Malaysia themed editathon at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

On November 26, 2022, Dr. Sae Kitamura (a.k.a. Saebou), Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda Uni Tokyo and Toumon Wikipedian Club Japan held a Malaysia themed editathon at Tokyo Univeristy of Foreign Studies (TUFS). This article describe the details.

Before the Editathon

On November 2022, Wikipedians in Malaysia decided to hold an editathon themed on Japan in commemoration of Wikipedia Asia Month and the 40 anniversary of Look East Policy. Dr. Kitamura heard about this event and also decided to hold similar editathon in Japan in corporation with a staff of TUFS.

TUFS students and veteran Wikipedians joined this editathon. Moreover, the members of Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda Uni Tokyo and Toumon Wikipedian Club Japan also joined as support staff. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection, this editathon was held with limited numbers of people.

This editathon is one of the events which Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan supported. It is introduced on the web page of Embassy of Japan in Malaysia.

Timetable

13:00-13:05	Opening
13:05-13:30	Wikipedia Lecture by Dr. Kitamura
13:30-13:45	Preparation
13:45-17:30	Research and Edit
17:30-18:00	Wrap up

Lecture

Firstly, Dr. Kitamura had a lecture on Wikipedia editing. She introduced Five pillars and policies. She also explained that the number of female Wikipedian is small and that Wikipedia articles related to Asia are not rich in content.

Edit

After the lecture, participants were divided into beginner team and veteran team.

Dr. Kitamura and I supported beginners. It almost went well, but there were some troubles about copying. When they tried to properly copy and paste source code to their draft (see [[Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia]]), it was blocked.

Veteran Wikipedians edited articles using books they brought. When they had a question about Malay language or the culture of Malaysia, they asked the researcher who joined this event.

Students of TUFS often went to the library to borrow the books they can use for Wikipedia. When participants got tired to edit, they enjoyed Malaysian board game “Congkak.”

Wrap up

Finally, participants shared the articles they had edited and what they felt after editing.

Some participants made new articles and the others (including an Wikipadian who joined online) added sentences with source. All the article edited at this event are listed on the project page on Wikipedia.

A beginner said that though it takes a lot of time to edit Wikipedia articles, it feels very rewarding. A veteran Wikipedian also said that if there was something they didn’t understand, it was reassuring to be able to immediately confirm it with the researcher.

Conclusion

This editathon was meaningful. For Wikipedia editor, it was an opportunity to do outreach, and for Malaysia and TUFS, it was an opportunity to showcase their own appeal.

This event also revealed some issues in Japanese Wikipedia. We found that articles on Malaysia in Japanese Wikipedia are not of high quality, and some of them have problems with place names and so on.

I believes that exchanges between universities and Wikipedia editors are beneficial to both parties. I hope that there will be more opportunities in the future for both parties to interact under a specific theme.