Word Warrios
A small but active group of volunteers spend their free time updating Wikipedia – the free online encyclopaedia which turns 20 this week – to ensure information it carries about the country and its culture is always accurate.
LAST November, secondary school teacher Awang Abdul Muizz Awang Marusin noticed that the Puteri Gunung Ledang legend on the Malay version of Wikipedia had been modified.
Someone, most likely a troll, had included an additional term in Puteri Gunung Ledang’s seven conditions to Sultan Mahmud of Melaka.
In order to get her hand in marriage, the sultan had to also make a “one-off withdrawal of RM10,000 from the Employee Provident Fund (EPF)”, the amended page read.
Though he was able to fulfil the other tasks such as building a golden bridge connecting Melaka and Gunung Ledang, Sultan Mahmud failed to win her heart, as he couldn’t make the withdrawal from EPF.
“Obviously this person had made the changes to reflect the situation at the time when people were waiting for the Finance Ministry to reveal the i-sinar application process,” said Awang Abdul Muizz, 26.
Malaysian editors worked furiously to remove the fake terms, he said, as many alterations had been made within just a day.
“The Malay-language Wikipedia website has become a favourite place for trolls to insert fake info, mostly for humorous purposes,” he said.
Awang Abdul Muizz, based in Sabah, is one of the few active Wikipedia contributors or Wikipedians in Malaysia.
Since registering as a user in 2007, he has edited about 4,500 articles in four languages – English, Malay, Indonesian and Arabic – and spends at least an hour a day on the platform.
“I correct links and spellings, and update pages with new information when the need arises,” he said, adding that he mostly prefers to focus on topics related to politics and governments.
According to the founder and president of the Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia, Dody Ismoyo, Malaysia has a small but active community of Wikipedians.
“As I began getting to know more people through Wikipedia, I initiated meetups so the first one was held in 2016 with editors from Kuala Lumpur and Singapore,” said the Johor-based electrical engineer, adding that the site’s article and user talk pages facilitated this.
The 35-year-old then began expanding to more states in Malaysia and continued to have meetings during the movement control order period via video conferencing platforms.
The group has been recognised by the Wikimedia Foundation – a United States non-profit organisation that has been hosting Wikipedia since 2018 – and early last year it was registered with The Registry of Societies Malaysia under the Home Affairs Ministry.
Though the group has about 50 members, Dody said only 10 are editing consistently now.
“I have been editing since 2009. So far (as of last December), I’ve written 2,096 new articles and made more than 180,000 edits,” said Dody, who mostly works on the English version of the site.
According to Dody’s profile page, he has handled topics ranging from politics in Taiwan to tourist attractions in Malaysia such as zoos, museums and waterfalls.
Household name
Wikipedia was launched on Jan 15, 2001 by Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and project developer Larry Sanger as an open encyclopedia platform to encourage everyone to create, contribute and edit pages by adding content, including images, sounds and links.
In just one year, users generated 20,000 articles for the English version of Wikipedia and by March 2006, it had hit a major milestone – one million articles.
The site, which has only grown in size since then, has often been cited as the reason for the demise of printed encyclopaedias.
When Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that it was ending the print version, the company said it was because it had to adapt to the digital age, as users were flocking to online resources, including Wikipedia.
Today, Wikipedia has over 55 million articles in 300 languages, including 6.2 million in English and over 340,000 in Malay, boasting more than one billion views per month.
The platform relies on about 128,000 active volunteers from around the world to keep the site updated.
As a non-profit, Wikipedia relies on donations from readers to run the site, as it doesn’t host ads for revenue.
Volunteers do not get paid for their work, as the donations are mostly used for maintaining servers, legal services and tech support.
However, it “promotes” select volunteers to administrators with powers to restrict users and lock pages to prevent vandalism.
Taufik Rosman, a 21-year-old Universiti Sains Malaysia student from Sabah was made an administrator of the Malay-language Wikipedia in 2015.
To become an admin he had to be nominated by another editor.
“When I was nominated, a page was created for me to talk about myself and present a manifesto on why I should be made an administrator.
“The editors then started asking me questions about what I’d do with my new role. Once they were satisfied, they started casting their votes,” he said.
As admin, Taufik creates and expands existing information, and responds to queries from other editors, guiding them to improve their pages.
Keeping vandals in check is par for the course.
“You can tell a page has been modified when you look at its size in bytes. If a page has suddenly increased or decreased in size, information could have been added or removed,” he said.
If Taufik sees an unfamiliar name or just an IP address as the handle, he will check the
Recent Changes page, which shows line by line what was modified.
