Hello.
An email arrived at japanese wikipedia's press contact mailinglist regarding Web Creation Award. It is an award given to people who made significant difference in the web in Japan. The host of the award is an association of advertisers, though the recipients of the awards are not limited to marketing campaign planners. Wikipedia is under consideration because someone made a recommendation. :-)
As a part of selection process, they would like to do some interview. The person who emailed us expressed that he would like to find the person who started the Japanese Wikipedia, someone who came up with the idea, plan, or determination. Who exactly this is, I think, is somewhat up to interpretation. Is there any strong candidate?
I recall reading early Wikipedia-l posting (perhaps by Larry and/or Jason) announcing the launch of several non-English Wikipedia circa May 2001. Japanese Wikipedia was among the first ones. Is there anybody who remembers how that happened? Was multilingualization of Wikipedia an idea of Jimmy and Larry from the beginning? Or was there someone else who suggested/ pushed for it? Is there any reason why Japanese was among the first?
In the early days, Aoineko was kind of "stationed" when there was only several edits a week, and welcomed the logged on users (there were only several back then) if I understand correct. Brion was there to fix bugs and take care of other technical aspects, too. The first article seems to have been written by RoseParks (phonemes of Japanese). But there are only fragmental traces and virtually nobody knows those early days. Could somebody inform us of people who made significant contributions?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Regards,
Tomos
More info. is available on the award at here (in Japanese):
http://award.wab.ne.jp/award/index.html
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