Courtesy of Google.

In Belarus, its population is mostly Russian-speaking. Even if an individual is Belarusian-speaking, they still google in Russian as they know that they can hardly ever find something interesting in Belarusian (instead of Russian, which is rich in scientific works and terminology). They are right. At least, they were.

Since Belarusian Wikipedia emerged, it started concentrating scientific, historical information in Belarusian. I can say that Belarusian Wikipedia is an unprecedented phenomenon in Belarusian history. The current goal of Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia is to outstrip Belarusian Encyclopedia (paper encyclopedia) with its 80k+ articles in Belarusian. Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia has already outstripped Belarusian Encyclopedia in topics range. We have articles about almost everything (at least all Vital Articles).

To become more popular, we’ve just started Popularity Project to outreach more people. People in Belarus all know about Wikipedia. They almost know about Belarusian Wikipedia, but they don’t know that it’s quite usable and readable. Well, Google is the most popular search engine in Belarus, so its Doodles are available for Belarusian visitors.

Here we get the opportunity to say people “Hey, guys! We’re here! Come here, it’s free and no ads!”. So, I decided to make an experiment. It was Robert Bunsen‘s birthday on March 31. I’ve started a stub in Belarusian. Today I checked its visits statistics and wasn’t surprised. Number of visits was ten times more than usual article had.

So the myth is confirmed. © 🙂

Conclusion: if you participate in a wiki project with low amount of visitors, then just write an article about current Google Doodle subject.