Coronavirus outbreak impacts Chinese Wikimedia communities - Wikimedia-l

29 Feb 2020

BEIJING, Feb. 29 (Qiuwen) - The coronavirus outbreak originated from China's Wuhan in
Hubei province only two months ago had already claimed thousands of lives with more
infected, but none of them are Wikimedians - as far as we know.

As of February 28th, Qiuwen can independently confirm that all active Wikimedians living
in the Greater China are not infected by the virus, including three of them who live in
outbreak's epicenter Wuhan, and dozens more who live in other parts of the Hubei
province as well as other heavily-infected cities in China. However, many of them were put
under citywide lockdowns, and just like other local residents, are not allowed to move
freely. Meanwhile, one editor in Hong Kong was put under a compulsory quarantine by local
health authorities due to close contact with a confirmed patient. The editor was forbidden
to go outside their home for a 14-day quarantine period. Detailed information of those
editors themselves will not be disclosed for privacy reasons.

Several meetups and edit-a-thons in China were either canceled or postponed due to the
outbreak. Since many Wikipedia enthusiasts in China are college students, meetups are
generally scheduled to cope with the beginnings and endings of academic semesters.
However, those meetups were postponed as the 2020 spring semester, which typically begins
from late February to early March, was delayed by education authorities. Organizers
reported canceling a meetup scheduled to be held in late January in the eastern coastal
city of Qingdao, while several others, including those in Beijing and Shenzhen targeting
college students, were postponed until most schools reopen. 

Another contributing factor to the suspension of these meetups is governments have been
discouraging people from traveling back from their hometowns to big metropolises like
Beijing and Shanghai after the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, which means attendee
turnouts for meetups held in these cities may be lower than usual.

The community in Hong Kong seemed to have suspended their meetup for the outbreak as well.
The Hong Kong community has had four meetups per year in the past two years, with the most
recent one held in November 2019. However, the next meetup, which supposes to be held in
late February according to their routine, was never announced by the community leaders in
the first place.

Communities in Taiwan was not significantly affected by the outbreak, as the island does
not have as many reported cases comparing to the mainland and Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the
organizer for a Wikimedia photowalk did make a post on Facebook, saying a mandatory body
temperature check will be implemented before the activity rolls out.

The coronavirus outbreak has been ameliorating in China during the past few days, with new
confirmed cases dropped dramatically, especially outside the epicenter Hubei province.
Local Wikimedians in Beijing are currently planning to have their meetups rescheduled for
the next public holiday, which is the Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday in early April. But the
exact planning is still yet to be decided.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland canceled physical meetings of the
Wikimedia Summit on Friday, which planned to take place in Berlin from April 3rd to 5th.
The scholarship application for Wikimania this August in Bangkok, Thailand, remains open,
and there are no signs indicating the bigger Wikimedians' gathering will be canceled
so far.

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This piece of news was gathered by Qiuwen, a news service operated by the Wikimedians of
Mainland China user group
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China>. We would like to
help deliver news from communities among Greater China to the wider world.

See our on-wiki page here <https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:QW>, and Telegram
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