Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español

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

Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español

Screenshot of the main page on 1 April 2006
Type of site	Wiki, online encyclopedia
Available in	Spanish
Owner	University of Seville
Created by	Edgar Enyedy
URL	enciclopedia.us.es
Commercial	No
Registration	Not required (although in some events unregistered users have to register to view and edit)
Users	3,921 registered users, 1 active (September 2023)[1][2]
Launched	26 February 2002; 23 years ago (2002-02-26)
Current status	Inactive
Content license	Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike 3.0
Written in	MediaWiki, 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• The downloadable database dumps of Wikipedia content were highly outdated.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]

By late 2024 the site had ceased operations.

See also

• Internet portal
• Spain portal

• EcuRed – Online encyclopedia from Cuba built on MediaWiki software
• Susning.nu (former Swedish wiki)
• Baidu Baike (Chinese wiki)
• List of online encyclopedias