During the first week of November 2024, a vibrant group of over 20 cultural students enthusiasts gathered in Cameroon for an intensive training session that marked the second activity after the official launch (held on October 26, 2024 in Garoua and Nkongsamba) of the Wiki-N’zuñdeuh project. This exciting initiative, running from October 2024 to May 2025, aims to enhance the digital representation of Cameroon’s rich cultural heritage through Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons… By empowering participants to contribute to Wikimedia projects, the project seeks to ensure that Cameroon’s cultural assets are better documented and more accessible to the world.

Kick-Start: A Day of Learning and Collaboration

Spanning 7 hours, the first training offered a comprehensive curriculum designed to introduce participants to the world of Wikidata. The day began with an overview of the platform, guiding attendees through its user-friendly interface. Key concepts such as items, properties, statements, and their values were discussed, equipping participants with the foundational knowledge needed to navigate the platform effectively.

Participants eagerly engaged in practical exercises, exploring existing items related to Cameroonian museums and cultural festivals. They learned how to enhance these entries with accurate references. Each participant made an average of 5 contributions, resulting in over 100 new references being added to Wikidata. This collective effort significantly enriched the documentation of Cameroon’s cultural narratives, showcasing the impact of community collaboration.

Engaging Discussions and Future Prospects

The training was characterized by lively discussions, where participants asked insightful questions and their experiences with cultural documentation. This collaborative atmosphere fostered a sense of community and collective responsibility toward preserving Cameroonian heritage.

As the training concluded, plans for the upcoming months were outlined, highlighting a variety of activities that will take place during the nine-month event. Participants and potential collaborators can look forward to:

• Edit-a-thons: Collaborative events focused on improving and expanding entries related to Cameroonian culture on Wikimedia.
• Translations: Efforts to make cultural content accessible in multiple languages, broadening its reach.
• Photowalks: Organized outings where participants will capture images of cultural sites, enriching Wikimedia’s visual resources.
• Wiki-clubs: Regular meetups for ongoing learning, sharing experiences, and fostering a community of practice.
• Mentorship: Opportunities for participants to receive guidance from experienced Wikidata contributors, enhancing their skills and confidence.

These activities are designed to deepen participants’ understanding of digital knowledge management while fostering a vibrant community dedicated to cultural preservation.

Looking Ahead

The Wiki-N’zuñdeuh project, supported by WAFTAI, its partners and the Ministry of Arts and Culture of Cameroon, promises to be a transformative initiative over the Cameroon and Africa. As the community documents museums, festivals, and other heritage elements, the public is encouraged to stay tuned for updates on progress. With the introduction of QR codes in Cameroonian museums and possibly building of tools powered by Wikimedia projects, visitors and users will soon have the opportunity to access rich, digitized summaries of cultural information, both onsite and offsite.

Commitment to Cultural Preservation

This training event not only marked the beginning of a significant project but also highlighted the importance of community engagement in cultural documentation. The enthusiasm and dedication displayed by participants reflect a shared commitment to preserving and promoting Cameroon’s cultural heritage. As the Wiki-N’zuñdeuh project unfolds, the community intends to work together to build a dynamic digital repository that celebrates and preserves the vibrant cultural tapestry of the nation. This collaborative effort harnesses the power of Wikimedia to elevate cultural heritage and ensure it remains accessible for future generations. Join us on this exciting journey!

Welcome to the October 2024 edition of the Language and internationalization newsletter by the Wikimedia Foundation Language and Product Localization team! This newsletter provides you with quarterly updates on new feature developments, improvements in various language-related technical projects and support work, community meetings, and ideas to get involved in contributing to the projects.

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Key highlights

Mooré Wikipedia is live!

Mooré is a language spoken by over 6 million people across Africa, yet remains largely underrepresented online. The Mooré language community have been taking steps for onboarding the language to Wikimedia projects, including translating the most used important messages on Translatewiki.net. However, a critical issue had been blocking the creation of the Mooré Language Wikipedia. The problem was that the Manual of Style (MOS) namespace on English Wikipedia conflicted with the interwiki prefix for the Mooré language, which also uses the code “MOS.” This issue was resolved by elevating the pseudo-namespace MOS to a real namespace on 12 wikis, including English Wikipedia, thus unblocking the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, which went live in September ^{[1] [2]}! This achievement has paved the way for a vibrant language community and its passionate contributors, who are now focused on boosting their online presence.

Enabling Translation Tools for Low-Resourced Languages

Translation tools, such as Content and Section Translation, were enabled on 25 Wikipedias ^[3] that currently lack machine translation support, including Hakka Chinese, Western Punjabi and Upper Sorbian. Normally, these tools are not available for languages without machine translation due to insufficient data. However, manually translating Wikipedia articles could provide the data needed to train translation models for these languages. By making these translation tools more visible now, we could encourage manual translations that may eventually enable machine translation support for these languages.

Recently, Google Translate added support for several new languages ^[4], showing how machine translation expands when enough data is available. Currently, 59 languages with machine translation support are enabled in the Content Translation tool for several Wikipedias ^[5].

Keyboard Layouts for Multiple Languages Added, Including Silesian

Numerous keyboard input methods, including Silesian, are now available in Wikimedia projects! For users, this means they can now type and contribute content on Wikimedia projects in these native languages. A big thank you to User:Bennylin, User:Krol111 and other volunteers for their contributions! ❤️ The addition of keyboard support for Silesian ^[6] gained traction during Wikimania in Poland this year, where language support was a dedicated Hackathon track. This highlights Silesian’s importance as a cultural and linguistic identity in the region. In the keyboard support area, there are now layouts for Silesian, Duala, Akan, Jawi, Krio, and more. For further development and contributions, please visit the project repository at GitHub – jquery.ime. You can also view the recent updates here: GitHub Commits.

New Projects Added to Translatewiki.net, Including VideoWiki

Translatewiki.net is a collaborative platform for translating and localizing software projects. Initially focused on the localization of MediaWiki, the platform is now widely used for several Wikimedia projects, along with other open-source initiatives like KDE. Users can contribute translations for software interface messages for projects on Translatewiki.net. Recently, six projects were added, including four Wikimedia projects—VideoWiki ^[7], CapacityExchange ^[8], Feverfew ^[9], Community Requests ^[10], and two external projects: UserProfileV2 ^[11], OpenHistoricalMap’s Overpass Turbo instance ^[12].

Language Support for New and Existing Languages

17 Languages were added to translatewiki.net, including Interslavic ^[13], Ngiemboon ^[14] and Jju ^[15]. Speakers of these languages can now translate MediaWiki user interface messages as part of the new wiki creation process.

10 Languages were added to Mediawiki, including Iban ^[16], Haryanvi ^[17], Saint Lucian Creole ^[18].  This allows speakers of these languages to help translate the software and content on various Wikimedia websites into their own language.

18 Configuration fixes were implemented, such as renaming autonyms ^[19], adding or modifying namespace translations ^[20] and adding RTL (Right-to-Left) support for InternetArchiveBot ^[21]. Learn more here: Language and Product Localization Technical Support Status Updates Q1 2024-25.

Topic-Based Filtering for Content Translation on Mobile

Translators using Content Translation on mobile can now personalize their article suggestions with 41 filtering options. This feature helps translators find articles aligned with their interests, making translations more relevant. The basics for topic-based suggestions is already available across the 287 Wikipedias where the mobile version of Content Translation is enabled. Users can now easily choose from popular articles and categories like Geography, Culture, History, Society, and more. This development is part of a broader ongoing project aimed at helping organizers identify and add relevant content based on high-impact topics to their Wikipedias. More details can be found here: Translation suggestions: Topic-based & Community-defined lists.

Community meetings and events

• A session on language support was hosted at the Wikindaba Hackathon, discussing how volunteers can contribute to testing internationalization and localization to ensure software usability in their languages. The importance of surfacing language-specific issues was emphasized to ensure they receive the necessary technical support and community involvement to resolve them. Ahead of the Wikindaba Hackathon, Khoehoe was added to translatewiki.net, along with a new keyboard for the language ^[22]. This initiative is part of the Khoe, Saan, and Xam’issa Language Project, aiming to promote editing and language incubation in Wikipedia for Khoe, Saan, and Kaaps languages.
• At the Let’s Connect Technology for Language Diversity session, the role of technology in supporting language diversity on Wikimedia projects was explored, with a focus on growth and incubation technologies. Participants engaged in a hands-on workshop using Translatewiki.net and Section Translation tools and shared positive experiences with the latter for adding citations.
• A session on the future of language incubation was hosted at the Celtic Knot Conference, discussing improvements to the onboarding process for new languages on Wikimedia platforms.
• Multiple sessions on language tools, onboarding, and strategies for developing Nigeria’s local languages were hosted at Wikiconference Nigeria, engaging over 70 attendees.
• A session on the state of language technology and onboarding at Wikimedia was hosted at Wikimania, exploring current tools and discussion on improving the language onboarding experience across Wikimedia platforms. The Language support track at the Wikimania Hackathon focused on addressing technical requests for new and existing language communities across Wikimedia projects.
• In case you missed the language community meeting in August, you can catch up by watching the video recording and reading the notes. This meeting had over 35 attendees, covering topics such as mapping language documentation initiatives, updates on the Language Diversity Hub, and a report on supporting South African languages during the Wikimania hackathon. Sign up here to attend the upcoming meeting in November.

