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The French Wikipedia (Wikipédia francophone) is the French language edition of Wikipedia, spelled Wikipédia. Started in March 2001, this edition has over 400,000 articles as of December 2006 and is the third largest Wikipedia after the English language and German language editions. One area in which the French Wikipedia has a larger coverage than others is in the cities and towns of France.

A bot, DasBot, the French equivalent of the English Wikipedia's Rambot, has created a fair percentage of the articles on the site, adding articles for all the communes of France, e.g. fr:Rochefort-en-Valdaine, and also on some of the smallest administrative areas (cantons). This data has been copied onto other Wikipedias, also via bots.

2001

• 19 May: First recorded date: [1]
• 6 June: First known main page: [2] (Including the participation of Valéry Beaud and Buzz).

2002

• June: A new logo (in green colour and quite different from the logo used on the other Wikipedias) is displayed in an initiative from Rinaldum. This autonomist move is criticized because all French wikipedians had not been consulted, but the logo is kept.
• August: The first sysops, Anthere, Aoineko and Shaihulud are appointed after a disagreement with user Mulot. The first IP is blocked.
• 31 October: Phase III began.
• December: A strong increase of activity is reported. It can be analysed as serial vandalism from a bot, and all subsequent corrections. After this new kind of vandalism, the software is changed in order to enable quicker reverts (rollback link available for sysops only).

2003

• January: A strong decrease of activity, essentially due to the slowing down of servers, thus limiting participation.
• 6 February: Colored "Putsch" on the main page: Before => After. The new design, authored by Aoineko, is subsequently reused by other language versions (including Polish and English Wikipedias).
• 7 February: 5,000 articles.
• 19 February: 6,000 articles.
• 7 March: 7,000 articles.
• 27 March: 8,000 articles.
• 13 April: Overtakes Polish Wikipedia to become the third largest Wikipedia, behind the English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia with 9,051 articles.
• 15 May: 10,000 articles.
• 18 May: The main page has been viewed 100,000 times since the counter was implemented.
• 7 July: Wikipédia has 20,000 pages, including about 12,800 articles.
• mid-July: The number of pages calculation is modified. According to the old calculation mode detecting at least a comma, 13,058 encyclopaedia articles are present, and the new calculation that detects at least one link, indicates 13,789 articles.
• 5 August: 15,000 articles; over 20,000 changes have been recorded since the implementation of phase III software.
• 20 August: Inhibition of some functions in order to increase performance.
• 4 September: 16,000 articles.
•  ? October: New logo.
• 3-11 November: Papotages is the first user blocked forever as the author of severe and repeated vandalism.
• 17 November: Lorraine is the first article of the week. 38 users participated in its redaction.
• 22 November: 20,000 articles.

2004

• 26 January: 25,000 articles.
• 14 March: 30,000 articles.
• End of March: Switch to UTF-8.
• 1st May: 35,000 articles.
• 16 June: 40,000 articles.
• 23 July: 45,000 articles.
• 29 August: 50,000 articles with nèfle.
• 2 November at 23:33: 60,000 articles with Lord Yarborough.
• 22 December: 70,000 articles with Borée.

2005

• 6 February: 80,000 articles.
• 14 March: 90,000 articles.
• 21 April: 100,000 articles with Pierre Séguier.
• 4 December: 200,000 articles with George Corliss.

2006

• 4 March: 250,000 articles with John Anglin.
• 10 June: 300,000 articles with Federal Government (Germany).
• 24 November: 400,000 articles with Neuropathie.

• French Wikipedia