(This is the fourth installment in a series of updates from the WikiHistories summer research fellows, who will be studying the virtual community history of different Wikipedia editing communities.)

Eric Andrada-Calica examines himself.

Did you know that Tagalog Wikipedia’s first active editor doesn’t speak Tagalog as his first language? This is one of a number of unusual things about Eric Andrada-Calica, who I first noticed at an all-day Wikimedia Philippines meeting in part because he did not utter a single word, except during lunch. I was even more surprised when I learned that after seav began Tagalog Wikipedia in early 2004 but continued to focus on English Wikipedia edits and administration, it was Eric who took the reins in September when he became a sysop and began to manage a project that, at the time, had less than one hundred articles – to one that now has more than 50,000 and counting. And because he does err towards silence, it was even more exciting to interview him and find out some of his interests and motivations for being such an active editor.

The first striking thing I learned is that Eric is from La Union, a Philippine province where Ilocano, rather than Tagalog is typically spoken as a first language. He explained the reason why he edits primarily in Tagalog: “I’m a native Ilocano speaker, but the problem is that I can’t write in Ilocano. I write more often in Tagalog.” Eric makes occasional edits in Ilocano and English, though he is not nearly as active in those two languages than in Tagalog, where he has made his most substantial contributions.

An examination of those contributions reveals that he is not primarily focused on article creation, even though he admits to timing his contributions so that the article he created on his home province of La Union was the 100th article on Tagalog Wikipedia. When asked about his motivations for starting to edit so actively, he recalled simply that as a self-professed “Internet addict” with a lot of downtime at his job, he saw many missing articles in Tagalog Wikipedia when he started around September 2004, and felt an urge to work on expanding the site.

“I am more of a general editor,” he says. “I sometimes translate articles but I usually don’t originate.” Thus, he ensures Tagalog Wikipedia’s functionality as he encounters new articles and edits to make sure that they conform to the site’s policies, while also watching out for vandalism, an increasing problem as the site becomes larger. Among the policies he enforces are source citation, image copyright, as well as the site’s controversial and often-discussed language policies. Though in the beginning, he did create or expand articles pertaining to provinces of the Philippines and then countries in the world, he also created articles based on the list of 1,000 articles all Wikipedias should have.

However, his role as a Wikipedia editor and administrator has diminished over the years, he says, “because I was a Junior Programmer when I started. Now I manage a segment of the software so I don’t have time.” Also, other administrators  have increasingly played larger roles in the organization. But as others have noticed, there seem to be fewer active editors and administrators to replace ones who have become less active.

While others editors are attempting to attract new Wikipedians through outreach related to Wikiemdia Philippines, Eric seems to prefer to stay behind the scenes. In fact, he is perhaps one of the few Philippine-based active Tagalog Wikipedia editors who is not a Wikimedia Philippines board member, though he is becoming more involved with the organization and regularly attends meetings. While other Tagalog Wikipedians are playing a more active role in Wikimedia and are meeting Wikipedians from other countries through Wikimania, chapter meetings, and other opportunities, Eric seems relatively content playing the important role of monitoring and maintaining the day-to-day activities of Tagalog Wikipedia.

Meredith Ramirez Talusan
Wikimedia Summer Fellow
and PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature, Cornell University

(The following is the first installment in a series of weekly updates from the WikiHistories summer research fellows, who will be studying the history of different non-English Wikipedia editing communities and publishing their findings over the course of the summer. Community members and translators: please see the project page on Meta if you’re interested in helping out!)

Less than two days after arriving in the Philippines, I found myself at the Wikimedia Philippines headquarters in Makati, Metro Manila on June 18 with members of its Board of Trustees and two representatives from the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on Philippine Language), Cherry Mae Tadeo and Jomar Cañega, to observe a meeting that was largely aimed at determining whether Tagalog Wikipedia’s language policies meet with the commission’s approval.

Wikimedia Philippines and Language Commission Hard at Work: (L to R) Officers and Members Butch Bustria, Roel Balingit, Josh Lim, Eric Andrada-Calica, and Jojit Ballesteros; Commission Representatives Jomar Cañega and Cherry Mae Tadeo.

I myself have not had a long history with Wikipedia. But from what I gathered at a three-day workshop at Wikimedia Headquarters in San Francisco right before my trip, English Wikipedians may find this unusual. Wikimedia Philippines, of their own accord and without pressure from the commission, was essentially asking for government approval of Tagalog Wikipedia’s language policies. This signals a greater tendency not only for collaboration at least among the Wikimedia Philippines top brass, but also for that body to take cues from established entities such as the government, universities, as well as other Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects.

