Cebuano Wikipedia
Today, Cebuano Wikipedia is a topic that has become increasingly relevant in our society. It has become a point of interest for people of all ages and around the world. Its impact can be observed in different areas of daily life, from politics and economics, to culture and entertainment. Cebuano Wikipedia has sparked passionate debates and generated different opinions and perspectives. In this article, we will explore different aspects related to Cebuano Wikipedia, from its origin to its influence today, as well as the possible future scenarios that could arise as a result of its evolution.
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Type of site | Internet encyclopedia project |
|---|---|
| Available in | Cebuano |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | Bentong Isles, Cebuano-speaking Wikipedia user community. |
| URL | ceb |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Users | 135,106 (as of 17 December 2025) |
| Launched | 22 June 2005 |
Content license | Creative Commons Attribution/ Share-Alike 4.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL) Media licensing varies |
The Cebuano Wikipedia (Cebuano: Wikipedya sa Sinugboanong Binisayâ) is the Cebuano-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Despite being the second-largest Wikipedia in numbers of articles, it has a small community of only 188 active users; nearly all of the 6,115,869 articles were initially created through automatic programs, most notably Sverker Johansson's Lsjbot.
Importance in the language area
It is the largest Philippine-language Wikipedia by number of articles, ahead of Waray Wikipedia and Tagalog Wikipedia (which as of 17 December 2025 have 1,266,838 and 48,792 articles respectively).[1]
Cebuano is the second most spoken language in the Philippines with about 20 million speakers.[2] The Cebuano-language Wikipedia community has claimed to be the only online encyclopedia in this language.[3]
However, Cebuano Wikipedia does not appear to be widely used in the Philippines; as of March 2021, 90 percent of Wikipedia views from that country were directed at English Wikipedia, with 5 percent going to Tagalog and 3 percent to Russian Wikipedia.[4] About 30 percent of Cebuano Wikipedia views come from China, 22 percent from the United States, and only about 11 percent from the Philippines (roughly the same number as from France).[5] Most of the articles on the Wikipedia are not relevant to Cebuano speakers.[6]
History and growth of articles
The Cebuano-language Wikipedia was launched in June 2005.[7] In January 2006, 1,000 articles were created,[8] while in November 2006 there were 1,400 articles.[9] At the end of 2006 and 2007, the bots created ten thousand articles on municipalities in France.[10]
By the end of 2012, the number of articles increased to about 30,000. In December 2012, Lsjbot began to create articles. As a result, the number of articles increased dramatically in 2013, and from February to December 2013, the number of articles increased ninefold.[11][12] By the end of 2015, about 99 percent of the then 1.4 million articles had been created by bots, including about 25,000 articles about localities and the rest of articles about living beings by Lsjbot.[10] Sverker Johansson, the creator of Lsjbot, focused on the Cebuano Wikipedia as his wife is a native Cebuano speaker; Johansson himself is not fluent in the language.[6]
On 16 July 2014, the Cebuano-language Wikipedia comprised one million articles, making it the 12th-largest Wikipedia. After overtaking Spanish-, Italian-, Russian-, French-, Dutch- and German-speaking Wikipedia within a year and a half, in February 2016 it reached the two-million mark. After about half a year, followed by the third million, and another half a year later, the fourth million. In August 2017, the five millionth article was created, and it became the second largest Wikipedia.
Many of the bot-created pages were found to have grammatical or factual errors, and due to the low ratio of human editors to articles, articles are not maintained or improved often. A 2018 proposal to delete the entire Wikipedia and start over received little support.[6] One editor claimed that the quality of other Philippine language Wikipedias was dragged down, as they started competing on quantity with the Cebuano Wikipedia.[6]
| Date | Number of articles |
|---|---|
| 9 July 2005 | 19 articles[13] |
| 30 August 2005 | 232 articles[14] |
| 1 January 2006 | 1,000 articles[8] |
| 1 November 2006 | 1,400 articles[9] |
| 1 January 2007 | 13,521 articles[15] |
| 7 February 2007 | 26,511 articles[16] |
| 2 February 2013 | 100,000 articles |
| 9 February 2013 | 150,000 articles |
| 17 March 2013 | 300,000 articles |
| 26 June 2013 | 400,000 articles |
| 18 July 2013 | 500,000 articles |
| 7 August 2013 | 600,000 articles |
| 16 July 2014 | 1,000,000 articles |
| 6 December 2015 | 1,500,000 articles[1][17] |
| 14 February 2016 | 2,000,000 articles |
| 25 September 2016 | 3,000,000 articles |
| 11 February 2017 | 4,000,000 articles |
| 8 August 2017 | 5,000,000 articles |
| 14 October 2021 | 6,000,000 articles |
An analysis of Cebuano Wikipedia content on Wikidata in July 2015 showed that of the then 1.21 million articles, 95.8 percent are on living beings and biological species (1,160,787) and 3.3 percent are cities and communities (39,420).[18]
See also
References
- ^ a b "List of Wikipedias by speakers per article – Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
- ^ Cebuano Informational Report (PDF; 864 kB) Christopher DeFraga, Rhode Island College, 2011
- ^ "Tell us about Cebuano Wikipedia – Meta". meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
- ^ "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Wikipedia Page Views Per Country - Breakdown". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
- ^ "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Page Views Per Wikipedia Language - Breakdown". stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
- ^ a b c d "How one man created 6 million Wikipedia articles, and why he stopped". ABC News. 14 April 2025. Retrieved 24 June 2025.
- ^ "Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Cebuano". meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
- ^ a b Meta: List of Wikipedias, 1 January 2006
- ^ a b Meta: List of Wikipedias, 1 November 2006
- ^ a b "Wikipedia Statistics – Bot article creations only". 30 November 2015. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
- ^ a b c "Wikimedia project at a glance: Cebuano Wikipedia". stats.wikimedia.org. November 2015. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
- ^ Meet the Stats Master Making Sense of Wikipedia's Massive Data Trove Ashik Siddique, wired.com, 27 December 2013
- ^ Meta: List of Wikipedias, 9 July 2005
- ^ Meta: List of Wikipedias, 30 August 2005
- ^ Meta: List of Wikipedias, 1 January 2007
- ^ Meta: List of Wikipedias, 7 February 2007
- ^ "Wikimedia News – Meta". Retrieved 16 January 2016.
- ^ "Cebuano Wikipedia, Wikidata:Statistics/Wikipedia". Wikidata. 17 July 2015. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
External links
