WikiPilipinas

Last updated

WikiPilipinas
WikiPilipinas icon.png
WikiPilipinas front 2007-08-28.png
the hip and free Philippine encyclopedia that you can edit
Type of site
 Online community
Available inEnglish, Filipino, and other Philippine languages
OwnerVibal Foundation
Created byVibal Foundation
URL wikipilipinas.org
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedAugust 29, 2007;16 years ago (2007-08-29)
Current statusOnline

WikiPilipinas (formerly known as Wikipiniana) is an online, free content website which bills itself as a combination "non-academic encyclopedia", web portal, directory and almanac for Philippine-based knowledge. Like Wikipedia, it contains various articles on Philippine-related topics. Unlike Wikipedia, many of the articles cover topics that would otherwise be deemed unencyclopedic by the stricter Wikipedia. The service for example, promotes the concept of original research and eschews the larger encyclopedia's neutral point-of-view principle.

Contents

Conceived in late 2006 by Philippine publishing magnate Gaspar Vibal, WikiPilipinas (as Wikipiniana) officially went live on June 12, 2007, with several thousand Philippine-related articles forked from the English Wikipedia. Its name was officially changed from Wikipiniana to WikiPilipinas a few weeks later on July 7. The service was formally launched at the 28th Manila International Book Fair in late August of the same year.

Overview

While it started as a fork of Wikipedia, WikiPilipinas does not fancy itself an "academic encyclopedia" as stated in its official policies and guidelines page. Despite this, the online resource does contain articles on encyclopedic topics such as history, culture, sports, and politics. In addition to those mentioned, WikiPilipinas styles itself as a mash-up of several entities; a "Who's Who" of prominent Filipinos, a directory of institutions and companies, an almanac of the Philippines and a community portal for the different ethnic groups in the Philippines. As an online resource using the wiki model, it bills itself as a collaborative effort-content provider. The most major goal that the wiki has stated is "to build the largest Philippine knowledge database". Like Wikipedia, the contents of WikiPilipinas are open to editing by anyone with access to the Internet. However, editors must register before they are allowed to edit. [1]

WikiPilipinas was particularly launched by the Vibal Foundation, a nonprofit organization which previously created Filipiniana.net, and WikiPilipinas.org (a reference guide on the Philippines). Conjunctively, the Vibal Foundation (per Gaspar Vibal and his mother) made a historical move in Philippine education, when it also launched on June 12, 2008, the 110th Philippine Declaration of Independence day, e-turo.org, as conduit of these 3 landmark education tools. Tin Mandigma, editor-in-chief of E-turo.org explained that it is an e-learning portal which "seeks to provide free and quality learning materials online to teachers and students; it gives teachers access to lesson plans and modules based on textbook materials published by Vibal Publishing House, Inc. amid plans to offer Department of Education-approved content from various learning institutions as supplementary teaching materials. One of the most common complaints of teachers is that while the Internet has so much information, most of it cannot be adapted to the local classroom. With this project, we hope to help teachers sort through the clutter and give them quality information that would be useful for their students." [2]

Differences from Wikipedia

Although it is modeled after Wikipedia, WikiPilipinas differs from it in distinct ways. Founder Gaspar Vibal describes "improvements" including a directory of web portals based on those of Yahoo!, Inc., and community portals for Filipino ethnic groups. [3] WikiPilipinas guidelines explicitly encourage, "balanced presentation, but not a neutral point of view.", state that WikiPilipinas, "does not believe that any view can ever be neutral" and that fair discussion of an issue is expected. One of the key pillars of Wikipedia is that articles be written from a neutral point of view, a major difference in encyclopedia models. WikiPilipinas supports the concept of original research, something Wikipedia forbids. WikiPilipinas encourages users to, "present their own research and findings on the site" and expects adequate references from editors for factual information. In addition, the site does not have the notability concept that is another cornerstone of Wikipedia. Articles about practically anything are allowed on the site. [4] Also, WikiPilipinas' conceptualization is far removed from that of an academic encyclopedia. The site's policy and guideline page states, "WikiPilipinas is not an academic encyclopedia." [5] [6] Unlike Wikipedia with its strict conflict of interest policy, WikiPilipinas has no rule preventing one from writing about oneself or one's family. [7]

