Indonesian Wikipedia

This page is last updated on 2009

This page is a descriptive article on the Indonesian Wikipedia, feel free to add any comment.

Facts and statistics

The Indonesian language Wikipedia started on May 30, 2003. Its first article was about Elektron (Electron).

Started: May 30, 2003

Current size: 708,820 articles

Total edits: 26,455,325

Active editors: 2,805 in the past month

Administrators: 47

Coverage of many places in Indonesia and a set example for the use of the formal Indonesian language.
Has a good coverage of Indonesia's history or things that related to Indonesia.

What other prominent encyclopedias exist in this language (print, electronic, online)?

What has its impact been?

In terms of readers, Indonesian Wikipedia is readily accessible to all of the population of Indonesia, the 4th largest country in the world, and the surrounding states that could understand Indonesian, e.g. Timor Leste, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Australia
In terms of media coverage, Indonesian Wikipedia has been covered in numerous publication media
In terms of community impact, Indonesian Wikipedia, in partnership with Wikimedia Indonesia, has done a lot of workshops, edit-a-thons, trainings, etc.
In terms of global movement, Indonesian Wikipedia has its member participated in multiple, if not all, Wikimanias; served as steward; organized regional gatherings (WikiNusantara Conference for 10+ Indonesian languages projects/contributors), ESEAP Conference for East and South East Asian projects/contributors

What language features are challenging?

Implementing formal Indonesian as the rule for writing the encyclopedic articles. People usually never communicate in formal Indonesian, instead opt to use informal Indonesian (bahasa percakapan), either in spoken and written (e.g. social media). Therefore, originally it's difficult for Indonesians to write in proper Indonesian. Even news, television programmes, movies in Indonesia nowadays many informal Indonesian, while Indonesian Wikipedia requires 100% of formal variant of the language.
In order to achieve the above, a lot of new words have to be coined by Wikipedian community, since not even the media (who usually have the obligation to do such thing) are doing it; instead, the Indonesian media often opt to use foreign terms lazily, and expect Indonesian readers to understand. In the beginning of Indonesian Wikipedia, a lot of the earliest Wikipedian usually discussed/debated/proposed new translation for foreign terms, especially with regards to technology, technical terms, and other areas where Indonesian dictionary is incomplete.

What would surprise the outside reader about the community?

Indonesia has the 4 largest population in the world, and as the sole official language of the country, Indonesian language is spoken by more than 200 million people, making it into one of the 10 most spoken language.
Most Indonesian speakers speaks different language (regional language) as bilingual speakers, and even third language (foreign, or second regional language) or more as trilingual speakers. The contributors in Indonesian Wikipedia, therefore also contribute in one of the many Indonesian regional language projects.
Indonesian (200+ million speakers) originated, though already differed greatly, from Malay language, and historically is not older than 100 years old, making it one of the youngest major language in the world. Indonesian Wikipedia and Malay Wikipedia (mainly used and contributed by Standard Malaysian language users from Malaysia, although Malay speakers from Indonesia also contribute sporadically), value their language integrity and doesn't like if each other's language is used to write articles, even though both languages somewhat mutually intelligible.

What are some unique practices/characteristics?

Who were the earliest participants, who started it?

Other prominent Wikipedians?