Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español (English: Universal Free Encyclopedia in Spanish) is a Spanish-language wiki-based online encyclopedia, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. It uses the MediaWiki software. It started as a fork of the Spanish Wikipedia.

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español
A screenshot of Enciclopedia Libre includes a panel to navigate users around the site, a welcome message, and a picture of a featured article
Screenshot of the main page on 1 April 2006
Type of site
Wiki, online encyclopedia
Available inSpanish
OwnerUniversity of Seville
Created byEdgar Enyedy
URLenciclopedia.us.es
CommercialNo
RegistrationNot required (although in some events unregistered users have to register to view and edit)
Users3,921 registered users, 1 active (September 2023)[1][2]
Launched26 February 2002 (2002-02-26)
Current statusInactive
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 3.0
Written inMediaWiki, made in PHP

History

The Enciclopedia Libre was founded by contributors to the Spanish Wikipedia who decided to start an independent project. Led by Edgar Enyedy, they left Wikipedia on 26 February 2002, and created the new website, provided by the University of Seville for free, with the freely licensed articles of the Spanish Wikipedia.[3]

The reasons for the split are explained on Enciclopedia Libre.[4] Key issues included concerns about censorship and the possibility of advertising on Wikipedia.[5] Edgar Enyedy stated the main reasons for splitting at that time as:[3]

  • Perceived expectation that Wikipedia would soon start hosting advertisements.[3]
  • Non-English Wikipedias were running older versions of MediaWiki.
  • When national groups offered help in software development and maintenance, access to the servers was denied.
  • The downloadable database dumps of Wikipedia content were highly outdated.
  • Wikipedia was hosted on a .com rather than a .org domain.

Post-split history

In 2011, Enyedy said that the sole reason for the failure of Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español as a long-term project was that it "was not intended to last. It was merely a form of pressure. Some of the goals were achieved, not all of them, but it was worth the cost." He further said "Nowadays, the romantic point of view is that EL survived and is still going strong." He argued that while the viewpoint is positive, it is not factual.[3]

See also

References
  1. "Estadísticas". Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-06-20.
  2. "Lista de usuarios activos". Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-06-20.
  3. Tkacz, Nathaniel (20 January 2011). "The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's ad-fuelled mutiny". Wired UK. Archived from the original on 4 May 2016. Retrieved 27 August 2022.
  4. "Enciclopedia:Por qué estamos aquí y no en es.wikipedia.org". Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-06-20.
  5. Lih, Andrew (2009). The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. London: Aurum. p. 9. ISBN 9781845134730. OCLC 280430641.
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