Contributing to the Society: A Wikipedia Experience

Wales says that he is on a mission to “distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language,” and to an astonishing degree he is succeeding*.

Wikipedia is a revolution. I still remember when I was in a junior high school, reading “Ensiklopedia”, an Indonesian encyclopedia was really an effort. I had to go to a library, and asked the librarian to borrow the encyclopedia. In my junior high school, as a school in a rural area of West Java, Indonesia, encyclopedia was treated as a high value manuscript and was saved in an exclusive cupboard. Only students with permit from a teacher could read the “holy book” in the library. I was very lucky that I eventually lived in Yogyakarta, a city in Indonesia which famous for its education development. Accessing the encyclopedias was not a big issue anymore (I did not need a permit nor the books was not put on a special cupboard), even though limited supplies made difficulties in reading them. In addition, the Internet café was easily found and affordable for the students in Yogyakarta. 
 
A few years later, Wikipedia comes to the Internet. I did not think that googling (or at that moment, if I am not mistaken, using “Yahoo! Search”) was not popular in my university, as we used the Internet mostly for sending emails or chat with parents or people outside the city. However, when Wikipedia came up, my fellow students and I could easily access information that used to be the exclusive contents of encylopedias. The advantage of Wikipedia is that the Wikipedia compiles many sources and provides general knowledge which newly exists or arises. People do not need to wait for the new revised edition of encyclopedias to know the information. Another advantage of Wikipedia is that people can also contribute to the content. It gives chances to particular people who understand particular knowledge to share their information to the society. Some people might worried to the fact that people might put mislead information, but Wikipedia provide checks-and-balances system on the media. People can edit and look the edit made by themselves or by the others.

Last week, on the Foundations of the Sustainable Development class, the MPA in Development Practice learnt the issue of human rights and gender equality. One of the discourses was the women who become victims during a war. I brought up the issue of Jugun Ianfu, sexual violence victims during Japan colonialization era in Indonesia on 1942-1945, that I made a research on it when I was in senior high. To regain my memory on the dates, I tried the google and was led to Wikipedia.
 
 
I was surprised that in the Bahasa version of Jugun Ianfu, it was explained as “wanita penghibur” (sexual entertaining worker), not “korban pelecehan seksual” (sexual violence victims). I am totally sure about the info as I have ever interviewed two of the survivors. The Jugun Ianfu were mostly young women who was invited to learn sing and dance or to study, but actually were kidnapped and trafficked to the Japan military camp. Thus, on the Wikipedia page on Jugun Ianfu, http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugun_ianfu, I deleted the words “penghibur” (entertaining worker) and “terlibat” (join) into “menjadi korban” (being a victim). So far, there is no later change of my edit. This is the advantage of the Wikipedia as I have written above, even though I have never thought that I could contribute to the site, or maybe to society. Yet, people still have to be critical to the contents of Wikipedia and involve in checks-and-balances to provide fair and better information to the society. ▪

This writing is a weekly reflection writing on
the New Media and Development Practice class. 

*Schiff, Stacy. 2006. Know It All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731fa_fact#ixzz2BYB0OX6G