Wikipedia has since introduced tools and measures to stop pages from being easily modified with false or incomplete information, he said, adding that it is still a challenge to correct vandalised pages or bad editing, as there are only a few active editors.
Taufik’s stint with Wikipedia started at age 14 when he was browsing the site at the library.
He felt that it needed more information in Malay so he started using whatever books he could find in the library as source.
“I started adding words from Kamus Dewan into Wikikamus to help users learn the definition of Malay words and how to use them in sentences.
“As volunteers our time is flexible. Sometimes I spend one or two hours at night editing or 10 to 15 minutes several times a day to do some checking,” he said.
Taufik has added more than 5,000 words to Wikikamus, including words used by ethnic groups such as Semai, Temuan, Kadazandusun and Bidayuh.
He has also created more than 900 pages on topics such as Nintendo Switch Lite, coronavirus, royal weddings and villages in Sabah in Malay.
Khairul Hazim Zainudin too started at an early age, as he was eager to list the TV programmes of his favourite channels.
“They aired shows that I liked, especially animated series. I would compile the info from memory, promos and TV guides, jot it down on paper and then transfer it online,” he said.
And when he edits stories, Khairul Hazim, now 26, includes tags such as coordinates, especially for Malaysian articles so readers could view the locations.
Sharing is caring
Taufik’s hard work didn’t go unrecognised – he was invited to attend community conferences in Bali, Indonesia in 2018 and Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden.
“I never thought that I’d be chosen to represent the Malaysian Wiki community group. It was an exciting experience and I may have been one of the youngest participants,” he said.
He was inspired by a group of elderly Russian women he met at the Stockholm conference, who
told him they were committed to translating tonnes of Wikipedia articles from English to Russian.
“They wanted more people in the country to have access to information. It really goes to show that anyone can be a part of this community regardless of age,” he added.
His family was surprised when he told them that he was invited to attend the conference, as they had assumed he was just playing games when he was in front of the PC.
“They asked if the invitation was real. What if it was a scam. Then they finally understood what I had been doing online all the while,” he said.
Dody also wants to help the differently abled by creating a page that highlights facilities such as wheelchair ramps that offer easy access to public places.
As he travels, Dody snaps photos of such facilities and hopes others will contribute too.
“Wikipedia has expanded to more than just about pages. Now the Wikimedia Foundation has other projects such as Wikimedia Commons (repository of free images, sounds and other media), Wikidata (open data) and Wikiquote.
“We need more people to contribute in various languages such as Cantonese, Tamil and Telugu,” he said, adding that users can always start by writing about what they know best such as their hometown.
Learning by teaching
Dody made his first edit on Wikipedia when he was looking for information about electrical engineering.
“Some of the terminologies were incomplete and I found it irritating. I started playing around with how to add information and that’s how I got started,” he said.
He remembers being the person his schoolmates relied often for information. As he learned to help them grasp a tough topic, he too started to understand the subject better.
“The same goes for Wikipedia. The more I write, the better I understand topics that I initially had no knowledge of. That’s something money can’t buy.”
However, most people who are initially interested in becoming editors are eventually turned off by the lack of monetary reward, he added.
Taufik’s motivation stemmed from wanting to make information accessible to more people regardless of language.
He has since started focusing his efforts on offline engagement by holding seminars to encourage school teachers in Sabah to contribute in the Kadazandusun language.
A number of projects to create Wikipedia in Kadazandusun and in other ethnic languages are currently in the incubator phase, said Taufik, but the projects are struggling to gain traction due to lack of active contributors.
To encourage active participation, Taufik also conducted a writing workshop for Bajau Sama language speakers last December.
“We need to preserve languages from going extinct. By getting more people to share the meaning or definition of words in their mother tongue, we create opportunities for others outside the community to learn as well,” he said.
Awang Abdul Muizz said he has no ultimate goal other than just sharing information.
“I guess I’m driven by the vision to provide free, open and useful information,” he said, adding that it doesn’t matter if users aren’t aware who maintains the pages.
What’s more important is the information on the page, he said, because the editors are passionate about ensuring that the content is always accurate and up to date.
For Khairul Hazim, it’s about the sense of excitement that he gets when he edits.
“I get a thrill when I edit, as it feels like I am putting my personal stamp as I make changes,” he said.
He has received two “barnstars”, awarded by readers to show their appreciation for the work he has done in improving pages related to Malaysia.
“My father would proudly mention them whenever he meets people and talks about me,” said Khairul Hazim.