WikiCitaRasa: Introducing Wikibooks through Indonesian Culinary Recipe Writing Workshop

Wikimedia Bandung Community, through Rapid Fund program of Wikimedia Foundation, successfully organized WikiCitaRasa project. WikiCitaRasa is a writing workshop focused on writing Indonesian culinary recipes on Indonesian Wikibooks using public domain references. This project aims to enrich the content on Indonesian Wikibooks and increase the number of contributors, which currently remains limited. It was carried out in six cities across Indonesia over a four-month period from June to September 2025. The project was led by Rafli Noer Khairam and Agus Damanik, in collaboration with six local communities across Indonesia.

What has been implemented?

Over the course of four months, we held a series of writing workshops in six cities across Indonesia in collaboration with local Wikimedia communities. The workshops were held in Jakarta (June 1, 2025), Palembang (June 8, 2025), Banjarmasin (June 22, 2025), Bandung (July 6, 2025), Madura (August 17, 2025), and Bandar Lampung (September 6, 2025).

In these workshops, participants learned how to write and publish Indonesian culinary recipes on Wikibooks using public domain references from Wikisource, particularly the historic cookbook Mustikarasa. This book, published by Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture in 1967, documents over 1,600 traditional Indonesian recipes from across the archipelago.

Through WikiCitaRasa, we introduced both new and experienced volunteers to process of writing and adapting culinary content on Wikibooks. Participants paraphrased and developed recipes from Mustikarasa, which was originally written in the old Indonesian spelling system. By writing these recipes into contemporary language, readers can now understand them more easily, while also helping expand Wikibooks’ collection of Indonesian culinary knowledge.

What has been achieved?

WikiCitaRasa successfully engaged 73 participants from local Wikimedia communities across Indonesia, exceeding our initial target of 70 participants. Beyond participation, the project also made a significant contribution to enriching culinary content on Indonesian Wikibooks. In total, participants produced more than 267 culinary recipe articles on Wikibooks, surpassing our original goal of 200 articles, and linked 70 culinary recipe articles on Wikibooks to their corresponding pages on Wikipedia.

This achievement reflects the enthusiasm and collaborative spirit of volunteers who are passionate about preserving Indonesia’s rich culinary heritage through Wikibooks. Based on the pre-test and post-test results we conducted, 92% of participants expressed interest in the Wikibooks project, 87% found it easy to use Google Workspace during the training, 86% felt that the duration of the activities was sufficient, 93% stated that the materials delivered by the trainer were clear, 75% found it easy to write articles on Wikibooks, and 75% said they could easily understand the workshop materials.

Participant testimonials

WikiCitaRasa workshop received positive testimonials from participants. Here are some of testimonials from both new and experienced volunteers.

New volunteers: 

“As a new contributor to Wikimedia, I got a better understanding of Wikibooks project through this training. The material about food recipes inspired by the Mustikarasa book was very interesting, since it’s one of the important and rare books in Indonesia’s food history. Friends from the Wikimedia Bandung Community were also very supportive, which made the training process fun.” — Priskamarsila29, participant in Bandung

“After joining WikiCitaRasa recipe writing training, I improved my skills in writing recipes correctly, clearly, and according to Indonesian language rules. The materials were practical and easy to understand, the facilitators were communicative, and everything could be directly applied in recipe editing practice. This training is very useful and worth recommending in the future.” — Rizky Hadiwijaya, participant in Bandar Lampung

Experienced volunteers:

“WikiCitaRasa is a form of care from Wikimedia project contributors in Indonesia to preserve Indonesian gastronomy through training on how to write various Indonesian recipes. For me, this is a great effort because Indonesian gastronomy is now starting to be replaced by foreign cuisines. WikiCitaRasa also opens the door for contributors to start contributing to Wikibooks project and to revive the spirit of Wikibooks in Indonesia, which is sometimes forgotten because it’s not as popular as its sister projects.” — Volstand, participant in Banjarmasin

“WikiCitaRasa activity is nice and easy. At first, I thought it wouldn’t be that easy and we would write recipes like in usual books. But it’s not like that. Especially since the Wikimedia Madura Community had never learned how to edit on Wikibooks before. It turns out to be quite simple and easy.” — Royhanah, participant in Madura

Lesson learned and next steps

We believe, WikiCitaRasa project still needs further development in the future. We want more volunteers to join the effort to improve content on Wikibooks and help preserve Indonesian culinary knowledge so that it can be easily accessed by everyone. Therefore, after this project ends, we hope to continue developing WikiCitaRasa through the following plans:

Writing workshops with local communities in Indonesia that haven’t been reached yet. There are still many local communities, both established and new, that we haven’t been able to reach. We hope to hold workshops with them to introduce Wikibooks and culinary recipe content.

In addition to workshops, we also hope to document Indonesian cuisines through photos and videos to make recipe articles more complete. Therefore, information about Indonesian recipes can be presented clearly and thoroughly. The documentation activities could be in the form of competitions, photowalks, meetups, and more.