Open Data
Collaborative knowledge in the web

Free and unhindered access to knowledge and information is an essential cornerstone of democratic societies. Collaborative platforms such as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia ensure that users have access to high-quality information irrespective of their origin and financial means. In order to strengthen collaborative knowledge platforms, Goethe-Institut Indonesien has been cooperating in various projects with Wikimedia Indonesia since 2016.

A special challenge facing many volunteer Wikipedia editors is that the usage options of the digital tools of the online encyclopedia as well as the guidelines for creating and editing articles are quite extensive. This was the context that spawned the project “WikiLatih Indonesiana”, a workshop for Wikipedia editors that gave them the basic knowledge necessary to create and edit articles for the encyclopedia. Supported by Goethe-Institut Indonesien, the training was a joint project of Wikimedia Indonesia and Indorelawan.

The project “Ganesha” was a cooperation of Wikimedia Indonesia and Goethe-Institut Indonesien designed to increase the number and quality of social science articles of the online encyclopedia. Named after the Hindu god of knowledge Ganesha, the project was a multi-stage writing competition that presents 1,400 participants with ten quite different and challenging tasks. In the course of the competition, around 4,000 already existing Wikipedia articles were edited and 1,065 newly created.