Namuwiki

Namuwiki (Korean: 나무위키) is a Paraguay-based Korean wiki created on April 17, 2015, powered by the proprietary wiki software The Seed. Its name, "Namu" (나무) translates literally to "tree" in Korean. According to its slogan ("The tree of knowledge that you grow together") and self-description, Namuwiki strives to share community-driven knowledge and information, whilst respecting the freedom and equal rights of every user.[1]

Namuwiki
나무위키
Type of site
Wiki
Available inKorean
Ownerumanle S.R.L.
(Asunción, Paraguay)
Created bynamu, PPPP, kasio
URLnamu.wiki
CommercialYes
Registrationoptional
Launched18 April 2015 (2015-04-18)
Current statusOnline
Content license
CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 KR

Compared to Wikipedia, material found on Namuwiki largely retains the personal/subjective style of writing characteristic of the Rigveda Wiki, a Korean Otaku wiki from which Namuwiki forked. It has been criticized for lack of accuracy and neutrality, but as of January 2020, Namuwiki was ranked the largest wiki in the Korean language, larger and more popular than the Korean Wikipedia.

History

In April 2015, one of the largest Otaku subculture wikis in Korea, Rigveda Wiki, suffered a massive community dispute when the site owner, Cheongdong, was discovered to have secretly changed the user agreement to privatize the wiki for his personal profit. Users vandalized articles in protest, forcing the closure of the servers.[2] In response, Namuwiki was created as a fork by a user named Namu on April 17. The article count of Namuwiki surpassed that of Rigveda Wiki by April 25, and surpassed Rigveda Wiki's original article count before its vandalism on May 12.[3] Namuwiki emerged as one of the biggest wikis forked from the Rigveda Wiki, and soon became its de facto replacement.[4]

In May 2016, Namu transferred Namuwiki's server management rights to a new owner, UmanLe, a company based in Asunción, Paraguay.[5]

In September 2018, the site began displaying advertisements on the top banner of its pages, ostensibly to help fund its server rental fees.[6]

Content

Articles

Like its predecessor Rigveda Wiki, Namuwiki's articles are lightly worded and humorous, often containing jokes or references to subculture knowledge from various areas, including movies, games, and online memes. It has a unique form of narrative through the use of strikethroughs, which are primarily applied to sentences that are written as part of a tongue-in-cheek joke. Bolding is used liberally, often to highlight an important phrase. Although the primary focus of articles is placed on popular subcultures (the original targeted material of Rigveda Wiki) like games, anime, and movies, there are also many articles written on the fields of science, history, scholarship, and current events. However, less emphasis is placed on creating verifiable information; Namuwiki acknowledges on its behalf that its comparatively lax editing policies can cause material to be written incorrectly, biased, or defamatory, especially given a smaller number of contributors.[7] As a result, the articles on Namuwiki are considered to be less scholarly than the likes of the Korean Wikipedia. The tone of Namuwiki is also much lighter, as it allows jokes and puns.[8]

Content of Namuwiki is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Korea (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license).[9]

As of January 2021, Namuwiki contained approximately 847,074 main articles and over 3,233,027 files.[10]

Projects

Namuwiki contains over 100 projects in various areas. Areas that it cover include games, transportation, military, sports, history, education, etc. As of January 2019, there were a total of 72 projects in Namuwiki.[11]

Press coverage

In March 2017, an article published by the Korean news outlet MK News detailed Namuwiki and the "humorous" writing style of its articles.[12] The article attributed Namuwiki's growth to its accessibility and humor. However, this and its ease of editing also leads to articles with biased and unfounded opinions.

In November 2018, Namuwiki was mentioned by Korean news outlet representative Junghwan Lee as a positive example for news outlets to follow in the context of fake news, explaining that information contributed online from repeated discussion, deletion, and adjustments ultimately creates truthful information.[13]

On January 9, 2019, Korean politician Haejoo Cho formally announced that he had deleted material written on his Namuwiki page, as it contained "false elements," which resulted in political backlash.[14]

Controversies

Administration

Umanle S.R.L.'s base of operation in Asunción, Paraguay has led to concerns over the legal venues available for Korean citizens to seek correction of information they consider harmful, given the bureaucratic difficulties in handling legal matters with a foreign entity under foreign law.[15] Various hypotheses have arisen to speculate the motivation behind the wiki's transfer, the most prominent of which characterizes the move as an attempt to avoid sensitive South Korean internet laws.

No information has been revealed about Umanle S.R.L., its employees, or its owner(s). Data from Paraguay's Ministry of Finance confirms its existence,[16] but little else exists to serve as any decisive evidence against the rising suspicions of a dummy corporation.

