Education/News/September 2020/Wikimedia Indonesia Education Team Launched Their Books About Wikipedia

Wikimedia Indonesia Education Team Launched Their Books About Wikipedia

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Twitter: @wikimediaid, Facebook: @wikimedia.indonesia, Instagram: @wikimediaid, Website: wikimedia.or.id

Summary: Wikimedia Indonesia Education Team wrote books that answer common questions they get about Wikipedia and Wikimedia in general. The books were launched this September along with a short video that talks about Wikipedia as well.

Digital poster for social media to promote the book and the video that can be accessed for free

Despite its popularity in the world as the largest free online encyclopedia and being in the 12th rank of the global top websites according to Alexa, there are still many people in Indonesia who do not understand the way Wikipedia works, and many other things related to Wikipedia. This lack of understanding stemmed from unanswered questions, which often leads to raising misconceptions about Wikipedia in Indonesian society instead.

As an instance, there are still many cases found in Indonesia, in which people use Wikipedia as a reference, in this case, in the academic context, or any other formal contexts such as in non-fiction books. These cases are very likely to occur due to people’s lack of knowledge on how Wikipedia works, or how to make use of Wikipedia and its information wisely.

The previous example is just one of the many cases caused by the absence of an understanding of Wikipedia. There are still many questions brought up about Wikipedia, either on social media, during Wikipedia training activities, or in everyday conversations, such as, “Is Wikipedia a social media?”, “Am I allowed to quote Wikipedia as a reference?”, “How to properly use Wikipedia as a reader?”, “Who edits Wikipedia? And how come it is open and free?” etc.

As the organization that supports the development and the growth of Wikipedia in Indonesia, Wikimedia Indonesia felt that there needed to be an effort to address those questions, before they turned into many new misconceptions. Therefore, the Education team of Wikimedia Indonesia decided to compile these questions and provide them with answers in a book called JANGAN NGUTIP DARI WIKIPEDIA! Panduan buat kamu yang ingin tahu tentang ensiklopedi terbesar di dunia maya or in English, DON’T QUOTE FROM WIKIPEDIA! A guide for you who wants to know about the largest encyclopedia on the internet. This book is an attempt to answer the questions as well as clarifying misconceptions in Indonesian society about Wikipedia. Wikimedia Indonesia hopes that this book will be able to give a basic understanding of Wikipedia to those who want to know more about Wikipedia.

The book is available in two versions. The first version is the General version which is written in informal Indonesian to make it easier and more fun for the common people to read it. While the second version uses formal Indonesian because it is aimed for educators only. This version is planned to be translated to 3 local languages by involving our volunteers in the translation process. Both of these books are available on Wikimedia Commons (General version) (Educator version).

We also have picked 5 most-asked questions from the General version and created a short video to answer them. The video is available here.

To learn more about this program, please contact Amy at rahmi.nailahwikimedia.or.id.