Get involved

• If you are looking for technical tasks, take a look at the easy tasks that haven’t been assigned yet in various language project repositories on Wikimedia Phabricator.
• Interested in contributing to language support related technical tasks for new and existing languages? See open tasks on LPL Technical Support workboard.
• If you are looking for tools to edit and translate articles and interface messages, you can use Content translation and Special:Translate on Translatewiki.net. These tools make it easier to work with content in different languages.
• Report feedback on talk pages of language tools.

Stay tuned for the next release! You can subscribe to this newsletter.

References

1. ↑ https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/09/24/moore-wikipedia-goes-live/
2. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T363538
3. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T361582
4. ↑ https://blog.google/products/translate/google-translate-new-languages-2024/
5. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T369815
6. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T372652
7. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T369463
8. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T368548
9. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T368810
10. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T372526
11. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T371156
12. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T367680
13. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T366171
14. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T371985
15. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T373928
16. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T367991
17. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T364737
18. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T371051
19. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T375947
20. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T366271
21. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T372035
22. ↑ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T375535

Over the last months, the Release-Engineering-Team of the Wikimedia Foundation put efforts into making improvements and fixing issues in Wikimedia Phabricator, our main software planning software. Here is an incomplete list of achievements:

• Reduced visual complexity by removing or hiding unused functionality, such as the Differential code review tool and other tools, and the contact numbers panel in personal settings.
• Made message improvements and user interface tweaks, such as explicitly linking from the Global Search to the Advanced Search to raise awareness of its existence, and disallowing creating projects with an empty description.
• Phabricator reuses your confirmed MediaWiki email address during registration of a new Phabricator account - no more manually entering your email address.
• If you have multi-factor authentication (2FA) enabled for your account, re-authenticating skips the additional OAuth access dialog on mediawiki.org.
• When resolving a task and explicitly not setting a task assignee, no disruptive "Action with no effect" warning is displayed.
• Pppery contributed many fixes to our neglected internationalization and translation setup (thank you!). This also made Slovenian and Sicilian translations available in the language user settings.
• Fixed inaccurate data in project reports and fixed anonymous access to burndown charts.
• Transparent embedded image files have a checkered background.
• Each Phame blog links to its atom feed.
• Fixed various crashes and exceptions.
• Improvements to fight vandalism and made the corresponding checks more performant.
• API user queries include the MediaWiki username if you have sufficient permissions.
• Corrected some bad and missing data in our database (thanks to Valerio for the Bugzilla data!).
• Deployed the latest stable Phorge version from upstream - see the full upstream changelog.
• Reduced the number of custom lines of code in our Wikimedia downstream installation by contributing some of our changes to the upstream Phorge codebase and by removing obsolete or uncommon custom code in our installation ("technical debt").
• Fixed PHP8 compatibility issues in upstream and in custom downstream code.
• Developers and testers of our installation can use the "lipsum" script again to create projects.
• In the meantime, the WMF SRE team also upgraded the host machines from Debian Buster to Debian Bullseye.

We hope you enjoy your Wikimedia Phabricator experience!

As usual, your thoughts and questions are welcome on the Phabricator talk page.

Wiki Club AMU contributes differently into the Wikimedia ecosystem. Supported by Deoband Community Wikimedia, a recognised affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation, the club is the first whose Core Organising Team is female students. These students from diverse departments of the Aligarh Muslim University, established the group and are collectively working together to transform it into a vibrant space both in the Wikimedia ecosystem and at the university. Aafi supports this group of students as a strategic advisor. The club has organised several meetups and workshops until now. However, as a budding club – we want to share our journey with the wider community to create an impact. The vision of “imagining a world where every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” resonates with our core objective of creating an enriching knowledge-sharing community at the university.

Background: The Other Side of the Story

Wiki Club AMU was founded on May 31, 2024 when a few students at Aligarh Muslim University came together and took the first step towards the shared vision. It is an exclusive circle dedicated to the free knowledge movement. It finds its inspirations from the struggles of the university’s founder Syed Ahmad Khan in supporting the development of modern education in India.

Aims and Objectives

Apart from contributing to the growth of youth in the Wikimedia movement, Wiki Club AMU enlightens students at the Aligarh Muslim University about the vastness of the open Wikimedia ecosystem encouraging them to contribute. Active participation in such activities improves the academic skills of students while enriching the global open knowledge base. Wiki Club AMU was initiated with the goal of empowering students at the Aligarh Muslim University through the Wikimedia ecosystem and training them to contribute to freely accessible knowledge resources like Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, among other open platforms. The purpose of the club is to focus on creating a safe learning and collaborative environment to engage the university students. Moreover, it enhances their knowledge, and intellect thus shaping their holistic personality.

Wiki Club AMU has set up certain key objectives to sustain its growth in the university and the larger open knowledge ecosystem. These include promoting free knowledge, supporting students to enhance their academic skills, build a collaborative community and to develop leadership.

Explaining Objectives

1: Create Awareness about Free Knowledge

It is important to understand the stark difference between “Free Education” and “Free Knowledge”. Wiki Club AMU aligns with Wikimedia movement’s mission to make knowledge free and easily accessible to everyone. The club envisions for the open ecosystem to thrive, and contribute into the development of a more vibrant student community in this ecosystem.

2: Enhance Academic Skills

Wiki Club AMU wants to achieve this objective by engaging its participants in contributing to the Wikimedia ecosystem. While contributing on the Wiki projects, students could master essential skills like writing, editing, interpersonal communication and important leadership skills – which would be beneficial for their academic journey.

3: Build a Collaborative Community

Wiki Club AMU is focused on creating a vibrant, engaging and cooperative environment where students and alumni of Aligarh Muslim University work together to develop leadership and create an impact. The club began with only three members in May 2024 and has eight members in its Core Team as of October 2024 coming from diverse backgrounds. 

4: Develop Leadership

While the club is taking baby steps for its development and sustainability, yet it equally supports skill-building and leadership development. It aims to  establish processes with support from Deoband Community Wikimedia to make sure that COT members are well-equipped to lead future initiatives and mentor new participants.

The Club’s Core Organising Team (COT)

COT is at the heart of Wiki Club AMU much like the “Kitchen Cabinet” of Parliament. The team comprises eight members and is currently headed by Samiya Ahmed, a student of M.Sc Chemistry at AMU. Sana Sabir, a data analyst, played the lead role in setting up the foundation stone of the club alongside the founding members Marisha Shoeb, Mehwish Ali, Layeba Farooqi and Sheeza Shoeb. Their strategic planning and consistent efforts enabled the club to thrive. Regular meetings are organised to discuss ideas, plans related to extracurricular activities as well as other initiatives. The most recent COT meetings included a discussion with Praveen Das from Wikimedia Foundation and a meetup cum semi-workshop held on 13 October 2024. In the initial meeting, the focus was on setting clear goals, inviting members while developing a strong social media strategy to boost the online presence. Later, multiple projects were discussed including Wikidata, a project that allows users to create and manage structured data. Building capacity in this area is a significant goal for the club, with brainstorming sessions planned to continue through November 2024.

Roadmap

Since its inception, Wiki Club AMU has strategized several online events as well as offline meetings which are open for all. As we proceed further, we are planning to host various interactive offline workshops and competitions. These include:

• 500 Edit Challenge – Students could participate in this challenge to enhance Wikipedia by editing articles, proofreading and even sharing experiences related to AMU that contribute to the global knowledge pool. With this challenge, the club wants to engage the researchers in the open ecosystem. 
• Wiki Loves AMU Campus – An event motivating students to capture photographs of the AMU campus and sharing on Wikimedia Commons.

Looking forward, Wiki Club AMU is all set to launch a variety of exciting initiatives. Initially, we are planning to organise photography and training sessions on topics which help connect more students. The club membership is open to students and alumni of the Aligarh Muslim University. Those who are interested to join may submit the membership form.

The Wikimedia Movement, encompassing major projects like Wikipedia, thrives through the dedication of its global contributors. To sustain and enhance this success, the Wikimedia Movement Charter, which sets forth fundamental principles and governance structures, requires continuous evaluation and adaptation. This article delves into the experiences of the 2024 Arabic Ambassadors for the Wikimedia Movement Charter, highlighting their pivotal role in gathering feedback from the Arab Wikimedian community—a crucial step toward fostering inclusivity.

Ambassadors

• Osama Eid (Osps7): An active contributor to Wikimedia projects, he has been editing the Arabic Wikipedia since 2017. His primary focus is on the Arabic and Spanish Wikipedias, where he emphasizes editing, translation, and preventing vandalism. He also works to combat vandalism on Wikidata. Furthermore, he has played a role in developing several educational programs at universities and actively participates in promoting human rights and peace through Wikimedia projects..

• Sandra Hanbo: An editor on Arabic Wikipedia since August 2019, she has been the projects coordinator for the Wikimedians of the Levant since June 2022. She also serves as a regional coordinator for WikiForHumanRights 2023 and is a member of the Wiki World Heritage User Group. Additionally, she edits Wikidata and Wikisource and contributes multimedia to Wikimedia Commons.

