User:Filipinayzd/ESEAP History

The regional collaboration composed of nationalities & Wikimedia affiliates in East Asia, South-East Asia, and the Pacific or ESEAP traces its history back at the Wikimania 2014 wherein several attendees from East and Southeast Asia discussed about collaborating in a regional way. From August to December 2014, ESEA virtual meetings were held with the aim to hold an in-person event ESEA Meetup in Indonesia on April 18 to 19, 2015. The inaugural event would be realized only three years later.

From 2015 and 2017, conversations, meetings and meetups were participated by affiliates' representatives and individuals from the region were held. During the annual Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, Germany, and at Wikimania held in different locations (Mexico City - 2015, Esino Lario, Italy - 2016, Montréal, Canada - 2017), the most common agenda included Wikipedia Asian Month and having an Asian regional meetup. The Wikimedia Conference, now known as the Wikimedia Summit, is an annual meeting of representatives of Wikimedia Affiliates, the Wikimedia Foundation and other movement groups like the Affiliations Committee. Whereas, Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. During Wikimania in London where the idea of having a regional collaboration was imagined, 139 individuals selected thru scholarship registrations of WMF, IEG and PEG, and the 2014 team members attended the global conference representing 59 different countries.

The first conference of Wikimedians from the ESEA and the Pacific outside Wikimedia Conference and Wikimania happened at ESEAP Conference 2018 which took place in Bali, Indonesia on 5–6 May 2018. It is the first gathering for Wikimedia communities throughout the ESEAP region as hosted by Wikimedia Indonesia with the aim to bring people in this region and share their views, challenges and best practices in their communities and individual efforts in the Wikimedia movement. The ESEAP Conference 2019 would not be funded by WMF. In 2019, Wikimedia Thailand would host a Strategy Summit in Bangkok.

On 25 September 2018, the Affiliations Committee approved the recognition of the Wikipedia Asian Month User Group.

At the Wikimedia Summit 2019 held in Berlin, participants held an Asian Meetup. On Wikipedia Asian Month, Sailesh narrated a successful Wikipedia Asian Month 2018, where more than 55 community participated. Mohsen of Iran requested that ESEAP (East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific) needs to be more inclusive and requested to expand to other Asian countries. Butch acknowledged that there are requests coming from non-ESEAP countries that is within geographical Asia (including Siberia, Russia). He told Mohsen that it will make coordination and governance hard as it focused on a broad audience. ESEAP conference was even never held for 2019 due to budget restrictions. Mohsen stated that Kazakhstan and Central Asia doesn’t have representative and countries that are not in WikiArabia don’t have a regional block. Butch responded that Asian geographic area is also large that non-Eseap countries can form its own regional cooperation bloc. Liang echoed the statement and prefer ESEAP to start small and grow. In strategy track, there are already many regional zones focusing on Asia. If combining different regional zones, it will be hard. He further added that there was even are already regional groups focusing on specific (thematic) things. So it’s better not to include too many countries for building the community. Sailesh in his part that combining India and countries west of it such as Pakistan pose cultural challenge and political challenge and different countries has different challenges. Liang stressed that chapters Wikimedia Taiwan (2007) and Wikimedia Hong Kong (2013) experienced burn out after Wikimania. Wikimedia Taiwan recovered but Hong Kong was de-recognized. He wish all communities to have a steady growing slope. Wikimedia Foundation is already including different communities in a country to join as User Groups this time. Before the group photo with then Wikimedia Foundation CEP Katherine Maher, and regrouping for a post-Asian Meetup by the attendees from the ESEAP region, Sailesh hinted that India initiated expanding relationships with its neighbors in the South Asia Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Further, there was even an early proposal for CASA (Central Asia South Asia) Conference he said.

Timeline of events

Wikipedia Asian Month: a regional collaboration

During the Wikimedia Conference 2015 on May 15 in Berlin, attendees from East and South East Asia got the chance to have a regional meetup at the venue. The members of Wikimedia Taiwan, Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia Hong Kong, Wikimedia Philippines and staff from Wikimedia Foundation were present. ESEA Wikimedians discussed the possibility of the regional collaboration. Asaf Bartov suggested that each community hold a survey to discover the interests of the community and find out whether there are similarities inviting collaboration. In the end, the ESEA community agreed to set up a platform on Meta to exchange experience and news about ongoing projects, so that if there is community interest in the program that is being done by others, they can get in touch and collaborate.

