May 22, 2014. A resident of Nizhniy Tagil named Vitaliy Dudko proved the most active author of the Tankopedia Project in April: he uploaded 28 entries there last month and was presented branded clothes and souvenirs from UVZSHOP.ru by Uralvagonzavod Corporation – the company that actually came up with the idea of such an online encyclopedia. Another proactive participant from Moscow will receive his present in the mail, Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s press service says.

Vitaliy works at one of Nizhniy Tagil’s advertising agencies and has been fond of tanks since his college years: he first went in for making model tanks and then started searching for some data on armored vehicles. He is now into the First World War.

‘If you look at the first three months of Tankopedia’s online presence, you can definitely see that the project is a success and is very popular. The encyclopedia has 2,529 entries already, of which 97 entries were added in April. The section on Armored Command has the greatest number of entries – 80,’ the corporation says.

There are currently 616 people contributing to the project. 35 people registered last month, 20 of whom are quite active and have been uploading entries and materials. The number of page hits has been going up as well: the site got 824,948 hits in February and March and 890,127 hits by end of April: the increase came to 65,179 hits.

According to one of the project curators Alexei Khlopotov, the project has enormous potential.

‘This electronic resource means you can upload data virtually free of charge. The first archive data from Uralvagonzavod Museum funds will become available as soon as the end of May and early June. We are planning to make Tankopedia as popular as the frequently visited Wikipedia pages by 2020. We want it to be as informative and as interesting as possible,’ Khlopotov adds.