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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On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 09:03:58 +0000 "Tomos at Wikipedia" wiki_tomos@hotmail.com wrote:
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?
As far as I know, it was Brion, who used it as a kind of 'experimenting area' or 'proof of concept' for creating a UTF-8 Wikipedia.
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?
From that I guess it would not be bad to consider Aoineko the one who started the Japanese Wikipedia. That also has the advantage of having someone who actually speaks Japanese and is still active on Wikipedia.
Andre Engels
Souvenir... souvenir... :o) In fact I don't remember well, but I know Brion was very enthusiastic starting this Wikipedia. Ask him the reason, but the fact he read/write some Japanese is surely a point. Here is what I can recall (it is certainly not the reality, so please correct if needed): * Brion starts a first version (UseMod?) of Japanese Wikipedia around September 2002. I remember some non-Japanese people came there to write few stubs/lists * In November 2002, Brion starts a new version (Phase3?). At this time the Japanese Wikipedia was almost sleeping and I was the only user available for testing the new server (it's why I'm registered as user number 2. Number 1 is of course Brion). The previous version database was very small (perhaps few dozen articles) so the content was not converted to the new server and old one staid alive for a wile to let us copy pages from old server to the new one. It's why you can't found the vestiges of the first edits on the current database. Perhaps Brion is keeping a backup of the old version!? * After, I think some non-Japanese people came back there to make some edits and we started to translate the interface in Japanese. Personally, I advertised Wikipedia around me (I'm in Japan) and tried to make people contribute to it, but as far as I know, it was unsuccessful. * The 19^th of December, Brion let me a message on my talk page to inform me that someone was creating (real) articles on Japanese Wikipedia! (« Peut-être t'interesse; il y a quelqu'un sur ja.wiki ! --Brion 08:46 déc 19, 2002 (CET) »). I think it was Hijiri. Few weeks later (January 2003?), Tomos arrived at ja.wiki. They know the continuation ;o)
Andre Engels wrote :
From that I guess it would not be bad to consider Aoineko the one who started the Japanese Wikipedia. That also has the advantage of having someone who actually speaks Japanese and is still active on Wikipedia.
I really don't merit the title of "the one who started the Japanese Wikipedia". If you want to award someone, you must elect Brion. Nothing would have been possible without his will to start and help the non-English Wikipedias. Meanwhile, if you need someone for an interview in Japan, I'm of course available :o)
Finally, what the firsts done is really less important than the great job Japanese wikipedians done since;o) Omedeto !
Aoineko
Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
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?
From the very beginning, yes. Japanese in particular was and is an
interest of mine because my wife was born in Tokyo and is half-Japanese. But of course, I am not responsible for any edits there, and others must take all the credit.
I would be *keenly* interested in visiting Japan to accept the award, if there's a ceremony or whatever, even if it has to be at my own expense.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org