The WikiChallenge African Schools won the 2024 Open Pedagogy Award of Open Education Global (aka, OE Global). The WikiChallenge is a writing competition specifically designed for pupils aged 8-13 in various French-speaking African countries and Sierra Leone organized by Wiki in Africa and Fondation Orange. The 2024 awardees were revealed on September 18, 2024, during an exciting live show, during which impact stories about former Open Education Award recipients were also featured.

The impact of the WikiChallenge is truly remarkable. The WikiChallenge African Schools (also known as the WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique) competition, founded by Florence Devouard, a co-founder of Wiki in Africa, has grown through six successful editions. Since the project began in 2016, it has expanded across 12 African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, RDC, Ivory Coast, Guinea Conakry, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco and Sierra Leone. So far, 794 schools have taken part, creating 618 articles published on Vikidia and sharing over 3,361 photos, drawings, and videos on Wikimedia Commons. These contributions have enriched the internet with stories about African communities while helping students feel proud of their local culture.

“Wow. I am blown away by this. Open Pedagogy not only engages in the production, use, and reuse of content, but also demonstrates effective teaching practices that increase access to learning and address equity and fairness. The impact this competition has is outstanding: hundreds of schools and students across 12 different countries. I hope this continues to grow!”

 — Award Reviewer

The way the WikiChallenge is run is also truly remarkable ! It is a collaborative effort that brings together students, teachers, heads of schools, digital facilitators, local Orange entities, Vikidians, and Wikimedians to share knowledge about the local communities, many (but not all…) of which are not connected to the Internet. This teamwork fosters a deeper connection to learning, with each group playing a vital role.

• The global Wikimedia team from Wiki in Africa oversees this education program and makes sure all elements fall into place;
• Fondation Orange brings in the basket the network of schools, equip them with digital equipment (tablets, raspberry PIs etc.), offer amazing prizes to the winning schools to improve the kids learning environment, and communicate widely about the contest;
• Digital mediators from local Orange entities provide technical support as most schools are not connected to the internet;
• Facilitators from Orange or from Wikimedia UserGroups provide training and assistance to teachers and schools directors and collect the final articles produced in the schools;
• Teachers guide students to create the content;
• The Vikidia association provides the publishing platform for all the articles produced, and;
• Wikimedians/Vikidians help ensure the quality of content.

The WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique is primarily an « Offline » project. The students have access to ressources through Kiwix on their tablets, as well as WikiFundi (an offline tool for editing Wikipedia). Using tools like, this collaboration breaks through internet barriers, especially in rural places, allowing everyone to participate equally. The result of the programme is not just a collection of articles, but a shared sense of pride and achievement, as communities contribute their local knowledge to the global knowledge landscape.

“This competition serves as a compelling example of how open knowledge can revolutionize education, particularly for children living in rural areas. Recognizing the WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique project not only honors its achievements but also inspires other initiatives to adopt similar approaches to open education and knowledge sharing.” 

— Award Nominator

We are deeply grateful to all the pupils, educators, digital mediators, and Wikimedians for their dedication, Fondation Orange for its financial, technical and communication support, as well as to all of our local partners : Fondation Orange Cameroun, Fondation Orange Guinée Conakry, Orange Solidarité Madagascar, Fondation Orange Mali, Orange République démocratique du Congo, Fondation Sonatel, Orange Digital Center, Orange Tunisie, Vikidia Association, Wikimedia Tunisie, Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group, Wikimedia MA User Group, Wikimedians for offline wikis user group, Groupe d’utilisateurs de la communauté Wikimedia Guinée Conakry for their continuous support in making this initiative a success.

We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to OE Global and the esteemed jury members for this incredible recognition. As we celebrate this recognition, the WikiChallenge African Schools continues to inspire and grow. This achievement is a powerful testament to how open knowledge can unlock the potential of African kids, allowing them to tell their own stories and share their communities with the world. The journey doesn’t end here—this is just the beginning! With each new edition, we look forward to seeing more young voices contribute to a brighter, more connected future for education across Africa.

Florence Devouard and Afek Ben Chahed

Links

• The contest page on Vikidia (in French) : Projet:WikiChallenge Écoles d’Afrique – Vikidia, l’encyclopédie des 8-13 ans
• Our facebook page (please like us ! ) : Concours WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique
• A Brut Afrique video about the contest : Video on Facebook by Brut Afrique
• The showcase website by Orange : https://wikichallenge.fondationorange.com/en/
• The meta page for hardcore super detailed-oriented wikipedians : WikiChallenge African Schools – Meta
• A compilation video of actors involved : Wiki Challenge 2023 Compilation Video
• The document proposed to jury members for the selection of best articles in 2024 : Jury document
• And last, the amazing poster presented at Wikimania Katowice : WikiChallenge_African_Schools_Poster_for_Wikimania_2024.pdf

The “From Stub to Featured” writing competition has made an exciting return to Hebrew Wikipedia, this year focusing on women-related topics. Building on the success of past contests—most recently in 2017—this edition is part of the broader “From Stub to Featured” initiative, which began in 2006. Over the years, these competitions have led to the creation of numerous high-quality articles, with many earning featured status.

This year’s contest has again brought together contributors eager to transform short stubs into well-crafted, detailed entries. The competition encouraged participants to write on subjects ranging from biographies of notable women to issues such as women’s health and gender studies. Participation was open to any registered Wikipedia editor, individually or in groups.

Designed to be a lighthearted and enjoyable experience, the competition focused on fostering a love for writing and contributing to Wikipedia. While symbolic prizes were awarded to winners, the primary goal was to reignite the joy of editing, improve the quality of Hebrew Wikipedia’s content, and encourage collaboration within the community—all while welcoming new editors into the fold.

The competition was divided into two main tracks: 

1. Original Articles: Completely new articles created from scratch.

2. Translated Articles: Entries based primarily on articles from other languages. 

To qualify, articles either had to be newly created or significantly expanded from very short stubs (less than 5,000 characters before the competition began). Exceptions were allowed at the judges’ discretion.

The success of the Competition

The competition officially began on April 7, 2024, and for the next three months, both new and seasoned editors worked to expand, create, and translate articles related to women. For some participants, this contest marked their first foray into Wikipedia article writing, introducing them to the community and its professional standards.

The contest saw a variety of entries on different aspects of women’s lives and contributions. The spirit of collaboration was palpable, with contestants and non-participating editors offering feedback to improve articles. We were thrilled by the enthusiasm and hope participants not only enjoyed the experience but also learned a lot along the way.

All in all, the 2024 “From Stub to Star” competition was a tremendous success. 135 new articles were created, 50 of which were original, and 85 were translations. Some focused on women, while others touched on related topics. Participants ranged from veteran editors to those writing their first-ever article, and many expressed how the competition motivated them to continue writing about women, even beyond the event.

We invite everyone to explore the remarkable articles produced during this competition. To all the participants, judges, and organizers—thank you for your dedication and efforts and for contributing to closing the gender gap on Wikipedia.

Winners of the 2024 Writing Competition

Original Articles Category

1. First Place – נשים בתנ”ך (Women in the Bible): Written by ותן טל (Veten Tal), this article is an excellent exploration of a central theme, thoroughly researched and supported by academic sources.

2. Second Place –  וסת בתרבות (Menstruation in Culture): A detailed and insightful article by לברן (Lavran), focusing on a crucial topic with widespread cultural relevance.

3. Third Place – אמילי דה שאטלה (Émilie du Châtelet): Written by האזרח דרור (The Citizen Dror), this article brings to light the contributions of a brilliant scientist in a time when women’s work in the field was often overlooked.

Honorable Mention – רחלי רוגל (Racheli Rogel): A well-researched article by א 1978, supported by numerous reliable sources.

Translated Articles Category

1. First Place – קורטה סקוט קינג (Coretta Scott King): Written by Itaygur, this article highlights Scott King’s accomplishments, showcasing her as an independent figure.

2. Second Place – דבורה סמסון (Deborah Sampson): A fascinating article by Pixie.ca, this entry goes beyond a simple translation, expanding significantly based on feedback from peers.

3. Third Place – מאיה פליסצקאיה (Maya Plisetskaya): Translated by שלומית קדם (Shlomit Kedem), this article stands out for its polished, flowing Hebrew and depth of detail.

Honorable Mention – מרטה ויירה דה סילבה (Marta Vieira da Silva): A comprehensive and detailed article by הכובען המטורף (The Mad Hatter) on the legendary footballer.

Honorable Mention – שיה פייסו (Xie Peisu): A well-researched piece by Galaranty on a Chinese pioneer in an unusual field.

The Prolific Wikipedian Award – This year’s Prolific Wikipedian Award goes to Crocodile2020, who contributed numerous well-received articles, including entries on אירמגרד פורכנר (Irmgard Förchner), תמר קדם סימן טוב (Tamar Kedem Tov-Siman), עינת רון (Einat Ron) , בטי דייוויס (Betty Davis), לטישה ג’יימס (Letitia Ann James), קארי ג’ונסון (Carrie Johnson), ליליאן ורנון (Lillian Vernon), among others.

26th September 2024 was the most awaited day to Telugu Community. Telugu Wikipedia (in short Tewiki) crossed 1,00,000 articles, which is a significant mile stone with రతీంద్రనాథ్ ఠాగూర్ contributed by the Wikimedian రవిచంద్ర.

Telugu Wikipedia started with the initiatives of Venna Nagarjuna in December 2003 and The first article was about Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India (గుంటూరు జిల్లా), created on 2004, August 3. Telugu wikipedia.

In these 2 decades of Tewiki journey since 2004, the initiatives and efforts of 3786 Telugu Wikimedians are highly appreciable. They strived hard for raising articles count maintaining the quality by imposing self set targets, countering the daily article challenges, launching more than 100 wiki projects, campaigns on various occasions focussing on diverse range of information search base.

The brief details are worth mentioning in this memorable context. Down the memory-lane, listing the top 15 contributor’s exceptional contributions with more than 1000 articles.

1. Batthini Vinay Kumar Goud (11023)
2. Pranayraj1985 (7866)
3. Rajasekhar1961 (5181)
4. Chaduvari (4007)
5. YVSREDDY (2355)
6. K.Venkataramana (2352)
7. స్వరలాసిక (2040)
8. Muralikrishna m (1904)
9. వైజాసత్య (1899)
10. యర్రా రామారావు (1625)
11. Bhaskaranaidu (1511)
12. Divya4232 (1293)
13. T.sujatha (1248)
14. రవిచంద్ర (1245)
15. JVRKPRASAD (1207)

12 Telugu Wikimedians tookup the personal challenges of writing daily articles for 100 days, while 3 people contributed for 7 days, 4 volunteers for 30, 2 people worked for 50 days. The remarkable challenge of writing more than 365 articles in a year were taken up by Wikimedians, Batthini Vinay Kumar Goud, Pranayraj1985, Myadam Abhilash, Muralikrishna M. Pranayraj Vangari drove the challenge beyond 1000 in 2 1/2 years and also completed 7330 articles in 8 years, and appears to be proceeding to 10000 articles by 2026.

Telugu Wikimedans used the platform to run projects to enhance articles base by including major topics on culture, heritage, literature, geography, sciences including health articles connected to Telugu language, people and nativity. Citing few notable among Tewiki projects are about folk literature, culture, women, political essays, cinema, sports, geographical spaces of Telugu speaking states Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – villages, towns, cities were added to the wikipedia. The project was aptly supplemented by Arjunarao and his team with their cartographic work. The size of the Tewiki database reached upto 3G and depth 112.1, with the number of edits 42,73,049 and 3,63,451 pages. The encyclopedia got about 799 millions page views.

So congratulating and wishing Tewiki and Wikimedians while proceeding ahead towards reaching 2 lakh

Telugu Wikimedian’s User Group

(Telugu Wiki Community)

Wikimedia UK is excited to announce our relocation to new offices at the prestigious British Library. The new office space will provide a vibrant environment that fosters creativity and innovation, allowing our team to work flexibly and collaboratively with a wealth of resources and opportunities available at one of the world’s largest libraries. This strategic location will enable us to better connect with partners, volunteers, and the public. Staff will continue to work remotely and occasionally come into the office, ensuring we adapt to the evolving needs of our team and the communities we serve.

Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid, says: “We are looking forward to our new office space within the British Library after a year of being fully remote.” As the national charity for the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement, there are lots of areas of shared interest with the Library. You can watch a (very short) introductory video to Wikimedia UK’s work here and read our latest Strategic Report here.

Director of Science and Innovation, Maja Maricevic, adds “We are delighted to welcome Wikimedia UK. Over years we have regularly collaborated with Wikimedia UK and hosted Wikimedians-in-Residence, so are delighted with an opportunity with an even closer proximity to an organisation that we have the existing close links with and share the common vision to open access to knowledge.”

We look forward to this new chapter and the opportunities it will bring to collaborate with old and new partners. Stay tuned for updates on our activities and initiatives as we continue promoting open knowledge and access to information.

Please visit our website or follow us on social media for more information.

The post Wikimedia UK moves into new offices at the British Library appeared first on WMUK.

Prehistory

It's hard to believe it, but there were Selenium tests in Wikimedia repositories even before I joined the Wikimedia Foundation. (12 years ago, in 2012.) In MediaWiki Core, Selenium tests (in PHP) existed from 2010 until 2013.

When I started working for the Foundation, Selenium tests (in Ruby) existed in the qa/browsertests repository. The repository was active from 2012 until 2014. Tests from the qa/browsertests repository moved to the MediaWiki Core repository in 2014. They lived in tests/browser folder until 2017. (T139740)

History

In 2017 we decided to rewrite Selenium tests in Javascript.

Since then we had a few major framework updates:

• Port Selenium tests from Ruby to Node.js (2016 - 2023) (T139740)
• Evaluate WebdriverIO replacements for our browser automation framework (2020) (T247835)
• Upgrade WebdriverIO to v6 in all repositories (2020-2021) (T247844)
• Evaluate Microsoft Playwright as replacement for our browser automation (2020-2021) (T262682)
• Upgrade WebdriverIO to v7 in all repositories (2021-2023) (T274579)
• Switch to spec reporter (2021-2024) (T280331)
• Refactor WebdriverIO tests from sync to async mode (2020-2024) (T256626)

Async

The sync to async migration is just one of the major updates to the framework. But, it's an important one.

In 2021 WebdriverIO announced they are deprecating the sync framework. In 2020 I created an epic task (T256626) to track the migration in more than thirty repositories. (I'm not sure why I created the task before the announcement. Maybe I knew the change was coming in advance.) I had resolved the task in 2024. It took us a while.

The migration project started with an internship (2021-2022). During the internship we did the majority of the migration. The internship lasted only a few months. We tried to migrate as many repositories as possible. We managed to migrate repositories that didn't give us a lot of trouble. The few remaining repositories were hard to migrate.

This monster Gerrit search finds most commits related to this project. There are 92 commits. 58 merged, 34 abandoned.

We started strong in 2020, but we were not able to finish the migration for several repositories. The main problem was technical. We could not set up a working development environment for some repositories (T344682).

At the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 I talked with several people from Wikimedia Deutschland about the async project. (At least with @Lucas_Werkmeister_WMDE and @WMDE-Fisch.) After looking at the tracking Phabricator task (T256626), they said their repositories are already migrated to async, but nobody closed the subtasks.

Documentation

After closing relevant subtasks, the only thing left to do was to update the documentation (T364268). All of our documentation was using sync syntax. After the hackathon I started updating the documentation.

After looking at the documentation I realized that there are several pages with a lot of code on them. All of the code was now broken. If we update the code now, it will become broken the next time we make a change to our framework. Nobody would know that the sample code on a wiki page was broken. That is, until somebody tried to use it.

To solve the problem of broken code on wiki pages, we have decided to move all sample code to MediaWiki Core (T368535). That way, we would be reminded (actually, forced) to update the sample code at the same time we update the framework. If we update the framework and not the sample code, our continuous integration would break.

I had a lot of help from people on my team. We have an office hours meeting almost every day. I was working on the documentation during the day and asking for feedback during the meeting. The process worked great.

When all the code was moved from the wiki pages to MediaWiki Core and updated to use async syntax, we copy/pasted the code back to the wiki pages. That's the last remaining step that is still manual. Nobody on my team knew how to embed a file in a wiki page. If you know how to do it, please let me know.

Updating the documentation finished the async migration project.

Languages and Tools

While doing some online archaeology for this blog post, I stumbled upon Selenium tests in Wikimedia projects written in PHP (search), Python (search) and Ruby (search).

Also, Selenium is not the only tool we use for end-to-end testing. There's Cypress (search), Puppeteer (search), Playwright (search) and Nightwatch (search).

Future

We're currently working on a few projects that will further improve our Selenium testing framework. There are plenty of future improvements we plan to do. See Selenium Framework Updates Timeline section at the end of the article for more information.

A notable project is T344682: Run Selenium tests targeting available local and remote testing environments. We need testing environments for more than forty repositories. Unfortunately, that's not a solved problem. There are many options, but I'm not sure that any of them would work with all repositories. A good solution would be to find at least one development environment where a particular repository would work. If that means we have to use multiple environments to get all repositories working locally, I'm fine with that. I'm not happy with that, but even that would be an improvement over the current situation. For some repositories we don't have a working local development environment at all.

Async Migration Timeline

• Core (2021-2022) (T293071)
• AbuseFilter (2022-2023) (T300790)
• AdvancedSearch (2022-2023) (T300791)
• CentralNotice (2022) (T300212)
• CheckUser (2022) (T321904)
• CirrusSearch (2022-2023) (T300793)
• Cite (2022-2023) (T300196)
• CodeMirror (2022-2023) (T300205)
• ContactPage (2023) (T334094)
• Echo (2021-2023) (T293073)
• ElectronPdfService (2022) (T299684)
• FileImporter (2022-2023) (T300535)
• GlobalWatchlist (2021-2023) (T293074)
• GrowthExperiments (2022) (T299102)
• Math (2021-2022) (T293076)
• Newsletter (2021-2022) (T293078)
• Popups (2021-2023) (T293072)
• ProofreadPage (2021-2023) (T293079)
• RelatedArticles (2022) (T300797)
• RevisionSlider (2022-2023) (T300798)
• TemplateWizard (2022-2023) (T300208)
• TwoColConflict (2022-2023) (T300800)
• VisualEditor (2022) (T299756)
• Wikibase (2021-) (T293080, T343886)
• WikibaseLexeme (2021-2024) (T293081)
• WikiLambda (2021-2022) (T293082)
• MinervaNeue (2021-2023) (T293084)
• Termbox (2022-2023) (T300807)
• Wikibase Query Service GUI (2022-2024) (T300808)
• wdio-wikibase (2022-2023) (T300811)

Selenium Framework Updates Timeline

Past

• Port Selenium tests from Ruby to Node.js (2016 - 2023) (T139740)
• Evaluate WebdriverIO replacements for our browser automation framework (2020) (T247835)
• Upgrade WebdriverIO to v6 in all repositories (2020-2021) (T247844)
• Evaluate Microsoft Playwright as replacement for our browser automation (2020-2021) (T262682)
• Upgrade WebdriverIO to v7 in all repositories (2021-2023) (T274579)
• Refactor WebdriverIO tests from sync to async mode (2020-2024) (T256626)
• Switch to spec reporter (2021-2024) (T280331)

Present

• Run Selenium tests targeting available local and remote testing environments (2023-) (T344682)
• Replace Node.js Assert library with WebdriverIO Expect library (2022-) (T325740)

Future

• Upgrade WebdriverIO to v8 in all repositories (2022-) (T324685)
  • Use import instead of require (2024-) (T373125)
• Upgrade WebdriverIO to v9 in all repositories (2024-) (T363704)
• Implement mediawiki core selenium test suite in popular alternatives (2022-) (T325552)
• Find flaky Selenium tests (2021-) (T291254)

The first Big Fat Brussels Meeting, held in 2013, established a tradition for Wikimedians to congregate in Brussels for a two-day gathering on advocacy and policy issues. Last month, the ninth edition of the meeting took place, bringing together almost forty Wikimedia volunteers and staff. 

The basic goal was to prepare for the challenges in the legislative landscape that we expect in Europe, regardless of whether at the EU, national, or Council of Europe level. We discussed Issues that would affect our projects, like “How to protect children online without gathering user data?” and “Will artificial intelligence (AI) change the way copyright works?” 

Additionally, participants had the opportunity to attend training sessions, which extended over topics as different as “How to carry out value-based communication” to “How to map relevant decision makers” to “How to draft an advocacy email.”

New Political Environment

Participants also had an exchange on the new political configuration that resulted from the European Parliament elections this past June 2024. Our discussion highlighted that two new far-and-further-right political groups have been formed in the parliament, and that the overall majority has drifted to the right. 

At the same time, participants looked at the new structure of the European Commission, which reflects the strengthened political power of President Ursula von der Leyen, and considered the most relevant Commissioners-Designate. Concerning our issues, the title of the latter certainly goes to Henna Virkkunen, the “Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy.”

If confirmed by the parliament, Virkkunen will be the main figure dealing with digital issues, including the Digital Services Act (DSA) implementation, copyright, and artificial intelligence (AI), and will oversee DG Connect (fully, the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology), where the European Commission units dealing with content moderation, copyright, and AI are located. 

New and Old Legislative Reforms

Among future legislative reforms and topics we can note the implementation of the DSA, the transposition (that is, the process where EU member states give force to EU directives by implementing them as national laws) of the so-called anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) Directive, the implementation of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (which covers the issue of attribution and copyright) as well as the possible new AI Liability Directive, the Digital Knowledge Act for Europe, and the two very topical issues of geo-blocking and child protection — the latter including age verification systems.

Age verification is a very sensitive subject, since the protection of children online is hotly debated across Europe and the rest of the globe. From a Wikimedia perspective, we want to make sure children are solidly protected both on and off the Wikimedia projects and the internet as a whole, but we worry that some proposals require collecting additional personal data to do so, which runs counter to the data minimization practices on the projects that make both readers and volunteers safer. As a result, this is a challenging political and legislative conversation for which we must be prepared. 

Researching Elections Information on Wikipedia

This year there was a third bonus day, which we spent inside the European Parliament. We kicked it off with a roundtable that presented a project to research how information and disinformation fares across different language versions of Wikipedia. The project, where Wikimedia Europe has partnered with European research teams, shall offer policy recommendations based on its learnings.   

The roundtable was followed by a meeting with experienced European Parliament staffers, who shared their views on the new parliament’s configuration and the most significant dossiers for the next term. They also provided recommendations and tips on how to carry out lobby activities directed at Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

Do You Want to Learn More?

If you would like to follow the public policy advocacy work of Wikimedia and Wikimedians across the world, you may sign up to the Wikimedia public policy mailing list and say “Hi!”. If you would like to get involved in this work within Europe or simply have a question, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line at advocacy@wikimedia-europe.eu.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren’t a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [1][2]
• WMF’s Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [3]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

• Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig’s Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the “search engine” option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [4]
• Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [5]
• Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [6]

In depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia’s authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

We’d like to invite our members and wider UK community to the Wikimedia UK 2024 Community Celebration, taking place on Saturday 23rd November, 11-1pm.

This online get-together will be a celebration of what our community has achieved in the last year, a recognition of that work through the Wikimedian of the Year awards, and to showcase some of the incredible work that has been taking place across the UK.

Over the last month or so, we’ve been reaching out to  community members in a call for lightning talks, and we’re really excited by what we’ve now got lined up.  It’s often the case that there’s a huge amount of work done by Wikimedians that others just don’t see, so we’re really happy to be able to highlight some of this activity.

After the lightning talks, we’ll be presenting the annual Wikimedian of the Year awards – there’s more information about those here, and nominations are open until the 1st November.

This event is open to both members and non-members of Wikimedia UK, who’d like to find out more about Wikimedia work in the UK, and who’d like to get more involved! 

Tickets are free, the event will be held on Zoom, and you can reserve your tickets now through Eventbrite.