• Donia AlDomiaty: An Egyptian doctor and member of the Leadership Development Working Program, she has been an editor on Arabic Wikipedia since 2019. She is the founder of the Wikipedian Editor Project and has organized numerous large-scale edit-a-thons and local photo competitions. Additionally, she is a member of the Egyptian Wikimedia User Group and the Arabic Wikimedia User Group, and has been an invited member of the Levant User Group.

• Rotana: Rotana: An editor on the Arabic Wikipedia and various Wikimedia projects, she has organized competitions related to the Arabic Wikipedia and is a member of the Wikimedians of the Levant.

Engaging the Arabic World

In May 2024, the Arabic Ambassador team initiated a series of online meetings. These sessions engaged representatives from 11 recognized user groups across the Arab region, fostering dialogue about the Charter, gathering crucial feedback, and providing a space for clarity and understanding. Recognizing the importance of inclusivity, invitations extended beyond established groups, welcoming all Arab Wikimedians, including unaffiliated volunteers.
Discussions were supported by interactive tools such as Mentimeter for live polling and gauging sentiment, as well as Google Forms for collecting detailed feedback.

Key Findings and Recommendations

1. Enhanced Outreach Needed:
   The report highlighted a low level of awareness and engagement with the Charter among the Arabic community, underscoring the need for targeted outreach tailored specifically for the region.
   
2. Volunteer Empowerment:
   Participants expressed concerns about ambiguous procedures for handling conflicts between communities and an absence of a defined process for addressing volunteer grievances. Some volunteers felt disconnected between the Charter’s rights and their current experiences. The report recommends refining the Charter to safeguard volunteer rights and establish clear conflict resolution mechanisms.
   
3. Clarity in Translation:
   Although the quality of the Arabic translation had improved, further revisions are needed to enhance the clarity of certain sentences and eliminate potential misunderstandings.
   
4. Strengthening the Movement’s Framework:
   The Arabic community called for clearer details about the relationship between the new Global Council and existing bodies. Concerns were also raised about the balance of power within the Council, particularly the distribution of influence between appointed and elected roles.
   

Moving Forward: A More Inclusive Charter:

The Arabic community offered valuable suggestions for both amending the Charter and encouraging its ratification:

Proposed Amendments:

• Define roles within the Charter more explicitly (e.g., distinctions between User Groups and individuals).
• Make the Charter more applicable and understandable for the Arabic-speaking community.
• Foster greater engagement between the Arab community and the global Wikimedia ecosystem.

Ratification Recommendations:

• Integrate awareness of the Wikimedia Movement into mentor-mentee programs for new volunteers.
• Highlight the Arab community’s significant role and responsibilities in shaping the Movement’s future.

The Human Touch: A Call to Action

The report concludes by emphasizing the need for increased outreach activities to educate volunteers about the Movement, the Charter, and related initiatives. A glossary to clarify technical terms used within the Charter would also be beneficial.

A particularly striking point raised by the community was the perception that the Charter focuses more on products (e.g., Wikipedia) than on the contributors themselves. This underscores the importance of emphasizing the human element and nurturing an inclusive and supportive community.

By addressing the concerns raised by the Arab Wikimedian community and implementing the recommended improvements, the Wikimedia Movement Charter can evolve into a more inclusive and effective document. The contributions of the Arabic Wikimedians exemplify how active participation and collaboration can bridge gaps and shape a more inclusive future for the entire Movement.

🕑 1 hour 9 minutes

Bertrand Gorge is the co-founder of Triple Performance, a (currently) French-language-only wiki that holds resources for farmers. He also co-runs the company Neayi, which manages Triple Performance.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Triple Performance
• Neayi
• "Rotations en grandes cultures" (Triple Performance article about crop rotation)
• Neayi GitHub account
  • Triple Performance Google Spreadsheets add-on
  • Triple Performance Docker image

The Wikimedia Foundation is rolling out temporary accounts for unregistered (logged-out) editors on multiple wikis. Their communities have the chance to test and share comments to improve the feature before it is deployed on all wikis in mid-2025.

On most wikis, edits made by logged-out users are attributed to the IP addresses used at the time of publishing the edit. An IP address is a unique number identifying a device connected to the Internet. Temporary accounts are a new type of user account present on 12 wikis, and next year, everywhere. They will be used to attribute new edits made by logged-out users instead of the IP addresses. It will not be an exact replacement, though. First, temporary users will have access to functionalities currently inaccessible for logged-out editors. Secondly, Wikimedia projects will continue to use IP addresses of logged-out editors, and experienced community members will keep access to them. This change is especially relevant to the logged-out editors and anyone who uses IP addresses when blocking users and keeping the wikis safe.

This is the first of a series of posts dedicated to temporary accounts. It gives an overview of the basics of the project, impact on different groups of users, and the plan for introducing the change on all wikis. Our next posts will offer more details on how we have been working with community members with advanced technical permissions. Following their advice, we have tied the deployments with work on specific functionalities.

Legal mandate for this change

Changing laws and regulation around internet privacy are creating urgency for the Wikimedia projects to protect personal data more strongly. To meet this need, the Wikimedia Foundation must change the way in which logged-out editors interact with the wikis, and how their personal data is handled. The solution is the introduction of temporary accounts – it will improve the logged-out editors’ privacy. To learn more about the need for temporary accounts, see the legal section in our FAQ and the 2021 update from the Legal team.

How temporary accounts work

Wikimedia projects allow anyone to edit, with or without creating an account. This is one of our founding principles. When an edit is made through a registered account, the edit is attributed to the respective account in various logs and pages like Recent Changes or page history. When an edit is made without an account, the edit will be attributed to an auto-generated temporary account. The temporary account will be created on behalf of the logged-out editor and will last for 90 days. All subsequent edits by the same device will be attributed to the same temporary account.

This account’s name follows the pattern: ~2024-1234567 (a tilde, current year, a number). The number automatically increments, such that the next user will be ~2024-1234568, and so on. Users won’t be able to choose this name.

It will be the same account even if the IP address changes, unless the user clears their browser cookies or uses a different device or web browser. A record of the IP address used at the time of each edit will be stored for 90 days after the edit. Only some logged-in users will be able to see it.

90 days after the account creation date, the cookie will expire. All published edits will continue to be attributed to its account, but the user, if they continue to edit as logged-out, will be assigned a new temporary account. Temporary accounts cannot be converted into registered accounts. To learn more on how temporary accounts work, see our help page.

Where are temporary accounts enabled

Temporary accounts are currently enabled on Wikipedias in: Cantonese, Danish, Igbo, Norwegian bokmål, Romanian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, and Swahili, as well as on Czech Wikiversity, Italian Wikiquote, Japanese Wikibooks, and Persian Wiktionary.

What does this mean for different groups of users?

For readers who don’t have a Wikipedia account

Nothing is changing! If you don’t edit, are not logged-in, and you are just reading Wikipedia (or using Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, etc.), there will be no difference from your perspective.

For logged-out editors

• This increases privacy: currently, if you do not use a registered account to edit, then everybody can see the IP address for the edits you made, even after 90 days. That will no longer be possible on wikis with temporary accounts enabled.
• If you use a temporary account to edit from different locations in the last 90 days (for example at home and at a coffee shop), the edit history and the IP addresses for all those locations will now be recorded together, for the same temporary account. Users who meet the requirements will be able to view this data. If this creates any personal security concerns for you, please contact talktohumanrights at wikimedia dot org for advice.

For community members interacting with logged-out editors

• A temporary account is uniquely linked to a device. In comparison, an IP address can be shared with different devices and people (for example, different people at school or at work might have the same IP address).
• Temporary user’s identity will be more stable than that of an IP user. If you see their edit, and you leave a message about it on their talk page, it will be quite likely that the person who made the edit will read the message, even if some time passes.
• Temporary accounts work similar to registered accounts in some aspects. We may enable more features for them in the future. As you can see in the screenshot above, temporary account users will be able to receive notifications. It will also be possible to thank them for their edits, ping them in discussions, and invite them to get more involved in the community.

For users who use IP address data to moderate and maintain the wiki

• For patrollers who track persistent abusers, investigate violations of policies, etc.: Users who meet the requirements will be able to reveal temporary users’ IP addresses and all contributions made by temporary accounts from a specific IP address or range. They will also have access to useful information about the IP addresses thanks to the IP Info feature. Many other pieces of software have been built or adjusted to work with temporary accounts, including AbuseFilter, global blocks, Global User Contributions, and more.
• For admins blocking logged-out editors:
  • It will be possible to block many abusers by just blocking their temporary accounts. A blocked person won’t be able to create new temporary accounts quickly if the admin selects the autoblock option.
  • It will still be possible to block an IP address or IP range.
• We are and will be working with other users with advanced permissions, like stewards. With invaluable comments and questions from these users, we have updated tools and scheduled deployments around these updates.
• Temporary accounts will not be retroactively applied to contributions made before the deployment. On Special:Contributions, you will be able to see existing IP user contributions, but not new contributions made by temporary accounts on that IP address. Instead, users meeting the requirements should use Special:IPContributions for this.

When will temporary accounts be deployed on more wikis?

