Namuwiki

Namuwiki
Screenshot
Type of site
 Wiki
Available in Korean
Owner umanle S.R.L.
Website namu.wiki
Alexa rank Global: 947
South Korea: 45
(August 2018)[1]
Commercial Yes
Registration optional
Launched 18 April 2015 (2015-04-18)
Current status Online
Content license
 CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 KR

Namuwiki (Korean: 나무위키) is a Paraguay-based Korean wiki which was created on April 17, 2015. Its name, "Namu" (나무) literally means "tree" in Korean. The wiki uses its own proprietary Wiki software named The Seed. Its motto is to guarantee every users' freedom and rights equally, and to share the knowledge and information.[2] As of August 8, 2018, the wiki has 589787 articles (including redirects) and 1253744 files. [3]

History

On April 2015, following a community dispute (Owner against CCL), most of the Rigveda Wiki users left, in which most of them rejoined at Namuwiki, which is one of the biggest wiki forked from Rigveda Wiki.[4]

On May 2016, Namu transferred Namuwiki's server management rights to a new owner, Umanle. Umanle established a company in Paraguay.[5]

On September 2018, the site started displaying advertisements on top of each article. "Umanle" has revealed that the profit from the ads will be used to pay for server rental fee.[6]

Criticism

Since Namuwiki can be edited by all users, some articles can be biased or contain false information. The sanctions for subjective statements are weak so numerous articles are based on personal thoughts. Also, a biased opinion can cause an illusion as if it has information value. When only a small number of users are involved in creating an article, errors in said articles can easily be neglected. The problems and criticisms of Namuwiki, which can be found within its own article,[7] are apparent and makes the whole website unattractive for many users. Problems such as immature debate culture, management issues, the lack of understanding of the rules of the board members, and technical issues. All have contributed to the reason why other Korean Internet communities criticize and are sometimes against Namuwiki.

Articles written before April 2015 are from Rigveda Wiki, including copyright infringement and defamation article. All articles of Namuwiki are debated if there is a disagreement among the users. Even though the wiki prohibits unfounded accusations against certain people, organizations, or its users to be uploaded, it is still difficult to identify the perpetrator of the defamation, and the obligation is unclear. This is because the website was taken over by Umanle S.R.L which is based on Asunción in Paraguay; it is no longer possible to tell the website to take responsibility for the contents. Thus, items based on hate, discrimination, and prejudice might not be filtered. Also, whether or not Namuwiki could be governed by the Korean law is debatable. Since the corporation of Namuwiki is in Paraguay, Korean laws are not applicable owing to the territorial principle. In Korea, the territorial principle is parallel with the personal principle. Therefore, some argue that even if the servers and corporation are in overseas, if the operators are Korean, Korean law may be applied. But this conflicts with the philosophy of Namuwiki.[8]

After big vandalism event in 2017; which an administrator elected by an election started to suspend all the other administrators and unblocked other users, Umanle S.R.L started to interfere in wiki management. They picked wiki admin without any existing users' consent and removed almost every descriptions about Alphawiki, which is based on the content of Namuwiki.[9]

Controversy

"Gender Equalism"

Namuwiki was criticized for its made-up concept about 'Equalism'. On 2016 August, One Namuwiki user made an article about 'equalism'.[10] The article mentioned that equalism, which is a better ideology than feminism because it is less disputed about reverse discrimination, has appeared in the West. Because Megalia, an extremely biased feminist community in the country, had caused large disputes about feminism the same month, this article was considered "anti-megalian". Users who had similar thoughts soon contributed to the article, which now contained misogynistic views and misconceptions about feminism. Though most of the assertions and reference included in the article were false or made up, contents of it were widely spread over Korean society. Internet presses, bbs, and the Justice Party used it to justify their offense towards feminism. The false article existed for longer than 6 months, until the country's Feminist wiki called Femiwiki brought forward specific and definite arguments on January 24, 2017. Soon, it was proved that most of the facts written were false, and the original idea of equalism was mostly fabrication.[11] Later, the disputed article was rewritten at full length. It is now renamed as "Namuwiki gender equalism fabrication case".

Contents

Contents of Namuwiki are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Korea (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license). [12] As of March 2017, Namuwiki contains approximately 900,000 articles.[13] As the Rigveda wiki was originally made as a sub-culture wiki, Namuwiki also has intensive and abundant contents about such. It now contains information about science, scholarship and articles regarding ongoing events. Though not all the information can be verified, it still provides an overall insight to the topics.

See together

References

  1. ↑ "namu.wiki Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Archived from the original on 2018-08-08. Retrieved Aug 8, 2017.
  2. ↑ "namuwiki-나무위키:기본방침" (in Korean). 2017-02-15. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
  3. ↑ "namuwiki-나무위키:문서 수" (in Korean). 2018-08-08.
  4. ↑ "[2016 웹컬처 키워드] 국내 집단지성 위키, '대위키시대' 도래 : 네이버 뉴스". News.naver.com (in Korean). 2016-01-27. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
  5. ↑ "일간지에 UMANLE S.R.L. 설립이 공지되었습니다" (in Korean). 2016-08-05.
  6. ↑ https://board.namu.wiki/notice/1175705
  7. ↑ "나무위키/비판" (in Korean). Retrieved 2018-07-12.
  8. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-10-07. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  9. ↑ "알파위키 언급이 운영방해? 나무위키 운영자의 치졸함". Archived from the original on 2018-07-24. Retrieved 2018-07-28.
  10. ↑ "Namuwiki gender equalism fabrication case article history". Namuwiki.
  11. ↑ "페미니즘 비판하던 '이퀄리즘'은 누리꾼이 만들어낸 '창작품'". 경항신문 (in Korean). 2017-01-31. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  12. ↑ "나무위키" (Wiki) (in Korean). Retrieved March 18, 2017.
  13. ↑ "나무위키:통계" (Wiki) (in Korean). Retrieved March 18, 2017.
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