Namuwiki
나무위키
English version of the logo
Type of site
Wiki
Available inKorean
Headquarters
Asunción
,
Paraguay
Ownerumanle S.R.L.
(Asunción, Paraguay)
Created bynamu, PPPP, kasio
URLnamu.wiki
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Launched17 April 2015 (2015-04-17)
Current statusOnline
Content license
CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 KR

Namuwiki (Korean: 나무위키) is a Korean language wiki. It was launched on 17 April 2015, is powered by the proprietary wiki software The Seed, and is currently based in Paraguay. Its name, "Namu" (나무) translates to "tree" in Korean. According to Similarweb, it is the seventh most visited website in South Korea.[1]

Namuwiki is not considered an online encyclopedia.[2] The material found on it is written in a personal/subjective style that was characteristic of the wiki from which it was forked, the Rigveda Wiki. It has much more lax guidelines than Wikipedia and has been criticized as being inaccurate and biased.[3]

As of December 2022, Namuwiki contained approximately 4,760,171 main articles (including redirects), compared to 3,153,761 pages (including redirects) on the Korean Wikipedia as of December 2023.

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.[4] In response, Namuwiki was created as a fork by a user named Namu on 17 April. The article count of Namuwiki surpassed that of Rigveda Wiki by 25 April, and surpassed Rigveda Wiki's original article count before its vandalism on 12 May.[5] Namuwiki emerged as one of the biggest wikis forked from the Rigveda Wiki, and soon became its de facto replacement.[6]

In May 2016, Namu transferred Namuwiki's server management rights to a new owner, UmanLe S.R.L., a company based in Asunción, Paraguay.[7]

In August 2016, one Namuwiki user created an article about "equalism".[8] The article falsely claimed that a supposed 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,[9] 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.[10] The false article existed for longer than 6 months, until a Feminist wiki named Femiwiki brought forward specific and definite arguments on 24 January 2017. Soon, it was proved that most of the claims were false, and the original idea of equalism was mostly a fabrication.[11] Later, the disputed article was rewritten at length and was renamed to "Namuwiki Gender Equalism Fabrication Case".[12]

In September 2018, the site began displaying advertisements on the top banner of its pages, ostensibly to help fund its server rental fees.[13]

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 video 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 incorrect, biased, or defamatory, especially given its smaller number of contributors. 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.[14]

Content of Namuwiki is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Korea (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license).[15]

As of December 2022, Namuwiki contained approximately 4,760,171 main articles (including redirects) and over 3,067,897 files.[16] For comparison, the Korean Wikipedia has 3,153,761 pages (including redirects) as of December 2023.[17]

Projects

Namuwiki contains over 100 projects in various areas. Areas that it covers include video games, transportation, military, sports, history, education, etc. As of June 2023, there were a total of 44 projects in Namuwiki.[18]

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.[19] 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.[20]

On 9 January 2019, Korean politician Cho Hae-joo formally announced that he had deleted material written on his Namuwiki page, as it contained "false elements," which resulted in political backlash.[21]

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.[22] 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.

Not much 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.[23] Some users raised concerns that Namuwiki may be operating under a ghost company.[22]

Kim Nak-Ho (김낙호), a professor of journalism opined that relying on opaque administration may be problematic for online communities. He further added that collaborative encyclopedia projects should be owned by a formal non-profit with transparent funding.[22]

Accuracy and neutrality

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.[14] The phrase "turn off Namuwiki" (나무위키 꺼라) 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. ↑ "Most Visited Websites in Korea, Republic of". Similarweb. Retrieved 28 June 2023.
  2. ↑ "대문". 나무위키. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
  3. ↑ "'위키백과' CEO도 아는 '나무위키'...이들 백과사전 믿어도 되나" (in Korean). 15 January 2021. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  4. ↑ "'리그베다 위키' 영리화 사태". 파이낸셜투데이 (in Korean). 12 May 2015. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  5. ↑ "나무위키/역사 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  6. ↑ "[2016 웹컬처 키워드] 국내 집단지성 위키, '대위키시대' 도래 : 네이버 뉴스". News.naver.com (in Korean). 27 January 2016. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  7. ↑ "나무위키:보존문서/공지사항 (토론) - 나무위키 소유권 이전에 대한 공지 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  8. ↑ "나무위키 성 평등주의 날조 사건 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
  9. ↑ "'나무위키 성 평등주의 날조 사건'에 대하여". 허프포스트코리아 (in Korean). 3 February 2017. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  10. ↑ "[카드뉴스] '경찰 추산' 맞먹는 페미니스트의 통계조작 – 리얼뉴스". archive.is. 29 January 2017. Archived from the original on 29 January 2017. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  11. ↑ "페미니즘 비판하던 '이퀄리즘'은 누리꾼이 만들어낸 '창작품'". 경항신문 (in Korean). 31 January 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
  12. ↑ "나무위키 성 평등주의 날조 사건 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  13. ↑ "공지사항 - 광고 부착과 관련한 공지". board.namu.wiki (in Korean). 15 September 2018. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  14. 1 2 "For Better or Worse, All Roads Lead to Namuwiki in South Korea, Not Wikipedia". Korea Exposé. 23 March 2017. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
  15. ↑ "나무위키" (Wiki) (in Korean). Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  16. ↑ "namuwiki-나무위키:통계" (in Korean). 5 November 2021. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  17. ↑ "List of Wikipedias" (Web). Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  18. ↑ "나무위키:프로젝트 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  19. ↑ "나무위키 10년…유머로 키운 '잡학다식'의 숲". mk.co.kr (in Korean). Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  20. ↑ 미디어오늘 (6 November 2018). ""'가짜뉴스' 논란, 언론이 '나무위키'에게 배워야"". 미디어오늘 (in Korean). Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  21. ↑ "사라진 문캠 흔적? 조해주 "나무위키, 내가 지웠다"". news.naver.com (in Korean). Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  22. 1 2 3 "나무위키 10년…유머로 키운 '잡학다식'의 숲". Archived from the original on 7 October 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2017.
  23. ↑ "Datos Proveidos por la SET". Ministerio de Hacienda. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
  24. ↑ "나무위키:편집지침/일반 문서 - 나무위키". namu.wiki. Retrieved 5 October 2020.
  25. ↑ "나무위키 대문, '꺼무위키'로 변신해 눈길…나무위키 꺼라? - 이정범 기자". 톱스타뉴스 (in Korean). 1 April 2019. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
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