Although Namuwiki's license is non-commercial, Umanle S.R.L. is classified as a for-profit corporation; September 2018 saw the deployment of advertisements on the top banner of each article, justified by the need to cover server costs.[6] However, as Umanle S.R.L. has declined requests to reveal advertisement profit statistics,[17] there are rising questions to this claim, to the non-commercial license of Namuwiki and any prospective violations thereof.[9]

"Gender equalism"

In August 2016, one Namuwiki user created an article about "equalism".[18] The article falsely claimed that a new ideology, "equalism", has appeared in the West, and made multiple remarks against feminist ideologies. As South Korea was seeing heated online debates about radical feminist website Megalia during this time,[19] the article quickly gained a lot of attraction and contributions. Although most of the assertions and reference included in the article were false or fabricated, contents of it were widely spread over Korean society, resulting in false articles about the concept of equalism.[20] Around the same time, the Wikipedia article on egalitarianism was also altered to favor inclusion of "equalism",[21] which was quickly removed. 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 claims were false, and the original idea of equalism was mostly a fabrication.[22] Later, the disputed article was rewritten at length and was renamed to "Namuwiki Gender Equalism Fabrication Case".[23]

Lack of accuracy and neutrality

Despite being the largest wiki in the Korean language, Namuwiki does not necessarily require sources, nor does it have strict restrictions on contributions containing inaccurate information or subjective perspectives; it is only "recommended" to leave citations in cases of direct quotes.[24] Due to no requirements for fact-checking, Namuwiki has been criticized for lack of accuracy and reliability.[8] Many entries have also been criticized for lack of neutrality to minority groups or women and how they are often written in a misogynistic or homophobic manner.[8] The phrase “나무위키 꺼라 (lit. ‘turn off Namuwiki‘)” has become a running joke in many Korean Internet communities, targeting its users who act knowledgeable about certain topics without doing in-depth and credible research outside of Namuwiki.[25]

See also

References
  1. "namuwiki-나무위키:기본방침" (in Korean). 2017-02-15. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
  2. "'리그베다 위키' 영리화 사태". 파이낸셜투데이 (in Korean). 2015-05-12. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  3. "나무위키/역사 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  4. "[2016 웹컬처 키워드] 국내 집단지성 위키, '대위키시대' 도래 : 네이버 뉴스". News.naver.com (in Korean). 2016-01-27. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
  5. "나무위키:보존문서/공지사항 (토론) - 나무위키 소유권 이전에 대한 공지 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  6. "공지사항 - 광고 부착과 관련한 공지". board.namu.wiki (in Korean). 2018-09-15. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  7. "나무위키/비판" (in Korean). Retrieved 2018-07-12.
  8. "For Better or Worse, All Roads Lead to Namuwiki in South Korea, Not Wikipedia | ké radar". KOREA EXPOSÉ. 2017-03-23. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  9. "나무위키" (Wiki) (in Korean). Retrieved March 18, 2017.
  10. "namuwiki-나무위키:문서 수" (in Korean). 2018-08-08.
  11. "나무위키:프로젝트 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 2019-06-29.
  12. "나무위키 10년…유머로 키운 `잡학다식`의 숲". mk.co.kr (in Korean). Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  13. 미디어오늘 (2018-11-06). ""'가짜뉴스' 논란, 언론이 '나무위키'에게 배워야"". 미디어오늘 (in Korean). Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  14. "사라진 문캠 흔적? 조해주 "나무위키, 내가 지웠다"". news.naver.com (in Korean). Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  15. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-10-07. Retrieved 2017-03-12.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  16. "Datos Proveidos por la SET". Ministerio de Hacienda. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  17. "문의게시판 - 광고 부착 관련". board.namu.wiki (in Korean). 2018-09-15. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  18. "나무위키 성 평등주의 날조 사건 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  19. "'나무위키 성 평등주의 날조 사건'에 대하여". 허프포스트코리아 (in Korean). 2017-02-03. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  20. "[카드뉴스] '경찰 추산' 맞먹는 페미니스트의 통계조작 – 리얼뉴스". archive.is. 2017-01-29. Archived from the original on 2017-01-29. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  21. "Talk:Egalitarianism", Wikipedia, 2019-02-07, retrieved 2019-02-11
  22. "페미니즘 비판하던 '이퀄리즘'은 누리꾼이 만들어낸 '창작품'". 경항신문 (in Korean). 2017-01-31. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  23. "나무위키 성 평등주의 날조 사건 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 2019-02-11.
  24. "나무위키:편집지침/일반 문서 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
  25. "나무위키 대문, '꺼무위키'로 변신해 눈길…나무위키 꺼라? - 이정범 기자". 톱스타뉴스 (in Korean). 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
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