Wikipedia has come a long way since it was established in January 15, 2001. At first, the founder of the encyclopedia, Jimmy Wales wondered if the project will survive.

The first version of Wikipedia was called Nupedia.

Initially, Wikipedia was intended to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia project edited solely by experts, by providing additional draft articles and ideas for it.

In practice, Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia, becoming a global project in multiple languages and inspiring a wide range of other online reference projects.

Today, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting 374 million unique visitors monthly as of September 2015. There are over 73,000 active contributors working on more than

38,000,000 articles in 290 languages including Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo language.

There are vital opportunities for Wikipedia to tap external expertise and enlarge its base of editors. It is also the most promising way to solve the considerable and often-noted gender gap among Wikipedia editors.

In 2011, less than 15 percent of Wikipedia's editors were women. Africa is among the continents where Wikipedia recorded low number of active editors.

If Wikipedia ever hopes to be able to achieve is vision of providing “the sum of human knowledge to everyone, everywhere, for free” then increasing the size of the editing communities on African language Wikipedia is extremely important.

There is no doubt that larger and stronger community of editors will leads to more articles of higher quality, which in turn makes that language version of Wikipedia ever more useful and relevant.

Like most African countries, there are low number of people contributing to Wikipedia from Nigeria. This could be as a result of lack of awareness and lack of periodic training to new volunteers.

Currently, the Yoruba Wikipedia have few active editors, the Hausa and Igbo Wikipedia have no active editors. These appears to be a major priority to the Wikimedia Foundation's affiliate in Nigeria, the Wikimedia User Group Nigeria.

"Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo language Wikipedia need urgent attention. These language versions of Wikipedia remain a topmost priority of our group. Over 90% of the contents in these language Wikipedia are written by bots and they are poorly written". Said Olaniyan Olushola, a co-founder of the Wikimedia Foundation's affiliate and the Team Lead of Wikimedia User Group Nigeria.

On 12 January 2016, a notable Wikipedia editor in Nigeria, and advocate for the improvement of Nigeria-related content on Wikipedia who is also the Manager of Wikipedia Education Program in Nigeria, Olatunde Isaac established the Yoruba language branch of "The Wikipedia Library".

There is no doubt that this idea will improve the quality of contents on these language Wikipedia. Outreach to Nigerian universities is most likely to increase the number of editors from Nigeria.

Over 85% of Nigerian students and scholars Visit Wikipedia on a daily basis to source for information. Student use Wikipedia as a major resource for assignments and classwork.

A recent research suggests that student prefer a computer based assignment to the traditional paper-based assignment.

Nigeria's Government, through the ministry of education could partner with the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) that owns Wikipedia through their affiliate in Nigeria to train academics on how to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool as well as to train students on how to edit and create articles on Wikipedia.

This will not only improve the students skills in reading, writing, researching, critical thinking, translation, communication, and collaboration but students will also gain information and media literacy; and deepen their understanding of copyright, plagiarism, citation, and digital citizenship.

In 2014, the Israel's Government through the Ministry of Education and Wikimedia Israel, an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation engaged in similar partnership.

Education Minister Rabbi Shai Piron said, “It is important to us that the education system in Israel leads in innovation and cooperating with Wikipedia is a wonderful opportunity to think outside the box and enable students in Israel to do things that make a difference from which others can also benefit.”

The founder, Jimmy Wales, says; the mission of Wikipedia is much more bigger than just creating a killer website. That is, it has a larger mission of affecting the world in a positive way

- http://www.nigeriacommunicationsweek.com.ng/e-business/wikimedia-calls-on-nigerians-to-write-wikipedia-articles#.dpuf

Ok. I'm an Ibo how do I become an Ibo editor?

ugolance:
Ok. I'm an Ibo how do I become an Ibo editor?

Well I'm not wikimedia personnel, but I know you could submit/edit an article on wiki.

You could visit the site to confirm.

Your article could be about any one, the Obi dynasty, maybe.

Ok......... Will start doing that..... #Yoruba