Sundapedia is a 72 days writing competition on the Wikipedia basa Sunda (Sundanese Language Wikipedia). This competition was held at the Indonesian University of Education (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, UPI). The competition was attended by 48 participants, all are students from the university, and held for 3 (three) months (September-December 2011).
This competition is stimulated by the conditions of Sundanese Wikipedia which quite alarming. The active contributors to contribute an article may be can be counted by the fingers. In fact, on the other hand, the number of speakers of Sundanese is the second (after the Java language) among other regional languages in Indonesia, which is more than 30 million speakers. This condition make the revitalization project in the Sundanese language Wikipedia become very needed. When Siska Doviana offers a revitalization project, Aditia Gunawan and Iskandar Adnan are willing to formulate an activity that can stimulate an active contributor in the Sundanese language Wikipedia.
In June 2011, we sparked the idea for organize a training and competition to write as Free Your Knowledge 2010 that has previously been successfully implemented. The project officer then choose Indonesia University of Education to become a partnership because in this University there was Department of Sundanese Language which is believed that the student on this department will be able to write Sundanese language. Because this activity is the first competition in existing activities of Sundanese language Wikipedia, so these activities are not dependent target heroics. The purpose of this competition is to increase the activities in Sundanese language Wikipedia and hope to get at least five new active contributor.
In July 2011, the Jakarta committee initiate a communication with the Indonesia University of Education, in this case represented by the Department, to offer cooperation between both side. This communication went well and the University was very interested to this activity. Since that time, both side begin some technical preparations. The University give the facilities, especially classroom which are connected with an internet connection. Wikimedia Indonesia also hope that University helps to provide scholarship funds for the winner. But this is not achieved at the beginning of the agreement and to be commercialized later. Training and competition schedules are then formulated and agreed to be held in September 2011.
Launching and First Training was held on 17 September 2011 while the new first round of competition begins on 19 September 2011 and ended on 12 October 2011. The target participants at the first meeting was 50 people, but in reality that comes only 48 people, consisting of 44 students and 4 post-graduate. Because it uses a system of fall, the end of the first round of the competition leaving 24 participants who survived. In this round each participant is required to make 1 (one) complete article. Second round competition runs from 13 October to 2 November 2011. While the second phase of training was held on October 15, 2011. The second round of the competition leaving 16 participants who qualify for the third round. Some participants were detained due to inadequate number of stub articles that are made. However, until the specified time limit, eventually the "participants held" can pass to the next round. Third-round competition runs from 3 November to 4 December 2011. End of the competition leaving 16 participants who are entitled to get a certificate on their tenacity to follow the competition and produce five winners. The first winners are entitled to get one unit laptop, while the four other get a major educational scholarship worth Rp. 1.000.000, - and one exemplar the Dictionary of Sundanese Language.
What lessons were learned that could help others succeed in similar projects?edit
Training performing well. Although at first (first round) there still some participants who have not mastered the Wikipedia writing technique, but slowly the participants can learn even through distance communication (Bandung-Jakarta). Intertwining insten through communication group in social networking, phone, and sms can maintain the activity of the participants in this competition.
Cooperation with the University. University welcomes this activity and are directly helping the organizers and participants of the technical terms, such as providing facilities that support the library room that help the participant to writing articles.
An increasing number of readers - although not part of the goal that it try to achieve, Sundanese Wikipedia have demonstrated significant progress in the number of pages viewed that jump from 755 thousand readers to 1.2 million readers per month that occurs during competition is in progress. Although such "jumps" are not surprising. Based on lessons learned from the project Exempt Pijar Theological Studies 2010 and 2011 that occurred before, there was a relationship where if Wikipedia is inundated by articles and contributors, five months later after the "input" to occur, the number of readers of Wikipedia will "go up" significantly. This result of course based under the assumption that there are a large number of native language speaker and there's no barrier to access the information through internet by the native speaker (Sundanese).
Media. It must be admitted, that the lack of personnel is tedious. One of the most feel is the publication, especially to the press. The committee has work hard to publish these activities to the media, but only two local media and the campus media who covered this activity so that "echo" of this activity is less pronounced.
Organizing Committee. Not like the other competitions, the competition Sundapedia technically only be done by two committee. So it is quite difficult. We look forward to further similar activities should be augmented so that technical difficulties can be resolved. Nevertheless, we hope the participants are persistent can be a new force for Sundanese language Wikipedia in the future.
The concept of cross-university administration needs to be carefully taken, especially the estimated time and cost for the future.
Statistically, the implementation of competition can raise the position of Wikipedia. However, it is necessary to note that the quality of the articles tend to be less good. This is due to the demands of competition that requires writing articles as much as possible. The solution to this problem is with the addition of specialized personnel on patrol to the participants in order quality articles can be maintained.
In order to run the editorial process more intense, the need to hold a modem that supports the participants to write an article on-line. Participant complaints generally revolve around the inability to gain access to the internet because they do not have a modem and have to go to Warnet.
Sundapedia has successfully increased the very active users (> 100 edits / month) of Sundanese Language Wikipedia from two contributors in August 2011 to 24 contributors when the competition took place (October 2011).
Sundapedia managed to increase theactive users (> 5 edits / month) from 6 contributors before the competition to 44 contributors during the competition.
The participant (both that finishes and dropped out from the competition) contributed more than | 1521 short and long articles using Wikimedia Indonesia competition standard within 3 months competition.
Increase rankings of Wikipedia, from 94th before the competition to 92th after the competition.
For taking the time to review the grant request and a prompt funding transfer that enables this time sensitive project to happened (1&2). James Owen and Sue Gardner (3&4) for taking the time to administratively help certificates signing as an appreciation for the winners and committee and sending them back to Indonesia to be distributed.
Dr. Dingding Haerudin, M.Pd, Chairman of the Department of Education Regional (Sundanese) Language, which has helped all that is needed by the committee.
Dr. Ruhaliah, M.Hum, for her kindly helps give a Sundanese language dictionaries for the winner and deftly helped the committee prepare technical work.
Prof. Dr. Iskandawassid for his appreciation of this activity by giving important comments and very useful notes for future improvements.
