Taiwan Panorama Project

The Taiwan Panorama Project is an initiative of User:Ralffralff for Wikimedia Commons when he became a visiting student researcher in a university based in Taichung City. In a span of six months, it collected 1,500+ of media files in Taiwan. As a cultural heritage initiative intended for Wikimedia Commons, it also aims to feature the photographs in its respective Wikipedia articles.

This project was inspired by the Philippine Panorama Project which is a cultural heritage initiative of the Pilipinas Panorama Community, a thematic Wikimedia community based in Metro Manila, Philippines. Through the aforementioned project, the organization aims to help towns (especially the less known) with no official website to have Wikipedia articles as alternative.

Project Period: August 2024 to February 2025

Background

Ralff Nestor Nacor (User:Ralffralff in Wikimedia), a licensed Chemical Engineer outside of Wikimedia, had been invited to have a research internship in Taiwan for then upcoming Fall Semester, A.Y. 2024-2025. This is mainly because of his enrollment as a part-time M.S. Environmental Engineering student of the University of the Philippines Diliman in the early part of 2024. Under the Taiwan Experience Education Program (TEEP), graduate students from the Philippines and various countries will be selected to conduct research and experience the rich cultural heritage of Taiwan.

He became a short-term student at the National Chung Hsing University in Taichung City. He is specifically assigned to a laboratory in the university's Department of Environmental Engineering. Out for almost half a year in the Philippines, this might affect his contributions in Wikimedia which is focused mainly on Filipino cultural heritage. As the Project Manager of the Philippine Panorama Project, he planned to conduct a similar initiative in Taiwan which is inspired by the aforementioned project. As a product of pure initiative, this project collected 1,500+ photographs in Taiwan for six months. The project ran from August 2024 up to February 2025.

List of subprojects

The Taiwan Panorama Project is divided into subprojects which were identified mostly on the county and city level. There will also be additional special subprojects intended for Food & Beverages, GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), Heritage Temples, Spring Festival, Roads & Transportation, and the National Universities in Taiwan.