Wikipedia, the world largest encyclopedia was established on 15th January 2001 by Jimmy Wales with the vision to create a digital encyclopedia that is based on a model of openly editable content.
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.
The idea that people around the world would collaborate to build such an encyclopedia seemed unrealistic but 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.
Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous volunteers who write without pay. However, Nigeria-related topics are poorly represented on Wikipedia, and this could be attributed to low number of Wikipedia editors from Nigeria.
“You don’t need to be and ICT expert, software developer or a professor to write or edit articles on Wikipedia and you don’t need to own a laptop or desktop computer to write or edit articles on Wikipedia. With a mobile phone, you can create a huge number of articles. I tried it and it worked for me. I created over 500 articles with my blackberry phone”. Said Olatunde Isaac, manager of Wikipedia Education Program in Nigeria.
Olatunde Isaac is a known editor of Wikipedia from Nigeria who has been working relentlessly to ensure that Nigeria-related topics are widely covered on Wikipedia.
He is a Wikipedian per excellence and one of the notable Wikipedian from Africa. Since he joined Wikipedia in 2014, he has been coordinating Wikipedia programs in Nigeria.
He co-founded the Wikimedia Foundation’s affiliate in Nigeria and he is the Manager of Wikipedia Education Program in Nigeria.
As Manager of Wikipedia Education Program and advocate of open knowledge, he had organized several seminars and workshop to recruit volunteer editors from Nigeria.
In 2015, he served as member of Individual Engagement Grant Committee, a committee under the Wikimedia Foundation programs and event grants.
He is an outreach coordinator of the Wikipedia Library who established the Yoruba Language Wikipedia branch of the library on 12 January 2016.
Editors like Isaac is an asset to Nigeria and Wikipedia, an increasingly vital resource that millions of people across the world get accurate information.
Olatunde Isaac is a prolific writer of Nigeria-related articles on Wikipedia. Isaac is believed to have the highest number of articles by a Nigerian across all disciplines on Wikipedia.
He was born in Owo local government area of Ondo State southwestern Nigeria.
He attended State High School, Ibereko Badagry where he obtained the West Africa Secondary School Certificate before he proceeded to Adekunle Ajasin University, Ondo State where he received a Bachelor of science (Hons) degree in Biochemistry.