Now, Wikipedia has visual editor too

BANGALORE, INDIA: In an effort to revive its growth, Wikipedia has unveiled the first version of its new visual editor.

This enables contributors to create articles or edit existing ones via a visual editor just like it is done on most of the blogging platforms.

After reaching a peak in 2007, there has been a decline in the number of editors on Wikipedia.

According to an Economist report, the 2011-12 annual plan of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation that runs Wikipedia, states that “declining participation is by far the most serious problem facing the Wikimedia projects”.

With the visual editor option, the organisation hopes for a spurt in new editors. However, right now the visual editor is still a developer prototype.

Ever since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has been bringing about new changes to the website to retain the interest of readers as well as editors.

Banking on growth of the mobile phone sector and increased Internet access in India, the online encyclopedia introduced versions in more than 20 Indian languages.

“Today, we have 50-100 million Internet users and 700-800 million mobile users (in India). There’s going to be a lot more people who will be more comfortable in their mother tongues than English, so it (developing language pages) is hugely important,” Hisham Mundol, India programs consultant for the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, had said in November.

The founder of the website, Jimmy Wales, has predicted there could be at least 100,000 new articles in the top 10 Indian languages by 2015.