Wikipedia Indonesia has become Asia's third fastest-growing of local version of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, after Japan and China. As of today, Bahasa Indonesia's version of Wikipedia generated 31,072 articles, while the Japanese edition extends to 250,900 items and the Chinese have achieved 86,319 posts.

Closest to Bahasa Indonesia's debut are other Asian nation languages such as Korean which encompasses 26,565 articles, Arabic at 16,593, Malay at 14,521, and Thai posting 13,949.

Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference Web site on the Internet. It has greatly drawn people all around the world to participate and collaborate in building its content. The content on Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people all over the world.

This Web site is called a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct or improve information throughout the encyclopedia.

In addition, MediaWiki, a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia, also uses the content management system for personal, community or group purposes.

In fact, two conferences have been conducted by Wikipedia enthusiasts. One was the Chinese Wikimedia Conference 2006 which ran from August 26-27 in Hong Kong, organized by the Chinese community of the Wikimedia Foundation. Another one, held three weeks earlier, was by Wikimania 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the US.

Indonesia joined Wikipedia on May 2003 by contributing the first Bahasa Indonesia version. According to Revo Arka Giri Soekatno (his nickname is Meursault2004), one of Wikipedia Indonesia's pioneers, the first article on Bahasa Indonesia tells about DNA. "Unfortunately, the writer is unknown because she/he didn't logon properly," he explained in an interview with sda-indo.com.

Wikipedia Indonesia

Indonesia's adoption of the Wikipedia movement is noteworthy. Priyadi Iman Nurcahyo, one of Wikipedia Indonesia's contributor, revealed that Indonesian contribution was not only in Bahasa Indonesia but also in any other local ethnic language such as Jawa, Sunda, Banyumasan and Bugis.

"Contributors for Wikibooks Indonesia are also increasing," he told me recently. Wikibooks is a collection of open content textbooks.

According to Ikhlasul Amal, another Wikipedia enthusiast, Wikipedia Indonesia has permanently became the top result search for Google Indonesia.

Of interesting note, Wikipedia Indonesia is more than just a translated version of Wikipedia global. "Since Indonesian contributors have enthusiastically and passionately written their own original articles, we have legions of original content in Wikipedia Indonesia," Amal told me during an instant messaging conversation.

As blogger Harry Sufehmi noted, it is no wonder that total Indonesian articles for Wikipedia Indonesia have already reached 14GB in capacity.

Take a ride!

 

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