Content

The contents of WikiPilipinas were originally aggregated from a selection of around 15,000 Philippine-related articles of Wikipedia. The addition of original articles began soon after, created by WikiPilipinas volunteers and its editorial team. [4] All text in WikiPilipinas was originally licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), [1] but on March 26, 2011, it migrated to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

History

WikiPilipinas was originally conceived as Wikipiniana, an open content management system for volunteer members of the Philippine online resource Filipiniana.net. The site initially used the Plone content management system the production of articles was deemed too slow under the system. In September 2006, plans to shift the system to use the wiki-model were conceived (after the founding of Filipiniana.net) by its New York-based founder Gaspar Vibal and webmaster Richard Grimaldo. [8] Octogenarian book publisher Esther A. Vibal, founder of Vibal Publishing House, Inc. (VPHI), and mother of Gaspar Vibal learned about online publishing and knowledge sharing. She introduced the concepts through Gaspar's Filipiniana.net and WikiPilipinas.org, the world's biggest Philippine encyclopedia available on the Web. [9]

The actual conceptualization of WikiPilipinas (then-Wikipiniana) occurred in February 2007. In planning, MediaWiki was officially selected to be the site's platform and it was decided that the site were to be modeled after the Wikipedia. Instead of a complete fork of Wikipedia however, Wikipiniana was to be a "hipper" and "freer" version, including almanac lists and directories. [7] The WikiPilipinas team, headed by Grimaldo as webmaster and Alfred Ursua as its managing editor, drew up an initial masterlist of priority contents for Project Wikipiniana. [10]

The project officially began on March 15, 2007. It was first made available online three months after on June 12 to coincide with the country's official Independence Day. [11] [12] A month after going live, the official name of the service was changed from Wikipiniana to WikiPilipinas on July 7. WikiPhilippines was the term decided upon for the section of the site with articles in English and WikiFilipinas for the section in Spanish. A press-oriented sneak preview of the site was hosted for the local media on August 22 of the same year. The event was attended by major Philippine media outlets such as GMA-7 and RPN-9, print media like the Manila Bulletin, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the Manila Times and dozens of Philippine bloggers. [1] In a press release on August 23, the site's publicists claimed to be "the fastest online startup in Philippine history" due to the site receiving 100,000 visitors during the slew of accesses that occurred after the site was covered by the media the previous day. [13]

WikiPilipinas had its official launch during the 28th Manila International Book Fair in late August 2007. [14]

The project itself is owned by the Vibal Foundation, which bills itself as the "corporate social arm" of Vibal Publishing House. It is a sister-project to Filipiniana.net, a Philippine-oriented research portal. [15]

Technical specifications

As a Philippine company, the site's physical servers are situated in Metro Manila in the Philippines. The site was originally hosted on the servers of its sister project, Filipiniana.net. However, a surge of viewers following intense media coverage on August 21, 2007, prompted the site's owners to turn to VConnect Inc. to upgrade the site's hardware. WikiPilipinas is now hosted on an IBM System x 3850 with dual 3 gigahertz Intel Xeon CPUs, 16 gigabytes of RAM and 1.4 terabytes of combined hard drive space. The site's internet connection is provided by IP Converge with a total bandwidth allocation of 10 Mbit/s. [15]

Impact and public reaction

WikiPilipinas has been the subject of several articles by major broadsheet newspapers in the Philippines. [4] [11] [15] [16] The service itself has been covered by GMA Network news in segments on two of the station's daily news programs. [17] [18]

Many of its observers on the blogging community and Tambayan Philippines, the Philippine Wikipedia regional notice board, have observed that it is "trying to be everything all at once: magazine, putative encyclopedia, pluralistic community forum, soapbox-for-a-day, rumor rag, fight club. It is a pastische of different entities, each of which has been successful on its own, but it remains to be seen whether they will be as successful when smashed together. It is less an organic fusion as it is an unnatural pile-up of knowledge-sharing methodologies taken from Euro-America. In many ways, it is symptomatic and representative of the Philippine condition." [19]

