'I wake pretty late these days, at about 9am, because I graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong this summer and am idle at home, looking for a job. The first thing I do after getting up is turn my computer on and check messages from other Wikipedians and e-mails.
I have worked for Wikipedia, which is a free internet encyclopaedia webpage in more than 190 languages, for more than four years. Anyone, anywhere can dit the content or create new entries anytime they want. Since the first English-language Wikipedia was launched less than six years ago, it has become one of the most popular reference tools on the Web. The August statistics from Comscore Media Metrix [an internet audience calculator] shows it ranked sixth among websites worldwide, with 138.6 million visitors.
There are about 2.4 million registered users in total and many more visitors. It is estimated that anonymous viewers make up a quarter of the total readership. But comparatively, the number of active Wikipedians, the contributors, is much smaller - only about 30,000 regular writers, editors and translators. I am one of the fewer than 100 Wikipedians from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the mainland and other places working for the Chinese-language Wikipedia webpage. As far as I know, there are only five full-time Wikipedians in the world and all Wikipedians for the Chinese version are unpaid volunteers. The love of sharing what we know and the website's collaborative nature binds us together.
Creating a new entry is not as easy as many people think. We can't simply copy and paste content from the internet. On the contrary, we have to do research, write content in our own words, list book references or links. As in journalism, being objective and balanced is important. And the work can be very time consuming: yesterday I spent three to four hours on a three-paragraph entry on Tokyo Bay.
After clearing messages and e-mails in the morning, I will have breakfast, usually congee made by my mother. I live with my parents and my younger sister in Tuen Mun. Although I have been hooked on Wikipedia for a long time, my parents know little about it and my sister, who is in high school, shows no interest. But it's OK as long as I am working on things I am interested in.
I first became aware of Wikipedia when I was a