The post Wikimedia UK Community Celebration 2024 appeared first on WMUK.

Over the past week I have spent some time writing some code to start running a little bot on the wikibase.world project, aimed at expanding the number of wikibases that are collected there, and automating collection of some of the data that can easily be automated.

Over the past week, the bot has imported 650 wikibase installs that increases the total to 784, and active to 755.

I mainly wanted to do this to try and visualize “federation” or rather, links between wikibases that are currently occurring, hence creating P55 (links to Wikibase) and P56 (linked from Wikibase).

251 wikibases seem to link to each other, and Wikidata is very clearly at the centre of that web.

Many wikibases only link to Wikidata, but there are a few other notable clusters, including Wikimedia Commons (but see the improvements section below, as some of these may be false positives).

I’m not sure why Q2 didn’t render the label, but Q2 is Commons in the below image.

Others such as LexBib, MaRDi portal, PersonalData.io, Librarybase, R74n and more also seem to have mutliple connections (more than one)

Here is a fairly nice SPARQL query that can get you these links in their current state, in a table…

PREFIX wwdt: <https://wikibase.world/prop/direct/>
PREFIX wwd: <https://wikibase.world/entity/>

SELECT ?wikibase ?wikibaseLabel ?linksTo ?linksToLabel
WHERE {
    ?wikibase wwdt:P3 wwd:Q10.
    ?wikibase wwdt:P13 wwd:Q54.
    ?wikibase wwdt:P55 ?linksTo
    SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
}   

Runnable here: https://tinyurl.com/28dor4qe

The scripts

Very briefly, there are a collection of scripts that import Wikibase found via a variety of methods (I’m open to new ideas if you have them).

• wikibase.cloud: which exposes an API of all currently active installations
• wikibase-metadata.toolforge.org: which as some data collected about usage of “wikibase suite” installed elsewhere
• google: with some painfully long, crafted search terms that match the few things identifying a wikibase that might get indexed.

These scripts import a very bare-bones version of an Item, such as [1], [2], [3]…

Once the data is in wikibase.world, a separate process loads all currently active wikibases, and tries to add and refine information.

• Load the site and see if it is a 200
• Try to normalize the URLs a bit if possible
• Try to detect and record the host
• Add an inception date, based on the first logged action by MediaWiki
• Add entity types and tools used (sometimes)… (extensions to come soon?)
• Add links to and from other wikibases based on some External Identifiers, and all URL properties.

The code makes use of wikibase-edit and wikibase-sdk written by maxlath. They were a pleasure to use, really simplify Wikibase APIs down to basics, which is all I needed here.

Improvements

There are many other elements of data that could be added, and that also would be nice to be able to filter by across all wikibases, such as number of entities, number of users, date of first wikibase edit etc. I plan on slowly trying to tackle these parts moving forward.

There are also possibly a few issues with the current process

• Not all External Identifier properties are currently inspected. Only those that have a formatter URL property defined, and also that have that formatter URL property exposed via wikibase manifest (so wikibase manifest is also a requirement)
• All URLs are inspected for known domains, and these may link to NON wikibase and NON entity pages. Such as a URL that just links to https://commons.wikimedia.org would currently appear as a link…

Currently, I have just been running the scripts locally, but I’ll aim to set them up on GitHub Actions so they run weekly perhaps?

And let’s pretend that I wrote the code in a nice tidy way, haha, naaah

That will come (if this all still seems like a good idea)

03/10/2024-09/10/2024

About us

• The editorial board of weeklyOSM is celebrating ten years of sharing weekly news from the OpenStreetMap world in multiple languages. On October 2014, the first multilingual edition was published.

Mapping

• Okainov has made a request for comments on their new proposal to standardise the mapping of airport lounges.

Community

• Kingsley shared his experience of attending the State of the Map 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya.
• The OpenStreetMap Community forum is now faster. The site has received a hardware upgrade.
• Raquel Dezidério wrote ►, in her diary about the 10-year anniversary of the multilingual edition of the Wochennotiz (weeklyOSM), including a link to an interview with the founders. She also gave thanks for the opportunity to be part of the team of editors for Brazilian Portuguese, along with Lívia Rios and Adriele Bernardo.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Grant Slater, the Senior Site Reliability Engineer at the OpenStreetMap Foundation, published a report outlining the progress of OSM’s infrastructure during 2023–2024.

Local chapter news

• [1] Jochen Topf announced ► the launch of the newly redesigned website for the German OpenStreetMap community.

Events

• The FOSSGIS conference will be held 26 to 29 March 2025, at the Schloss Münster (we reported earlier). The call for participation has been made ►, and submissions will be accepted ► until Tuesday 5 November. You can also support this event by becoming a sponsor. For more information regarding sponsorship please check the sponsorship brochure.
• Michael Reichert has published ► a report on the OpenStreetMap booth at the Maker Faire in Hannover, Germany, held on 17 and 18 August.
• Matt Whilden announced that the next State of the Map US will be held in Boston from 19 to 21 June 2025.

Education

• Amy Plant showed in a video how to find a place from a photo using OSM, overpass turbo, and F4map.
• Panagiotis Vasilopoulos tooted that they have written a blog on how to import OSM data into Blender.

Maps

• The OK Lab Flensburg has downloaded data from the Open Data Portal and turned it into an interactive heritage protection map ►. The current state of development can be viewed on GitHub and the software can be deployed by any municipality, city, or state free of charge and licence-free.
• OpenInfraMap is now rendered as a 3D globe with zooming and panning capabilities, using the recently released MapLibre GL v5 pre-release. The water layer has also been updated to display reservoirs, water treatment and sewerage plants, and pumping stations.
• Netherlands’ National Road Traffic Data Portal has published an interactive map that shows the location of and detailed information about traffic signs.

OSM in action

• Flickr recently added a map feature to their Flickr Commons Explorer. It showcases historical photographs from cultural institutions all around the world using an OpenStreetMap-based interactive map.
• The EU Commission has made the free WiFi4EU app available, which is intended to make it easier to find free Wi-Fi hotspots. The app uses an OpenStreetMap map, but unfortunately without attribution.

Software

• PLATEAU is a 3D urban model development, utilisation, and open data project led by Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism.
• GeoScribbles is now available in iD editor as an overlay layer.
• A new Panoramax instance for MapComplete is now available.
• Jefle released ‘Public Transport Stop Analysis’, an interactive map visualising public transport stop data from the OSM database.
• Richard Ulmer has developed ‘osmar’, a command line tool for directly querying OSM data from PBF files.

Releases

• Michal announced the release of Locus Map 4.26, which includes several enhancements, such as improvements to the rotating map feature, offline routing engine, remaining elevation estimation, and the Garmin smartwatch add-on.

Did you know …

• … that Organic Maps now offers native track recording ?
• .. that the United Nations Vector Tile Toolkit is a collection of open source software to produce, host, style, and optimise vector tiles for web mapping?

Other “geo” things

• The Kon-Tiki team has published ► a statistical report about the age of houses in 80 large cities in Russia. They divided the age of buildings into several historical periods: Pre-Revolutionary (up to 1917), Avant-Garde (1918 to 1929), 1930s (1930 to 1939), Military and Post-War (1940 to 1956), Khrushchyovka (1957 to 1964), Era of stagnation (1865 to 1985), Post-Perestroika (1991 to 1999), 2000s (2000 to 2009), and 2010s (2010 to 2020).
• InsertUser noticed that osmhydrant was briefly referenced in the recent Phil Edwards video essay titled ‘The Secret Economics of Google Street View’.
• Anton Thomas will be giving a talk, ‘Wild World: A Hand-Drawn Map Odyssey’, at Stanford University on Monday 11 November. Anton will dive deep into his story, from the endless details of Wild World to managing its popularity, and the psychological odyssey of three years drawing one map, to his search for new ideas in the Kenyan wilderness. The event is free and hybrid.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Zámoly	Zámoly Mapping Party		2024-10-12
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-10-13
Grenoble	Atelier d’octobre du groupe local de Grenoble		2024-10-14
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2024-10-15
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-10-15
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-10-16
Bonn	181. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-10-15
Flensburg	OK Lab Flensburg Community OSM Treffen		2024-10-16
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-10-17
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-10-16
	Atelier Pifomètre/Bano		2024-10-16
Bruxelles – Brussel	Velopark mapathon @ Fietsberaad offices		2024-10-17
Zagreb	OSM-HR Meetup		2024-10-17
Boucau	Rencontre Mapadour (Groupe local Pays Basque – Sud Landes)		2024-10-18
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-10-18
Rouen	Atelier découverte OpenStreetMap		2024-10-18
Pamplona/Iruña	GeoCamp ES		2024-10-19
Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend October 2024		2024-10-19 – 2024-10-20
Yelahanka taluku	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party		2024-10-19
Cabecera Municipal Duitama	Estado del Mapa – Duitama 2024		2024-10-19
Nonnweiler	Craftmapping Höckerlinie Otzenhausen		2024-10-19
Kalyani Nagar	OSM Mapping Party at TomTom		2024-10-19
Toulouse	Rencontre du groupe local de Toulouse		2024-10-19
	[Online] 18th Annual General Meeting of the OpenStreetMap Foundation		2024-10-19
Amsterdam	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations Between Eric Theise and Edward Schocker		2024-10-19
Mumbai	Mumbai Online Remote Mapping Pre-Party		2024-10-20
Berlin	DRK & HeiGIT Online Beginner Mapathon		2024-10-22
City of Edinburgh	OSM Edinburgh pub meetup		2024-10-22
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #63	✓	2024-10-22
Lübeck	147. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-10-24
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-10-25
Bologna	OpenStreetMap al Linux Day di Bologna		2024-10-26
中正區	台北城內商家mapping party暨慶賀MozTW 3.0喬遷之喜		2024-10-26
Mumbai	Mumbai Mapping Party		2024-10-26
City of South Perth	Social Mapping Sunday: Perth Zoo FREE TICKETS		2024-10-27
	Bremer Mappertreffen		2024-10-28
Saint-Étienne	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire		2024-10-28

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, YoViajo, barefootstache, derFred, rtnf.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Wikimedia Commons, the Wikimedia project for freely licensed media files, also contains a bunch of photos by me and photos of me at various events. While I don't think Commons is going away anytime soon, I would still like to have a local copy of those images available on my own storage hardware.

Obviously this requires some way to query for photos you want to download. I'm using Commons categories for this, since that's easy to implement and works for both use cases. The Commons community tends to come up with very specific categories that you can use, and if not, you can usually categorize the files yourself.

There is almost an existing tool for this: Sam Wilson's mwcli project has support for exporting images one has uploaded to Commons. However I couldn't use that to upload photos of me others have uploaded, plus it's written in PHP and I don't exactly want to deal with the problem of figuring out how to package it in a way I could neatly install it on my NAS.

So I wrote my own tool for it, called comload. It's written in Python because Python is easy to deploy (I can just throw it in a .deb and upload it to my internal repository), and because I did not find a Go library to handle Action API pagination for me. The basic usage is like this:

$ comload --subcats "Taavi Väänänen"

This will download any files in Category:Taavi Väänänen and its sub-categories to the current directory. Former image versions, as well as the image description and SDC data, if any, is also included. And it's smart enough to not download any files that are already there on future runs, so you can just throw it in a systemd timer to get any future files. I'd still like it to handle moved files without creating a duplicate copy, but otherwise I'm really happy with the current state.

comload is available from PyPI and from my Git server directly, and is licensed under the GPLv3.

It all started quite casually, as a lighthearted email exchange. Then, what followed was a meeting over Skype. What was tge the topic of discussion? Google Health Speaks Challenge. It was a collaboration between the Swahili Wikipedia and a working group from Google led by Dr. Joanne from South Africa. I can’t quite recall her last name, but alongside those from distant places, there was me (Muddyb) from Tanzania and Salome Nduku from Kenya.

This team was determined to carry out a project to teach Tanzanian teachers, students, and doctors how to edit Swahili Wikipedia. It wasn’t just about editing Wikipedia in general; but also the focus was on improving articles about health. That’s why the initiative was called Google Health Speaks. In fact, it was Salome Nduku, a Swahili language expert from Kenya, who proposed that the project be named Afya Husema in Swahili.