Upon learning of its inception, a few Filipino bloggers questioned the usefulness of WikiPilipinas as a fork of Wikipedia. [20] In a post entitled "Is There Any Point to Wikipiniana?", a Filipino blogger weighed the pros and cons of having an encyclopedia administered to entirely by Filipinos. [21] Filipino blogger and Wikipedian Eugene Alvin Villar questioned the usefulness and purpose of WikiPilipinas in a blog post on July 19, 2007. He argued that the "hip and free encyclopedia"'s policy on articles not needing to adhere to a neutral point of view (as Wikipedia does) was not conducive to an unbiased encyclopedia. With WikiPilipinas being marketed as an encyclopedia "by Filipinos, for Filipinos," Villar pointed out the great possibility of bias in the encyclopedia's articles. Aside from the possibility of bias, he also mentioned that the articles of WikiPilipinas were less likely to rank higher than those of the English Wikipedia in web searches, making effort spent in updating WikiPilipinas articles better spent working on their equivalent Wikipedia articles. [22] He later reiterated some of these concerns in an interview with the Manila Bulletin in September. In the interview, he criticized WikiPilipinas for prioritizing publicity over streamlining the site's policies and guidelines. [23] Notable Filipino blogger Abraham Olandres personally mentioned Villar's criticism of WikiPilipinas. In his post, Olandres agreed that the Filipino-based service would be useless and redundant unless it "came up with its own set of content". [24] In a later entry, Olandres pointed out that WikiPilipinas' lack of a notability guideline could possibly slant it towards a Filipino-centric sense of pseudo-notability. [25]

Kristine Mandigma, the president of the Philippine literacy advocacy group Read-or-Die Foundation, also made a commentary on WikiPilipinas after attending the service's August 22 official press launch. She described WikiPilipinas as "the online version of an omnium gatherum… a motley and captivating assortment of ideas, facts and factoids, emotions, dissertations, and agonized biographies." [26]

The site's credibility was questioned in line with a possible connection to Vibal Publishing House, a local publishing service that was implicated in a controversial textbook scandal. Both the publishing company and WikiPilipinas are owned by the same person, Gaspar Vibal. In an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Vibal asserted that the wiki project and the publishing house were independent of each other. [27]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippine Assembly</span> Lower house of the Philippine Legislature from 1907 to 1916

The Philippine Assembly was the lower house of the Philippine Legislature from 1907 to 1916, when it was renamed the House of Representatives of the Philippines. The Philippine Assembly was the first national legislative body fully chosen by elections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike De Leon</span> Filipino film director

Miguel "Mike" Pamintuan de Leon is a Filipino film director, cinematographer, scriptwriter and film producer.

<i>Manila Bulletin</i> Philippine newspaper

The Manila Bulletin is the Philippines' largest English language broadsheet newspaper by circulation. Founded in 1900, it is the second oldest extant newspaper published in the Philippines and the second oldest extant English newspaper in the Far East. It bills itself as "The Nation's Leading Newspaper", which is its official slogan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Library of the Philippines</span> National library of the Philippines

The National Library of the Philippines is the Philippines' official repository of information on cultural heritage and other literary resources. It is located in Ermita neighboring culturally significant buildings such as the Museum of Philippine Political History and the National Historical Commission. Like its neighbors, it is under the jurisdiction of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epifanio de los Santos</span> Filipino academic

Epifanio de los Santos y Cristóbal, sometimes known as Don Pañong or Don Panyong, was a noted Filipino historian, journalist, and civil servant. He was regarded as one of the best Filipino writers and a literary genius. He also entered politics, serving as a member of the Malolos Congress from 1898 to 1899 from Nueva Ecija and later as governor of Nueva Ecija from 1902 to 1906. As a lawyer, he was named as the district attorney of San Isidro, Nueva Ecija in 1900 and later as fiscal of the provinces of Bulacan and Bataan. He was named as an assistant technical director of the Philippine Census in 1918. He was appointed Director of the Philippine Library and Museum by Governor General Leonard Wood in 1925, serving until his death in 1928.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambeth Ocampo</span> Filipino historian

Ambeth R. Ocampo is a Filipino public historian, academic, cultural administrator, journalist, author, and independent curator. He is best known for his definitive writings about Philippines' national hero José Rizal and on topics on Philippine history and Philippine art through Looking Back, his bi-weekly editorial page column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tagalog Wikipedia</span> Tagalog-language edition of the free online encyclopedia

The Tagalog Wikipedia is the Tagalog language edition of Wikipedia, which was launched on December 1, 2003. It has 45,582 articles and is the 102nd largest Wikipedia according to the number of articles as of November 22, 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabián de la Rosa</span>

Don Fabián de la Rosa y Cueto was a Filipino painter. He was the uncle and mentor to the Philippines' national artist in painting, Fernando Amorsolo, and to his brother Pablo. He is regarded as a "master of genre" in Philippine art.

