By Nino Gonzales
Wikipedia, just like any other place in the world, virtual or otherwise, has a Filipino community, including both Filipinos and non-Filipinos interested in things Filipino. For several years, this community has worked tirelessly towards the vision of Wikipedia, that of giving every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge; in particular, the sum of Filipino human knowledge. Working with other Wikipedia editors all over the world, they have produced thousands of articles, including what is perhaps the most comprehensive and balanced ones on topics ranging from History of the Philippines to the Carriedo LRT Station.
Wiki, the phenomenal collaboration software (and generally included in any Web 2.0 buzz), and thousands of dedicated editors guided by a handful of core principles, makes up what is biggest encyclopedia in the world. One of these core principles states that all articles must be written with a neutral point of view, or in Wikipediaspeak, NPOV. Although the tagline of Wikipedia says that it is “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” its veteran members are always on guard to make sure that whatever anyone enters is stripped of all bias. One of the more prevalent biases that appear in country-specific articles is a nationalist POV. Fortunately, the nature of wiki itself is an antidote to this—it forces people to write articles about things they are passionate about—be it their country or their favorite basketball team—with people who abhor these same things. The intertwining and the tension of the diverse backgrounds and biases of Wikipedia editors filters out contributions which are mere opinions, loaded with bias or based on speculation, contributions which are not NPOV.
Another core principle of Wikipedia is that it should not contain original research (NOR). Information in Wikipedia is supposed to be based on established scholarly publications, news articles and books, and not on the user’s own research. For instance, Wikipedia editors could not make assertions in a Wikipedia article based on the results of their lab experiments on the growth rate of Promil-fed spiders or their eyewitness accounts of EDSA II or personal insights on Fr. Tropa’s failed predictions of Armageddon.
This is the reason why a lot of skepticism arose in the Pinoy Wikipedia community when WikiPhilippines website was started. WikiPhilippines aims to be the “hip ‘n free Philippine encyclopedia” for Filipinos written by Filipinos. The sentiment behind WikiPhilippines is understandable. We Filipinos pine for our own Olympic medals, our own inventions, our very own Nobel Prize winners. Why not our own online encyclopedia? While this endeavor may strike a patriotic chord in many Filipinos, it also hits a raw nerve among the Pinoy Wikipedians. Can an encyclopedia, they ask, be trustworthy if it aims to be written from a particular viewpoint? Furthermore, original research is not only allowed but encouraged in WikiPhilippines. This inevitably provokes raised Wikipedian eyebrows. They would ask: is original research by anonymous amateurs reliable?
There is also a more pragmatic concern in the Pinoy Wikipedia community. The quality of articles is proportional to the number of people dedicating time to research, write, edit and clean-up those articles. That is why the Wikipedia article on Pinoy Big Brother is a lot meatier than the article on Nick Joaquin. If a separate Filipino wiki is set up, the Pinoy Wikipedians fear, it might sap current and future contributors away from Wikipedia, slowing down the progress of Philippine-related articles.
In response to these concerns, Gus Vibal, the founder of WikiPhilippines, points out that there is no harm in giving Filipinos more choices. Furthermore, WikiPhilippines is not trying to be Wikipedia. Although built on the same technological infrastructure and culture, WikiPhilippines, unlike Wikipedia, allows articles that will not last two minutes in Wikipedia: from the unabashedly subjective (Top 10 sexiest actresses in the Philippines), to the arcane (History of Pinoy Komiks), to the personal (History of the Tuason Family).
I’m a bit of fanboy of wiki, and I’m currently involved in implementing a wiki for professional use within the company I work in. Wiki has a lot of potential going way beyond the creation of encyclopedias. Even Microsoft acknowledges this with their inclusion of wiki in the latest version of their corporate intranet collaboration product. Considering this potential of wiki, the nascent “rivalry” between WikiPhilippines and the Pinoy community of Wikipedia will seem the equivalent of two maritime explorers fighting over a small patch of land while continents are left unexplored!
Let me share a dream I have, which is just one example of an island to discover in the vast ocean of possibilities of wiki. A secret cause I keep in the recesses of my techie heart is the progress of the study of Philippine history, the progress of Philippine historiography. I think that we could really use more minds to comb through the stacks and stacks of historical archives, make sense of them and help ourselves better understand our past.
Naturally, I thought along the lines of my background (IT) to contribute to the growth of something I care deeply about (Philippine historiography). If the opensource model works in creating software and encyclopedias, couldn’t it be used for historical research as well? If it could, we would still have two big hurdles. First, we need to make the primary sources available to as many people as possible. Second, these primary sources need to be in a language understandable to these people.
Fortunately, some folks are already hurdling over the lack of accessibility of primary sources. The main reason why I trust WikiPhilippines is because of Gus Vibal’s other project, www.filipiniana.net. This website can make history geeks salivate over the countless primary sources it makes available online, from the earliest records of Spanish missionaries to the memoirs of leaders of the Philippine Revolution (damn, I think I just damaged my keyboard).
But how do you squeeze out a better understanding of our past from this immense collection of raw data, mostly written in a language majority of Filipinos do not understand, at the rate similar to the growth of Wikipedia? Perhaps we can use the same model as Wikipedia, both for its translation from Spanish and historical research. Imagine a website with primary sources on one side and a wiki on the other, open for collaborative translation to everyone with internet access. Or imagine another wiki where people all over the world collaborate to create monographs, treatises and books on Philippine history similar to how encyclopedia articles are created in Wikipedia. Just put a business model on top of this wiki and you can have a self-sustaining venture with an impact to society. You can follow the non-profit model of Wikipedia or you can monetize your traffic with ads or your content by licensing them to publishers to support your overhead and growth.
This is why I’m all for WikiPhilippines, although I’m very much a Wikipedian who will continue the struggle to keep Wikipedia NPOV and NOR. Being a young wiki, it could go where Wikipedia, due to its nature and aims, cannot and will not go. Plus, it seems to have existing relationships with publishers and academicians, making linkages easier. I just hope that its formula of mixing entertainment with scholarship will work. I hope its potential for education will not be drowned by vandalism, an insular point of view and the worst anti-NPOV: gossip. Chismis 2.0, anyone?
To visit the site of the Pinoy Wikipedia community, go to en.wikipedia.org and type wp:pinoy in the search box. WikiPhilippines URL: www.wikipilipinas.org.