Articles were created, but not without a number of challenges. This was my first time ever to conduct Wikipedia training session in front of a live audience. It was far from easy, as I had never done something like this before. The questions were numerous, and Salome, though was an expert in Swahili, wasn’t well-versed in Wikipedia. I was the more experienced one in that regard. From that time until recently, I hadn’t conducted a similar training again. I’ll share more on that in future blog posts.

While the articles were written, their quality was, admittedly, not the highest. I simply didn’t have the capacity to improve every single article. However, this project helped increase the presence of Wikipedia in Tanzania. It also coincided with the growing awareness of Google Translate Toolkit at the time.

The event in Tanzania took place on September 4, 2010, while a similar one was held in Kenya on September 11, 2010.

It has now been 14 years since that journey began, and for all that has happened, I am grateful to God!

Muddyb.
12-10-24

Luckily, I speak Leet.

– Amita Ramanujan, Numb3rs, CBS’s IRC Drama

There’s an episode of the CBS prime-time drama Numb3rs that plumbs the depths of Dr. Joel Fleischman’s¹ knowledge of IRC. In one scene, Fleischman wonders, “What’s ‘leet’”?

“Leet” is writing that replaces letters with numbers, e.g., “Numb3rs,” where 3 stands in for e.

In short, leet is like the heavy-metal “S” you drew in middle school: Sweeeeet.

 / \
/ | \
| | |
 \ \ 
| | |
\ | /
 \ /

ASCII art version of your misspent youth.

Following years of keen observation, I’ve noticed Git commit hashes are also letters and numbers.

Git commit hashes are, as Fleischman might say, prime targets for l33tification.

What can I spell with a git commit?

With hexidecimal we can spell any word containing the set of letters {A, B, C, D, E, F}—DEADBEEF (a classic) or ABBABABE (for Mama Mia aficionados).

This is because hexidecimal is a base-16 numbering system—a single “digit” represents 16 numbers:

Base-10: 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 16 15
Base-16: 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F

Leet expands our palette of words—using 0, 1, and 5 to represent O, I, and S, respectively.

I created a script that scours a few word lists for valid words and phrases.

With it, I found masterpieces like DADB0D (dad bod), BADA55 (bad ass), and 5ADBAB1E5 (sad babies).

$ mkdir /tmp/BADA55-git && cd /tmp/BAD55-git
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/BADA55-git/.git/
$ echo '# BADA55 git repo' > README.md && git add README.md && git commit -m 'Initial commit'
[main (root-commit) 68ec0dd] Initial commit
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
  create mode 100644 README.md
$ git log --oneline
68ec0dd (HEAD -> main) Initial commit

$ git cat-file -p 68ec0dd > commit-msg
$ sha1sum <(cat \
    <(printf "commit ") \
    <(wc -c < commit-msg | tr -d '\n') \
    <(printf '%b' '\0') commit-msg)
68ec0dd6dead532f18082b72beeb73bd828ee8fc  /dev/fd/63

$ truncate -s -1 commit-msg    # remove final newline
$ printf '\t\n' >> commit-msg  # Add a tab
$ # Check the new SHA to see if it's BADA55
$ sha1sum <(cat \
    <(printf "commit ") \
    <(wc -c < commit-msg | tr -d '\n') \
    <(printf '%b' '\0') commit-msg)
27b22ba5e1c837a34329891c15408208a944aa24  /dev/fd/63

$ time lucky_commit BADA555

real    0m0.091s
user    0m0.653s
sys     0m0.007s
$ git log --oneline
bada555 (HEAD -> main) Initial commit
$ xxd -c1 <(git cat-file -p 68ec0dd) | grep -cPo ': (20|09)'
12
$ xxd -c1 <(git cat-file -p HEAD) | grep -cPo ': (20|09)'
111

$ cat > .git/hooks/post-commit && chmod +x .git/hooks/post-commit
#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo 'L337-ifying!'
lucky_commit BADA55
$ echo 'A repo that is very l33t.' >> README.md && git commit -a -m 'l33t'
L337-ifying!
[main 0e00cb2] l33t
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
$ git log --oneline
bada552 (HEAD -> main) l33t
bada555 Initial commit

In the ever-evolving landscape of information, the need for accurate, well-sourced content has never been more critical, particularly in the midst of this U.S. election year. Fearful of the technical side of editing Wikipedia but motivated to join the fight against misinformation, political scientist Dr. Susan Liebell enrolled in a Wiki Scholars course this spring to bring her nearly 40 years of study to Wikipedia – and hasn’t stopped editing since.

Liebell’s scholarship lies at the intersection of history, politics, law, and philosophy – areas that have sharpened her keen eye for identifying gaps in the information available to the public. 

“I had noticed things that were missing on Wikipedia, for example the article on women’s suffrage does not include important material on the contributions of women of color, but I was afraid of the practical, technical side of editing,” said Liebell, a political science professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “I really did not think it would be so easy – and that was the best part of the course.”

Expressing her gratitude to the Wiki Scholars course, Liebell now compares the simplicity of editing Wikipedia to the ease of sending a text message.

“I learned that it only takes a few minutes to add or correct something – and you don’t need to be a tech genius,” explained Liebell.

From information about Supreme Court cases to 17th century feminist thinkers, Liebell made widespread improvements to Wikipedia across a variety of political science topics, following her interests, areas of expertise, and available resources – and even tackled the example her instructor shared to underscore how some critically important articles can still need serious help: the Comstock Act of 1873 article.

“I had made a very long list of possible articles to work on, but when I saw that the Comstock article was a strange mix of long quotes and did not connect with 21st century politics, I thought it was an easy way to contribute,” said Liebell, noting her excitement to lend her expertise to the article. “I knew a lot about 19th century attitudes towards women in the law and I understood that Comstock was a ‘zombie’ law that some people hoped could criminalize abortion and birth control.”

Just as she approaches her own scholarship, Liebell’s work on Wikipedia often bridges historical context with contemporary life, a link she forged during the course to enhance relevant and critical content for U.S. voters.

“My work is very theoretical and historical – but I always try to connect what I know about the 17th and 18th century to what is happening in today’s world,” noted Liebell, who added information about relevant court cases to several articles, including Mifepristone and Bump stock. 

Throughout the course, Liebell also enhanced articles covering legislature (Married Women’s Property Acts in the United States), court cases (Garland v. Cargill), and political figures (Lilly Goren). 

“We need all types of people to add what they know about the world,” emphasized Liebell, encouraging other scholars to learn to edit Wikipedia. “I have continued to edit because people who have access to ‘behind-the-paywall’ resources need to share with those who do not. As a university professor, I have access to databases (so I can easily find a quote or a photo out of copyright) and I’ve spent almost 40 years learning to research.”

Liebell continues to draw real-world connections between her experience in the course, her ongoing work to improve election-related content on Wikipedia, and current events.

“As part of our [Wiki Scholars] class, we looked at the number of people who read articles,” said Liebell. “During the Democratic National Convention, one of the speakers mentioned Comstock (because Project 2025 recommends using Comstock to make mailing abortion related material illegal). Because of the course, I know that people will look up terms they don’t know – and it is absolutely true!”

When considering the challenges of her editing experience, Liebell noted the conflicts that can arise between editors when they disagree about exactly what content should be included in an article.

“I saw that Wikipedia is only as good as the editors and we needed more editors to be involved,” Liebell reflected. “Democracy is great until you have two people who disagree and no neutral umpire!” 

Motivated by the satisfying moments when she can leverage her expertise and resources to benefit others, Liebell continues to fight misinformation by improving Wikipedia.

“It feels very good to add specific material that is time consuming and tricky to find,” said Liebell. “For example, I read that the Comstock Act was mentioned in Project 2025 but I could not find it when I scanned the 900+ page document. Project 2024 refers to the law but never uses the term. But I read the sections on abortion and added the page reference to the Wikipedia article. That felt good!”

Liebell encourages other scholars to join her in editing Wikipedia, underscoring her hope that academic associations establish a way to credit this impactful knowledge equity work.

Interested in learning how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

1.1 million— the number of times the 2024 European Parliament election article on English Wikipedia has been viewed from May to June 2024. With another 37 language versions and additional millions of views globally, this page exemplifies Wikipedia’s role in informing the public about major political events. Yet, Wikipedia’s impact extends far beyond that. As a widely used repository of knowledge, its content is frequently cited by other media outlets, amplifying its reach and embedding its information within broader public discourse. This means that any inaccuracies or disinformation on Wikipedia could have significant consequences on the public discourse, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like elections.

While the role of commercial platforms in spreading disinformation has been widely analysed, how Wikipedia has addressed this issue over its 20-year history has gone mostly unnoticed. 

Wikipedia is powered by a global network of volunteers who rigorously fact-check and peer-review content following transparent, community-led guidelines. As the only not-for-profit platform recognised as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA) – the new EU legislation that imposes transparency and reporting obligations on platforms with more than 45 million “monthly active users” in the EU – Wikipedia offers a distinctive, community-driven approach to managing information that sets it apart from the Big Tech. 

In an era dominated by for-profit, data-driven platforms that exacerbate societal vulnerabilities to polarisation, it becomes crucial to ask: What can we learn from Wikipedia’s model of community-led fact-checking and moderation? How can these lessons contribute to strengthening the broader information ecosystem?

Leveraging community-led practices in democratic debate

To address these questions, Wikimedia Europe partners with the research teams of the University of Amsterdam and Eurecat Technology Centre of Catalonia for the DEM-Debate project. In the next 18 months, this project will explore if, and how, the Wikipedia fact-checking and moderation practices adopted during the 2024 European Parliament election have enhanced the online information ecosystem reliability, and whether these practices can be transferred to other online contexts.  

The DEM-Debate kicked off with a panel organised at the European Parliament on September 30. Moderated by Dimitar Dimitrov, Policy Director at Wikimedia Europe and project coordinator, the panel brought together disinformation experts, researchers, and the Wikimedia communities to discuss how the Wikimedia ecosystem addresses disinformation in the current legal framework, and how the DEM-Debate project will contribute to expanding online pluralistic, democratic spaces. 

Wikipedia as infrastructure against disinformation

Costanza Sciubba Caniglia talked about the Trust & Safety’s Disinformation Response Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports the Wikimedia communities in identifying and countering disinformation campaigns in line with the Disinformation Attribution model. Sciubba Caniglia explained that communities can be both a solution to creating trustworthy information and an infrastructure of disinformation. The “WikiZédia” incident during the French presidential elections illustrates this dynamic: a group of French Wikipedia users coordinated off-platform to improve the image of candidate Eric Zemmour by editing his Wikipedia articles until they were discovered by a journalist who infiltrated the French political movement Génération Z, a movement supporting Zemmour’s bid for the presidency. It is evident that the way platforms and policies are designed influence the health of the information ecosystem and this is where research initiatives such as DEM-Debate come into play. 

European regulations and free knowledge

The DSA’s new standards apply to big tech and community-governed platforms alike. Despite its emphasis on human rights, transparency, and accountability, which have long been championed by Wikipedia, the DSA presents compliance obligations that might burden nonprofit organisations with limited resources. According to Ronan Fahy, Assistant Professor at the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam, and lead DEM-Debate researcher, fostering collaboration between platforms and regulatory bodies can lead to a more effective response to disinformation challenges. The team will conduct independent research into how the current regulatory framework supports free knowledge communities and generate policy recommendations to ensure that free knowledge communities are supported in their contribution to the public interest. 

Wikipedia transferable practices for reliable information 

For the last 20 years, thousands of people from various cultural contexts have constructively disagreed on the accurate representation of knowledge throughout Wikipedia. The communities’ content creation and moderation practices are instrumental in ensuring that peer-based knowledge production is transparent. Anna Mazgal, Executive Director of Wikimedia Europe and DEM-Debate supervisor, explained that the DEM-Debate approach is twofold. On the one hand, to assess how the current regulatory framework influences free knowledge through legal analysis. On the other hand, analyse the communities information flow through computational analysis. David Laniado, Senior Researcher at Eurecat and DEM-Debate researcher, explained this method: his team will focus on the digital footprints of users in the edit history and talk pages of Wikipedia entries and community spaces related to the EU elections, such as articles on political parties and candidates. They will analyse activity, conflict, and controversies on these pages over time and across different countries and linguistic communities. The two methodologies combined with communities’ input and feedback will offer a full picture of Wikipedia’s practices on information on elections. 

A field-tested model for a public interest internet 

The evidence collected by DEM-Debate on what works – and what does not – in the Wikipedia model to counter disinformation will constitute the basis of our advocacy work to support free and equitable knowledge in Europe. The findings will be translated into policy recommendations that will benefit both the policymakers and the information ecosystem, including the Wikimedia communities and other community-based projects, proposing a new model of public interest internet based on transparency, reliability of sources and a decentralised governance. 

The DEM-Debate kickoff panel was part of Wikimedia Europe’s Big Fat Brussels Meeting, an annual gathering of about forty community members discussing policy and advocacy to advance free knowledge in the EU. As the DEM-Debate project moves forward, the communities will play a crucial role in the project mapping out their policies and practices, and sharing critical insights that will inform the researchers’ work at any project phase.

The DEM-Debate project is supported by the European Media and Information Fund – EMIF managed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Disclaimer. The sole responsibility for any content supported by the European Media and Information Fund lies with the author(s) and it may not necessarily reflect the positions of the EMIF and the Fund Partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute. https://gulbenkian.pt/emifund/disclaimer/ 

As the curtains draw on yet another exciting edition of the Wiki Loves Folklore and Feminism & Folklore 2024 Campaign, we take a moment to reflect on the powerful stories, cultural practices, and rich traditions captured by talented photographers from around the world. This year’s campaign highlighted the beauty of folklore and underrepresented voices in feminism, ensuring that diverse cultures and traditions continue to thrive in our digital archives.

From the bustling rice mills of Bangladesh to the ancient traditions of Myanmar’s fishing communities, the winning images tell stories of resilience, joy, and heritage. They allow us to peek into communities where folklore is woven into the very fabric of daily life. Let’s explore the categories of this campaign;

Top 3 Winning Images: Stories of Tradition and Resilience

First Winning Image

In this heartwarming first-place photograph, Azimronnie captures a delightful moment of childhood joy in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh. In an imaginative twist, a rice mill has been transformed into a vibrant playground where 2 children weave through towering cones — known as topas — designed to protect drying rice. The scene is alive with energy as the children roll bicycle tyres and dart around, embodying the innocence and exuberance of youth.

Juror Camelia Boban praised this image as a “perfect photo that captures the essence of rural life in Bangladesh.” The vibrant colors and dynamic composition evoke a deep sense of nostalgia, transporting viewers back to their childhoods. Beyond mere play, the photograph reflects the resilience of a community that creatively transforms its surroundings into joyful spaces. It celebrates the beauty of simplicity and the deep sense of community inherent in rural life, reminding us of the joy found in childhood and the bonds formed through shared experiences.

Second Winning Image

In this captivating photograph, Tapas Kumar Halder captures the intricate makeup of a folk dancer as they prepare for an upcoming performance, showcasing the rich tapestry of Indian folk culture. Dance, music, and storytelling are deeply intertwined in Indian traditions, and this image beautifully reflects the pride and cultural significance of these art forms. The dancer, adorned in traditional attire, embodies the essence of centuries-old customs, highlighting the vibrant narratives that folk arts convey across different regions of India.

Juror Camelia Boban acknowledged the technical excellence of the photograph, appreciating its cultural significance and the elaborate makeup that represents a vital aspect of Indian identity. However, she noted that the theme felt somewhat familiar, having encountered similar representations in previous editions of the competition. Despite this observation, the image serves as a poignant tribute to the diverse expressions of Indian folk culture, emphasizing the importance of preserving these traditions as they continue to thrive in the modern world.

Third Winning Image

Set against the tranquil landscape of Myanmar, this stunning photograph offers a glimpse into the ancient fishing practices passed down through generations. The image depicts fishermen utilizing traditional techniques, surrounded by serene waters reflecting soft natural lighting. The harmonious composition not only captures the scene’s beauty but also tells a compelling story of perseverance and a deep connection with nature.

Juror Camelia Boban lauded the photo as “an extremely good quality image,” praising its originality and ability to shed light on the underrepresented fishing traditions of Myanmar. She noted how the image elegantly portrays a way of life that is on the brink of extinction, emphasizing the critical importance of preserving such cultural practices for future generations. Through its captivating storytelling and serene aesthetics, this photograph encapsulates a timeless tradition that deserves to be recognized and cherished.

Top 10 Winning Images: A Diverse Tapestry of Cultural Expressions

Set in a remote village in Rajasthan, India, this touching photograph captures a quiet moment of everyday life. A man, absorbed in sewing clothes, shares a conversation with his wife. The vibrancy of their surroundings, despite the simplicity of their home, underscores the richness of their humble existence and the joy they find in each other’s company.

Juror Pierre André Leclercq highlighted how the image masterfully captures the essence of cultural heritage. Though their material possessions are few, the couple’s quiet happiness radiates through the frame, telling a story of contentment, peace, and a deep human connection that transcends wealth.

In this captivating image, the vibrant spirit of the Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo, Philippines, comes to life. Performers are captured in motion, wearing intricate costumes and traditional body paint, celebrating the rich cultural and religious heritage of the festival. Their movements convey the energy, passion, and deep-rooted devotion that the festival embodies.

Juror Nwonwu Uchechukwu P commended the photograph for its authenticity and artistic composition. The dynamic expressions of the dancers, paired with the vibrant colours and lighting, evoke a sense of liveliness and cultural pride. The image offers a unique and immersive glimpse into one of the Philippines’ most celebrated festivals.

This breathtaking image captures the ancient martial art of Kalaripayattu, originating from Kerala, India, in the heat of action. A fighter is frozen mid-air during a powerful strike, displaying the extraordinary agility, balance, and discipline that are central to this traditional combat form. The movement of the airborne fighter contrasts sharply with the poised, grounded defender, adding tension and drama to the scene.

Juror Nwonwu Uchechukwu P praised the image for its compelling composition, emphasizing the dynamic interplay between the fighters. The natural setting serves as a timeless backdrop, enriching the visual storytelling and evoking admiration for Kalaripayattu’s enduring legacy.

In this striking image, a craftsman is captured fully absorbed in his work at a traditional cotton mill in Kültür, Turkey. The piles of cotton surrounding him highlight the enduring importance of this ancient craft in the region, symbolizing not just the work itself but the cultural heritage passed down through generations. His quiet concentration reflects the skill and care that goes into each stage of the milling process.

Juror Nwonwu Uchechukwu P commended the photograph for its strong narrative, noting the craftsman’s intent expression and the intricate details of the milling process. The balanced lighting and soft tones evoke a sense of intimacy, offering a serene yet powerful portrayal of a time-honoured craft that is slowly fading.

This intimate portrait showcases an Apatani woman from Arunachal Pradesh, India, known for the distinctive facial tattoos and nose plugs worn by the women of her tribe. These adornments carry immense cultural and historical significance, symbolizing the resilience and deep-rooted traditions of the Apatani people. The photograph captures not only the physical markings of the culture but also the enduring spirit of an indigenous group that has preserved its identity through generations.

Juror Nwonwu Uchechukwu P praised the image for its evocative power, noting that the elderly woman’s solemn gaze provides a glimpse into the Apatani tribe’s storied past. The lighting draws attention to her unique facial features and cultural adornments, making this portrait a powerful tribute to her identity, cultural pride, and resilience in the face of time.

In this serene image, a member of the Bonda tribe from Odisha, India, is seen partaking in the consumption of Mahua, a traditional drink made from the flowers of the Mahua tree. The quiet simplicity of the moment reflects the deep connection the tribe holds with its traditions and natural surroundings. The drinking pot and woven basket serve as cultural symbols, representing the tribe’s timeless customs and their way of life that has remained unchanged for centuries.

Juror Mrb Rafi commended the composition, which adheres to the one-third rule, bringing a harmonious balance to the photograph. The captured motion of the figure drinking, combined with the vibrant colours and traditional elements, creates a powerful visual narrative of cultural pride. The image doesn’t just document a moment but tells a story of the Bonda tribe’s resilience and their deep-rooted traditions, celebrating their way of life with dignity and authenticity.

In this vivid snapshot from India’s iconic Holi festival, revellers are completely immersed in a burst of radiant colour, celebrating the arrival of spring with pure joy and exuberance. The air is alive with clouds of vibrant powders, and the scene is a riot of reds, blues, greens, and yellows, symbolizing the unity and playful spirit of the festival. The lively composition captures the festival’s essence, where people gather to smear each other with colors, dance, and celebrate the renewal of life.

Juror Pierre André Leclercq praised the image for its powerful representation of Holi’s energy and joy. The dynamic composition, combined with the kaleidoscope of colors, perfectly conveys the festive atmosphere. The chaotic harmony of hues in the photograph encapsulates the spirit of the festival, where the celebration of spring is infused with deep cultural meaning and exuberant expressions of happiness. This image is a beautiful homage to the timeless traditions and the vibrant celebration that is Holi.

The Iloilo Dinagyang Festival, held annually in the Philippines, celebrates the rich heritage, history, and vibrant spirit of the Ilonggo people. Originally a thanksgiving event in honour of Senyor Santo Niño, the child Jesus, the festival has grown into one of the country’s most colourful and grand cultural and religious festivals. This celebration features energetic street performances, music, and stunning displays of traditional costumes, capturing the essence of Ilonggo devotion and pride.

The photograph of the Dinagyang Warriors perfectly encapsulates the energy and symbolism of this iconic festival. The warriors’ detailed and intricate cultural adornments highlight the deep-rooted traditions of the Ilonggo people, from their bold costumes to the powerful symbolism embedded in their attire. Each piece worn by the warriors tells a story of cultural identity and history.

Juror Mrb Rafi commended the image for its aggressive and intense atmosphere, created by its darker colour grading and the busy composition. These elements combine to portray a story of fierce devotion, aligning with the title of the image. Though many visual elements vie for attention, the overall effect successfully reflects the dynamic, chaotic energy of the festival and the warrior-like spirit of the performers. Despite the overwhelming details, the intricate cultural decorations and body ornaments stand out, reminding viewers of the rich traditions passed down through generations.

In this breathtaking capture, the wild energy of a traditional gunpowder celebration in Morocco unfolds in a haze of smoke and light. The participants, engaged in a dramatic display of cultural heritage, stand amidst clouds of gunpowder as explosions reverberate around them. The excitement is almost tangible as the scene fills with light breaking through the thick smoke, creating an atmosphere of raw intensity and vibrant tradition.

Juror Mrb Rafi praised the image for its impeccable timing, capturing the exact moment of action and chaos. The rays of light piercing through the smoke, coupled with the intense expressions on the participants’ faces, convey a sense of powerful motion frozen in time. This photograph beautifully encapsulates the energy, spirit, and cultural significance of the celebration, offering a glimpse into the heart of Moroccan tradition. The controlled chaos, dramatic lighting, and dynamic storytelling come together to create an image that resonates with both movement and emotion.

In this serene and sacred capture, a group of Muslim worshippers are seen in ruku, the bowing position during namaz (congregational prayer). With heads lowered and backs arched in deep submission to Allah, this moment embodies humility, reverence, and piety. The worshippers are united in their devotion, their hearts aligned in rhythmic prayer as they seek closeness to the Almighty. The peacefulness of the scene evokes a sense of spiritual connection, as each individual, immersed in worship, finds solace and fulfilment through this profound act of devotion.

Juror Aristeas praised the photograph for its powerful depiction of both unity and diversity within the group. The uniformity of posture, as all worshippers bow in prayer, signifies their equality before God, following the same religious customs and practices. Yet, the diversity is beautifully expressed through the vibrant variety of colours in their clothing, reminding viewers that while these individuals share a common faith, they remain unique. This harmony of unity and individuality highlights the personal nature of faith.

Adding to the spiritual tone of the image, the large chandelier hanging above the worshippers emphasizes the sacredness of the space. Its presence in the foreground lends an additional layer of sanctity to the photograph, further drawing attention to the holiness of the moment and setting, creating a visual that resonates with a deep sense of spirituality and reverence.

Best Video Highlights

The video category was dominated by Azimronnie’s Traditional Fishing Festival (CC-BY-SA 4.0), which masterfully portrays the rich cultural heritage of Bangladesh. It highlights age-old fishing techniques and showcases strong community involvement. The narrative is captivating, featuring smooth transitions and well-paced editing that maintain the viewer’s attention. The audio quality is clear and well-balanced, further drawing the audience into the experience. Visually, the footage is vivid and dynamic, offering striking views of the festival’s activities. Juror Camelia Boban praised the video for its “captivating narrative and smooth editing,” noting that it successfully underscores the significance of preserving these folkloric traditions, leaving a memorable impression on its viewers.

Best Audio Highlights

In the audio category, First Nations Pow-Wow Drums and Singers Stereo by Marc Lautenbacher (CC-BY-SA 4.0) stands out for its beautiful capture of the cultural essence of Indigenous heritage. The recording showcases traditional rhythms and vocal harmonies that are deeply rooted in ceremonial practice. The sound quality is crisp, with a balanced mix of powerful drumming and voices, allowing listeners to fully appreciate the complexity of the performance. Juror Camelia Boban noted that the audio creates a captivating atmosphere, evoking a sense of reverence and unity, effectively transporting the audience to the heart of a sacred gathering. Overall, the recording serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of preserving and celebrating Indigenous folklore traditions, leaving a lasting emotional impact.

Top Uploaders

🥇 User: Goutam1962–5,000 files

Goutam1962 is a highly dedicated contributor to Wiki Loves Folklore, with an impressive 5,000 files uploaded. His diverse collection of photographs highlights traditional festivals, dances, and everyday life, capturing various aspects of folk culture and traditions within Indian communities.
Juror Camelia Boban commented: “Goutam1962’s uploads demonstrate a strong commitment to documenting the vibrant tapestry of Indian folk traditions, providing invaluable insights into the rich cultural heritage of the region.”

🥈 User: Wasiul Bahar — 4,298 files

Wasiul Bahar is a notable contributor to the Wiki Loves Folklore competition, having uploaded an impressive 4,298 files. His contributions significantly enrich the global documentation of folk culture, particularly focusing on the rich traditions of Bangladesh.
Juror Camelia Boban remarked: “Wasiul Bahar’s extensive uploads play a crucial role in representing Bangladeshi folklore, showcasing its depth and diversity while enhancing awareness of these cultural treasures.”

A Celebration of Diversity and Tradition

As we close this chapter of Wiki Loves Folklore 2024, we celebrate the extraordinary photographers, videographers, and contributors who have enriched Wikimedia Commons with their stories. Their work not only preserves cultural heritage but also uplifts underrepresented voices and communities across the globe. Each image, video, and sound recording is a testament to the power of storytelling through folklore, bridging generations and bringing distant traditions closer to all of us.

Also, the Feminism and Folklore initiative has been monumental, with 9981 articles submitted, including 9784 newly created ones across 34 Wikipedia language versions. Additionally, 197 existing articles have been expanded, shedding light on the vital intersection of gender and cultural heritage. This initiative showcases how storytelling can empower and give voice to diverse communities, bridging traditions and modernity.

Let us continue to celebrate and preserve these rich traditions, ensuring that feminism and folklore remain vibrant parts of our shared history and digital future.

Call to Action

Looking ahead to 2025, we invite you to be part of the Wiki Loves Folklore and Feminism & Folklore campaigns! Whether you are a photographer, videographer, writer, or simply a lover of culture, your contributions are invaluable. Share your stories, document your traditions, and help us build a richer, more inclusive digital heritage. Together, we can ensure that the beauty and diversity of folklore continue to inspire and educate future generations. Let’s make the 2025 campaign even more impactful and inclusive!

This Blog was reposted from Medium

Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe gathered in the Prespa Region of Macedonia at the first-ever WikiOutdoor Training that took place in the period 7–8 September 2024. A total of 23 selected trainees from 12 countries had the opportunity to learn skills and competences on how to implement outdoor activities from the four-man team that has been in charge of the Macedonian Wikiexpeditions since 2015. The primary goal of the training was to support the conduct of expeditions aimed at documenting places in other countries as well as to encourage organising events on developing universal skills.

Participation and format

The training was planned for a total of 28 participants—24 selected trainees and 4 trainers. Trainees were selected through a call for applications, which was open from 22 April to 20 May 2024, based on the answers provided in an application form. Of the selected trainees, 20 received a scholarship and 4 were self-funded participants. Participants (trainees and trainers) were divided into seven teams of four members, and each members had a pre-determined role—a driver, a researcher, a photographer and a drone operator. Drivers were transporting the teams during the training, researchers were responsible for exploring the target area of the expedition, photographers were taking pictures during the training and drone operators were taking aerial pictures and filming videos using a drone. One of the teams did not have a researcher because the selected trainee was unable to arrive for the event due to visa problems.

A brief recap of the training

The training began with an opening address by the trainers and a roundtable introduction in which trainees shared their background, interest to take part in the event and future plans on how to use the new skills and knowledge within their respective countries and communities. After the opening session, the event continued with an introductory presentation on outdoor activities in which trainees learnt about the pros and cons of outdoor compared to indoor activities, as well as about the different types of outdoor activities that can be implemented in the Wikimedia movement. A workshop followed on expeditionary planning and research, which presented the six-step process of organising expeditions in greater detail. This session was particularly notable for researchers and drivers as it helped better understand the activities that need to be carried out and all logistical needs that have to be met in order to successfully conduct expeditions. The next workshop dealt with photography for expeditions in which the trainees in the roles of photographers and drone operators had the chance to gain knowledge on how to take documentary images of places and objects, why aerial photography is sometimes superior to ground photography and what is the photographic equipment required for it. During the course of this workshop, the trainees in the roles of researchers worked together to plan the route and places of interest for the expedition the following day. The last session was a workshop in which the expedition in the Prespa Region was introduced, and the expeditionary teams were formed by drawing of lots.

In the second half of the first day, a casual exploring was organised on the nearby mountain Galičica. A total of four stops were made during the exploring. At the beginning, the group stopped at a viewpoint on the eastern slopes of the mountain, which offered a nice view of Lake Prespa. Then, a stop was made in the locality of Asan Ǵura, which is deeply in the mountain and has an abandoned ski lift. Afterwards, the group visited the mountain pass of Lipova Livada, which separates the Prespa and Ohrid regions. This was the longest stop as it offered a beautiful aerial view of Prespa and Ohrid lakes from a drone. Finally, a stop was made on the western slopes of the mountain, near a small Orthodox Christian chapel dedicated to Saint George, with a sunset view of Lake Ohrid. After the casual exploring, participants had a dinner in a restaurant at the Monastery of Saint Naum on Lake Ohrid. The first day concluded with an astroexpedition that took place on the mountain pass of Lipova Livada during which participants could observe a sky full of stars thanks to the favourable weather conditions.

The second day was marked by the expedition in the northernmost part of the Prespa Region, which was deliberately chosen because of its poor coverage with content on the Wikimedia projects. A total of six villages—Gorno Krušje, Leva Reka, Izbišta, Jankovec, Kriveni and Zlatari—were visited and documented. Each researcher’s team was responsible for one village, and their vehicle led the convoy to all the places of interest in that village. The first village was fully covered by the team of trainers in which they practically explained all necessary activities, such as navigating the vehicle through the village, understanding the architectural elements of an Orthodox Christian church that are worth documenting and operating a drone over the village in order to take documentary aerial pictures. In addition to the six villages, one team continued the expedition by visiting and documenting the village of Bolno. The documentation included searching for places of interest (e.g. churches and monasteries, cultural monuments, schools etc.) based on the information about the villages prepared by researchers the day before and taking pictures of those places. As with the first day, the second day concluded with a dinner in a local restaurant.

Participants were also instructed on how to upload the images taken during the different activities in order to complete the documentation of the training.

Lessons learnt

The main lessons learnt from the training are presented in turn:

• Lesson 1: Providing logistics for the event is difficult and tiresome. The event had high logistical demands as six sport utility vehicles carrying the participants had to be transported to and from the Prespa Region. This required a careful and detailed plan in advance, and some of the organisers had to travel back and forth a couple of times.

• Lesson 2: Presentations and workshops are a useful introduction. Despite the fact that this was an outdoor training, the presentations and workshops that took place indoors were a very good introduction for participants to the training and what should be borne in mind for each of the participatory roles.

• Lesson 3: Casual exploring is perfect to get to know each other. As the training aimed at bringing people to work together as teams in an outdoor setting, it was of crucial importance to give some time and space for socialising before the expedition. The outdoor activities in the second half of the first day truly contributed to achieving this goal.

• Lesson 4: More teams slow down the pace of the expedition. One caveat when having more teams moving in a convoy during an expedition is that things substantially slow down. As a consequence, the number of visited and documented villages was only a half of that in the preliminary plan. This proved that one team whose members have clearly defined roles is optimal for conducting an expedition.

• Lesson 5: Weather is an important factor as it is unpredictable. Since the dates for this event were set several months in advance, it was uncertain if the weather conditions would be favourable for the outdoor activities to take place. Therefore, it is important to plan such events in a period of the year with less precipitation and higher amount of sunshine hours.

Future plans

The main plan in the near future is to guide and help trainees to use the skills and knowledge acquired during the training to initiate expeditions and other outdoor activities within their countries and communities. Furthermore, this event will hopefully inspire communities from other regions to consider organising similar trainings that offer universal practical skills. Finally, it is important to keep consistency in developing skills on conducting expeditions, so a long-term plan is to make this training a recurrent event in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

In the first half of 2024 the Wikimedia Foundation continued its support of Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and other projects that further the overarching goal of free access to all knowledge. Providing that access would be impossible without the dedicated members of the Wikimedia community. Volunteer editors, admins, and other functionaries are essential to keeping Wikimedia projects running smoothly. Not only do they contribute articles and other content, volunteers also remove harmful content and misinformation, create policies to protect user rights, and decide what content is allowed on each project. Wikimedia projects are essential sources of knowledge, and the volunteer community is vital to providing that resource to people all over the world. 

Biannually, we publish the transparency report so as to provide transparency into the work we do. This transparency report contains a sample of interesting cases received by the Wikimedia Foundation during the applicable reporting period, as well as a FAQ. It also details various types of requests the Wikimedia Foundation received during the reporting period, as well their countries of origin, and other information. 

This transparency report details the period from January to June 2024. 

Unfortunately, the Wikimedia Foundation’s goal of promoting freely accessible information can sometimes be incompatible with the aims of state and private entities. These entities may seek to alter or delete Wikimedia project information, or by attempting to acquire nonpublic information. In such situations, the Foundation steps in to protect the vital movement principles of user privacy and freedom of expression. It also emphasizes and defends the volunteer community’s right to decide what educational content is available through the projects. These first principles are key when the Foundation evaluates incoming requests.

Below, we highlight some high-level details from the latest transparency report. 

Takedown requests (including content alteration). From January to June 2024, we received 350 requests to alter or remove project content. 11 of these requests were Right to Erasure-based requests related to user accounts. When we receive such a request, we provide the user information on the community-driven vanishing process.

Copyright requests. The Wikimedia volunteer communities work diligently to ensure that copyrighted material is not uploaded to the projects without an appropriate free license or exception, such as fair use. Most Wikimedia project content is therefore freely licensed or in the public domain. When we receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove allegedly infringing material, we conduct thorough investigations to make sure the claims are valid. From January to June of 2024, we received 10 DMCA requests, and granted only two. Some stories in the Transparency Report share more about the kinds of DMCA requests we received and how they were handled. With projects as large in scope as ours, the low number of DMCA requests we receive is due to the hard work of community volunteers who ensure that content on the projects is properly licensed.

Requests for user information. The Wikimedia Foundation only grants requests for user data that comply with our requests for user information procedures and guidelines (which includes a provision for emergency conditions). Moreover, the Foundation collects very little nonpublic user information as part of our commitment to user privacy. Any information we do collect is retained for a short amount of time. Of the 26 user data requests we received, 2 resulted in disclosure of nonpublic user information

This transparency report reaffirms the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to the principles of transparency, privacy, and freedom of expression. It also represents the diligent work of Wikimedia volunteers, who build Wikimedia projects and the knowledge available on them. If you are interested in learning about the requests sent to the Foundation in greater depth, please access the comprehensive January to June 2024 transparency report. You can also see past reports by viewing previous blog posts.

The transparency report would not be possible without the contributions of Julianne Alberto, Aly Marino, Amanda Jardine, Riddy Khan, Ed Erhart, Jim Buatti, Leighanna Mixter, Sara Campos, Laura Pulecio Duarte, Lauren Dickinson, Justin Gonzales, Mackenzie Rhine, and Noah Usman. 

• Albania report: Wikimedian in Residence at Elbasan’s Ethnographic Museum in Albania
• Argentina report: GLAM and communities
• Australia report: Artbank’s edit-a-thon for gender equity in Australian visual arts
• Belgium report: Project ‘Belgian distilleries as Linked Open Data’ completed
• Brazil report: Photowalks for Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 at five corners of Brazil
• France report: 4th edition of the Label Culture Libre
• India report: Digitization at the Museum of Santal Culture, Federation Hall Society Library and Cultural Heritage and Literature in Meghalaya
• New Zealand report: Report on the Wikidata WikiProject International Botanical 2024, Conference report for SPNHC-TDWG 2024 and the upcoming New Zealand species edit-a-thon
• Poland report: What’s up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland
• Spain report: Wiki Takes Rural Archaeology
• Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme
• UK report: Wiki content in interfaith education
• USA report: Banned books and more
• Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group September monthly highlights
• Special story: Global GLAM calls from November: short survey, and register!
• Calendar: October’s GLAM events

A quick look at the ARIA aria-details attribute, which is NOT read by screen readers (:

We like to talk about how big Wikidata is − millions upon millions of items, billions upon billions of triples, thousands upon thousands of edits.

To be fair, that was always the case with Wikimedia projects − Wikipedias have always celebrated their millionth article, or Wikimedia Commons its milestones.

And it’s something I have been prone to just as much as anyone: one of my first contributions to the Wikimédia France blog ages ago was for Wikimedia Commons’ 8th million file ; and in recent times I have celebrated on this blog 50,000 and then 100,000 video games items on Wikidata.

Is there such a thing as too big? Big numbers are often “dizzying” − but sometimes, I find them borderline triggering existential dread: can a handful of editors really maintain, say, 300,000 music albums on Wikidata? How can we possibly tackle the two-thirds without a language? Only 7000 matches left to do in that Mix’n’match catalogue? Sounds tractable − if I would do 10 every day, it will only take me two years.

To deal with big, we needed to go fast. Developing, using and advertising highly powerful editing tools that bring the bot to the masses (I once read this referred to as “cyborgs” − human editors augmented by machines − how poetic, very cyberpunk).

This mood got to my thinking too: when I was regularly presenting Wikidata at events in Vienna, I eventually caught myself telling people that, sure, editing via the website is fine, but if you want to get Really Serious then you use QuickStatements or OpenRefine − ignoring the fact that most of my own editing is done with the good’old website.

Is there such a thing as too fast? While Listening to Wikipedia is a relaxing symphony, I find listening to Wikidata a stressful cacophony.

As the saying goes, we move fast and break things: Wikidata is getting too big, too fast. The Wikidata Query Service graph got so huge it will be split, and the growth of the core database is deemed unsustainable.

The thing is − we don’t always have to go big. Yes, we imported twenty thousand games from Steam − this was a good one. What’s next? How can we top that? 200,000 Flash games, one million from itch.io, even more from Google Play / App Store?

My answer is − we don’t really need a next big one. We don’t need to top that. We can rather go small. For example, by working on more modest platforms − 388 games on Nintendo 64, 251 on 3DO − or even niche ones − 22 games on Virtual Boy, 28 on Vectrex, 15 on Gizmondo? I’m in!

A good way to go small is to go local. The 2022 DACH Culture Contest got me working on games from Austria and from Switzerland (an interest later boosted by my curiosity for the CH Ludens research project) − currently some 200 games each.

With smaller sets, you can see the end. You don’t have that existential dread. You can afford to be thorough, to really flesh out items, to go deep. You can afford to take your time.

We can go slow.

The key ideas of the slow movement include prioritizing quality over quantity […]. It encourages a more intentional approach to daily activities, promoting sustainable practices and mindfulness. The movement spans various domains such as food, cities, education, fashion, and more.

English Wikipedia article on the Slow movement

Let’s have it for slow data. Let’s make edits that take minutes rather than racking tens per second. (And sure, “It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality” is an old Wikipedia trope, at times ill-used, but not wrong per se.)

As an example, I have recently enjoyed working on video game genres. I mentioned before our genre (P136) problem: missing on over 60% of our video game items, and no way in sight to automatically enrich these. Looking away from the abyss, I have found it rather pleasant to work on smaller genres like collect-a-thon platformer (Q104819482) or bullet heaven (Q122791012) − or even straight-up niche, like one-move game (Q112278052): adding these statements one by one, with a solid reference from a reliable source. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work. It will make the tiniest, most beautiful dent in the mountain.

This whole philosophy is built into my Integraality tool. For the most part, the numbers it presents are relative, not absolute − as the colours are based on percentages, not counts. The end-game, ostensibly, is to get the whole table dark blue ; but you do that cell by cell. It encourages you to work piece-meal, to pick the scopes as narrow as you feel like. Sometimes, all it takes to turn a cell blue is to edit a handful of items.

This does not mean not creating new items. But it does mean creating them more intentionally. The old, somewhat hyperbolic jest is that Wikipedia is full of articles that « no-one will ever read » (and I have done my fair share of that!) ; but on Wikidata, we sure have items that were not even created by someone, merely by something.

Does such an approach mean we will never be complete? And if we are not complete, are we useful at all? What’s the point of a video game database if we don’t have all the video games?

There’s an answer that touches on the Wikibase ecosystem, federation etc. There’s another one which would debate what is a video game. For now, I’ll just say that we can have the most complete of datasets of Austrian one-move games for the Vectrex. That’d be something! But joke aside, there is tremendous value in smaller but in-depth datasets. The CH Ludens project shows how a complete dataset of all Swiss video games would be highly useful in its own right − and that’s already ambitious enough (if very tractable).

There’s space for big and fast, for the QuickStatements batches and the OpenRefine imports, for bots running all day-long enriching data − it’s an important and necessary part of Wikidata.

And there’s time for small and slow, making one thorough edit at a time on narrower scopes.

I like a good acronym so let’s play a bit with Slow, NArrow, In-depth, Local − and call it SNAIL.

When your scope is getting too big for you, then consider re-scoping it down.
When it’s so big that you don’t know where to start, start small.
When you are tempted to “go big or go home” with your next QS batch, perhaps go home and sleep on it.

Let it SNAIL.

(The examples in that post were taken from my current main topic of interest − video games. I’m sure you’ll find your own examples in your own area of predilection.)

Three years ago, the Wikimedia Foundation introduced the Knowledge Equity Fund as an experiment to contribute to closing knowledge gaps and addressing knowledge equity, one of the two pillars of the 2030 movement strategy. The goal was to support groups who are creating and sharing knowledge with populations left out of mainstream knowledge structures because of racial barriers of power and privilege. By supporting a larger knowledge ecosystem, the Knowledge Equity Fund seeks to help Wikimedia communities to address pressing knowledge gaps in their language or region.

Since the Equity Fund first began, we’ve learned a lot about how we can be effective partners in the movement to address knowledge equity. Through multiple community conversations that we hosted in 2023, we heard feedback from volunteers about the goals and impact of the Knowledge Equity Fund which led us to make some key changes for our upcoming rounds of funding. 

These changes include

• More consistent and clear communication about the Knowledge Equity Fund, its grants and impact
• Opportunities for movement groups to also receive grants for work they are doing to address knowledge equity
• Clearer measures of impact for Knowledge Equity Fund grants

Achievements of our Round 2 grantees

In September 2023, we announced our second round of grantees. As part of the grant, our grantees have shared impact reports with us of their ongoing work before the conclusion of their one-year grant. We’ve published these grants on Meta, and a final one-year report will be forthcoming in the next couple of months. A few highlights from these reports include:

• Project Multatuli: with the grant, they have produced 16 stories, including two photojournalism essays, that touch on a wide range of issues in Indonesia, ranging from the role of indigenous women in society, public health, and culture to underprivileged youth, disability, and human rights. These stories can now serve as sources for Wikipedia articles on these topics. There is a further opportunity to connect Project Multatuli with local Wikimedians for initiatives that can make use of their investments in photojournalism 

• Create Caribbean: They received 60 nominations to their public call for participants for their oral history project. The team has conducted virtual and onsite interviews with people in Antigua, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Dominica and St. Lucia to collect nontraditional sources of knowledge. 

• The Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN): They organized three training sessions for indigenous and citizen journalists in North Sumatra, Riau, and Nusa Bunga. They report that “in 2023, as many as 154 articles have been written by indigenous journalists (JMA) and published on their website. The traffic involved 3,728 users with 20,537 reactions on the website (clicks, shares, comments, etc).” They have also invited Wikimedia Indonesia to these sessions to help learn more about Wikipedia’s content needs, in particular, in relation to knowledge by and about indigenous people.

Announcing Round 3 grantees

With the learnings from the last round of grantees, we are announcing the newest round of grantees who will be recipients of Knowledge Equity Fund grants. We will be giving grants to 13 organizations in 10 countries, supporting work to address knowledge gaps and create and share new knowledge. Hear more from these grantees in their own words:

(1) AfLIA: The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) is the umbrella body for the library sector in Africa, with membership from 34 African countries. We have worked with the Wikimedia projects through initiatives like the African Librarians Week, which resulted in the Wikipedia in African Libraries course as well as a course on Wikidata which sought to assist these professionals make their information resources more visible for all.  Nevertheless more work remains to be done. Firstly, this grant would enable us to revisit the Authority Control construct in Wikidata and Wikipedia. Currently, the AC template only directs readers of African content to national libraries outside the continent for ‘validation’ through the AC template; with this grant, we will create a model of how African National Libraries can create semantic Authority Control for their resources using Wikibase which can then be linked to African content on Wikidata and Wikipedia, through a collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland. Secondly, it will allow us to coordinate virtual conversations between the African Library sector and African Wikimedians, as a pathway for promoting Wikimedia projects and activities adoption in African libraries. 

(2) Archive Nepal: Archive Nepal is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization based in Nepal and the USA, focused on preserving and promoting Nepal’s rich cultural heritage by curating, digitizing, and improving access to archival resources. With this grant, we aim to catalog and digitally preserve historic manuscripts from Nepal’s diverse ethnic, minority, and marginalized communities. Through AI-powered tools and collaboration with the Wikisource team, we will engage the global community to transcribe and translate these manuscripts into accessible languages like Nepali and English, addressing inequalities that limit access to these materials. By digitally safeguarding these manuscripts, we ensure their preservation for future generations, while fostering inclusivity, cultural understanding, and community engagement.

(3) Democratic Voice of Burma: Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) was established in 1992 in Oslo to disseminate unbiased news and information to the people of Burma. Today, we provide 24/7 satellite TV news to people in Burma and publish dozens of stories daily online. Operating from exile, DVB has 100 full-time reporters inside and outside of Burma, with 20 million followers on Facebook, 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube, and a reach of at least  15 million TV viewers inside the country. We will use this grant to run trainings for our journalists and increase capacity building, and further maximize our audience reach through satellite TV, social media, and websites. We hope that the expansion and exposure will result in more openly-available, accurate, and creative content around people and issues of Burma.

