Politisi Project, five months later

One of the problems constantly facing Wiki projects, whatever the language, is the lack of coverage of subjects or topics from languages other than the project. In the case of the English Wikipedia, this kind of bias could be observed through the imbalance of amount between Western articles and non-Western articles. The same problem is present on articles relating to politics, such as articles relating to politicians, elections, legislatives, etc.

Reflecting from the aforementioned condition, the Politisi Project was established to increase coverage of Indonesian related articles on the English Wikipedia. Although there’s already a lot of Indonesian editors present at the English Wikipedia, most of them do not, or rarely contribute to topics relating to Indonesia. This situation stems from (presumably) a lack of English language sources, the perceived lesser significance of Indonesia in the world stage, or just their lack of interest on Indonesian topics.

Despite the term politisi, which translates to politician in Indonesian, the project is not only about politicians. The project encompasses all walks of articles related to Indonesian politics. As stated in its scope, the project also covers articles such as ambassadors from and to Indonesia; high-ranking civil servants who execute policies made by politicians; ambassadors; and even officials from the past with obsolete titles such as patih (the most senior bureaucrat for a region in colonial Indonesia) or sultan. The Politisi Project maintains a criteria similar to the English Did You Know project for submitted articles, with articles having at least 1,500 bytes in length, being newly created or expanded 5x in size, cited with reliable source, and did not contain generative AI text.

Currently, the Politisi Project is a microproject due to its five-member size. Established on 31 May 2025 by user Juxlos, the project was initially Juxlos’s personal project before being transformed into a collaborative project with the existence of a coordinative Discord group on 12 June. The group serves not only as a hub for Politisi project article creation, but also as a forum to discuss about political trends and events in Indonesia, which not only enriches the members through insights, but also serves as a forum to improve relevant articles that support the Politisi Project. One prominent example was the flow of information regarding the August 2025 Indonesian protests through links and immediate information that helped develop the article to its current extent.

Each members of the Politisi Project has different area of specialization. Juxlos mostly writes about national and regional member of parliaments as well as district chiefs (bupati) and governors; Faldi00 that writes articles about legislators and regional leaders alike; me who mostly focused on ambassadors, although sometimes writes articles about regular politicians; and Kaythehistorian and Twotwofourtysix who designed election and political maps, as well as writing articles on legislative and executive politicians.

Overall, the project produced—at the time of this writing—182 articles, excluding supporting articles and graphics (images, maps, etc) not registered in the project’s page. The project has significantly improved the coverage and awareness of the topics through appearance at the Did You Know and In The News section of the English Wikipedia’s mainpage. The Politisi Project’s overlap with other major projects such as the Indonesian Wikiproject and the Women in Red demonstrates the joint effort made to combat Western bias in the English Wikipedia and create a fairer, more balanced free encyclopedia for all,

We invite those who are interested in writing and/or improving Indonesian politics-related article to join us by adding your name in this page.