(This is translated from the Chinese version on the same blog
which are published earlier. Sorry for grammatical mistakes. Feel
free to point out mistakes, I’ll fix it.)
Recently Addis, a mainland Chinese Wikimedian resided in the
USA, as well as Taiwanese Wikimedians Liang and Reke attended the
Wikimedia Conference 2016 in Berlin, held talks with Asian
Wikimedians from Indonesia, Korea, Thailand etc., and talked about
WAM, Seasonal Newsletter and ESEA Conference with them. I’m
particularly interested in Regional Conference (not for covert
form of travel), as it is helpful for Wikimedians from the
Asia Pacific region to share experience on community affairs, to
complement each other and to plan for regional projects (due to
time difference and differences in working hours there may be
difficulties for Wikimedians from every country/region to discuss
it online.) With the Wikimania reform, it may become an event to
hold between two Wikimanias.
From what they discussed it should be a conference with 30-50
attendees with a scope as follow:
- WMTW, WMID and WMPH (WMHK & WMMO is stagnated, so is
excluded)
- Usergroups in mainland China, South Korea, Thailand, Japan and
the Philippines
- Grassroot editors from Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Cambodia,
Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore
Later they discussed with Ellie, the event manager of WMF. She
suggested to extend the scope to Oceania.
People are essential for a conference. So please let me to
introduce what’s going on about Wikimedians across the Asia Pacific
region (except Hong Kong, which I’ll explain in another post
later).
Pacific
Islands
The representative of WMAU, Andrew, said to Liang and Reke that he
can’t see any Wikipedian communities taking root in island nations
of Oceania due to poor network services there.
Australia
Australia is the only Oceanian state with a Wikimedia chapter by
Apr 2016. There’s a vital community, meetups are held quite
frequently. From Andrew I know that Australia Wikimedians
can be divided geographically as those from the East (like
Melbourne) and those from WA (Perth). Perth community once bid for
Wikimania 2017, but the WMF gifted the holding rights to Montreal.
There’s a possibility that the chapter will be divided as two local
usergroups (though from experiences abroad local chapters can
co-exist with national chapters).
Cambodia
I once met with Vantharith, a Khmer Wikipedian in Wikimania 2013.
We talked about what happened in the Cambodian community. What I
wrote on FB was:
Here is Vantharith Oum, the
Cambodian Wikipedian I met after the Wikimedia Asia meeting on Aug.
10th. He is also the man-in-charge of the Khmer Wikipedia
Official Blog. On the
meetup day, we walked together and talked about the situation of
Khmer Wikipedia: The Cambodian Wiki-community is comparatively
small, as there are not too many people in Cambodia (I think the
geographic-economic situation in Cambodia can be another cause of
the situation). We exchanged our Facebook a day after, and the
picture is taken at that day.
Later developments is unknown to me due to language barriers,
but I once called for importation of the Khmer version of the
book The Customs of Cambodia (though I don’t know how
it went on). They participated in discussions on ESEA
meetup last year.
Myanmar
I met with Burmese Wikipedian Mg Sun on the same occasion and
talked with him about what’s happening in the Burmese
community. What I wrote on FB was:
Most of the Wikipedians in Myanmar
are from Yangon or Mandalay. Some are from Naypyitaw, which is
having the best Net service in the state. The most controversial
articles in Burmese Wikipedia are about the former military junta,
but they will not argue with this. Instead, they will set down the
controversy by discussion – they have connections with each
other.
By then the USDP was still the ruling party. Since then there
are Wikimedia meetups in Myanmar, but what happened later is also
unknown due to language barriers.
Taiwan
Taiwan has a Wikimedia chapter which is the only functioning
chapter in East Asia. It once faced crisis after
Wikimania 2007, but revived later and launched a project
named Wikiseeds of Taiwan Knowledge. With the project the chapter
imported a Taiwanese Hokkien dictionary, held several Wikipedia
meetups for women and took photos of new legislators in
Taiwan. There’re media coverages on it – once I read an
interview with Reke on a Taiwanese newspaper in a community
library. So we can say that this is useful in promotion and
building of Wikimedia projects. There’re also Wikimedia communities
in some counties/cities of Taiwan, like Kaohsiung, Taichung, and
more recently Hsinchu. Taichung Wikipedians’ attempt to hold
collaborative meetups (different from editathon), and attempts to
push forward projects on hydroelectricity and spoken articles by
their Hsinchu counterparts are interesting. At present Taiwanese
Wikipedians maintained a Facebook group (I thought that it is
comprised of the good, bad and ugly), some others are on IRC
chatrooms.
mainland
China
There’s a user group in mainland China, which Addis proposed to set
up in Wikimania 2013. Before that Addis already secured funds from
the WMF to make use of social networking sites for promotion of
Wikipedia in mainland China. (Though the Weibo account is now
stagnated, and the twitter account is flooded with main page
contents.) The user group also organised activities like a
photography contest called “Run Run Shaw Hall besides you", “Wiki
Love Monuments" campaign, “Youdao Babel Translation Project" and
the Asian Month. Some still require fundings from the WMF, though
in a far smaller amount, if compared with their Far East
counterparts (check it in Meta). But it still trigger controversies
in the Teahouse of the Chinese Wikipedia, even if those complaints
are groundless.
Outside the group there’re plenty of Wikipedians stationed in
QQ, a popular instant chat software in mainland China. Members in
QQ chatrooms bear the word “Wikipedia" are not necessarily
Wikipedians, Wikipedia users inside are not completely in a loose
relationship, some can be grouped by their clear and staunch stand
and belief. Those chatrooms are also comprised of the good,
bad and ugly, but besides the bad, there’re still outstanding
editors and sysops rising from this poor environment.
Peking now has Wikipedia blocked, though Wikipedians in mainland
China can still work there with their own way of access. Both the
user group and Wikipedians using QQ hold community events, but not
on a regular basis. Both groups are said having a bitter moment,
which I’m sorry that no investigation reporting can be
provided.
Indonesia
There’s a Wikimedia chapter in Indonesia, in recent years they
focused on cultural preservation (like book digitalization),
development of small-scale communities for Wikipedia in Indonesian
regional languages and interactions with Wikidata developers’
community. They are pioneers in co-operation between regional
Wikimedia communities, once invited Liang to visit Indonesia and
their chapter, and initiated proposal for a regional conference.
(For this part I’m not confident on what I’ve written.)
Wikimedians’ activities in Indonesia is vital, in Indonesian
Wikipedia they have a good practice by putting informations on
meet-ups and current theme of weekly collaboration project to the
main page. Unlike Hong Kong, this may prevent a rift between
grassroot editors and outreach team to come into being. But
some complained the edition review process there is keep delaying,
stopping newcomers from having amendments done to articles.
Japan
There’s a user group in Kansai area (Osaka, Kyoto, etc.) of Japan.
Wikipedians in Japan are proactive, they held activities like a
meeting with Lila Tretikov and WP15 celebrations. They co-sponsored
the Asian Month too (I once received a postcard from
them!) Japanese Wikipedia just passed the milestone of having
a million articles. One of my colleagues said that they have
better articles focused on Western history, geography and
academic theories than Chinese Wikipedia. Even that’s being
said almost a decade ago, now I still consider this
claim valid .
(To be continued…)