Another key difference between the English and Tagaog Wikipedia movements is that there is significant overlap between Wikimedians and Wikipedians in this context. Josh Lim and Jojit Ballesteros, President and Vice-President of Wikimedia Philippines respectively, are also two of Tagalog Wikipedia’s most active editors. Eric Andrada-Calica, Tagalog Wikipedia’s first administrator, is a Wikimedia Philippines member and was also present at the meeting.

Thus, what would traditionally be a separation between a Wikimedia issue of whether Tagalog Wikipedia’s language policies conforms to government standards easily overlaps with the Wikipedia question of how those policies can be improved to best serve the needs of Tagalog Wikipedia readers. As much as Wikimedia Philippines has absorbed the rhetoric of English Wikimedia and says that it does not involve itself with the content of Tagalog Wikipedia, it is certainly clear that it involves itself with the forms of language that are used to render that content, which arguably overlaps with the content itself.

For readers unfamiliar with the Philippine language debate, a good place to start is the English Wikipedia entry on Filipino language, which details the history of Filipino and its distinction from Tagalog. The crux of the debate over language purity stems from the country’s history of double-colonization, first by the Spanish and then by the Americans. The use of loanwords from Spanish and English are therefore discouraged by some sectors of Philippine society, because it signals a continued dependence on that colonial past. However, new technologies and the teaching of English in schools tends to make loanwords more readily available to many Filipinos than purer terms. One example discussed at the meeting is the use of “seatbelt” rather than the Tagalog term “sinturong pangkaligtasan” (belt for safety), used by airlines in official announcements but not in daily speech.*

Cañega makes a particularly impassioned point.

In a Western context, language commissions most immediately recall governing bodies that try to preserve language purity, so it was ironic to hear that Tagalog Wikipedia’s language policies are actually more rather than less pure than what the commission recommends. As Cañeda noted during the meeting: “It is not linguists who determine how language is used. It is the people who do.” Thus, when Cañeda reviewed Tagalog Wikipedia’s language policies, he noted that they were in relative keeping with the commission’s guidelines — not because they maintained Tagalog language purity, but because they include a policy that provides more common terms in parenthesis whenever a more obscure or “purer” term is used.

This was not always the case for Tagalog Wikipedia, which started out significantly less formally, with many English loanwords peppering even its front page and basic terms. As an example, the term for editing a page used to be “i-edit,” a combination of a Tagalog prefix and an English verb, before it was changed to “baguhin,” a word that is purely Tagalog but may be less comprehensible to many Filipinos whose language of school instruction is English. Between 2006-2007, a period that I plan to investigate more closely, more stringent and uniform language policies were implemented. There were a number of references during the meeting to contributors who were alienated when their articles were edited into “purer” Tagalog, which I also plan to follow up on as I conduct interviews and research Tagalog Wikipedia pages.

Wikimedia Philippines President Josh Lim, with Vice-President Jojit Ballesteros in the mirror behind him.

In response to the question of why these language policies were adopted, Wikimedia Philippines president Josh Lim expressed a need for Tagalog Wikipedia to be seen as reputable especially by academic institutions, once again signaling a concern that departs from English Wikipedia. For better or for worse, Tagalog Wikipedia seems less inclined to establish its own autonomous and independent policies and parameters, and is more likely to collaborate with other entities or look at other established sources for guidance.

However, there is also support within the organization for more liberal language policies. This feeling was articulated most assertively during the meeting by Wikimedia Philippines Treasurer Roel Balingit, who expressed concern that the more academic and purist tone the site currently leans towards risks intimidating and alienating potential editors and contributors.

This comment points to an important research direction in relation to Tagalog Wikipedia, of determining if there have been any changes in editor and contributor activity since the stricter language policies were adopted, which points to a broader question of whether stricter policies in general have a tendency to alienate potential editors and contributors. Regardless, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight in terms of the debate regarding Tagalog Wikipedia’s language policies, which itself mirrors the  indefinite discussion of language in the Philippines in general.

Meredith Ramirez Talusan
Wikimedia Summer Fellow and
PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature, Cornell University

* Attentive readers may note that “sinturon” itself comes from the Spanish “cinturon,” which signals another language complication in the Philippines since Spanish tends to be prioritized over English when the use of a loanword becomes necessary. This is perceived as an aesthetic issue, because Spanish more easily adapts to Tagalog/Filipino spelling norms and its vowel system also integrates well with the indigenous language compared to English.