• As we mentioned, we have rolled out temporary accounts on the first batch of wikis. This phase is called the minor pilot deployment. It will help us identify any issues that need to be fixed before temporary accounts are enabled on more wikis. We need to see how community members interact with temporary accounts, if all the existing and new tools are working, if experienced users comfortably perform their usual tasks, etc. We will be constantly monitoring the impact of this project and periodically sharing the reports. You can see a public dashboard with real-time metrics data.
• If we don’t have a ton of unexpected work, then in February 2025, we will roll out on larger wikis. We call this major pilot deployment. It may include some top 10 wikis which would express their interest (write to us here). We would prefer not to deploy on English Wikipedia at that time, though.
• Next, mid 2025, we will deploy on all remaining wikis in one carefully coordinated step. After that, we will be providing support, monitoring metrics, and solving issues as they arise.

We will do our best to inform everyone impacted ahead of time. Information about temporary accounts will be available on Tech News, Diff, other blogs, different wikipages, banners, and other forms. At conferences, we or our colleagues on our behalf are inviting attendees to talk about this project. In addition, we are contacting affiliates running community support programs.

Subscribe to our new newsletter to stay close in touch. To learn more about the project, check out the FAQ and look at the latest updates. Talk to us on our project page or off-wiki. See you!

Between June and August 2024, the Gombe Network, Wikimedia UG Nigeria joined forces with other Wikimedia communities across Nigeria for the WikiForHumanRights (WFHR) campaign, focusing on the theme “Knowledge for a Sustainable Future.” Our local campaign centered on “climate change and environmental justice” in Gombe State and the Northeast region. The campaign, which started in June, included an online launch led by national organizers, followed by a series of training sessions aimed at empowering participants with the knowledge needed to contribute meaningfully to Wikimedia platforms.

Building Awareness on Climate Change and Environmental Justice

From the 14th to the 15th of August, 2024, we held our in-person training in Abdullahi Mahadi Library, Gombe State University, Gombe State. For a successful campaign, Gombe Network partnered with the Department of Geography and Abdullahi Mahadi Library, both of Gombe State University, to leverage their academic expertise and resources to meet our campaign goal. The first day of the program was about deepening the understanding of participants regarding climate change and its relations with environmental justice. The session was moderated by a scholar from the Department of Geography, Gombe State University, Dr. Yusuf Umar Ahmed, who made a very educative presentation. He underlined some key causes and effects of climate change, citing that climate change was caused by human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation.

He spoke elaborately on the long-range effects that include a rise in global temperature, extremes in weather conditions, disturbance of ecosystems, and many more. His presentation included major indicators of climate change, which comprised changes in precipitation and melting polar ice, and described their effects on agriculture, infrastructure, and human health.

The major highlights of his talk were on environmental justice, and he elucidated that the marginalized communities are usually economically disadvantaged or people of color who bear a disproportionate share of the harmful effects brought forth by environmental degradation. These communities, such as the Afghanistan community, have greater vulnerability to pollution, toxic waste, and lack of access to clean water. He urged participants to act in active championing of environmental equity through entailing all communities in benefit sharing in environmental protections and underrepresented groups in decision-making processes.

Practical Wikimedia Training: Contributions to Climate and Environmental Knowledge

The second day of the training was led by Ismail Atiba with support from Umar Faruk Yunusa and Hussayn Akhanamhoya, providing the participants with practical skills to contribute to editing on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikivoyage. Again, with much emphasis on contributions that concern climate change and environmental justice, our community members were instructed on how to create and improve articles in regard to the environmental issues affecting their locality: deforestation, desertification, waste management and the socio-economic impacts of climate change upon rural Northeastern communities.

Participants made valuable contributions on climate change and environmental justice, ensuring that Wikimedia platforms reflect a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of the topic. 

Campaign Goals and Outcomes

As a community, our campaign goal was to localize this year’s theme (Knowledge for Sustainable Future) to address the urgent issues of climate change’s impact on vulnerable communities in Gombe State, Northeast Nigeria, specifically focusing on raising awareness, advocating for sustainable environmental policies, and promoting access to information/knowledge about best practices to achieve a sustainable future. Furthermore, the campaign aimed to engage 10 existing users and recruit 10 new editors while contributing and/or improving 80 Wikipedia and Wikidata items (50 Wikipedia, 30 Wikidata).

Outcomes

The campaign successfully achieved its goals and targets by creating and improving 382 contents (articles, items, and media files) through content creation, expansion, and improvement of existing articles. A total of 49 participants registered to participate in the campaign, with over 15 new editors joining the campaign. 

Testimonies

In an interview with some of the participants, they expressed satisfaction in the campaign exceeding their expectations while acquiring new knowledge and skills in creating awareness on the effects of climate change and promoting environmental justice in their community. Mrs. Maryam Bornoma, in an interview while expressing her satisfaction in the campaign, said, “As a legal practitioner, the concept of environmental justice is a new concept for me, and my participation in the two-day workshop has broadened my knowledge of what environmental justice means; hence, I have developed a research interest in the field and look forward to stepping down on the knowledge gained.” Another participant in the interview, Umar Faruk, saw the workshop as an opportunity to gain new insights both as a participant and support trainer.

Challenges

Communication gap: Prior to the kick-off of the campaign, the national organizers had online meetings with the community leads of Anambra, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Osun, Rivers and Igala Community, to delibrate on the action plans and deliverables for a successful campaign. However, new approaches adopted on coordination, contributions review by the campaign team reviewers without prompt comunication and consensus on the new development created gap and initial confusion on the part of Community organizers on contribution review and the end to the edit-a-thon.

Outreachdashboard: Article Scope Outreachdashboard introduced by the national organizers to track selected articles that falls within the campaign theme and topic list prove challenging in capturing the contributions of editors. Several attempt to reconfigure the outreach dashboard was unsuccessful as participating communities were forced either delete their existing dashboard and create an edit-athon scope dashboard or rely on manual collation making it difficult track contribution automatically. To mitigate this challenge, Article Contribution Table became handy collating Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items editors improved or created during the campaign timelone. Initially, it was a bit challenging and discouraging for newbies across communities, tutorial videos explaining how editors can input their contributions to the table shared by the national organizers to ease the challenge.

Looking Ahead: Sustaining the Momentum

The success of the WFHR 2024 campaign in Gombe reflects our community’s commitment to SDGs initiatives through open knowledge platforms. Moving forward, we aim to continue collaborating with local experts and engaging our participants to create more content on climate and environmental justice issues. Our collective effort will ensure that Wikimedia remains a powerful tool for raising awareness and driving action on climate change in North East Nigeria and beyond.

The Maharlika Highway, the nearest main road to our learning hub, has been inaccessible due to the heavy rains that Typhoon Kristine delivered to the Bicol Region. One of the areas that has been severely impacted is San Fernando, Camarines Sur. As a result of the flooded highways leading to the downtown area of Naga City, passengers of buses, private cars, and delivery trucks have been left stranded.

As a means of responding to this disaster, Wiki Advocates Philippines initiated a two-day donation drive to provide food packs and bottled water to stranded passengers. Together with our community members, our learning hub prepared meals and donations during the two-day donation drive. We may not have been able to reach other flooded areas, such as Camaligan, Gainza, Milaor, and the Rinconada area, but we hoped that we had inspired others to make the same efforts.  

We believed that helping people in need was a crucial component of our purpose as a group dedicated to promoting human rights and open knowledge. Wiki Advocates Philippines is determined to make a positive difference in the lives of those affected by Typhoon Kristine. By providing immediate support and assistance, no matter how small it is, we uphold the fundamental human right to dignity and well-being. Aside from annually participating in the WikiForHumanRights Campaign through editing, we also strive to live by the objectives of this initiative. 

As of today, the vehicle flow has resumed but is only limited to passenger buses and heavy trucks. The team is back to its regular operation in our learning hub for its ongoing activities. We would also want to highlight the support Art+Feminism has provided us in continuing our outreach activities for the typhoon victims. We appreciate those who have supported, prayed for, and sent sympathy to us in times like this. 

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

• Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [1]
• Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
• The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [2]
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.

Updates for technical contributors

• XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [3]

In depth

• Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.

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

The Karavali Wikimedians User Group and Tulu Wikimedians have made significant strides in preserving the rich heritage of Tulunadu by reviving the nearly lost tradition of Mugera Aati Kalenja.  This unique cultural practice is integral to the history of the Tulu people, and its revival marks a vital step in preserving the region’s folk culture.

The Significance of Aati

The project centers around Aati, the fourth month of the Tulu calendar, traditionally considered inauspicious. During this month, important events like marriages and religious ceremonies are avoided, as heavy monsoon rains create a period of rest for farmers in coastal Karnataka. This connection to the agricultural cycle reflects the Tulu people’s deep relationship with their natural environment.

Cultural Meaning

Aati holds significant cultural and spiritual meaning. Rituals performed during this month aim to protect people from illnesses brought on by the wet season. One such ritual is Aati Kalenja, believed to safeguard both the community and livestock. This ancient tradition involves impersonating the spirit Kalenja, who descends during Aati to protect the people. Members of the Nalke community, Mugera community known for their cultural roles, dress as Kalenja, donning intricate costumes and painting their faces.

The Ritual of Aati Kalenja

The ritual includes visits to homes, where Kalenja impersonators perform dances, sing traditional songs, and sprinkle a mixture of turmeric, charcoal, and salt to ward off evil spirits and promote health. The presence of Kalenja is thought to bring blessings and positive energy.

(BHARATHESHA ALASANDEMAJALU, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Decline of the Tradition

However, Mugera Aati Kalenja had not been performed over a decade(exactly 12years), particularly by the Muger community in Belthangady, who had been custodians of this tradition. Factors such as modernization and urban migration contributed to its decline, with only one family continuing the practice, making it increasingly rare.

To combat this decline, the Karavali and Tulu Wikimedians launched a project to revive Aati Kalenja. They visited the Mugera community to encourage them to bring back the ritual, offering support along the way. After numerous discussions, the community agreed to revive Mugera Aati Kalenja.

To ensure authenticity, the Wikimedians provided traditional items, including the tatra, a palm-leaf umbrella essential to the ritual. They worked closely with the community to maintain the original practice. Their efforts were successful, and the Aati Kalenja performance was resurrected. This event was documented as part of the larger Tulavas Aati Month documentation project, aimed at preserving the traditions of this unique period.

Community Participation

Remarkably, many Tulu people were unaware of this tradition due to its localized performance. Over 30 people participated in the revival, with more than 10 performing the ritual and visiting over 50 households, just as their ancestors had done. This marked a significant milestone in preserving a living heritage on the brink of extinction.

Support

The revival of Aati Kalenja was made possible through the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and the dedication of the Karavali and Tulu Wikimedians. Their commitment to cultural preservation has ensured that this tradition will endure for future generations. To secure its future, younger community members have been trained in the ritual, ensuring that knowledge and skills are passed down.

Team of Documentation

Led by BharatheshaAlasandemajalu, with support from Dr.VishwanathaBadikana, Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai, Ms. Vinoda Mamatha Rai, Ms. Yakshitha, Mr. Chidananda, Yadupathi Gowda, and Dr. Diva Kokkada, the team has reawakened the spirit of Aati Kalenja and reinvigorated interest in Tulunadu’s folk culture.

Conclusion

This project transcends mere preservation; it reconnects the Tulu people with their cultural roots and protects their living heritage for future generations. The revival of Mugera Aati Kalenja serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of cultural preservation in an increasingly modern world, showcasing the resilience of local traditions and the deep connection between people and their environment.

By documenting and reviving the rituals of Aati month, the Karavali and Tulu Wikimedians have made an invaluable contribution to preserving Tulunadu’s cultural legacy. Through the addition of photos, videos, and media to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, writing insightful articles for Wikipedia, and enriching incubartor Wiktionary with traditional words, they have ensured these cherished traditions are globally accessible. Their efforts beautifully enhance the Wikimedia movement, offering the world a deeper understanding of Tulu culture.

Click on the link to see more images and media files related to Mugera Aati Kalenja

It’s the eve of the 2024 US election. Tens of millions of votes have already been cast, with many more to come today. And thanks to the efforts of nearly 200 participants in our election courses throughout the past year, voters who use Wikipedia to learn more about their options in this election – and those who rely on one of the many digital assistants or AI search tools that draw from Wikipedia – have more information to make their decisions. 

Wiki Scholars courses like Elections and Campaigning in the United States, Women and Politics in the US, and State Politics and Policy have brought together subject matter experts to learn to edit Wikipedia, tackling misinformation and filling in the content gaps on election-related content. 

Course participants improved the encyclopedia’s coverage of electoral processes, proposed local laws, US political parties, voting behavior and participation, candidates for office, and other topics related to the election, making an incredible impact on the public’s understanding of these topics. Their work on Wikipedia has been viewed nearly 28 million times!

For Libby Newman, associate professor and chair of the Department of Government, Politics and Law at Rider University, the professional development course also offered an opportunity to better understand the editing process on Wikipedia.

“I came away with much more confidence in Wikipedia as a source, and I feel empowered to add content myself now, too,” said Newman.

From candidate biographies and historical events to voter access and voting behavior, participants contributed to a diverse range of topics to create new, neutral content to help inform voting decisions. 

Particularly interested in voter access, one participant created several new Wikipedia articles including Homeless vote in United States, United States non-resident eligible voters, and Pitt v. Black, a 1984 legal case that established that Americans living in non-conventional accommodations cannot be refused the right to register to vote.

“My community service with homeless people sparked the interest in creating an article about the homeless vote in the United States, which consequently led to the creation of the Pitts v. Black article, a landmark case that allowed Americans to cast their ballot even if they reside on a park bench,” explained the participant.

This editor also enhanced articles like Voter registration in the United States, Absentee ballot, and Election law, adding more than 50 new references and nearly 4,000 words through their work on Wikipedia.

Without a doubt, Wikipedia’s role as a neutral and high-quality public knowledge source is more critical than ever during election years, providing nonpartisan information to voters as they wade through the never-ending landscape of bias and misinformation online. As course participant Dale McGowan of the Center for Election Innovation & Research shared with us, the heart of Wikipedia is democracy – the democratization of knowledge for all.

Interested in learning more about our election courses and the subject matter experts who participated? Explore their stories:

• Scholar, writer joins efforts to democratize knowledge on Wikipedia
• Connecting the past and present: Political scientist brings expertise to Wikipedia during election year

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

Looking to empower your students by incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. Apply by December 1, 2024 for priority consideration for spring 2025.

Welcome to “Don’t Blink”! Every month we share developments from around the world that shape people’s ability to participate in the free knowledge movement. In case you blinked last month, here are the most important public policy advocacy topics that have kept the Wikimedia Foundation busy.

The Global Advocacy team works to advocate laws and government policies that protect the volunteer community-led Wikimedia model, Wikimedia’s people, and the Wikimedia movement’s core values. To learn more about us and the work we do with the rest of the Foundation, visit our Meta-Wiki webpage, follow us on LinkedIn or on X (formerly Twitter), and sign up to our quarterly newsletter or Wikimedia public policy mailing list.

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Protecting the Wikimedia model
(Work related to access to knowledge and freedom of expression)

Discussing and promoting “The Power of the Commons” at the United Nations Summit of the Future
[Watch our side event “The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World” and CEO Maryana Iskander’s Action Days plenary session remarks]

UN Member States gathered in New York this September for the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and an official pre-event, the Summit of the Future, to discuss and vote on several important commitments related to the future of internet regulation. These commitments, embodied in a document called the “Pact for the Future,” aim to advance digital technologies in a way that enables all the world’s people to thrive.

In an opening video for the Action Days’ high-level plenary session on “securing our digital future,” Maryana Iskander (CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation) offered her thoughts about the Global Digital Compact, the annex to the Pact focused on digital governance. She shared the Wikimedia community’s hopes that the Compact will be implemented through a strong multistakeholder process and that it will encourage governments to support the communities who build Digital Public Goods (DPGs) like the Wikimedia projects.

On the same day, we also co-hosted a high-level side event at the UN titled “The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World.” The event explored why we need to consider the whole of society when discussing how technology is shaped and governed. It featured success stories, highlighting grassroot efforts to develop community-governed public interest projects and goods, and gathered a panel of experts from government, civil society, and academia. Now that the Compact is approved, we need to think about how it will be implemented. To ensure that community work is promoted and protected on the internet, and that open knowledge can be shared freely, we need to work with governments, the private sector, and civil society to promote and protect Digital Public Goods (DPGs) and Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs).

View the recording of our side event The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World and CEO Maryana Iskander’s Action Days plenary session remarks. For those interested in the lessons learned from the campaign that Wikimedia affiliates and the Foundation launched to include our proposed commitments in the Compact, check out this slide deck on Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedians set policy priorities at the Big Fat Brussels Meeting
[Read Wikimedia Europe’s blog post about the event]

Wikimedians from chapters across Europe gathered once again for the Big Fat Brussels Meeting, where they discussed the most pressing legal and policy issues for the Wikimedia projects in Europe. Joining them from the Global Advocacy team were Rebecca MacKinnon (Vice President of Global Advocacy), Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) and Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy and Advocacy Lead).

The meeting covered topics related to existing and upcoming legislative reforms across the European Union (EU) like child safety online and artificial intelligence, and participants were able to take part in trainings on advocacy topics like communication and planning. Other discussions focused on how to address lawsuits that seek to censor civil society projects like Wikipedia, as we saw in our recent court victory in Germany. The event also featured a visit to the European Parliament to present findings from a study on disinformation on different language versions of Wikipedia, followed by a meeting with parliamentary staffers. At the Parliament, Costanza was part of a panel presenting a new research project led by Wikimedia Europe, EMIF, the University of Amsterdam, and Eurecat – Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya, to study Wikipedia in the 2024 EU Elections.

As Ricky reflected:

“The gathering came at an important time for Wikimedians in the EU. The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) has been in force for one year and recent elections for the EU parliament have shaken up the political landscape in Europe. Engaging constructively with EU institutions is critical for advancing free knowledge in Europe, and the Big Fat Brussels Meeting allowed us to begin thinking strategically as a group about how to best advance this mission.”

Find out more in Wikimedia Europe’s blog post about the event.

Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA)
[Read an interview with Wired Italia and find more reflections in our op-ed at The New Federalist last month]

As we approach the anniversary of the EU DSA coming into force, the Wikimedia Foundation reflected on how its implementation has impacted the Wikimedia projects and the broader online information ecosystem.

