Working on japan-related Wiki projects

[toritaiyo]

have any of you contributed to any japan-related wiki projects?

If so, which ones? And how can others get involved?

Some that I'd like to help with are:

en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese (en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese) - free Japanese language textbooks (wouldn't a free japanese textbook, from beginner to advanced, be pretty cool?)
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Japan - the wikipedia Japan portal

[hideway]

Seems a great website. Thanks for mentioning. :-)

[maushan3]

Wow, thank you for helping me learn some Japanese. I started studying this Wikibook around 4 months ago and it started me off on basics until I started going to Japanese lessons.

Mauricio

[toritaiyo]

Hi maushan3,

I can't take create for that. I am interested in getting involve in those projects but I haven't yet.

[toritaiyo]

I am looking for people who have worked on some of these projects before because I want to hear about how they contributed and get ideas about how I can organise people to contribute.

I think that these projects are really beneficial to people wanting to learn about Japan and learn Japanese.

And they are free! Free textbooks. I wish I had realised they existed when I was taking Japanese classes!

[footyboy]

what does wiki stand for?

[toritaiyo]

what does wiki stand for?

Hi,
Thanks for the question and the interest.

If you google it (define:wiki), you get:
"A collection of websites of hypertext, each of them can be visited and edited by anyone. “Wiki wiki” means "rapidly" in the Hawaiian language.
www.cpsr-peru.org/english_version/privacy_ngo/part4"

But you probably know wikis from wikipedia.com

wikis are great for bringing a lot of people together to create something. And anyone can participate. With wikipedia millions of people came together to create the world's largest encyclopedia.

The creators of wikipedia also created wikibooks.org which has a project to create a free Japanese textbook.

I was wondering if anyone here edits the Japan-related things on these wikis.
And I want to work together with people to improve these resources.
-Tori
p.s.
A football lover I see :)

[sanji]

18 months ago, I wanted to create a new web site which would work as a large guide book for people traveling and living in Japan. Indeed, after a couple of years in Japan, I realised that it is easy to find information on Kyoto, Tokyo, Koya-san or Hakone, but as soon as you try a little more remote locations, it is much more difficult to get interesting information.

My first idea was to create a wiki-type site, but I quickly noticed that is was difficult to keep up with the changes, and to motivate people to participate.

Finally, I quickly changed to a forum structure. The idea behind that is that each contributor can submit his guide, even if someone else already did write a guide on the area. You have then 2 guides that I written by different persons in their own perspective. This seems to be a much more interesting approach...

So wiki can be great, but you need to have be able to find a lot of contributors that are willing to change someone else's text, which is not always easy...

Since I am here, some ad : Secret Japan - www.secret-japan.com/forum
If you know the country, why not help to expand our guide section ;)

sanji