Last January 15 was Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary. It’s a bit hard to believe that it’s been that long. But 10 years, especially on the Internet, is a significant length of time and it’s a testament to the universality of Wikipedia’s vision of sharing knowledge to everyone that this project—which in theory is a disaster, but in practice is a success—has lasted this long and is still thriving, having raised $16 million during the last annual fundraising.

I have been a Wikipedian for a little more than eight of Wikipedia’s 10 years, so I have seen the ups and downs of the project. While I am not as active as I used to be (well, another project inspired by Wikipedia has grabbed my attention), I still see plenty ahead for Wikipedia, especially here in the Philippines, and will continue to support the project in many ways.

To celebrate this historic milestone, there were hundreds of Wikipedia 10 celebrations held throughout the world. Here in Metro Manila, Wikimedia Philippines organized Wikipedia Takes Manila, a photo scavenger hunt competition with the aim of taking pictures of significant landmarks in the City of Manila (and then some). These photos will help towards building the free media commons on the Philippines and will also be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles about Philippine-related topics.

Despite plenty of hiccups and disorganized planning (like maps of Manila that arrived too late and unforeseen Internet bandwidth requirements), I’m glad to say that the event was still successful and the participants went home happy.

Congratulations to the top ten teams (and individual) (listed below)! The score each team got is shown in parentheses.

1. Team RMD (889)

2. Team Waka Waka (793)

3. Flashbang (579)

4. Manila Bloggers Network (491)

5. Darwin Cayetano (482)

6. A-trio (478)

7. RM Photowalkers (451)

8. Newbies (404)

9. Pro-chamb (403)

10. Vega (394)

Given the overwhelming response shown by the participants, I’m quite sure that we will be having more of these kinds of events in the future. And even if you can’t attend one, just remember that you don’t need to write articles to help Wikipedia. Even contributing freely-licensed photos still goes a long way.

Wikipedia Philippines 10 cake photo by Eric Calica (CC-BY-SA 3.0 PH).