In this article, Eugene Ormandy from Japan, Caner from Turkey and Taufik Rosman from Malaysia introduce their activities in October 2023.
Logo
Caner created a logo for this project. 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 October 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: I did a lot of things in October 2023. I held four editathons, created four Wikipedia articles, contributed to other Wikimedia projects, and wrote eithteen Diff articles in Japanese and English! Of these, the four editathons were particularly impressive.
- Wiktionary Editathon 2023 with Malaysian and Indonesian friends was a good opportunity to learn about other languages and Wiktionary.
- A small editathon with Takenari Higuchi for Wikimedia Japan-Türkiye Friendship was a lot of fun. I love talking to Wikimedians while editing.
- An online editathon week for Wikimedia Japan-Malaysia Friendship was significant because some Wikimedia projects – not just Wikipedia – were improved in the online campaign. This is rare in the Japanese community.
- An editathon called WikipediaOYA at Oya Soichi Library in Tokyo, one of my favourite libraries, achieved great results. Many high-quality Wikipedia articles were created, and the participants analysed the uniqueness of the library by editing Wikipedia.
I have already made the report of the events on Diff!
Caner: October was a very exciting month for me. I would like to talk about the Turkic Wikimedia Conference, which is our biggest work in October. More than 30 presentations were made in 3 languages at the conference, which hosted more than 90 participants from 10 countries. The excitement of hosting the participants in Istanbul and the motivation and pleasure of completing the conference positively is indescribable. We also celebrated Wikidata’s 11th anniversary with a cake!
You can access the Diff article we wrote about the conference below:
Taufik Rosman: October was quite eventful for the user group. After months of preparation, we did an outreach in an aboriginal village in Kelantan, Malaysia where we attempted to preserve the indigenous Mendriq language which according to experts will gone extinct in the next 20 years. The 2-day outreach consisted of training local villagers to edit in Wiktionary, Incubator Wikimedia, Commons Wikimedia and Lingua Libre. A detailed post will be published soon.
Q2. What was the most impressive news of Wikimedia Movement in October 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: OtuNwachinemere‘s Diff article “Climax of Wiki Loves Africa ’23 – Celebrating Climate and Weather winning media” was really impressive. I think it is important to document the climate change through Wikimedia projects.
Caner: Frankly, the Diff article that impressed (excited) me was the Wikimedia Japan-Turkey Friendship Editathon in Japan 13 October 2023. Because this event, which was the first physical outcome of the Japanese-Turkish friendship project we carried out jointly with Eugene, gave me information and motivation about the Japan Wikimarathon that we will hold in Türkiye.
Taufik: There was this one diff that piqued my interest. It was a diff titled “The Internet Outages Guide” by Nada Hatem. I shared the article with my friend. Even though it is unlikely for this to happen in Malaysia, however, some of the tips are quite useful for those who does not have an Internet connection to begin with like in some remote places in Malaysia. Do give it a read!
Q3. What did you learn about your friends’ communities in October 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: I enjoyed reading Wikipedia articles about Malaysia in English, which refer to [[Category:Bilateral relations of Malaysia]]. Not only did I read them, I also translated one of them, [[Egypt-Malaysia relations]], into Japanese [[エジプトとマレーシアの関係]].
I also enjoyed reading some books about Turkey.
- 内藤正典『トルコ 建国一〇〇年の自画像』岩波書店、2023年。ISBN 9784004319863。
- 今井宏平『トルコ100年の歴史を步く : 首都アンカラでたどる近代国家への道』平凡社、2023年。ISBN 9784582860382。
- 小笠原弘幸『ケマル・アタテュルク オスマン帝国の英雄、トルコ建国の父』中央公論新社、2023年。ISBN 9784121027740。
Caner: During the Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2023 Istanbul, I listened to the events for young people organized by our participants from Uzbekistan in their own countries. I realized that, in addition to all of them being brand projects, they were very motivating and productive for young people. I think we should hold similar events in Türkiye.
Taufik: I learnt that Türkiye was celebrating its 100th anniversary as a republic. The country achieved a lot in that span of time. I watched the celebration and it was really festive. It made me wonder how would Malaysia celebrate its 100th birthday in the next few decades.
Playlist
As Caner had suggested in the September report, we made a music playlist! We are happy if this playlist help readers to have interested in our culture!
Eugene Ormandy: I picked up three songs. The first is “TECHNOPOLIS” by Yellow Magic Orchestra, one of the pioneer of Techno Pop. The second is “管弦楽のためのラプソディ (Rhapsody for Orchestra)” by Yuzo Toyama. I think this is one of the successful examples of the fusion of traditional Japanese music and European “classical music.” The third is “アイドル (Idle)” by YOASOBI, the most popular song in Japan in 2023.
Caner: October is a slightly stagnant and sad month in which we feel autumn deeply. For this reason, I would like to leave here a few songs that are suitable for this month and that I love very much. I will share the songs with you in three different languages: Korean, Turkish and Kazakh. Even though the languages are different, the emotions they convey are always the same!
Taufik: There was this one song that I listened. It was a Japanese song titled “Habit” by SEKAI NO OWARI. Even though it was released last year, there was a singer that made a cover of the song recently named Kogeinu and the singer has not been active. It was quite catchy and I was interested on how the singer ends some of the words with a consonant which is not that common in Japanese.
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