In this article, Eugene Ormandy from Japan, Caner from Turkey and Taufik Rosman from Malaysia introduce their activities in September 2023.
Logo
The triangle came from the location of three countries and colors has meanings too. Turquoise is the historical and cultural color of Turkey, red one came from Japan flag and golden one came from Malaysia flag. In addition, interlocking triangles represent diversity.
Q1. How did you contribute to Wikimedia projects in September 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: I launched two international Wikimedia project; Wikimedia Japan-Türkiye Friendship with Caner and Wikimedia Japan-Malaysia Friendship with Taufik. It is a great pleasure for me to collaborate with friends I met at Wikimania 2023. We have already done some activities; writing Diff posts, creating logo and hosting editathon! For example, on 23 September, Japanese Wikimedians and Malaysian Wikimedians held online editathon and edited Wikipedia articles about their partner’s community. For this editathon, I created the article of Seido Miyatake（宮武正道）, who made Japanese-Malay dictionary.
In addition, I wrote some Diff posts in English and Japanese. Some of them were translated into Malay, Turkish and German.
Caner: September 2023 was quite busy for me. I took part in the organization team of CEE Meeting 2023. This was my first CEE Meeting experience. In addition to being a part of the organization team, I made 2 presentations about CEE Youth Group and Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group at the conference. You can read the Turkish report I wrote about CEE Meeting 2023 here.
This month, I completed the process of establishing a Wikipedia student club, which was one of my goals and which excited me the most. Istanbul Bilgi University Wikipedia Student Club was officially established as of September 2023. Following the establishment of our club, we signed a cooperation and friendship declaration with the Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda University Tokyo, within the scope of the Wikimedia Japan-Türkiye Friendship Project. I can’t wait to start great collaborations!
.png)
Finally, I have come to the end of the process of creating the visual face of Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2023. We determined the slogan of the conference as “Unity” and created sub-slogans such as “Unity for Knowledge”, “Unity for GLAM”, “Unity for Community”. Accordingly, I determined and drew Iznik Tiles, known as Turkish tiles, as a visual theme. Because when these tiles come together, they create harmony. Thus, I made a reference to the harmony we created when we came together as Turkic Wikimedians.
I also drew two cute mascots to accompany us at this conference. These mascots will be with us and help us throughout the conference!
Taufik Rosman: September was the time for me to take a small break after attending Wikimania Singapore. Most of my time for this month is spent with planning the upcoming outreach event called “WikiKata Bahasa Mendriq” that will be held early October to document an endangered language called Mendriq or Minriq.
However, Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia organised a photowalk in Sabah, Malaysia to document some cultural places like the Kota Belud Weekly Market and the Tobilung House. This photowalk was organised to do some surveying for the upcoming ESEAP Conference 2024. We hope that the conference will be successful and brings more positive impact in the region.
Q2. What was the most impressive news of Wikimedia Movement in September 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: I enjoyed reading a Diff post titled “University of New Mexico students participate in the #WikiForHumanRights Campaign for the second time.” The voices of Wikimedia beginners were really impressive and reminded me of the moment when I was fascinated by Wikimedia projects.
“I thought to edit Wikipedia you would have to have a degree so was surprised how easy it was to edit. I felt like it was fun to contribute to the site.” says Kelsey, a participant of the training.
Sophia added that, “It is astonishing to me how easy it is to upload images and to edit things on Wikipedia.”
Pambelle12 (5 September 2023) “University of New Mexico students participate in the #WikiForHumanRights Campaign for the second time” Diff.
Caner: The Diff article that caught my attention the most in September was “Wikimedia Indonesia’s 2023–2027 Strategic Plan is now available” The goals that Wikimedia Indonesia has set for the next five years have excited me too. The following article in particular caught my attention:
Understanding public needs: In this direction, we aim to engage more closely with existing partners who have been working with us since their early days by conducting targeted research on public needs. We are also working to learn more about audience preferences by providing multiple forms of social media content to enable more people to connect with our organization and participate in our programs.
Rachmat WMID (20 September 2023) “Wikimedia Indonesia’s 2023–2027 Strategic Plan is now available” Diff.
Taufik Rosman: What interested me for September is the Diff post titled “Indic Oral Culture meetups launch: Discussion on current status, hopes and challenges for underrepresented languages” by Amrit Sufi. This article resonates me a lot since most of my outreach works are related to preserving indigenous languages in Malaysia. This gives me more insight on how other Wikimedia communities work on their approach towards the same goal as mine in Malaysia.
Amrit Sufi (5 September 2023) “Indic Oral Culture meetups launch: Discussion on current status, hopes and challenges for underrepresented languages” Diff.
Q3. What did you learn about your friends’ communities in September 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: I went to Malaysian restaurant in Tokyo and enjoyed Kuey Teow Soup. In addition, I bought a textbook of Malay language. Now I can use a few words.
I also learned about Turkish culture. Caner introduced impressive Turkish music to me.
Caner: Since I knew that he was interested in classical music, I asked Eugene to recommend Japanese classical music to me. He also suggested the following song to me.
Based on this song, I found myself lost in Japanese classical music on Spotify. In fact, I was quite lucky to discover the song below. I think it was impossible for me to listen to it before. However, the song reminded me of my childhood in a strange way. I don’t know how to put into writing the feelings it evokes in me. However, to summarize in three words; longing, hope and success.
I think Eugene, Taufik and I should create a joint Spotify playlist and give it away to dear readers at the end of October!
Taufik Rosman: For Japan, I learnt more about songs and musics from Japan. Before this, I mostly listened to Japanese pop songs. Now, I learnt that there are many other genres out there that I need to listen to and give it a try. I like listening to other country’s musics as it gives us more information about the country’s cultures.
For Türkiye, I learnt more from Caner as there are more languages that are similar to Turkish which are in the Turkic languages family. I am really interested in compiling all of these Turkic languages word into Malay Wiktionary to see the similarities and differences between all of these Turkic languages.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank many people; the members of the Friendship projects, staff of Wikimedia Foundation, who support us a lot and especially Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team. Thanks to Wikimania 2023, we could meet and launch collaborative projects.
If you are interested in our projects, don’t hesitate to join us! If you enjoy this article, why don’t you ask your friends to write a report like this together? We believe our collaboration will grow and hope to see various friendship projects around the world!
Can you help us translate this article?
In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out?
Start translation