A Year of Iban Wikipedia

The Iban Wikipedia has officially turned one year old since its launch on October 14, 2024. As of this writing, the Iban version of Wikipedia contains a total of 1,940 articles. Many of the articles on Wikipedia are written by me, although there are also people who edit with me but are not active as active as me.

In Wikimedia Incubator

Before its official launch, the wiki was created in 2010 in the Wikimedia Incubator and stayed there for 14 years. I started editing the Iban Wikipedia page in Wikimedia Incubator in 2022. I taught myself how to edit Wikipedia in Wikimedia Incubator, including how to embed reference material in Wikipedia articles and embed images from Wikimedia Commons. With a guide from several members in the Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia, I learnt how to put templates and modules in the wiki site.

From my experience editing in Wikimedia Incubator, I experienced technical difficulties, especially when putting in templates and modules. Finding people to consistently edit Wikimedia is also a difficult task, because I have time to edit there, but others are not as active as I am. But I was very grateful to the several users for being active in editing the Iban Wikipedia until its successful official launch.

Iban Wikipedia

My work on Wikipedia is to find articles in English and translate them into Iban. Every day, there is at least one article to work on, and when I feel motivated, I translate many articles at once. As a result, a large number of articles on the Iban Wikipedia were created by me. Although there are other editors, they are not as active, so I also try to introduce more people to the Iban Wikipedia. Many people still do not know that Wikipedia already exists in the Iban language, and I hope to raise awareness and encourage more contributors to join.

WikiTour 2.0: Iban Wikipedia Workshop in IPG Rajang

On 30 June 2024, Kent Wiki Club organised a workshop at IPG Rajang as part of the WikiTour 2.0 programme. The purpose of the programme was to introduce the Iban Wikipedia to 15 participants who are learning Iban at IPG Rajang. During the workshop, I taught them how to translate articles from other language versions of Wikipedia, such as Malay or English, into the Iban Wikipedia. The workshop went very well, and on that day the participants managed to produce about 60 new articles in Iban. It was my first time teaching in a Wikipedia workshop, and it was a very valuable experience for me personally. Through this experience, I was also able to observe the technical problems that often arise when people first try to translate articles into Wikipedia.

Iban Wikipedia’s 1st anniversary celebration

On 10 October 2024, the first early anniversary celebration of the Iban Wikipedia was held at SMK Bukit Assek, Sibu. The event took place during the Malay Wiktionary and Iban Wikipedia Workshop. In this workshop, participants were taught how to translate articles from other language versions of Wikipedia into the Iban Wikipedia, as well as how to add lemmas to the Malay Wiktionary. Before the editing sessions began, we sang the birthday song and cut three birthday cakes to celebrate the Iban Wikipedia. During the workshop, 268 lemmas were added to the Malay Wiktionary and 30 new articles were created on the Iban Wikipedia. I am very happy to have been developing the Iban Wikipedia for more than a year now, and this event was especially meaningful to me. The celebration was also reported by Sarawakian local news agencies such as TVS.

Goals for Iban Wikipedia

In the coming year, I hope that more people will become aware of the Iban Wikipedia, and that more active editors will join besides me. I also hope that the Iban Wikipedia will continue to grow with articles from a wide range of fields such as science, technology, entertainment, sports, and many others, so that this knowledge can be expressed in the Iban language. This will help to develop the Iban language not only as a language used in everyday life (by both Iban and non-Iban speakers), but also as a language of knowledge, raised to the same level as other major world languages.