The online presence of Pakistani lawmakers is very bleak when anyone wants to know about the political and personal details.
Saqib Qayyum, 28, who is currently residing in Russia, told The Nation that he is creating 442 Pakistani members of provincial assemblies’ online pages on Wikipedia in a single day to make a record.
He is creating these pages on Wikipedia’s 17th anniversary on January 15.
These parliamentarians included 270 parliamentarians from Punjab Assembly, 112 from Sindh Assembly, 28 from Khyber PakhtunKhuwan and 42 from Balochistan Assembly.
Balochistan Assembly members included Mir Amir Rind, Mir Hamal Kalmati, Agha Syed Liaqat Ali, Abkar Askari, Fateh Muhammad Baloch, Haji Ghulam Dastagir Badeni and others.
Punjab Assembly included Abdul MAjeed Khan Niazai, Abdul Qadeer Alvi, Ali Salman, Amir Hayat Hiraj, Amir Inayat Khan Shahani and others.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly members’ names included Mehmood Khan, Saleh Muhammad, Sardar Fareed, Sardar Hussain, Sardar Muhammad Idress, Tufail Anjum, Ubaid Ullah Mayar and others.
From Sindh Assembly Abdul Aziz Junejo, Abdul Karim Soomro, Abdul Rauf Khoso, Allah Bux Talpur, Bashir Ahmed Halepoto and others.
“I have been involved with Wikipedia for over couple of years now and contribute extensively to a number of topics that interest me particularly related to Pakistan,” Saqib said.
“I am a Pakistani national living in Russia for the past few years. And have done BBA,” he said.
“Concerning why I volunteer for Wikipedia, since my early teenage days, I have had passion for knowledge and history. I was a regular reader of Wikipedia articles on pretty much anything Pakistan. But often I would have found errors and mistake which led me to begin fixing the articles by editing them.
“Sharing my knowledge with the world through my edits made me more motivated and somehow I became a regular or as Haaretz noted perhaps a prominent Pakistani contributor."
Saqib said that Wikipedia promises people to bring them the sum of human knowledge, and "I think I am playing my part in contributing that sum of all human knowledge".
He introduced himself as ‘Wikipedian for life!’
He explained he is not planning to create bio pages on MPAs elected on reserved seats for women and minorities, as of now.
“There are two reasons. Since I am planning to set a record by creating most number of Wikipedia articles in a single calendar day, I don't think I will have enough time; therefore I will focus on lawmakers elected on general seats.
“I'm already creating profiles on female MPAs on reserved seats as part of my commitment to create a new Wikipedia biography on Pakistani women, every day throughout the year 2018 to help close Wikipedia's dangerous gender gap so eventually pages on reserved seats MPs would be ready by the end of this year,” he said.