(Re)Production of Knowledge for Human Resource Building: The Multicultural Dynamics of the Indonesian-language Wikipedia

Abstract

Access to information is a fundamental requirement for developing quality human
resources. One prominent source of such information is Wikipedia, a website which
advertises itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". This paper, which is
based on participatory action, observational, and library research conducted over a
period of ten years, describes the multicultural dynamics of the Indonesian-language
Wikipedia (WPID) after first situating it within the context of the global Wikimedia
movement. Established in 2003, WPID freely (in both the libre and gratis sense) offers
more than 380,000 articles with a wide range of information which can be used for
human resources building. Its more than 2,200 active users, originating from varied
backgrounds, (re)produce knowledge through several means, including writing original
text based on their understandings of existing sources and translating articles which exist
on other Wikipedias. This combination of actors, approaches, and content has led to
complex interactions between the (primarily Western) culture of the global Wikimedia
movement, the mixed cultures of source articles, and the Indonesian/local cultures of the
actors. This article argues that WPID has organically negotiated a compromise between
these at times conflicting cultural dynamics to create a hybrid source of information.
Keywords: Crowdsourcing, knowledge production, knowledge reproduction, Wikipedia