Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur Nomen Tuum;
adveniat Regnum Tuum; fiat voluntas Tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie; et dimitte nobis debita nostra,
Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris; et ne nos inducas in tentationem; sed libera nos a Malo. Amen!

The Main-Wiki-site for Network of Jerry~yuyu

CITY5 | LIFE, 04-May-2006, South China Morning Post

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, has been built by a global army of unpaid volunteers covering all things great and small. Alex Ortolani logs on.

JEROMY CHAN YU had some trouble with the European names when he was translating an article on the Hapsburg dynasty from English to Chinese. The 19-year-old found help online from some Germans, who suggested he work from the original German names rather than their English versions. "I don't mind getting help or criticism," says Chan.

It wasn't for a school assignment. It was his contribution to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopædia. Founded less than six years ago, Wikipedia has now become the most popular reference tool on the web, with 1.35 million registered users and many more visitors. The site recorded more than 25.5 million visitors in March alone. That makes it the 18th most visited English site on the internet, according to comScore Media Metrix.

The effort is collaborative, with entries written, edited, and translated entirely by unpaid volunteers such as Chan. Anyone can log in and edit, add or remove content. "It's a learning experience for all of us," Chan says.

Wikipedia has attracted more than 100,000 contributors, although only about 30,000 of those are regular writers, editors and translators. Scattered around the globe, they form a lively online community that has produced more than 2.9 million entries in 125 languages - well on the way to achieving Wiki's aim of creating an encyclopædia available in all languages.

According to market research firm Hitwise, it's also starting to gain on established news sites such as The New York Times for current-event searches.

As in most parts of the world, Wikipedians in Hong Kong are a varied lot. Some are experts who want to share their knowledge. Others are purists who want to get the facts straight on Hong Kong's geography, politics and environment.

Then there are young people such as Chan and Lawrence Lo Wing-kei. A university student, Lo was attracted by the idea of contributing to a project that could change the way information is created and shared. "Nobody knows everything, but everybody knows something," Lo says. Through collaboration "the site has created some of the best, well referenced, and accurate information available on the internet", he says.

Lo stumbled across Wikipedia four years ago while browsing the internet. Intrigued, he searched the site for Hong Kong entries and found there weren't any on some major subjects. One glaring omission, he says, was the Tsing Ma Bridge. "This is a well-known landmark, but there was no information on it."

The 21-year-old decided to correct the situation. Combining his own knowledge of the bridge with a little research, Lo posted a few sentences. The Tsing Ma entry soon ballooned to a full page with photos and links. It was Lo's first taste of the collaborative nature of Wikipedia. "After that," he says, "I was hooked."

Lo isn't the only one. The Hong Kong noticeboard for Wikipedia lists about 68 contributors for English-language entries. Topics range from the public transport system to the definition of yum cha. The noticeboard features a "collaboration of the week" that contributors can work on, as well as a long list of subjects that have yet to be included.

Although most exchanges are online, contributors have held face-to-face meetings on improvements and how to increase the Chinese-language entries.

"We're a community that includes anyone who wants to join," says Lo, sitting at a table of Wikipedians, some of whom he had only met online previously. "That's what makes it work."

Wikipedia is growing at a startling rate. The English-language site doubled its content last year and now exceeds a million entries. Despite being blocked on the mainland, the Chinese-language site, which started three years ago, now has more than 52,000 entries.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says this global growth is exactly what he envisioned when he launched the site nearly six years ago. "From the very beginning, it was the intention to be [available] in all languages," he says in an e-mail. "I am very excited about how well we have done in that regard."

Wiki is the offshoot of another free-encyclopædia venture Wales launched called Nupedia, which was based on a peer-review system by expert contributors. To boost Nupedia's growth, his business partner Larry Sanger suggested in 2001 that they set up a platform allowing people to freely create and edit the content using a browser. Known as a "wiki" - which comes from the Hawaiian word for "quick" (wiki wiki) - the system became so popular that Wales scrapped Nupedia for the less restrictive Wikipedia.

However, the open platform has its drawbacks. Last December, Wikipedia came under fire when an entry on former newspaper editor John Seigenthaler falsely linked him to the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. It was eventually traced to a prankster, who apologised for his actions. But the incident damaged Wikipedia's credibility as a reference resource. Subsequent news reports also found that some political groups were using entries to discredit opponents in smear campaigns.

Cyber vandals who post false information, pornography or abuse are an inevitable problem in a system that seeks maximum openness. To combat the menace, Wikipedia introduced a group of about 900 administrators to help monitor the entries. The members, who are voted in by the community, have the power to block certain sites that are continually sabotaged, such as those for US President George W. Bush and Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian. They also step in to arbitrate between squabbling contributors about the presentation of controversial topics. And since the Seigenthaler debacle, new contributors are required to sign up before posting entries.

But to Wikipedians, these are minor flaws compared with the advantages of the system. Fans say it provides a useful and surprisingly coherent starting point when gathering information on a subject. "Wiki is the most well-linked site on the internet, but you should always check other sources," Lo says.

Besides, the collective nature of Wikipedia ensures that the most accurate definitions will win out in the end, Wikipedians say. They cite a recent survey by the journal Nature, which found that scientific entries in Wikipedia had only slightly more inaccuracies than those in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Britannica wrote a 20-page rebuttal criticising Nature's report as inaccurate and flawed.

However, Chan points out that Britannica, founded in 1768, has had a lot more time to perfect its product. "Wikipedia's hasn't even been around for six years," he says. Plus, continual arguments between contributors help keep it honest. "Truth comes from debate."

To Lo, more contributors mean a better future for Wikipedia. "It's like a snowball," he says. "The more people that join, the bigger and better it gets."

Cathy Ma Po-shan, a post-graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, agrees. "Wikipedia {hellip} is like a big castle under construction," she writes in a paper to be published in a communications journal in the US. "Everyone who sees it as an interesting project can choose to participate the way they want, from painting a brick to designing its architecture."

Although initially attracted by Wikipedia's non-hierarchical system of entries, Ma says it often trumps mainstream sources of information. She cites a posting on the impact of Hurricane Katrina in Florida, which received more than 7,000 edits within a month, showing "perspectives from the people who were there".

Contributors such as Musashi Young Kit will add to the growing mass of information. Although fairly new to Wikipedia, he has already made 30 entries and translations. This week, he's working on an article about a wartime military leader. Where will he get the information? "From here," Young says, pulling out a hardcover book.