Wikipedia conference set to kick off at PolyU
The five-day event at PolyU will discuss improvements to the far-reaching website
Encyclopaedia mania starts this week as Hong Kong gets its turn to host the Wikimedia Foundation's annual conference from tomorrow.
The five-day event, Wikimania, brings together Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, hardcore editors and knowledge junkies to discuss the future of the free website, whose global reach has surpassed that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
There's a real sense of achievement knowing that billions of people might be using something you've worked on
Almost 1,000 participants from more than 90 countries will descend on Polytechnic University to debate and discuss fixes, and introduce more people to the collaborative platform.
"Simon, one of our members, started editing when he was 15 or 16 years old," said Kris Cheng, a volunteer with Wikimedia's Hong Kong chapter, which co-ordinated the conference. "There's a real sense of achievement knowing that billions of people might be using something you've worked on."
The foundation employs 150 people to run 13 non-profit information-sharing projects, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary. Wikipedia alone carries more than 30 million articles in 286 languages. It relies on thousands of volunteers around the globe to create, fact-check and correct online entries.
Conference attendees will work on fixing a new visual editor - a program used to edit web entries - debating the style and sharing how governments and schools use Wikipedia.