More than 500 "Wikipedians" -- volunteers around the world working to compose and update the online encyclopedia Wikipedia -- are scheduled to meet in Taipei next month.
The opportunity to host Wikimania 2007, the third annual international Wikipedia conference, was made possible through the work of 20 or so Taiwanese Wikipedians, Wikimedia Taiwan said.
On its Web site, Wikimedia Taiwan, which is affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, said the Taiwanese team beat teams from Egypt, Hong Kong, Turkey, the US, England and Italy in a Wikimedia Foundation fund-raising competition last year.
Founded in 2003, the foundation is in charge of collaborative online projects. Wikipedia is one of them.
Wikimedia Taiwan chairman Teng Jie (
However, in a television interview with the Taiwan Broadcasting System this month he stressed the value of cooperation among people around the globe to collect information.
"In the past, people thought nothing good would come out of a bunch of Internet surfers getting together," he was quoted as saying in the news clip. "Wikipedia proves otherwise and shows that two heads are better than one."
As a non-profit organization, the team in Taiwan was able to garner support from local sponsors such as Chunghwa Telecom.
The main conference will be held from Aug. 3 to Aug. 5.
Jimmy Wales, one of Wikipedia's founders, and Joichi Ito, an advocate of shared economy, are also expected to attend.
From Aug. 1 to Aug. 2, the organizer has arranged for technology and media personnel to meet for a series of discussions on issues related to their fields.
Wikipedians around the world first gathered in 2005 in Frankfurt, Germany.
The conference was then held in Boston, Massachusetts, last year.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS