The Singapore LGBT encyclopaedia

This wiki aims to provide readers with comprehensive information regarding Singapore LGBT culture and history.

It was set up by Roy Tan and attempts to integrate all the disparate sources of information on Singapore's LGBT community into one convenient site.

Origins

In 2005, Tan realised the potential of the then nascent Wikipedia in informing local mainstream society and the world at large about Singapore's LGBT culture and history.

The advantage of Wikipedia was that knowledgeable contributors could consolidate widely scattered pockets of information into a one-stop reference site. This was unlike any Singaporean LGBT website that had existed before like Yawning Bread, Fridae or Trevvy in which only authorised writers could pen articles.

Tan created the first Singapore LGBT-related Wikipedia article entitled Singapore gay movement under the username of Groyn88 on 12 April 2005. He subsequently started all the other articles on Singaporean LGBT culture there in the ensuing months.

Howevever, his hope that other contributors would chip in and expand the articles he pioneered was not realised and he ended up doing most of the updating himself. Moreover, many Singaporean editors of Wikipedia were homophobic and deleted entire articles or huge chunks of extant articles, claiming that they were not significant enough for a prestigious reference work such as Wikipedia. They later blocked him from making any further contributions[1].

In dismay, Tan looked for an alternative site to transfer the articles to. He was overjoyed when he found SgWiki, a site hosted on a local server and which used the same wiki markup language as Wikipedia. He then ported all the articles in September 2005 to SgWiki[2], which had a more liberal and LGBT-friendly policy. Even then, some articles deemed sensitive because they rebutted religious condemnation of homosexuality were also deleted by SgWiki's administrators.

Another drawback was that articles on SgWiki did not rank as high up on Google and other search engines as the much more globally popular Wikipedia.

Tan also replicated all the Singapore LGBT-related articles on user-constructed knowledge sites such as the now-defunct Knol (an initiative of Google) and on other wikis such as the PBwiki[3] and Wikidot[4]. These websites enabled registered users to have complete editorial control over their articles and not be subjected to the whims of appointed editors. However, these wikis used different markup languages form Wikipedia, therefore making porting articles much more difficult than just copying and pasting. The articles first had to be translated to the different wiki language used by the site.

In 2012, Tan searched for and managed to find websites such as Shoutwiki[5], Wikia[6] and Orain[7] (now defunct) which used the same wiki markup language as Wikipedia. He then transplanted all the SgWiki articles to these sites - easily accomplished by direct copying and pasting with no translation required.

How to use

To begin, you could first read the most central main article, Homosexuality in Singapore, or click on one of the links below to see all the articles in the category, or type a keyword in the search box at the top of the page.