Universal Free Encyclopedia in Spanish

The Universal Free Encyclopedia in Spanish (EL) is a splinter project of the Spanish Wikipedia. It was created on February 26, 2002.

As of January 27, 2018, the Free Encyclopedia had 50,240 articles and 15,578 images.

For a little more than a year after its creation in 2002, it had a larger group of collaborators and visitors than the Spanish Wikipedia^{[cita requerida]} (before the software update on Wikipedia in October 2002, considerably higher). Throughout its history, materials have been incorporated which, in the case of the Spanish Wikipedia, belong to parallel projects, such as dictionary entries (covered in Spanish Wikipedia by the Wiktionary) or historical documents (managed by Wikisource).

According to some of its collaborators, by being disconnected from the parent encyclopedia, the English-language one, the Free Encyclopedia would not tend to be a mere translation of the English Wikipedia, and would produce more "local" articles;^{[citation required]}. However, the same collaborators think that not being able to link to articles from other encyclopedias in other languages is depriving themselves of a certain cultural richness ^{[citation required]}. They also argue that the existence of several collaborative encyclopedias in Spanish would constitute an enrichment of free online encyclopedia, since they would allow those who consult to have several points of view on the same topic.^{[citation required]}

History

Due to certain actions taken in Wikipedia, considered harmful, some cooperators decided to create a website isolating the lucrative purpose devised in the company Bomis Inc. The first development was at the University of Seville decided by Juan Antonio Ruiz Rivas, one of his employees.

The exchange between the Enciclopedia Libre and the Wikipedia in Spanish is done fundamentally by copying articles from one to the other (there are also Wikipedians who collaborate in EL, producing the same content for both encyclopedias). Although in principle it could To think that this exchange would make both seem more alike every day, in fact both the contents and, fundamentally, the structure of the information are diverging ^{[citation required]}.

Statistics

Chart of the quantitative evolution of the articles of the Universal Free Encyclopedia. The X-axis shows the quantitative approximation of the years passed and the Y-axis shows the number of items.

THE Workshop

EL Taller is a sister project of the Enciclopedia Libre, and its main difference with other wiki projects is that it is oriented towards individual initiative and creativity. It is intended to host non-encyclopedic content such as images, poems, stories, among other things that are creations entirely of each user (as opposed to Commons).