I am so glad nooone has been affected so far. May your friends and families remain safe during this difficult time and know that our thoughts are with you.
Best wishes,
Delphine
On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 1:17 PM 《求闻》编译组／Qiuwen WMCug qiuwen@wmcug.org.cn wrote:
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.
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%3E. 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 channel here https://t.me/Qiuwen.
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