In Wired Italia, Rebecca MacKinnon discusses the unique position of the Foundation in regards to the DSA: the only nonprofit host of a website designated as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP). Being a VLOP demands that the host follow the most stringent requirements of the DSA. Rebecca explained that while the Foundation generally agrees with the promises of the DSA and did not contest its VLOP status, the burdens of compliance with the regulation are significant for our public interest organization’s small legal team. Respect and support in the DSA for community governance as in the case of the Wikimedia projects has, however, been vital in lessening that burden and ensuring the continued survival of the Wikimedia model in this new regulatory world. She warned that as more legal frameworks like the DSA are considered elsewhere, policymakers should consider the “Wikipedia Test,” which asks if a law or regulation will protect or harm online communities like the ones that run Wikipedia and other public interest projects.

Read Rebecca’s interview with Wired Italia (in Italian) and read the op-ed that Jacob Rogers (Associate General Counsel) published in The New Federalist.

Contributing to European Commission’s Consultation “Future-Proof AI Act: Trustworthy General-Purpose AI”
[Learn more about the EU AI Act and about our prior submissions to consultations about AI]

As legislators across the globe grow increasingly interested in passing laws and regulations to shape the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), the Foundation has provided input to several official consultations worldwide to ensure legislation takes into account the perspective of public interest projects like Wikipedia. Most recently, we contributed to a consultation on the implementation of the European Union’s AI Act, which seeks to address a number of potential risks posed by AI development by imposing rules about how these technologies are both developed and used. 

The consultation focused on general-purpose AI, and we shared best practices that could be undertaken by providers of general-purpose AI models to meet the standards set out in the EU AI Act. Our recommendations include committing to provide attribution to the sources in AI outputs, including honoring any conditions required by open licenses on source content and providing enough information about the process of building a training database for a model that it can be replicated by researchers. These practices are important for ensuring that AI models support the data sources, like Wikipedia, which they use for training while also providing adequate transparency around their input sources to allow better scrutiny.

Find out more about the EU AI Act, and read about our prior submissions to AI consultations worldwide.

Protecting Wikimedia’s values
(Work related to human rights and countering disinformation)

Discussing free expression and fair elections at the Future of Speech Online (FOSO) conference
[Watch the panel on Youtube]

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and Stand Together Trust hosted their annual Future of Speech Online (FOSO) conference from 16–17 September. The conference gathered policymakers, campaigners, and experts across the fields of law, elections, public policy, and technology to discuss important policy topics related to the over 60 elections that will take place worldwide before this year ends. Conversations at the conference focused on how to protect free and fair elections by ensuring voters are getting truthful information and also by upholding human rights like freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) joined a panel with representatives from WITNESS and Internet Sans Frontières, which are community-based projects focused on sharing knowledge online. The panelists shared their perspective on how to build these types of trustworthy spaces online without making the intermediaries who host these platforms—like the Foundation—the ultimate decision makers about what is truthful and what is not. Costanza explained how the infrastructure of Wikipedia, with policies shaped and enforced by volunteers, helps to encourage the reliability and integrity of the information on that Wikimedia project. She argued that this reliability has a ripple effect, because the data on Wikipedia supports a broader internet ecosystem of search engines, digital assistants, and large language models (LLMs).

You can watch the panel on YouTube, and find recordings and transcripts from both days of the conference on the CDT’s conference webpage.

Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event
[Read more about the Global Gathering] 

The annual Global Gathering event—formerly the Internet Freedom Festival—brought together participants who work on digital rights for several days of discussion and making connections in Estoril, Portugal. Local Wikimedians Jorge Gomes of Wikimedia Portugal and Ana Bragança from Wiki Editoras Lx joined Global Advocacy’s Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy and Advocacy Lead) to host a booth at the event, which featured stories about how Wikimedians work to make the internet a more equitable place.

At the booth, Jorge and Ana shared their experiences editing Wikipedia and growing their communities in Portugal, including the important work Wiki Editoras Lx is doing to close the gender gap on the Portuguese version of Wikipedia. Attendees could also learn about the Foundation’s public policy and advocacy priorities more generally and our work engaging global governments to uphold free expression, privacy, and transparency online.

Read more about the Global Gathering.

Discussing elections at the “Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy” book launch
[Watch a recording of the event on YouTube]

This month, Costanza Sciubba Caniglia moderated a panel at Columbia University as a part of the launch of the book “Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy: Legal Approaches in Comparative Context”—edited by Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr., András Koltay, and Charlotte Garden. This book brings together legal scholars from across the world to explore examples of the issue of false and misleading information online, and potential measures to address it without infringing upon democratic values like free political speech. Other topics explored in the book include proposals for government regulation, media self-regulation, and the role of civil society.

At the event, Costanza hosted a panel focused on what social groups and civil society institutions can do to address misinformation and disinformation around elections. Some of the approaches and actions include: public regulation of large private online companies; strategic litigation; and, greater protections for unions of knowledge workers, educators, and scientists. The panel also touched on the topic of journalistic content being used to train large language models (LLMs) and AI, and the potential interruptions of revenue for journalism that may result from that.

Watch a full recording of the event on YouTube.

Announcements from our team

The fourth Global Advocacy newsletter is out! 

In this most recent issue, we look closely at our activities at the United Nations ahead of, and during, the UN General Assembly and Summit for the Future. We also share news about an encouraging US Supreme Court ruling focused on state laws limiting social media platforms’ ability to moderate content, information about how Wikipedia editors are working to counter disinformation in this important year for elections across the globe, and a summary of the efforts of Wikimedia affiliates and the Foundation to address public policy advocacy challenges at the first global meetup on these issues as well as at Wikimania 2024.

Read the latest issue of our newsletter, and sign up to receive the next one!

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Follow us on LinkedIn or on X (formerly Twitter), visit our Meta-Wiki webpage, sign up for our quarterly newsletter to receive updates, and join our Wikipedia policy mailing list. We hope to see you there!

24/10/2024-30/10/2024

Mapping

• Requests for comments have been made on the amenity=travelers_lounge proposal for mapping public seating areas within transit facilities, such as airport lounges or waiting areas at railway stations.

Community

• [1] Strubbl’s OSM profile page features a comic inspired by xkcd #386 titled ‘Duty Calls‘.
• Alan Grant has been conducting a systematic update of local points of interest (POI) across several neighbourhoods in the city of Málaga, Spain, and has been detailing the process in a series of OSM diary entries.
• Arnalie Vicario gave an overview of the OSMF Membership Campaign 2024; 392 new members have signed up since the start of the campaign in March with 16 new countries now having members.
• Carlos Lunna has documented ► his research on socio-technical interactions in the Altos and streams of the North Zone of Recife and its adjacent area in Olinda, Recife Metropolitan Area, Northeast Brazil, noting ► changes in public spaces such as the Alto do Eucalipto. He has observed community-led changes, such as sports markings, and later improvements by the NGO G10 Favelas, including playgrounds and painted staircases, highlighting local adaptations and evolving landscape changes driven by residents’ needs.
• Jacopofar shared his experience of contributing 360° imagery to Mapillary using a GoPro MAX, describing its benefits for capturing detailed street views, particularly in Milan, Italy, and detailing the camera setup, recording insights, and tips for improving coverage on OpenStreetMap.
• Daniel Capilla has created a new wiki userbox for those OpenStreetMap users who contribute to OpenBenches, a crowdsourcing project that gathers information about memorial benches around the world.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Christoph Hormann observed that the OSMF currently faces challenges in producing high-quality small-scale maps using OpenStreetMap data for public communication.

Local chapter news

• At the KonGeoS 2024 conference in Würzburg, Germany, FOSSGIS e.V. representatives talked ► to geodesy students about open source GIS software, including OpenStreetMap, and introduced FOSSGIS to many attendees, highlighting opportunities for student contributions and wider use of OpenStreetMap data.
• OpenStreetMap Austria will showcase ► OpenStreetMap at the Maker Faire ► in Salzburg on Saturday 9 November, inviting attendees to explore mapping and interact with both new and experienced mappers at this DIY-focused event.

Events

• The FOSSGIS 2025 conference is accepting ► submissions for various formats, including talks, workshops, lightning talks, and posters, until Tuesday 5 November. Special focus is on ’25 Years of FOSSGIS e.V.’, inviting contributions that reflect on the organisation’s history, milestones, and member experiences. The programme and registrations will open in January 2025.
• OpenStreetMap US has announced the Mapping USA 2025 virtual event, scheduled for 24 and 25 January 2025, and is inviting proposals for talks and workshops by Monday 25 November, with registration details and an optional $10 non-member donation.
• Volker Krause reported on his work at the OSM Hack Weekend, which focused on preparing the KDE Itinerary public transport client for integration with MOTIS v2, improving map features for trip views, and advancing indoor routing testing. These improvements were made possible through collaboration, highlighting the value of hack weekends, which are supported by donations from the KDE and OSM chapters.
• Jimmy Angelakos will present at the PostgreSQL Conference Europe 2024 on using the free tools of PostGIS and OpenStreetMap to integrate GIS capabilities into PostgreSQL.
• In his blog, Ravi Dwivedi reflected on his experience of attending the 2024 State of the Map in Nairobi, Kenya, discussing the diverse OpenStreetMap community, project insights, logistical aspects, and suggestions for more open source communication tools in organising such events.
• The OSM Kerala Community Meetup on November 16-17 is an annual gathering, organised by the OSM Kerala (India) community since 2022. The call for talks closes on Monday 4 November, and the deadline for scholarship requests is Thursday 7 November.
• IDéO BFC has published a recording of the webinar ‘OpenStreetMap: A Digital Commons Serving Local Communities’, led by Alban Vivert, founding member of the French Federation of OpenStreetMap Professionals ►. In the same video, Aymeric Dutremble presented ► the initiative of the Haut-Jura Regional Natural Park around OSM and upcoming events ► highlighting OpenStreetMap.

