New subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] The man who edited Tamil Wikipedia from prison.

8 Mar 2013

Hi,

I wanted to share this real life story of a man who edited Tamil wikipedia
from prison !

Meet Muthukrishnan ( http://ta.wikipedia.org/s/fcl ) from Malaysia. He is a
retired school teacher and writer. He uses most of his spare time for
writing detailed articles about Malaysia and Tamils in Malaysia. He is so
involved in Wikipedia that once he personally visited the grave of a
personality to write an article on him !

Few weeks back, he was arrested by the Malaysian police on a case that
challenged his freedom of expression for an article he wrote in a magazine
(just to make it clear that he didn't create a real "crime" to land in
prison). He was out of the prison in couple of days.

What touched me a lot was that he provided an update in his wiki user page
that he is in prison and that he will be back soon! He used the laptop of
his grand daughter who visited him in the prison and made this edit under
the supervision of the prison guards !

He sees his contributions to Wikipedia as his lifetime work beyond the
search for survival and wealth. He calls his 12 year old grand daughter as
his inspiration to keep writing in Wikipedia.

Can people be so dedicated to a movement ? !

Do you have such stories in your project that inspire you? It is time to
share, inspire and infuse new blood in the movement !

Ravi