ESEA Meetup group photo, 2015

Affiliation	Representative 1	Representative 2
Wikimedia Hong Kong	Venus Lui
Wikimedia Indonesia	Hendra Prastiawan	Siska Doviana
Wikimedia Philippines	Eugene Alvin Villar	Juan Bautista Alegre
Wikimedia Taiwan	Liang-chih Shan Kuan	Reke
Wikimedia User Group China	AddisWang

• Affcom: Josh Lim
• WMF: Asaf Bartov, Alex Wang, Anna Koval

In November 2015, the Wikipedia Asian Month was launched as headed by Addis Wang and Liang-chih Shan Kuan. It is an online edit-a-thon aimed at enhancing the understanding among Asian Wikipedia communities with the following participating affiliates:

Wikipedia Asian Month 2015 logo

Wikimedia User Group China Wikimedia India Wiki-ID/WMID Wikimedia Philippines Wikimedia Taiwan Wikimedians in Kansai

Wikimedians in Thailand Philippine Wikimedia Community User Group Wikimedians of Uzbekistan Community Wikimedians in Thailand Iranian Wikimedians User Group Wikimedia Ukraine

The Wikipedia Asian Month 2016 was held in November as organized by the following:

• AddisWang
• SuperHamster
• Rosiestep
• Titodutta
• Lingveno

The Wikipedia Asian Month 2017 was held in November as organized by the following:

• Addis Wang (General Questions)
• Kevin (Offline Event)
• Le Loi (Judging Tool / Tech)
• Kenrick (Page Setting)

ESEAP Conference: a regional conference

At the 2016 Wikimedia Conference, the idea of holding a regional meet up in 2018 before Wikimania came about to be hosted by 2018 Wikimedia Indonesia or Wikimedia Taiwan before the 2018 Wikimania. Liang-chih ShangKuan (WMTW) initiated the meeting.

Affiliation	Representative 1	Representative 2
Wikimedia Indonesia	26Isabella	Beeyan
Wikimedia Taiwan	Reke	Liang-chih Shang Kuan
Wikimedia User Group China	AddisWang
Wikimedians in Thailand	Taweetham
User Group Korea	Motoko C. K

At the 2017 Wikimedia Conference, a year before the planned regional conference, attendees from the East Asia and Southeast Asian Regions strategized. Among the other agenda were Wikipedia Asian Month and communication.

Affiliation	Representative 1	Representative 2
Wikimedia Indonesia	Beeyan	Kartika Sari Henry
Wikimedia Taiwan	Yannmaco	Liang-chih Shang Kuan
Wikimedia User Group China	Xiao Guan	Addis Wang
PhilWiki Community	Filipinayzd	Ringer
Wikimedians in Thailand	Athikhun Suwannakhan	Taweetham
위키미디어 대한민국 (Wikimedians of Korea)	Motoko C. K.	Manjai Lee

Invitees for the Movement Strategy Track:

• Dody Ismoyo
• Ks aka 98
• Mei Yee Lui

Participants during the 1st meeting:

Erick Guan Addis Wang Yusuke Ks aka 98 Liang-chih Shang Kuan Aaron Huang Dody Ismoyo

Venus Lui Robert Myers Taweetham Limpanuparb Athikhun Suwannakhan Biyanto Rebin Kartika Sari Rebin

(The names of a couple more people present there might be missing here...)