Gaspar A. Vibal is the executive director of Vibal Foundation. As book collector, he pioneered the creation of Filipiniana.net and WikiPilipinas.org, two of the foundation's flagship projects. As a balikbayan from New York City, Gaspar is a scion of a family long-established in the Philippine book publishing and commercial printing industry. His parents are Hilarion Palomer Vibal (1908–1988) and Esther Asuncion (1923-2020). Hilarion was a writer, editor, and publisher. He is known as the co-founder of Vibal Publishing House, Inc., the Philippines' biggest publishing house. He was among the first generations of Filipino writers in English. On April 30, 1950, Hilarion met and married Esther at the time he was recruited by Ramon Roces's associate D.H. Soriano to become the business editor of Evening News. Gaspar's mother Esther, on the other hand, is a writer, publisher, businesswoman, socio-civic worker, lifetime member of the prestigious Girl Scouts of the Philippines and philanthropist. As incumbent president of Vibal Publishing House Inc. (VPHI), she is known internationally as the first Asian and Filipino world president (1983) of Inner Wheel Club, a socio-civic organization formed by wives of Rotary International. She was the founder of Philippine Women's Studies project and member of the board of trustees of UP Center for Women's Studies Foundation, Inc., a commissioner of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women, and was the president of the National Council of Women of the Philippines (1990).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikiversity</span> Wikimedia wiki for learning materials that anyone can edit

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather than an encyclopedia. It is available in many languages.

Soledad Sarmiento Reyes is a Philippine literature scholar, literary and art critic, author, anthologist, consultant, professor, instructor, editor, annotator, researcher, and essayist in the Philippines. Specializing in the field of popular culture and the arts in the Philippines, Reyes is a professor teaching interdisciplinary studies at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University. She is an accomplished author of books and anthologies. "sa nobela mababalatuba ang mga pangyayati sa buhay ng isang kagawad sa union

<i>Pinaglahuan</i>

Pinaglahuan is a Tagalog-language novel written by Filipino novelist Faustino S. Aguilar. Aguilar completed the manuscript on September 25, 1906. The novel was published by Manila Filateco in Manila, Philippines in 1907. The novel was written during the American period in Philippine history (1898-1946).

<i>Busabos ng Palad</i> Book by Faustino Aguilar

Busabos ng Palad is a Tagalog-language novel written by Filipino novelist Faustino Aguilar in 1909. Apart from tackling the "ills and injustices" in Philippine society, Busabos ng Palad revolves around love, romance, tragedy, and prostitution. The 157-page novel was published in Manila by Manila Filatelica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of Wikipedia</span> Overview of and topical guide to Wikipedia

The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:

Vibal Publishing House, Inc. is a major publishing house in the Philippines based in Quezon City. Vibal was founded in 1953 by Hilarion P. Vibal and by his wife, Esther Asuncion-Vibal. Vibal is a textbook, reference materials, and multimedia products publisher and is the biggest in the country. In 2011, in partnership with Procter & Gamble, Vibal introduces digital classrooms and low-cost digital education tablets, for the digitization of education in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mahar Lagmay</span> Fillipino geologist

Alfredo Mahar Francisco Amante Lagmay is a Filipino geologist. He is executive director of Project NOAH and a professor at the National Institute of Geological Sciences of the University of the Philippines Diliman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santiago Albano Pilar</span> Filipino historian (1946–2021)

