Nurunnaby Chowdhury Hasive, building the Bengali Wikipedia – Wikimedia Blog

"Bengali is spoken by nearly 250 million people, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. With nearly 48,000 articles on Wikipedia, representing the Bengali culture on the internet feels like a national duty for Hasive.

'We have recently started work on two new projects in my country,' says Hasive. “The first one is called 'Women in Wikipedia,' which aims to engage more Bengali women in editing Wikipedia (rather than just reading). The second has seen us working with a group of medical students who have shown interest in addressing the shortage of medical content on the Bengali Wikipedia.'

And in order to get his message heard by anyone interested in Wikipedia in Bangladesh, he has written a book explaining how Wikipedia works and how to edit it. He has published this book under a free license to let anyone copy and re-publish the book for free.

The time he spends helping other editors does not distract him from editing. Hasive has recently started a 100 Wiki Days challenge, where the participant commits to creating one new Wikipedia article every day for 100 consecutive days.

For his challenge, Hasive is creating and editing articles about soldiers who fought in the Liberation War of 1971, particularly those who received the Bir Sreshtho, Bir Uttom, Bir Bikrom, and Bir Protik medals that were awarded to 767 people for the role they played in the war. But for Hasive, the challenge is not limited to only 100 days. Hasive has a long-term goal of creating and developing articles about each medal recipient."