na pt.wikipedia
  31. ^ Wikipedia:Votações/Impedir carregamento de imagens
  32. ^ Wikipedia:Votações/Uso Restrito de Conteúdo (fair-use)
  33. ^ Wikipedia:Uso Restrito de Conteúdo/Implementação
  34. ^ Wikipedia:Versões da língua portuguesa
  35. ^ Gerrit 104660
  36. ^ "Pro-Kremlin Disinformation Outlets Referenced By Hundreds Of Wikipedia Articles". StopFake. EU vs Disinfo. 19 April 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Bibliography

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