Reflections on the Wikimedia Malaysia 2026 Strategic Direction Conference

After discovering the Wikimedia platform, I began my journey of promoting and preserving my community’s language, Kadazandusun, through my participation in Wiki Club Kent. The club gave me an opportunity to learn more about the Wikimedia movement and to contribute to the world of free knowledge.

Today, that journey continues with the same mission. Although my time as a student and as a Wiki Club member has come to an end, my passion for contributing remains. I hope to take the Kadazandusun language further into the world as part of this community.

On 30th August 2026, I had the opportunity to participate in the Malaysian Wikimedia Strategy Summit 2026 in Kuala Lumpur, which brought together Wikimedians and community leaders from diverse backgrounds across Malaysia. For me, this was more than just a conference. It was a space for us to pause, reflect on the journey we have taken so far, and envision where the Malaysian Wikimedia community wants to go next.

From Diverse Communities, One Movement

One of the most meaningful aspects of the conference was the opportunity to meet fellow contributors from various communities, including Kadazandusun, Kimaragang, Malay, Chinese, and others. Each community has its own stories, languages, and challenges. Yet, we share one fundamental belief: knowledge should be accessible to and shared by everyone.

The first session, “Movement”, discussed the role of the Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia in expanding the movement within communities across Malaysia. It also explored ways to build partnerships with educational institutions and other organisations, particularly in areas such as language, culture, tourism, and libraries.

How Do We Bring Communities Together?

The second session, “Society”, and the third session, “Ecosystem”, raised an important question: how can we bring more people into this movement?

Among the ideas shared were editing campaigns, gamification, and recognition for volunteers, as well as approaches that are more closely connected to young people who have the potential to continue contributing to and expanding content across Wikimedia projects.

Programmes such as WikiGap Editathon, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos, and various edit-a-thons demonstrate that communities can grow when we create opportunities for people to contribute according to their interests and abilities.

Wikimedia is also about more than just Wikipedia. Wikidata, Wikisource, and Wiktionary open up even more opportunities for us to build, connect, and preserve knowledge.

Imagining the Future

The discussion about the future was perhaps the most interesting part of the fourth session, “Future”. Over the next one to five years, the community envisions more editors and more content in the ethnic languages of Sabah and Sarawak, as well as the development of tools that can make contributing easier, such as Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata applications.

Looking further ahead, over the next ten to fifteen years, the aspirations are even greater: establishing Wiki Clubs in more states and educational institutions, creating physical hubs in Sabah, developing more specialised Wikimedia applications, and using Wikimedia data to support the development of local technology and artificial intelligence.

For me, one of the most important dreams is to see ethnic languages continue to grow as languages of knowledge in the digital world.

Hopes for My Community

As part of the Kadazandusun community, I hope that more young people from my own community will come forward and contribute. We have so many stories, terms, traditional knowledge, history, and cultural heritage that can be shared. Our language should not live only in everyday conversations. It should also live in the digital space.

One Day, One Wake-Up Call

The conference lasted only one day, but it left a much longer-lasting impact on me. I returned home with a wake-up call to become more active and committed to editing than ever before, to create more content and encourage more people from my community to contribute as well.

From Wiki Club, I learned about community.

From community, I learned about the movement.

And through this movement, I began to see the future.

Perhaps our contribution today is only a small edit. But when thousands of people do the same, we are building something much greater: a world of knowledge that can be passed on to future generations.

Thank you, Wikimedia Malaysia, for reminding me that every edit is part of a much larger journey.