It was started on 16 January 2002, preceding Wikipedia versions in the different standardised varieties of the language, namely Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian.

[2] Some editors were opposed, such as User:Caesarion, who acknowledged that Serbo-Croatian is mutually intelligible with Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, '[b]ut the wounds of the nineties Balkan wars are all too fresh to... let Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks cooperate on one Wikipedia.

'[1] However, the argument to re-open it was successful due to efforts driven by editors such as User:Pokrajac, who stated: 'So, this Wikipedia (if you open it) will be absolutely NPOV, liberal and antinationalist.

'[1] Richard Rogers (2015) concluded that the separate Wikipedias for Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian were created as 'solutions to the burden of collaboration after the Balkan wars'.

Rogers found that in this process, the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia was considered neutral and unifying, attempting to find the best balance between different standpoints and 'softening both the Bosnian and Serbian points of view'.