Santiago Albano Pilar more popularly known as Jak Pilar, was a Filipino art historian, curator, and author. He was best known for chronicling Philippine art centered on the 19th and the 20th century in numerous publications in both the Philippines and overseas.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "WikiPilipinas: About". WikiPilipinas. August 23, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  2. ↑ Dizon, David (June 12, 2008). "RP e-learning portal launched on Independence Day". abs-cbnnews.com. Archived from the original on April 7, 2013. Retrieved February 11, 2013.
  3. ↑ Suarez, Mike (August 27, 2007). "Wiki comes to the Philippines - Bringing along 'copyleft' IPR model popularized by Wikipedia". Tech Times Online. Manila Times. Archived from the original on November 10, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  4. 1 2 3 Wong, Chin (September 4, 2007). "A wiki for Filipinos". Digital Life. Manila Standard Today. Retrieved September 8, 2007.
  5. ↑ "WikiPilipinas Policies and Guidelines". WikiPilipinas. August 24, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  6. ↑ Lim, Ronald S. (August 27, 2007). "WikiPilipinas stirs Pinoy knowledge revolution". Youth & Campus. Manila Bulletin. Archived from the original on October 31, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  7. 1 2 Estopace, Dennis (August 23, 2007). "Book trader building Pinoy online encyclopedia". Headlines. Business Mirror. Archived from the original on November 11, 2007. Retrieved August 29, 2007. Indeed, anybody with access to the Internet, has the time and temerity to write about, say, his or her clan, could contribute article/s to the WikiPilipinas's reservoir of knowledge.
  8. ↑ www.yehey.com, Wiki comes to the Philippines [ dead link ]
  9. ↑ "Business lessons from an octogenarian". Inquirer.net. April 26, 2008. Archived from the original on February 9, 2012. Retrieved February 11, 2013.
  10. ↑ "isulong-seoph.aboutmyrecovery.com, WikiPilipinas Profile". Archived from the original on July 7, 2011. Retrieved April 7, 2008.
  11. 1 2 Casiraya, Lawrence (August 23, 2007). "Wikipilipinas founder aims for 'long tail' effect". Breaking News/Infotech. Inquirer.net. Archived from the original on May 15, 2010. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  12. ↑ "Wikipilipinas founder aims for 'long tail' effect". Technology. Asian Journal. August 23, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  13. ↑ "WikiPilipinas reaches 100,000 visitor mark in 24 Hours" (Press release). SEO Resources. August 23, 2007. Retrieved September 1, 2007.[ dead link ]
  14. ↑ "WikiPilipinas Schedule of Activities at the 28th Manila International Book Fair from August 29 to September 2, 2007". WikiPilipinas. August 26, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  15. 1 2 3 Ong, Edison D. (August 27, 2007). "Pinoy online encyclopedia WikiPilipinas aims high to break in into top 10 wikis". Info Tech. Manila Bulletin. Archived from the original on October 16, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  16. ↑ Buensalido, Monique (August 31, 2007). "Wikipilipinas: Join the knowledge revolution". Young Star. Philippine Star. Archived from the original on September 26, 2007. Retrieved September 2, 2007.
  17. ↑ Mike Enriquez (newscaster) (August 22, 2007). WikiPilipinas gives online info on RP (streaming video) (television production ( 24 Oras )). Manila, Philippines: GMANews.TV. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
  18. ↑ Sheryl Yao (reporter), Arnold Clavio (newscaster) (August 23, 2007). First online encyclopedia on RP launched (streaming video) (television production ( Unang Hirit )). Manila, Philippines: GMANews.TV. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
  19. ↑ Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines
  20. ↑ Calmada, Dong B. (August 27, 2007). "Wikipilipinas: From a Wikipedia subset to one-stop hub on RP". Activism 102: An online personal track on activism of the new millennium. The Bayanihan Blog Network. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
  21. ↑ Mossesgeld, Rico (July 17, 2007). "Is There Any Point to Wikipiniana?". The Bayanihan Blog Network. Archived from the original on July 31, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  22. ↑ Villar, Eugene Alvin (July 19, 2007). "There is Currently No Point to Wikipiniana (aka WikiPilipinas)". Vaes9. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  23. ↑ Jusay, Annalyn S. (September 3, 2007). "Wikipedia or WikiPilipinas? : the debate continues". Tech News: Blog-O-Rama. Manila Bulletin. Archived from the original on October 21, 2007. Retrieved September 5, 2007.
  24. ↑ Olandres, Abraham (August 15, 2007). "Rainy Day Friday Round-up". Blogosphere. YugaTech: Philippine Technology News and Reviews. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
  25. ↑ Olandres, Abe (August 31, 2007). "Will WikiPilipinas redefine what is notable?". Daily Dose. YugaTech: Philippine Technology News and Reviews. Retrieved September 1, 2007.
  26. ↑ Mandigma, Kristine (August 22, 2007). "Wikipilipinas". Read or Die weblog. read-or-die.org. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
  27. ↑ Casiraya, Lawrence (August 26, 2007). "Wikipilipinas founder answers credibility issues". Breaking News/Infotech. Inquirer.net. Archived from the original on August 29, 2007. Retrieved August 27, 2007.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.