Telenor, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Myanmar Wikipedia community have held their first joint workshop in Myanmar in a bid to create local content for Wikipedia, the world’s biggest free encyclopaedia.
The workshop was held at Telenor’s headquarters in Yangon and was conducted by experienced Wikipedia contributors.
The event gave new volunteers an introduction and training in how to identify content for translation, how to edit articles and also how to teach new members of the Wikipedia community, Telenor said in a statement.
“Wikipedia is an important source of information and have committed to providing access to Wikipedia for free to Telenor’s customers,” Petter Furberg, CEO, Telenor Myanmar.
Telenor is also supporting local initiatives to create content in local language on Wikipedia, he said.
“We are excited to help bringing Wikipedia to the people of Myanmar and to start our partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation and the Myanmar Wikipedia community.”
Wikipedia contains more than 30 million volunteer-authored articles in over 287 languages, and is visited by more than 490 million people every month, making it one of the most popular sites in the world.
The Myanmar version of Wikipedia – my.wikipedia.org – currently only has around 30,000 articles in local language.
Telenor said creation of content is the first step towards launching Wikipedia Zero, where Telenor customers can use Wikipedia for free, with no internet charges, once the company launches its network in September.
“We need more local content in Myanmar language and our aim is to create a collaborative, growing ecosystem of contributors in the Myanmar community,” said Ngwe Tun, who is one of the first Wikipedians in Myanmar and conducted the workshop in partnership with Telenor Myanmar.
“More contributors mean more articles, which results in more usage of Wikipedia. This is a true initiative for the community, by the community. Knowledge is power and Wikipedia can offer a platform with reliable, useful and unbiased information,” he said.