Maps

• Zsolt Ero shared several updates about OpenFreeMap, a free and open-source map hosting solution that offers custom styles for websites and apps using OpenStreetMap data. Since its launch one month ago, it has gained around 2,000 GitHub stars, handles 300 requests per second, and has 2 TB of daily traffic.
• Rebecca Laurel, a cyclist from Leicester UK, has created ► a Halloween-themed GPS artwork by riding a 112 kilometre route in the shape of a skeleton; a challenging project, as the legs and ribs had to be traced. Rebecca’s previous Strava art creations include pumpkins and ghosts.

OSM in action

• Votermap provides an interactive visual comparison of US presidential election data between 2016 and 2020, showing individual county vote distributions based on population density and county vote totals.
• Shahwaiz Bukhari built ‘Safe Route’, an OpenStreetMap-based route planner that calculates the likelihood of encountering crime along a given path, using historical data. The crime data is customisable through a CSV file that includes the coordinates of past incidents.
• Scrambled Maps is a daily map puzzle in which players rearrange randomly scrambled OpenStreetMap tiles of a city chosen from a pool of 28,000 worldwide. The game includes a feature that makes tiles of the same colour (e.g. ocean tiles) interchangeable, improving playability by reducing trial-and-error frustration.

Open Data

• Pete Masters shared statistics and facts about the open drone imagery hosted on OpenAerialMap, hopefully useful and interesting for the OSM community, as a key user group!

Programming

• Alexey Zakharenkov talked about the design of their metro line route validator, in particular about the algorithm for searching for missed metro stations. Variations of this validator are being used by applications such as Organic Maps and MAPS.ME.
• William Edmisten compared restaurant data from OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps, highlighting differences in data sourcing, accuracy, and update frequency. They found that while Overture has a larger dataset, OSM often shows higher quality in recently edited data, particularly where active local mappers contribute. However, Overture’s confidence scoring can also produce high quality data, especially in areas with strong proprietary data contributions.
• Kieran Farr announced that the 3DStreet traffic simulator now has an option to import OSM Carto tiles and 2.5D buildings from OSM as an alternative to Google Maps and Mapbox Satellite.
• Michael Kreil has made ► VersaTiles, a free and open-source software stack for generating, distributing, and using vector map tiles based on OpenStreetMap data.

Releases

• OpenInfrastructureMap released several feature updates, including added water, sewage treatment plants, and reservoirs on the water layer, a visual redesign of the infobox section, and translations for many common tag values.
• HeiGIT’s openrouteservice now has export and snap endpoints, changing the way users interact with and process routing data, making it easier to handle complex use cases or pre-process points for routing queries.
• The OSM Traffic Sign Tool helps users match OpenStreetMap tags with the relevant traffic signs. Version 2.1.0 enhances mobile usability, optimises tag validation, and introduces a streamlined tag selection interface for faster mapping.

Did you know …

• … that OsmAPP offers a convenient interface for everyday use of OpenStreetMap, including a basic search engine, various map layers, and POI editing?
• … that flosm has developed several thematic maps derived from OSM data, such as a power grid map and a public transport map?

Other “geo” things

• dgTerritorio, by the Departamento de gestão do território de Portugal, offers the Webfototeca, with aerial images of Portugal, from 1940 to 2000. The images can be obtained ► through an acquisition ► process.
• Google Maps has reached over 2 billion monthly users, with the company integrating its Gemini AI models for enhanced functionality and promising further improvements in 2025, as highlighted in Alphabet’s Q3 2024 earnings report.
• Jacek Krywko, from Ars Technica, reported that a team of researchers have used drone-based Lidar to map mountainous medieval cities along the Silk Road between East Asia and Europe.
• MapScaping is providing a comprehensive, interactive map for US drone operators, highlighting no-fly zones, restricted airspace and customisable layers for airspace data. It includes search and GPS location capabilities, as well as downloadable datasets, but still requires official FAA authorisation for operations in controlled zones.
• OpenCage shared unique geographical trivia for each US state, showcasing Alaska’s unusual position as the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state, Alabama’s geological ‘black belt’ and its historical influence on demographics, Arizona’s complex time zone differences within Native American reservations, and other intriguing state-specific facts, culminating in a ‘geoweirdness’ thread.
• The Concord Consortium’s Geological Models for Explorations of Dynamic Earth (GEODE) project has developed ‘Seismic Explorer’, an interactive tool that visualises global earthquake data, tectonic plate boundaries, and patterns of seismic activity over time, designed to support educational exploration of geophysical phenomena. Gigazine has published a comprehensive guide detailing the features of this visualisation tool.
• s3lph has built a laser-engraved plywood map that displays the locations of hackerspaces around Central Europe. The location of each hackerspace and their SpaceAPI opening states ► are represented by red and green LEDs embedded in a 60 x 70 cm plywood map.
• Victor Vikulov, product owner of the short-term scooter rental service Whoosh, talked about how to develop a navigation system for electric scooters, what are the peculiarities, where to acquire the data (you should know the answer), and how to organise the development taking into account the cartographic specifics of the task.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Moers	Community-Hackday am 1. – 3. November 2024 im JuNo, Moers Repelen		2024-11-01 – 2024-11-03
Berlin	OSM Hackweekend Berlin 11/2024		2024-11-02 – 2024-11-03
Hobart	FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2024		2024-11-05 – 2024-11-08
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2024-11-05
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2024-11-06
Potsdam	Radnetz Brandenburg Mapping Abend #10	✓	2024-11-06
	LCCWG Monthly Meeting		2024-11-07
Dresden	OSM Stammtisch Dresden		2024-11-07
Dresden	Stammtisch Dresden		2024-11-07
Gent	OpenStreetMap + pizza + velopark – meetup		2024-11-08
Salzburg	Maker Faire Salzburg 2024		2024-11-09
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-11-10
Zürich	169. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich		2024-11-11
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #70		2024-11-11
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-11-13
Vitoria-Gasteiz	XV edición de las Jornadas Ibéricas de Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (JIIDE)		2024-11-13 – 2024-11-15
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-11-14
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-11-14
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-11-13
	OSM US Pre-Geoweek Mappy Hour		2024-11-14
Bochum	Bochumer OSM Treffen		2024-11-14
Saint-Claude	Conférence Apéro OpenStreetMap		2024-11-15
Vythiri	State of the Map Kerala 2024		2024-11-15 – 2024-11-16
Saint-Claude	Cartographie collaborative pour tous		2024-11-16
Град Зрењанин	Okupljanje u Zrenjaninu		2024-11-17
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-11-18
	Internationale GeoWoche – Online Mapathon von DRK, HeiGIT, MSF Deutschland, Österreich & Schweiz		2024-11-18

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 MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheSwavu, TrickyFoxy, YoViajo, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Strategy

I created a first draft of the strategy for 2030 by moving the ideas we came up with at our last meeting. It’s not fully fledged, but perhaps it is good enough to provoke a reaction, or to see what is missing when we get down to annual planning.

Newsletter

While not packed with content, I did manage to get a newsletter for October sent.

Social Media

This month, after a discussion I initiated, we opted to deactivate the Twitter account @wikisusdev: Internet Archive.

On a more constructive note, I also engaged a new moderator in the Facebook group. I truly hope to be able to get more people involved like this, by taking on quite small tasks. Not only will it unburden me, but my ambition is that it will increase the sense of belonging, community and agency in the process and development happening in all these ends.

This is the second half of my ninth report of my New Year’s resolutions.

Eiko Strader is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the Director of Graduate Studies in Public Policy and WGSS at the George Washington University. She began incorporating Wikipedia assignments into her Gender, Welfare, and Poverty course in 2021. 

What is feminist praxis? 

To start discussing potential answers to this question, we can first look up the word, praxis, in Wiktionary, and review its definitions. In English, praxis can mean “the practical application of any branch of learning,” but there are other uses and definitions. To dig further, we can check out the reference, which at the time of this writing takes us to the Oxford English Dictionary. From there, we can find out how meanings and uses have changed overtime and across subjects. We can also see how the word praxis in politics and philosophy has been used to mean the application of theories and ideas to sociopolitical activities. If you have access to multiple dictionaries or editions, we can compare different uses and definitions across sources. Now we are one step closer to discussing what feminist praxis may be.

Next, we can explore how the word praxis is used across different contexts via Wikipedia. We find out that the term is often used to describe “the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied or put into practice.” If we recognize that praxis refers to a series of actions in relation to different ways of thinking, reasoning, and understanding, we can explore what that process may entail, how these processes change, and what their ultimate goals may be. We can also evaluate how this understanding emerged by examining the references listed at the bottom of the article and discuss relevant sources that could potentially be included. Then we can delve deeper into what feminism may look like in practice, how feminist ideas may evolve, and what ultimate aspirations of feminist praxis may entail. 

