The Wikimedia Foundation, which founded Wikipedia, is starting up a South African chapter. This is with the aim of helping the Foundation achieve its goals in the local context.
Kerryn McKay, director of non-profit organisation The African Commons Project (TACP), which the local chapter will be linked to, says the chapter is not based anywhere at present.
“We held a workshop to discuss the opportunities for a local Wikimedia chapter which would be the first of its kind in Africa. There are over 28 chapters established around the world but none as yet in Africa,” she says.
The chapter will be driven by - and consist in membership of - local Wikipedians who are the people who contribute to the Wikimedia projects, says McKay.
The South African chapter will be set up as a non-profit organisation, although, according to McKay, exactly what form this will take in terms of legal structure, is being discussed at present by people who attended the kick off workshop [two weeks ago].
The fact that the chapter would be the first in Africa is significant, notes McKay. “We need local people to not only 'consume' information on the Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, but also to contribute and create the knowledge.”
Achal Prabhala, who is on the Wikimedia Foundation advisory board, and recently established the Indian chapter, contacted TACP to talk to the Wikimedia Foundation about supporting the set-up of a local chapter.
The Foundation is very interested in seeing African chapters being established and so this was an important first step, says McKay.
The Foundation had two representatives from the Chapter Committee come out to SA to attend the kick-off workshop, which saw local Wikipedians coming together in Johannesburg to discuss the possibility of setting up a local chapter.
Give and take
Prabhala states: “There are large audiences of readers in SA and India (of people who have access to ICTs), but readership does not correspond to contribution. In other words, we consume but don't contribute.”
He adds that developing countries need to create content. This could be existing content that should be produced in home languages or new content about indigenous cultures - many of which are not 'fixed' in that they are oral heritages, he explains.
“The Chapter set-up is being discussed by local Wikipedians and free culture people who wish to encourage local communities to not only use and gain knowledge, but also to contribute to this body of knowledge,” notes McKay.
She says the benefits of a South African Chapter “would be to make official the commitment of local actors to start or support local initiatives within the Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia”.
This could include creating local knowledge, contributing to these projects in local languages, and training and outreach programmes teaching learners how to contribute to the projects and use them as resources, McKay explains.
“It could also involve showing corporates and the private sector how these initiatives can be useful; or even looking at finding a solution to delivering Wikimedia projects content to communities on mobile.”
Believe it or not
One of the hindrances to the growth and credibility of Wikipedia is that not many people trust what they read on the Internet.
Universities in SA, such as the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) do not accept information sourced via Wikipedia in their academic essays and research papers. Some tutors at UKZN, who wished not to be named, say they give their students zero for essays containing Wikipedia references.
Prabhala says recent research showed Wikipedia to be more accurate than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. "People trust the content of Encyclopaedia Britannica because it's in books and written by old people."
“This needs to change, and we seek to change that perception.”
Wikipedia has over 500 000 articles and represents one of the largest encyclopaedic publications available.
The Foundation says the SA chapter might go live early next year. Final deadlines are dependent on having completed the necessary processes, such as having the organisation's bylaws agreed by the Foundation, and then getting the legal vehicle set up and registered in SA.
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