This week, the Signpost went island-hopping with WikiProject Indonesia. The project was founded in 2007 and has 31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, and 93 good articles. We interviewed SatuSuro, Crisco 1492, and Bennylin.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Indonesia? Do you currently or have you previously lived in Indonesia? Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured or Good Articles?
SatuSuro: I currently live in Australia. I lived in Indonesia some time ago, and when I first encountered Wikipedia I was concerned about the quality of many of the articles and project in general when I first started editing. We have been very fortunate to have had editors who have contributed immensely to the project – who have since stopped editing Wikipedia. This is a mixed blessing – there were a number of very dedicated editors who have since moved on, and I believe the project would have not got to its current status without the amazing effort they put in.
I have admired others who have raised articles to Featured and Good Article status, I tend to be concerned with the range of maintenance issues when I can pull myself away from other Wikimedia exploits. Like most other projects, there tends to be a very low level understanding of the work required for good project maintenance, as a result there are always backlogs. Usually in expanding the content stubs about Indonesia's many islands.
Crisco 1492: As a Canadian expat living and studying in Indonesia for the past seven years (and counting), gravitating to Indonesia-related articles was sort of a given. My first article on an Indonesian topic was before I became a very active Wikipedian, and after becoming highly active I've focused mostly in that area. I've contributed perhaps half of the currently listed featured and good articles related to Indonesia, as well as almost all lists and revamped our featured portal. I mostly work with Indonesian films, so a new portal on films would be nice.
As the world's fourth most populous country, should we expect Indonesia to contribute large numbers of editors to Wikipedia? Do many Indonesians have access to the internet? Will Indonesia receive the kind of international headlines and frenzied discussion that has been given to other emerging giants like China, India, and Brazil?
SatuSuro: It is hard to tell whether there would be much interest or involvement with English language content on an online encyclopedia about their country, but there are dedicated number of editors who are bilingual (English and Indonesian) who steadily add to the quality of materials on wikipedia english and commons. There are also some notable editors – the pioneers of Wikipedia in Indonesian and Javanese like User:Meursault2004 and the younger generation of editors like User:Bennylin who are bringing aspects of Indonesian languages and culture into perspective.
Crisco 1492: As Sats said, it's hard to judge much about how big of a role Indonesia will play in the Wikiverse and in international relations. On the English Wikipedia, there are two editors I know who are Indonesian by birth and contribute quality content (though I have not seen either around in a while). Most Indonesians (and Wikimedia Indonesia) focus on the Indonesian Wikipedia and Wikipedias in the various local languages, which are at various stages of development.
Bennylin: There's this tendency to say "Wikipedia" when actually it really means "English Wikipedia". Overall, the editors in Indonesian do edit multiple edition of Wikipedias, and I'm looking forward to see Indonesia to be the country with the most editions of Wikipedias :), given the fact that it has the second highest number of living languages in the world (after PNG), and the number of editions waiting in Incubator.
Access to the internet is not the measure for user engagement, as most people access the internet from mobile devices, and Wikipedia is not the first thing that come to mind when they browse. Social media usage is large, therefore we're trying to tap into that, and making available every article to be shared on social media (via sidebar link). I see a healthy and growing number of shares and followers, and the FB group is full of people asking random stuff, but that's okay for now. Slowly we hope to turn some of them into long-term editors. I've seen some successes, but it's still a long way before we can have a solid number of editors like English Wikipedia.
Are some aspects of Indonesia better represented on Wikipedia than others? Are there any significant gaps in coverage with which the project could use some help?
Crisco 1492: Film is perhaps one of the best-represented Indonesia topics (sorry), though even that is far from complete; I estimate we have articles on less than 10% of all Indonesian film production, and that doesn't even touch on the TV series we're missing. Association football is another with lots of coverage (too much, if you ask me). Most major historical events are already here, but a lot of articles on fairly significant figures are underdeveloped or non-existent. We didn't have Trisakti shootings until 2011, and major films such as Darah dan Doa and Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI waited until 2012. I can name several literary works which we don't have articles on yet but should have one, including Khotbah di Atas Bukit (Kuntowijoyo) and Godlob (Danarto).
