KOCHI: When Wikipedia launched in 2001, its premise – that anyone, anywhere could help build a reliable encyclopaedia – felt naive, even outlandish. Twenty-five years on, that openness has survived not only naysayers but algorithmic feeds, paywalls and more recently, generative AI. In Kerala, which boasts a strong reading culture, Wikipedia’s story is linked to that of its volunteers.
Spanning all age-groups, interests and careers, they write, correct and curate content on the platform, which sees over 4 billion visits each month. Dr Neetha Hussain began her tryst with Wikipedia 15 years ago, with an article on a local chutney. A few days later, she was enthralled to find other editors had improved it. “I was drawn in by this collaborative spirit,” she said.
As a medical student, she noticed how little reliable health information existed in Malayalam. “There was a lot of misinformation circulating in Malayalam,” Neetha recalled, particularly around conditions like diabetes and hypertension, where medication is discouraged. Expanding those articles on Wikipedia became, for her, a way to counter false narratives.
In 2018, during the Nipah outbreak in Kerala, Neetha researched the disease and curated a dedicated article.
“I knew nothing about the disease, but started researching for my own understanding and for writing the article. Eventually, others joined in,” Neetha said. Today, that article has crossed 1.9 million views.
That slow filling of gaps defines much of Kerala Wikimedia community’s work.
Irvin Sebastian, a full-time naturalist and birdwatcher, began editing after noticing how little science content existed in Malayalam Wikipedia. “I was motivated by the idea that knowledge, especially about subjects like prehistoric life, should be accessible in one’s own language,” he said.
Sebastian has since created and expanded more than a thousand articles on birds, dinosaurs, prehistoric animals and fishes of Kerala.
For Jinoy Tom Jacob, one of the youngest volunteers in the community, the idea that a small edit could be read by thousands across the world was powerful. “A large part of our local and regional knowledge, especially related to culture, history, places and people, was either missing or under-represented.
So I went on to amend that,” he said. Starting with small edits during college, Jinoy later began working across Wikipedia’s sister projects, contributing images, maps and structured data through Wikidata and OpenStreetMap. The roots of Kerala’s Wikimedia community also lie in the Free and Open Source Software movement. Manoj Karingamadathil traces his entry to discussions around Malayalam computing and the slogan My Language for My Computer.
Introduced to Wikipedia through the Swathantra Malayalam Computing community, he saw it as a way to document biodiversity, folklore, heritage and technology. Over the years, Manoj coordinated campaigns like Wiki Loves Earth and Wikisource digitisation efforts, drawing in over 1,000 volunteers.
For Ranjith Siji, one of his earliest edits involved adding a missing image to an article in 2005.
“The idea that a reader could immediately become a contributor was radically different,” he recalled. His work later extended to building MediaWiki infrastructure and educational platforms such as SchoolWiki, where teachers and students collaboratively document schools across Kerala.
As Wikipedia turns 25, this work is gaining even more momentum, as volunteer editors document vanishing art forms, strengthen health information, and ensure that Malayalam continues to exist as a living language of knowledge online.