(4) Earth Journalism Network: This century, every story is a climate story. Our mission is to strengthen local journalism that serves communities and policymakers on the frontlines of climate and environmental crises, enabling them to shape solutions, hold power to account and demand action. With Wikimedia’s support, we will be implementing two activities. First, we will support Indigenous journalists globally through a training program and story grants as part of our Indigenous Environmental Reporting project. Through the leadership of our Indigenous media trainers Amira Abujbara and Stella Paul, journalists will benefit from 1-1 editorial mentorship, hands-on skills training, connections with key experts, and the funding to complete a longform investigative reporting project. And second, we will be investing in immigrant, Black, Indigenous and people of color-serving local newsrooms in the United States and Canada who serve under-reported communities. We will do this through seed grants to enable them to develop their own innovative reporting projects that call attention to issues, groups and/or locations lacking representation in mainstream media.

(5) Ideas Beyond Borders: Ideas Beyond Borders (IBB) is dedicated to empowering individuals and communities in the Middle East by promoting knowledge, free expression, and intellectual curiosity. Through our work, we challenge censorship and misinformation, fostering a culture of open dialogue and critical thinking. This grant will empower 26 young leaders from 13 ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region through comprehensive training in journalism, media, and social media advocacy. IBB, Kurdistan Information Network (KurdistanIN), and those leaders will produce 13 documentaries and 13 Wikipedia articles, preserving the unique oral histories and cultural heritage of their communities while raising awareness of minority issues through a large-scale social media campaign.

(6) International Center for Journalists: The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) enables a global network of journalists to provide the trustworthy news essential to free and strong societies. The grant from Wikimedia Foundation will allow us to expand the multilingual resources we offer journalists on our unparalleled International Journalists’ Network (IJNet), with a focus on topics of critical importance to underrepresented communities. In addition, we will run a “solutions challenge” supporting newsrooms to innovate with AI in ways that deepen trust with the communities they serve.

(7) Just Futures Pahal: Just Futures Pahal (JFP) is a Nepali non-profit organization led by Dalit women and committed to understanding and fostering new narratives on dignity, justice, equity, inclusive democracy, and sustainability through the prism of Caste. We believe that over 120 million Dalit women worldwide must not remain invisible but must be recognized as valuable producers of new knowledge for just futures. This grant will support our inaugural Damal Fellowship, a nine-month intensive program involving six Dalit women to interrogate and foster narratives related to caste, gender, sexuality, and class. Additionally, the grant will help establish a distinct JFP Learning and Resource Center, as well as a digital space for archiving and accessing knowledge materials—textual and non-textual—on these topics and beyond. By doing so, we hope to expand the knowledge of the marginalized in open and accessible ways. 

(8) Kontras: The Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) is a non-profit organization established in Indonesia to promote human rights and democracy, ensuring that the state fulfills its obligations to respect and protect the human rights of its citizens. We will be using this grant to initiate the Human Rights Documentation Center (PUSDOKHAM). PUSDOKHAM has three priority program components: (1) serving as an archive center for human rights-related information in Indonesia, including archiving human rights advocacy activities, human rights defenders, and document human rights violation cases in Indonesia; (2) Providing a platform for citizens to report human rights violations; and (3) serving as an educational center on research methods for human rights monitoring. Based on meetings with local Wikimedia Indonesians, our training agendas will involve collaboration with the Wikimedia community. Through these collaborations we hope to further a partnership between KontraS and the Wikimedia community.

(9) Open Restitution Africa: Open Restitution Africa (ORA) is a pan-African, women-led initiative based in Kenya and South Africa, dedicated to making information on restitution of African material heritage more accessible, transparent and usable. Our work is premised on 3 core areas: collating nuanced grassroots research on restitution processes, providing access to this research via a bespoke open-data platform, and increasing awareness. Over the next 12 months, with this grant from the Knowledge Equity Fund, ORA will publish a series of in-depth restitution case studies, to drive restitution efforts across the continent.

(10) Rising Voices (Global Voices): Global Voices, through its Rising Voices initiative, will use the Knowledge Equity Fund grant to strengthen, build upon, and expand its support to Indigenous language communities. Over the past several years, we have collaborated with various Wikimedia affiliates and contributors in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We will facilitate spaces to bring together individuals who are part of the Global Voices community and the Wikimedia movement to collaboratively plan and implement future partnerships, leveraging their knowledge of both communities. The initiative will include additional collaborations with Wikimedia groups to provide peer-led digital activism workshops using the “Digital Initiatives for Indigenous Languages” toolkit co-developed with UNESCO as part of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. This initiative will also expand the peer learning Fellowship Program in Latin America. 

(11) School of Cultural Texts and Records: The School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University, India was established in 2003 to enhance the university’s capacities in archiving, digitization, bibliography, textual studies, editing, and book history. Our mission is to promote the use of archives amongst the general public. As the Endangered Archives Programme Hub for South Asia, we also collaborate with the British Library to regularly conduct workshops on various archival practices. Resources from the Knowledge Equity Fund will allow us to extend our reach, allow us to travel to remote areas of India to reach underserved communities and provide workshops on easy and low budget digitisation techniques. We plan to share the digitized items through Wikimedia, creating open access to cultural items of importance that have not been digitized before.

(12) Syria Untold: UntoldStories is an independent media organization running three major projects: SyriaUntold, a bilingual platform covering Syrian voices and stories; MENA Art Gallery, an online space supporting local artists; and UntoldMag, a bilingual magazine addressing interconnected global challenges. With support from Wikimedia, we will focus on amplifying underrepresented voices and telling the stories, past and present, of the diverse peoples who make our communities and preserve them. By producing high quality journalism and knowledge in Arabic and English we challenge mainstream narratives and propose an alternative lens that highlights the intersectional nature of our shared realities across the globe whether in Syria, West Asia, North Africa, and beyond.

(13) Auckland War Memorial: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum is the largest Museum in Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest, and most diverse city, Tāmaki Makarau Auckland.  For the past five years we have been actively working with various Wikimedia projects enabling it to make its openly licensed collections available to a global audience. This funding allows us to continue our Wikimedia Alliances Funded work, diversifying Auckland local history content on Wikipedia for use in secondary school classrooms. We will support a cohort of four university students in a ten-week Wikipedia editing programme at the Museum, taking part in the Museum’s wider Summer Studentship programme. With guidance from the Museum’s Wikimedian in Residence, this second cohort of Wikipedia Interns will focus on improving and diversifying Auckland’s local history content on Wikipedia, particularly focusing on underrepresented places, people, and related topics. The project aligns with the new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum and seeks to mirror Auckland’s cultural diversity, addressing gaps in knowledge representation and enhancing digital literacy, while also introducing a group of students to Wikipedia editing and the wider Wiki ecosystem.

The future of the Knowledge Equity Fund

The Knowledge Equity Fund was initially established as a one-time grantmaking fund to support racial equity initiatives and further free knowledge. No new funds have been added to the initial fund since it was first set aside in 2020. With the conclusion of Round 3, the Fund now has $815,000 USD left in the fund. The Equity Fund will run one last “round” in the next 4 months, where we will choose a handful of the most impactful grantees from the first rounds and provide them with a final “top up grant” to deepen their work with the movement and ensure that the content they create is present on the Wikimedia projects. 

With this final round, the committee will finish the grantmaking and close out the Equity Fund, and present our learnings about this experiment. We will be hosting a community call about Round 3 and the future of the Fund soon, and will share more information in the coming months about these forthcoming grants.

Oct 9, 05:00 UTC
Resolved - For approximately one hour after 5am UTC some uncached requests, such as those coming from logged in users, edits and api calls observed high latencies and/or errors due to an overload on MediaWiki nodes at the primary datacenter.

The internet archive appears to have been hacked via a polyfill supply-chain attack, with potentially 31 million records soon to end up on HIBP

The Wikimedia Foundation filed a friend-of-the-court or amicus brief in collaboration with the TEDIC and the CELE at the University of Palermo supporting Christian Chena in the Paraguayan Supreme Court case Gisele Zuni Mousques v. Christian Chena.

The case Gisele Zuni Mousques v. Christian Chena is currently before the Paraguayan Supreme Court. In this lawsuit, Mousques sued Chena for allegedly violating the Paraguayan Law On Comprehensive Protection of Women Against All Forms of Violence. Through an incorrect interpretation of the law, Mousques is attempting to suppress public interest information about herself, threatening freedom of expression and access to reliable and accurate information. In the continuous effort to promote gender equity and access to knowledge, the Wikimedia Foundation strongly believes that laws intended to protect certain groups or values should not be abused to suppress legitimate information. Furthermore, the freedom for volunteers to properly source articles is one of Wikipedia’s most significant assets, since there can be no new content on the Wikimedia projects without reliable and accurate sources. 

For this reason, the Foundation worked with TEDIC and the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE, in Spanish) to submit a friend-of-the-court or amicus brief supporting Christian Chena’s position. Participation in these types of cases is essential for an organization like the Foundation, as there is an increasing current of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) aiming to remove content from the internet that, while accurate, may displease those in positions of power. The Foundation’s efforts, then, seek to ensure our society remains a place where people can voice their opinions and beliefs freely without fear of persecution. This, in turn, helps to protect and promote the creation of reliable content that can be added to Wikipedia so that others can find it there, generating a virtuous circle that keeps people well-informed across the world.

About the lawsuit

The lawsuit concerns an article published by the news media outlet Última Hora, which claims that Gisele Mousques illegally retained members of the Paraguayan Armed Forces as domestic employees. Mousques’ complaint alleges that Chena, the businessman who owns the news media outlet in question, violated the law by publishing discriminatory language against Mousques based on her gender, violating her dignity. Subsequently, the Justice of the Peace of the city of Trinidad prohibited Chena from mentioning Mousques’ name on his own social media channels, as well as on any media outlet in which he is a stakeholder, for 365 days.

The Foundation is concerned that the overzealous application of this law could potentially prohibit negative statements against any woman regardless of the underlying journalistic intention, constituting a clear case of a SLAPP. We are concerned that the misapplication of this legislation threatens to render a chilling effect that may endanger freedom of expression in public and journalistic discourse. If this legislation continues to be applied too broadly, it may eventually become possible for any prominent public figure to censor criticism under the guise of fighting gender discrimination, and it might even endanger legitimate efforts to protect women and gender minorities from discrimination. This might directly affect the Wikimedia volunteer communities’ ability to properly source content on the projects, as less of it would potentially be available due to censorship. Consequently, volunteers could have to base their articles on less reliable content. We recognize that this is a complex position and emphasize that our agreement with the overall aims of the legislation is separate from our concerns over how this legislation is being implemented and enforced.

On our amicus brief

Our friend-of-the-court or amicus brief explains that the Justice of the Peace failed not only to consider the human rights implications of the ruling on freedom of expression and journalism, but also did not apply the appropriate test to determine whether a restriction of the affected party’s human rights was legitimate.  Instead, the Trinidad court argued that advertising the past activities and/or opinions of others does not constitute legitimate speech, and declined to apply the test in the process. We would have expected the court to recognize the special protection of freedom of expression in the context of public debate on matters of public interest, especially when it involves public officials and figures who voluntarily participate in the public debate.

The case is now on appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice in Paraguay. While the law serves an important goal, the legislation’s aims are separate from how the law is being used in practice regarding this lawsuit. We hope the Paraguayan Supreme Court reverses action in this case and recognizes the public interest in making such important information about high-profile individuals available. As we explain in our amicus brief, no law should be used as an excuse to censor speech, especially when freedom of expression in matters of public interest is at stake.

Learn more about the case and the law

If you would like to learn more about the case or the topic more generally, you can read the arguments presented in the amicus brief at the TEDIC website, and also take a look at the original text of the relevant law here. TEDIC has also published a comprehensive research report examining the legal theory and detailing the areas of potential abuse of the Paraguayan Law On Comprehensive Protection of Women Against All Forms of Violence, which might be of interest as well.

We would like to thank the Paraguayan NGO TEDIC and the CELE for drafting the brief. Thank you also to the Wikimedia Foundation’s staff Amalia Toledo, Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Noah Usman, former Legal Fellow.