Participants during the second meeting on 2017-04-02:

WMID: Biyanto WMTW: Liang & Aaron WMAU PHWiki irvin & ramon China User Group

Japanese community (Thailand) (Malaysia) (WMF)

Agenda: 1) Wikipedia Asian Month; 2) Introduction of Google Non-profit - free GMail/Google Drive accounts for nonprofits - G Suite, formerly called Google Apps, techsoup.asia used by Korea, Indonesia; 3) Communication - Difference between newsletter from social media, Ask help from Ed Erhart; 4) Conference

At the Wikimedia Conference 2018, Asia Meetup was held at Room KINDL, Mercure Templehof Hotel Berlin. It was attended by the following:

Bidgee Rahul Deshmukh ANKAN Nahid Sultan Morgan Jue Daniel Chong Wikilover90 Jitendra Shah Irvin Parco Steven Fung

Tanweer Biplab Anand Pankaj Deo Rachmat Wahidi Ravidreams Punchalee Athikhun Balaji Krishnan Chia-Yi Meng Sanket Oswal

Imacat Motoko C. K. Rinto Jiang Ivonne Kristiani Jayanta Nath Satdeep Gill Abbad Darriya Ijon Lahariyanithi Liang chi

Meeting notes:

• New Readers: Awareness Campaign and Inspire Campaign.
• Marathi Wikipedia: Offline Wikipedia. Offline User Group
• Wikimedia Bangladesh: Awareness on Mother Tongue language day.
• Wikimedia Taiwan: Edting Medical articles. WikiWomen edit-a-thons every year.
• Korea: Helping governmet to edit articles related to themselves.
• User Group Malaysia: Got funds from other partners.
• Wikimedia Indonesia: Writing competitions related to Science. Increasing awareness of Wikipedia. Doing ESEAP next month.
• West Bengal Wikimedians: 12000 books uploaded on Wikimedia Commons.
• Punjabi Wikimedians: Social media inspire campaign with an animated video. Collaborating with CIS for Punjabi Wikisource as Focused Project for the next fiscal year.
• Maithili Wikimedians: Wikipedia Education Program in 20+ schools.
• PhilWiki community: February 2019: Wiki Loves Art
• Punchalee and Athikum (Wikimedians in Thailand): Editor retention. Mentor-Mentee project. Education program since 2014, 103 students have participated.
• Balajijagdish (Wikisource community): Tamil Wikisource collaborated with Tamil Nadu government. Got copyrights of Tamil books by paying authors.
• Hindi Wikipedia: Ektara video. World Hindi Conference.
• CIS: Now supporting capacities and capabilities of Indic communities.
• Wikimedia India: Internation winner for WLM. Thinking of doing Wiki Loves Food again.
• Ravi: We need newcomers. Let's look forward to Movement Strategy. Coming up with ideas relevant to our communities.
• Wikimedia Australia: Digitization project without many resources. Andy Mabbet might be able to do Wikidata sessions. Interested in organizing ESEAP or Asia-Oceania Conference in Perth in 2019.

ESEAP Conference 2018, a regional conference for Wikimedia communities throughout the ESEAP region took place in Bali, Indonesia on 5–6 May 2018. This is the first regional conference for these Wikimedia communities.

Asian Meetup and the formation of SAARC

Wikimedians from Asia at Wikimania 2018

On 20 July 2018, the annual Wikimedia Asia meetup was attended by Wikimedians from all of Asia during Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Agenda:

• Discussion during the recent Asia meetup in Berlin
• Preparations for the 2018 Wikipedia Asian Month
• Follow-up from the Wikimedia ESEAP Conference 2018 and planning for ESEAP conference 2019 in Fremantle, Australia
• Proposal for a Wikimedia SAARC (South Asia) 2020 Conference.
• Share recent wiki related activities in participant's country
• Other topics

Participants:

Sky Harbor Viswaprabha — regards, Revi --Abbad Bidgee Mardetanha Daniel Mietchen Hasive NahidSultan 이강철

Doctor 17 SSethi (WMF) Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington Satdeep Gill Ranjithsiji Balajijagadesh Pavanaja Afifa Afrin Ibrahim Husain Meraj

Wirjadisastra --Alaa :)..! Atudu Sumitsurai Blue Rasberry Techyan Mahmoudalrawi ~Moheen

General discussion:

• Mardetanha - To have an Asia-wide conference.
• SkyHarbour - The ESEAP was organized to test the capacity. WiR. Also working in journalists.
• Liang - We can't do a bigger conference for at-least next year. How we engaged the medical students in Taiwan.
• Robert - Regional conferences are the future.
• Srishti - To have an Asian Developers Group inspired from African Wikimedia Developers Group.
• Viswa - Schoolwiki model can be imitated and scaled up in many Asian communities.
• Anirudh - Workshops across Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Vietnamese Wikipedians User Group.
• Gyana - 7 government websites and social media handles have been re-licensed under CC-BY-SA.
• Wikimedians of Levant and Latin America organized Bridge across Borders.
• Sailesh - Inspired from Wiki Loves Africa and we can do Wiki Loves Asia.
• Balaji - Project Tiger Editathon 2018. Generally, there are individual competitions but this one had community prize as well.

