{"id":51285,"date":"2012-02-19T12:06:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-19T10:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=51285"},"modified":"2023-04-16T09:12:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-16T06:12:00","slug":"can-turkeys-contribution-to-the-web-be-reproduced-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/02\/19\/can-turkeys-contribution-to-the-web-be-reproduced-elsewhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Turkey\u2019s contribution to the Web be reproduced elsewhere?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Francis Pisani<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Turkey\u2019s major contribution to the Internet,\u201d says professor Ozg\u00fcr U\u00e7kan of Istanbul Bigli University, of the site ironically called\u00a0Ek\u015fi S\u00f6zl\u00fck, the \u201cSour Dictionary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The site has 36,000 authors, and an equal number of users who hope to become authors. It contains more than 10 million entries, gathered into more than 2.5 million topics, and it attracts 7.5 million unique visitors a month, out of a total Turkish Internet population of a little over 30 million. It\u2019s an enormous success that few outside Turkey have heard of.<\/p>\n

This is even more surprising, when you consider that the site just celebrated its thirteenth anniversary February 15th. It\u2019s the grandfather of blogs, older than Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter; it was launched before\u00a0Urban Dictionary, which has 6 million entries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was to create a user-made dictionary,\u201d says Sedat Kapano\u011flu, the site\u2019s founder. There\u2019s no editing: anyone can create any definition. Like a real dictionary, the entries are ordered numerically, but there\u2019s no limit to how many definitions there can be; they can surpass 10 thousand entries, as is the case with \u201cLove\u201d, or for the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The most-read definitions are ranked first. All of this is processed in real time.<\/p>\n

Some people see this as a sort of forum, but, Kapano\u011flu insists, \u201cWe wanted to avoid that, and we created rules to prevent it from happening. We wanted a dialogue between ideas, not people. When a contributor leaves, the ideas and conversations remain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The site\u2019s only revenue stream is advertising; in order to avoid \u201cdisrupting the user experience,\u201d it is limited to one ad per page.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have more entries than the English version of Wikipedia,\u201d Kapano\u011flu responds when asked, \u201cbut the quality isn\u2019t the same.\u201d Jokes and false info abound. \u201cWe believe that no one has the authority to decide what stays on a site,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re neutral in terms of administrating it, and we\u2019ve become one of the largest Turkish sites to defend the freedom of expression in a country where it is threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n

So there is no control of any sort. \u201cI decided to let everybody express themselves, independently of social, religious or political stance It was very radical back then\u2026 and now makes us one of the most popular sites in Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as one can gauge from an hour-long interview, Kapan\u011flu deserves a place in the pantheon of IT figures. He\u2019d never say so himself \u2013 he\u2019s humble and doesn\u2019t seem to take himself too seriously.<\/p>\n

At 36, he has never gone to college, but he wrote his first program when he was 10. \u201cI learned on my own and I created a lot of things,\u201d he says. \u201cI love the creative process. I have thousands of ideas. I know what to do with a computer, and I understand the web\u2019s potential.\u201d He has so many ideas, they sometimes get lost in the process. He can\u2019t remember what he was thinking when he wrote \u201coffline cellphones\u201d on a scrap of paper, for example.<\/p>\n

Kapano\u011flu\u00a0worked in Seattle for Microsoft for 5 years (2005-2009) without anyone really seeming interested in his site. Then came the day he realized he was making more advertising pays. \u201cThat happened even though I considered it more of a hobby, nothing new. And then it started to make more money than I earned with my salary. I had to make a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, since his return to Turkey, he\u2019s had to deal with increased government attacks. They ask him to reveal the IP addresses of anonymous posters with increasing frequency, which explains why his office has three developers and four lawyers.<\/p>\n

There have been a few suitors for a possible acquisition, but \u201cI have no idea what I\u2019d do what the money. Keeping the site alive in today\u2019s Turkey is a huge challenge.\u201d All his energies go towards this.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange that this \u201cdictionary\u201d (S\u00f6zl\u00fck in Turkish) has been copied hundreds of times in Turkey, but has only been replicated in one other country, Azerbaijan. Why not anywhere else?<\/p>\n

The requests to copy the idea in English, French, Romanian and Arabic haven\u2019t had much success. Kapan\u011flu is convinced that it can\u2019t work anywhere else. \u201cThe way the site has grown is linked to specific aspects of Turkish society. We wanted to express ourselves, but had no space for that. The laws of physics don\u2019t apply to social media; every culture needs its own platform.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fascinating response, but one that\u00a0U\u00e7kan, the professor, doesn\u2019t agree with. He recalls that Google\u2019s social site Orkut, which is immensely popular in Brazil (and which plays an important role in India), was invented by Turkey\u2019s Orkut B\u00fcy\u00fckk\u00f6kten. Turkish-style socialization could perhaps spread elsewhere. \u201cIt can be copied. The format can be entertaining anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Winch5 project is essentially built around the question raised by this Turkish Sour Dictionary. If the culture of Harvard students can spread across the globe, it\u2019s either because we\u2019re all American teenagers \u2013 even more absurd than it sounds \u2013 or because the most unique cultures have the possibility of dissemination. On the condition, no doubt, that they have a Napoleonic drive and the economic resources needed to succeed. It\u2019s always good to put your premises in question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Francis Pisani \u201cIt\u2019s Turkey\u2019s major contribution to the Internet,\u201d says professor Ozg\u00fcr U\u00e7kan of Istanbul Bigli University, of the site ironically called\u00a0Ek\u015fi S\u00f6zl\u00fck, the \u201cSour Dictionary.\u201d The site has 36,000 authors, and an equal number of users who hope to become authors. It contains more than 10 million entries, gathered into more than 2.5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[845],"tags":[5975],"class_list":["post-51285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scitech","tag-eksisozluk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}