In this article, Eugene Ormandy from Japan, Caner from Turkey and Taufik Rosmanfrom Malaysia introduce their activities in November 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 November 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: I created two articles on Japanese Wikipedia and wrote 11 articles on Diff, the Wikimedia Community Blog. The most impressive work is “Student Wikimedian Clubs were formed!.” In this article, I introduced the two Student Wikimedia Clubs; Kent Wiki Club in Malaysia and Istanbul Bilgi University Wikipedia Student Club in Turkey. I am happy that many Wikimedians around the world gave messages for the them!
Caner: November was a very busy month for me, like other months. As a member of the CEE Youth Group, I attended the CEE Youth Group Meeting held in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, on 24-25 November 2023. In this meeting, we had brainstorms and conversations on many topics such as the future of our group and young people’s expectations from Wikimania 2024 Krakow.
Secondly, I completed the shooting of my Wikipedia 201 Education Set for Advanced Users project, which hosted Wikipedians in Türkiye, using the television studios at my university. I aim to have the videos available on Wikimedia Commons and YouTube in December.
And finally, as Istanbul Bilgi University Wikipedia Student Club, we organized a Japan-themed editathon within the scope of the Wikimedia Japan-Türkiye Friendship Project.
Finally, we carried out Movement Charter studies within the Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group. During my work as Movement Charter Ambassador, we received opinions from Turkic-speaking communities about Movement Strategy and encouraged them to translate Movement Strategy pages into their local languages.
Taufik Rosman: There was a big event that we organised for this November. We organised a Wiktionary training to add words of indigenous languages of Sabah, Malaysia. The event was sponsored and supported by UNESCO Jakarta. The partnership happened when the user group and other Southeast Asia Wikimedians met with the director of UNESCO Jakarta, Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa, at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Through the collaboration, we attracted 160 participants that contribute to more than 2,000 lemmas in 25 languages. You can read more about it in this Diff post.
Q2. What was the most impressive news of Wikimedia Movement in November 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: The most impressive news in November is that a Japanese Wikipedian Yuriko Kadokura published a book themed Wikipedia. I reported it in a Diff post “Japanese Wikipedian wrote a book titled “A 70-year-old Wikipedian talks about the charm of libraries”.”
Caner: The content that impressed me the most in November was an event from our own country, organized for children in Anatolia to learn Wikipedia.
Adem from Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey organized an event for children in Sivas to learn Wikipedia with the support of the European Union within the scope of Micro-Fon. I think this is pretty cool and interesting! You can read the details of the project in Adem’s Diff article.
Taufik Rosman: For me, the Diff post titled “What users think about the Machine in Translation (MinT) service” by Ozoma Ozurumba caught my interest as it discussed about languages. MinT is quite a new machine translation tool and it is available in Wikipedia. What more impressive is that ths tool is available in many languages that are not offered in Google Translate. I hope that one day, local languages of Malaysia will be in the tool as well.
Q3. What did you learn about your friends’ communities in November 2023?
Eugene Ormandy: In November, I read some reports that Malaysian Wikimedians wrote and I introduced them in Diff articles such as “Wikimania 2023 reports from Malaysian Wikimedians” and “Malaysian universities and Wikimedia events.” In addition, I enjoyed Malaysia Fair in Shinjuku, Tokyo and of course, made a report of it on Diff “Japanese Wikimedian enjoyed the Malaysia Fair in Tokyo.” Furthermore, I translated the article [[Jamaica–Malaysia relations]] on English Wikipedia into Japanese [[ジャマイカとマレーシアの関係]].
In November 2023, several Diff articles about Turkey and Turkic culture were published and I enjoyed to read them. In addition, I translated the article [[Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts]] on English Wikipedia into Japanese [[イスタンブール文化芸術財団]]. Of course, the Japan themed editathon by Istanbul Bilgi University Wikipedia Student Club was really impressive. I’m really glad to see the Turkish Wikimedians enjoyed the event!
November 2023 was very busy for me. I visited Bangkok and took pictures for Wikimedia Commons.
Caner: In November, at the CEE Youth Group meeting in Prague, I met with other young Wikimedians to learn about youth activities in their countries. I asked various questions about WikiCamps, especially for student clubs and young people, and we talked about collaboration opportunities.
As a result of my interviews, I gained very useful information. I am thinking of applying these in my own country as well.
Taufik Rosman: I’ve learnt from Caner that in Türkiye, they made a project called Wikipedia 101 and 201 to make videos to introduce Wikipedia and how to edit. I believe this is crucial especially for newcomers to have many resources made available for free for them to access and read more to have a better understanding on editing Wikipedia. In the future, I plan to translate these into Malay and local languages in Malaysia and use them in Wikimedia events here.
Music
Eugene Ormandy: Sam Gendel and Ugnė Uma‘s new EP “Tam Tikri Objektai Erdvėje” fascinated me. I am always surprised by the way that Sam Gendel, one of my most favorite musicians collaborate with other artists.
Caner: This time, I will share with you a song whose music, as well as its lyrics, take the listener to different worlds. You can find more detailed information about the song written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul in the relevant Wikipedia article.
Taufik Rosman: Here is one of my favourite Malay songs that I would like to share with everyone. Hope you like it!
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