WikiPilipinas

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The hip and free Philippine encyclopedia that you can edit.

WikiPilipinas is a free-content website established in 2007 by the Vibal Foundation and designed as a knowledgebase for Philippine-centric topics, especially those which may not be covered by Wikipedia. It is modelled after Wikipedia, and as such was partially forked from the latter, though prior to MediaWiki they initially used the Plone content management system which would later prove to be a pain to maintain.

The site proudly bills itself to be "hip-and-free", eschewing at least some of the formality observed by the larger Wikipedia. WikiPilipinas styles itself as a mash-up of several purviews: a "Who's Who" of prominent Filipinos, a directory of institutions and companies, an almanac of the Philippines, and a community portal for the different ethnic groups in the Philippines.

Tropes used in WikiPilipinas include:
  • Creator Provincialism: Being how WikiPilipinas focuses on Philippine-related subject matter and all.
  • Edit Stomp: A particular problem editor who gained notoriety in some Filipino internet circles (especially due to his alleged mental condition) for spamming both Wikipedia and WikiPilipinas (as well as OpenStreetMap and Google Maps) with made-up nonsense about fictitious radio stations became one of the most prolific editors on the site for all the wrong reasons. This came to a halt in 2018 when the site went offline, and when it rebuilt itself in 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in distance learning initiatives for displaced students, no new registrations were allowed for the time being to prevent similar disruptions (though they do accept editor applications from interested contributors).
  • Network Decay: The site's stated principles led to doubts by local bloggers and veteran Filipino Wikipedians over its viability and future, and it did show when WikiPilipinas underwent a period of decay and decline during the mid-to-late 2010s as few if any paid attention to it, and most other edits were either from spambots or the above-mentioned perennial vandal.
  • No Such Thing As Notability: Much like This Very Wiki and The Other Tropes Wiki, WikiPilipinas does not observe a notability mandate, allowing users to write about anything and everything as long as it has something to do with the Philippines. The site does not have any rules against vanity articles either, making it acceptable to write an article about themselves or their family and/or friends.
  • Start My Own: With patriotic fervour, no less, as it aims to be an archive of everything and anything Filipino.
  • The Wiki Rule: While Wikipedia set itself up as a general-content encyclopedia, the founders of WikiPilipinas felt that a knowledge resource about things that matter to the average Juan de la Cruz (a personification of the Filipino everyman and also the Filipino equivalent to the "John Doe" placeholder name) would be better for the Philippines.