By Tare Youdeowei

Wikipedia, a free encyclopae-dia written collaboratively by the people who use it, has launched a new platform, Wikimaster, to make learning and local content development for Nigerians easier and more interesting.

Wikimaster, created by World of Knowledge, WOKCraft Inc., was launched in Lagos by the Wikimedia Foundation, Nigeria, in conjunction with Goethe Institute at the Wikimaster Conference 2018.

Describing how the platform works, Erik Bolinder, the founder of WOKCraft Inc said: “We are trying to enhance Wikipedia by creating Wikimaster. We wanted to create a social network for learning, so we created the Wikimaster. It is an app that is open to everyone, you download the app and become part of a global community where you can ask questions, answer questions, interact, learn and have fun. Having Wikipedia as the basic component, questions as second component and social interaction by multiplication as the third component, we have created a dynamic network app in the Wikimaster.”

Hoping the app will spur content creation on Wikipedia by Nigerians and serve as a learning platform for school systems, Bolinder said; “Wikimaster can help teachers create a more interesting way of learning for their students, and help the students develop their knowledge, while online. This is the start of the awareness drive, followed by a quiz contest that has started  February and will end December 31, 2018.

It is a quiz contest with prize money involved. The goal is the first person to reach 1million wokbits.”

Olusola Olaniyan, President, Wikimedia Foundation Nigeria in a similar comment said, “We came into this because we believe Nigeria’s local content needs to be featured on the platform and the only people that can contribute to it are Nigerians. In 2016 Wikimedia foundation did a survey and found that just 27 percent of Nigerians using Wikimedia.

“As such we decided to go all out to create awareness. In the process, we have reached out to so many schools, organisations and individuals to key into this platform. We are partnering with the global Wikimaster and on this platform you don’t only have access to knowledge, you can create contents.

“We are also working on a project called Wikiloveswomen designed to encourage Nigerian women to create and write content about themselves. We discovered that 13 percent of every article created on Wikimedia represented women and we are doing this in conjunction with WFM Radio in Lagos.”