Bennylin: Topics about Indonesia are covered well in Indonesian Wikipedia(!), if you mean English Wikipedia, I think in general the basic topics are well covered. I think User:Crisco has brought attention to Indonesian cinema. I particularly think that File:DYK hook numbers Mar 12 - Jan 13.png captures what he did very well. In general, the attention to Indonesia really is low, and really not correlated to the number of population. But hopefully time will slowly change that.
Has language hindered the growth of articles about Indonesia on the English Wikipedia? Have you contributed to the Indonesian Wikipedia? Are there any ways the English and Indonesian Wikipedias could collaborate?
SatuSuro: Indonesian soccer (Association football) articles are in the main created by non-english speaking editors, or with limited capacity, which makes many stubs about soccer players and aspects of soccer in Indonesia collections of names and flags, and little extra material. Also some enthusiasm for lists of names of things has been a problem in the past, with lists of names and links something that really detracts from the quality that is possible in the project.
One problem with Indonesian Wikipedia is that many articles lack reliable sources and citations that are traceable, as a consequence there are many articles in that Wikipedia that are not easily transferable. With a stricter sense of the reliable sources requirements on English Wikipedia, many articles on the Indonesian Wikipedia remain unconverted. That said, I believe there has never been much of an effort to collaborate, and I do believe that if ventured into, a well thought out programme to collaborate might see some useful processes in translating materials between both Wikipedias.
Crisco 1492: Language is not the main issue; getting the actual sources is. Most Indonesian books have short circulation lives (three to four years) with very little resale. Unless one lives near a library with good Indonesian coverage, getting domestic sources will be a headache (and even then, it's hit and miss). Collaborations of a sort have happened; Indonesian editors, if they see a decent English article on Indonesia which is underdeveloped on their home wiki, may translate, and English translations of Indonesian articles are also possible (both Ratu and Ganting Grand Mosque were translated from Indonesian FAs). Off-Wiki, English Wikipedia editors such as John Vandenberg, sats, and myself have worked collaboratively to get some better coverage; I recall John helped migrate a Sundanese-language dictionary to Wikisource, for instance.
Bennylin: I don't know... for me, I don't think it's our (bilingual Indonesian-English speakers) job calling to write in English Wikipedia, just like the Chinese Indonesian are not compelled to write in Chinese Wikipedia about Indonesian topics. I see that as English native speakers' area of work, because I believe good encyclopedias should be written by native speakers. I started editing (Indonesian) Wikipedia when I was studying abroad, so in most cases, I think it's our mother language that's calling us to edit. No matter how good (I think) I am at English, I'm still not gonna beat native speakers in writing an article. Therefore I try to focus on editing Indonesian and Javanese Wikipedia, both are my mother tongues.
From the fact that there's very few (if none) of my fellow id.wp editors are active in WPIndonesia, I can only theoretize that the culprit was the myriad of policies in en.wp. Editing in en.wp, for me, is always feels like doing some work in a friend's house, so as much as possible I'd prefer to stay at my home wiki. About collaboration, I'm envisioning a list of important/vital topics/articles about Indonesia that needs to be translated in as many possible language as possible, not just English Wikipedia. More about that on bottom. But in general, the stream of information still flows heavily one-sided. So far there's been requests from en.wp to id.wp's editors (via Indonesian Embassy) to check some facts/articles, but that's usually sporadic. A practical thing would be to put the name/contact links of active id.wp contributors to be contacted if necessary, and another link to the embassy and/or village pump.
Last thing I want to add is that Indonesia is huge, and very diverse, but sometimes is overgeneralized, and under the radar, because some people work and contributing in a specific language/culture topic. So for example when I created articles about Javanese script, am I working/translating from Javanese Wikipedia/Javanese topics? Or is it constitute work about Indonesian topics/WPIndonesia also? Even I wouldn't immediately think about contacting anyone from WP Indonesia, and no one would ever think of putting WPIndonesia banner in their talk pages. So you see, there are a lot of overlaps, and there are hundreds of subtopics that people wouldn't initially think about Indonesia when they heard about it, like Bali, its culture, or History of Java, etc.
What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles within its scope, developing over the next few years?
SatuSuro: There are still many articles to be created and expanded, it is much larger than any one editor can do, and if it was possible to have a regular team of editors prepared to stay the course, I believe the quality of the project could be improved greatly. The more diverse the involvement of editors in Indonesia and outside would also be very useful.sats08:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bennylin: My current vision goes something like this: Systematic coverage of Indonesian topic. 1) List all (1000?) vital articles about Indonesia, create the red links, and then after most of them have already covered, expand the list, and so on, until we can finally say: Okay, we've got Indonesia covered in English Wikipedia. There are only 11,671 identified Indonesian articles in en.wp (out of 4,324,522); that's incredibly low (0.27%) 2) List all articles that existed in id.wp about Indonesia (sans Indonesian villages and townships), I predict the number would be around 50k. Find the ones that notable to be written in en.wp, and write a stub for each of the notable ones, and this can be done in conjunction with the first method. 3) Scout for the same topics in Indonesia's many Wikipedia editions, such as Javanese (for Javanese topics), Sundanese, Minangkabau, etc. Even Malay Wikipedia sometimes can be used as resource too.
The first has been done in Wikipedia:WikiProject Indonesia/List of core articles and other subsequent pages, but it need to be expanded, added with more red links in logical order, with some examples to start with, like what the templates that need to be included, categories, etc. For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Indonesia/List of history articles#City.2Fregional history should be expanded to cover the history of the core 97 cities in Indonesia, if possible with the link to external resource, and/or a tutorial (how-tos) for beginners. It's like creating species stub, but with limited number (sets) of articles, and better result. The current state of those lists are the de facto articles (what's already exists), my vision is to start with the de jure articles (what's need to exist). Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Indonesia/List of economy articles, surely there's more than that to be covered!
SatuSuro: As Bennylin is not an active Indonesia project member but a very important part of Wikipedia Indonesia and Javanese Wikipedia, I appreciate his ideas, but having been invoved over the years and watched the editors come and go, I would be somewhat more circumspect. If we are lucky enough to have a new editors who are not listers of soccer results, or lists of things, but enthusiastic enough to help with content, I do think we will benefit and can perhaps see what might happen over time if we indeed do get new enthusiasts.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Crisco 1492: I think maintenance is a big one. A lot of topics get the hatred of Indonesians but noone else, so they are not watchlisted as often (for instance, monthly BLP violations at Cherrybelle which may end up unnoticed for days). Also, I think the series on National Heroes of Indonesia could use some work, as could articles on Indonesia's presidents.
SatuSuro: Content. A large number of stubs and articles lack readable explanations of things Indonesian. There is a wealth of information available online and in published materials, it simply hasn't migrated into the Indonesian project articles yet.
Anything else you'd like to add?
SatuSuro: The Wp en Indonesian project is a formidable task, many islands, and a huge variation in ethnic groups, languages, islands and circumstances are almost encyclopedic in range as an encyclopedia itself. It (the project) will require revitalising regularly to keep up with the potentially large amount of information not yet in the project – whole subject areas are under-developed, and whole ranges of topics that need to be created. But that is about content, not soccer lists or shopping centre lists – the major challenge in the short term will be for the improvement of content with well referenced articles. I am sure that the interest in the project will increase again, and people will be there to help.
Next week's article will be "good." Until then, reassess our old articles in the archive.
Discuss this story
"...31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, and 93 good articles...". It's good! Wagino 20100516 (talk) 07:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]