Wikipedia Asian Month:

• Kevin - Wikipedian Asian Month and Wikidata.
• Viswa - SVG graphics with embedded annotations can be translated into various languages and used better in each local wikiprojects.
• Nodir - Only 3 community members. Need help in organizing.
• Sailesh - Also, providing funding for local events.

On 25 September 2018, the Affiliations Committee approved the recognition of the Wikipedia Asian Month User Group. The scope of the group, which can be found on their meta page, is "to support Small Asian language Wikipedia communities around the world, Increase the cooperation among the Wikimedia communities and affiliates in Asia and to enrich Asian related culture, content, and enjoyment on Wikimedia projects."

Wikimedians from Asia at Wikimedia Summit 2019

At the Wikimedia Summit 2019 held in Berlin, participants held an Asian Meetup.

On Wikipedia Asian Month, Sailesh narrated a successful Wikipedia Asian Month 2018, where more than 55 community participated. 6700 articles on 56 languages of Wikipedia. Many small Wikipedias also joined. WAM made assistance to small to emerging communities to join the movement. WAM asks participants to write articles about Asia from other countries. If the participants wrote 4 more articles, they can get a postcard from either India, Hong Kong or Japan. WAM was organized and recognized as a Wikimedia User Group. For 2019 edition, WAM needs to organize the event for 4 to 5 months. WAM needs more people to join the affiliate. It’s welcoming feedbacks and more participants applying for board members from various countries.

Mohsen of Iran requested that ESEAP (East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific) needs to be more inclusive and requested to expand to other Asian countries.

Butch acknowledged that there are requests coming from non-ESEAP countries that is within geographical Asia (including Siberia, Russia). He told Mohsen that it will make coordination and governance hard as it focused on a broad audience. ESEAP conference was even never held for 2019 due to budget restrictions.

Mohsen stated that Kazakhstan and Central Asia doesn’t have representative and countries that are not in WikiArabia don’t have a regional block.

Butch responded that Asian geographic area is also large that non-Eseap countries can form its own regional cooperation bloc.

Liang echoed the statement and prefer ESEAP to start small and grow. In strategy track, there are already many regional zones focusing on Asia. If combining different regional zones, it will be hard. He further added that there was even are already regional groups focusing on specific (thematic) things. So it’s better not to include too many countries for building the community.

Sailesh in his part that combining India and countries west of it such as Pakistan pose cultural challenge and political challenge and different countries has different challenges.

Liang stressed that chapters Wikimedia Taiwan (2007) and Wikimedia Hong Kong (2013) experienced burn out after Wikimania. Wikimedia Taiwan recovered but Hong Kong was de-recognized. He wish all communities to have a steady growing slope. Wikimedia Foundation is already including different communities in a country to join as User Groups this time.

Wikimedia regions

Sailesh hinted that India initiated expanding relationships with its neighbors in the South Asia Regional Cooperation (SAARC). There was even an early proposal for CASA (Central Asia South Asia) Conference.

Butch added that since Asia is already diverse and if it don’t improve the capacity on the current regional block, ESEAP can’t grow as a community. ESEAP will support initatives for creation of a new regional bloc that includes all Asian countries that is neither ESEAP nor WikiArabia.

Meeting suspended to allow picture taking with Katherine Maher, Executive of Wikimedia Foundation. After the traditional picture taking, Katherine left and non-ESEAP members were asked to leave the conference room for the ESEAP meeting.

Wikimedia Regions

Wikimedia regions was established dividing areas of the world into mutually exclusive regions for purpose of funding, representation, and management. There has been some change over time in these definitions. As of 2022, the Wikimedia Foundation is organizing its activities around the following eight regions:

Timeline of representation at ESEAP in-person meetings