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# 5 - Wikipedia
Prompted by the fact that on another academic mailing list I subscribe to,
someone circulated a copy of an article (scholarly, signed and including
references) written by a colleague for Wikipedia, I started to wonder what's
happening with the study of Indonesia on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).
There are at least three issues here: finding high-quality material on
Wikipedia that one would be able to recommend (such as to the journalist who
asked me last week for quick references on religion in Indonesia); monitoring
what's out there and being read by the public at large; and understanding how
Wikipedia operates.
On the first issue, I don't know of any shortcuts other than searching and
scanning articles yourself and finding the ones that are better quality,
starting at places like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia Or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_language
On the second issue, I did a search of the indonesian-studies archives for
wikipedia/wiki as a subject. The variety of regional languages in which
one can find entries surprised me (here Javanese, Sundanese, and Malay).
See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indonesian-studies/message/4610
An interesting approach is to compare similar subjects in different languages,
as John did with "Indonesia/s" in Indonesian, English, Dutch, French, and
German. One could do the same with any key word(s).
See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indonesian-studies/message/6258 .
Apparently Wikipedia has what it calls 'notice boards" for people who want to
get involved, although I don't see why they would limit the invitation to
Indonesian nationals and foreign expats living in Indonesia.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Indonesia-related_topics_notice_board
You can also follow the discussions about the articles and get a sense of some
of the talk that goes on behind the scenes.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Indonesia-related_topics_notice_board
As for the third topic, there is more written on Wikipedia than I have time to
review here. Two recent articles, found on John's new internet-studies
Yahoo list at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/internet-studies/ are found below. (I enjoyed
the discussion following the second one, which shows that I am not alone in my
skepticism about the anonymous and unreferenced dimensions of this experiment in
collaborative information-sharing.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/technology/17wiki.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&th&emc=th
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1328/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation
Posted June 22, 2006
@ 2000 Antara Kita. Southeast Asian Studies
Program, Yamada House, Ohio University, Athens, OH
45701-2979, USA.
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