Could incorporating Wikipedia assignments be part of feminist praxis? 

Despite unequal access to digital technology, free online resources like Wiktionary and Wikipedia are remarkable for fostering critical conversations without paywalls. If you are a faculty working at a higher education institution, you likely have access to lots of research materials like books, peer-reviewed articles, journals, periodicals, databases, archives, and media through the university library. However, that is not the case for most people. Facts and information are expensive and not always accessible. I often joke with my students that I write papers that hardly anyone reads, and I am sure many faculty feel the same way. If you are not part of some established research ecosystem, most knowledge products are inaccessible, which makes it harder for the general public to learn new ideas and unfamiliar topics that are important for engaging in critical dialogues. 

While Wikipedia boasts an impressive amount of free content, it also suffers from significant gaps. One of the most frequently highlighted issues is gender bias on Wikipedia, largely due to the fact that men make up the majority of contributors. That is probably old news for many but given the geographical reach and the volume of traffic to Wikipedia, it’s crucial for educators to reflect critically on the knowledge production process and address this bias. Doing so will ensure that Wikipedia becomes a more reliable and comprehensive source of encyclopedic information. With the goal of fostering more informed and inclusive discussions about social issues, I started incorporating Wikipedia assignments into one of my graduate courses during the Fall of 2021, during the shift from virtual to in-person learning. 

I believe incorporating Wikipedia assignments can contribute to feminist praxis.

Wiki Education’s focus on social impact resonated with me during the public health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the rapid evolution of scientific knowledge, misinformation, and the exacerbation of disparities. I thought my students and I could contribute to equitable knowledge access by updating references, filling content gaps, and learning to navigate open collaboration. I share my experiences below.

My course is a discussion-based graduate course that meets weekly and requires students to submit an original analytical paper at the end of the semester. To encourage students to start their research early, I had them find, review, and improve existing Wikipedia articles related to their research interests rather than creating new entries. In my class, students learn about the terminology and concepts related to welfare states and poverty, various strategies for tackling social welfare issues, with the goal of interrogating the link between welfare regimes and gender inequality. Therefore, students have access to scholarly sources that could be referenced to improve existing articles related to welfare and poverty, while recognizing the role of gender. For example, a student noticed during initial review that an article on pandemic unemployment lacked data points on women, and another observed that an entry on red tape and administrative burden could benefit from additional references on equity implications. These observations shared during weekly class discussions underscore the importance of ongoing review and improvement to ensure that Wikipedia becomes a reliable and inclusive source of information.

I used Wikipedia assignments as part of the participation grade, recognizing that the contributions made by students may not always remain. Given Wikipedia’s open structure, I emphasized the importance of students completing training modules and exercises, and through completion, they earned participation points. Learning to evaluate Wikipedia articles, make revisions, and conduct peer reviews is just as valuable as sharing contributions publicly. Both activities help connect theory with practice. To encourage collaborative learning, I grouped students with similar research interests for peer reviews. On several occasions, students got to share and compare their references, which also helped them make progress on course paper. 

Because the final analytical paper carried more weight in the course grade, some students focused on making small but important edits, such as adding newer references and correcting grammatical errors to improve readability, but many went further. A student described the intersecting challenges faced by women, youth, and LGBTQ+ people who are experiencing homelessness in California and another expanded on the intricate ways welfare programs affect poverty. Many students also addressed racial bias and geographical disparity on Wikipedia by detailing the impact of Real ID Act on marginalized communities, incorporating government statistics published in Spanish to unpack machismo in Puerto Rico, adding new information on poverty in Indonesia, and providing additional details on public child care programs across countries. After addressing content gaps, students developed their own analytical papers to advance their original ideas and arguments, which were graded separately. 

I am still learning and experimenting with Wikipedia assignments. Navigating between Wiki Education dashboard and Wikipedia interface can be difficult, and instructors may need to carve out some class time to assist students having technical difficulties. Aligning Wiki Education training modules and exercises with course schedules also requires some trial and error, like moving deadlines, but I believe Wikipedia assignments have been useful for my students and I to think more critically about knowledge accessibility and implications of content gaps. Most importantly, incorporating Wikipedia assignments has given us the tangible opportunity to collectively experiment and discuss what it’s like to connect theory with practice in the era of social media. I am excited to continue this journey with my students, hopefully inspiring informed and inclusive dialogues about our future along the way. I am proud of my students for making a difference by contributing to more equitable knowledge access and engaging in feminist praxis. 

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your courses? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. Apply by December 1, 2024 for priority consideration for spring 2025.

Another year on from the last generation of the Wikidata map, @tarrow and @outdooracorn spent some time in preparation for the Wikidata birthday to prepare a new map (see git commits).

The latest images have already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and appear in the Wikidata map commons gallery.

In this post, I’ll have a look at what has changed in the past year that is visible from the map!

Previously I have generated diffs that highlight areas that have changed, overlaid on the map in pink.

This year, we have a version which only highlights the changed areas on a white canvas, making the intensity of change easier to spot.

Getting a trusty world map up alongside, we can see that:

• Lots of growth in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Easter Australia, Some areas of India
• The USA sees growth primarily on the east coast
• Europe sees growth, very notably in France, Spain and Italy
• The continent of Africa has a particular set of north western regions that see growth. At a guess, Nigeria and Cameroon
• Much harder to see, but I think Northern Peru? Iceland! South Korea

Indonesia and the area surrounding looks rather impressive.

The map isn’t all about item locations, but also their relations. In order to see these you’ll have to go and have a look at the tool online at https://wmde.github.io/wikidata-map/dist/index.html

The comparison view below shows you relations between items that use “shares border with” P47. You can see that someone has spent a lot of time adding all of the relations for Australia.

I look forward to this map being generated yearly for the birthday.

Maybe at some point I need to generate a few new animations!

Author: Aline Blankertz, Policy and Public Sector Advisor, Wikimedia Deutschland

We all use online platforms, from Google Search to WhatsApp to Microsoft Office. It is about time that users also get a say in how they work. In reality, we are far from this. But the direction is clear: platform councils can make decisions according to democratic principles.

It is a truism by now that the big digital corporations are too powerful: their market capitalisation exceeds the gross domestic product of many countries, they have billions of users, make billions in quarterly profits and use these profits to exert political influence.

There is broad consensus in society that their power and harmful effects must be limited. The EU has introduced many regulations and control mechanisms to this end, from the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act to stricter merger control and legal action against competition violations and tax avoidance.

But the efforts up to this point are too fragmented and diluted by lobbying power. Too little is changing in the balance sheets and products of Big Tech. So how can we tame these powerful infrastructures of our daily lives and make the platforms more compatible with the public interest?

We need more democratic governance

Academic research has explored the potential role of platform councils and considers them to be ‘a powerful tool to bring people and their problems into platform norm-making processes – if they are implemented correctly’. The researchers point to a need for new institutions in which users themselves, civil society or academic expertise are represented.

Collective governance is an essential feature of public-interest digital policy. This is also feasible for global projects that have similarly high user numbers as Big Tech‘s platforms.

Projects of free knowledge, above all Wikipedia, show that this is possible. The communities that make up the online encyclopaedia are continuously developing it and also discuss issues such as knowledge equity and how to deal with artificial intelligence. To negotiate this, the communities have rules – just as in a democracy. We can also establish similar principles for digital corporations.

Building on experience and experiments

A platform council can enable various forms of digital co-determination, including full self-administration. The idea is not new. It relies on established principles of democracy that have long been tried and tested outside the digital world in the form of trade unions and works councils.

A range of existing institutions can serve as inspiration for how councils could make digital platforms such as Instagram, Amazon, Google Maps and the like more democratic, open and safe. German broadcasting councils control the content of public broadcasting programmes and are often referred to as practical examples. In the gaming sector, councils can represent player interests.

The most publicised example is Meta’s Oversight Board: It is designed to clarify particularly difficult questions regarding the rules for content moderation on Facebook and Instagram. The board’s decisions only relate to individual cases. Meta can ignore more general recommendations and has done so in the past, for example, in the case of recommendations that the board formulated in the context of conflicts in Ethiopia.

In the young debate about platform councils, the focus has so far been on social media councils for content moderation. However, because platforms play such a central role in shaping many types of interactions, there is a strong argument to broaden the scope of collective governance decisions. The biggest challenge for the democratic governance of platforms is probably to involve the relevant and affected groups – and to negotiate conflicts of interest according to democratic rules. This requires some form of experimentation: The current German government had even planned to ‘establish platform councils’ in its coalition agreement, but has not implemented this yet.

A suitable council for every platform

Since platforms fulfil different functions, no single council can fit all platforms. What decisions a platform council should be involved in differs across platforms. However, a basic rule should apply to all of them: the interests of users and consumers must be represented as well as the concerns of people and groups affected by platforms. This can be done through civil society organisations and associations. In addition, academic experts should provide input to empirically substantiate debates and decisions.

The scope of a platform council is a political decision about how much weight to assign to social interests alongside or instead of profit maximisation. A council could have a very limited influence on decisions regarding data access or the design of algorithmic recommendations. However, it could also be involved in core business decisions.

What this might look like can be seen by taking a look at two much-used platforms: Google Maps and Amazon’s sales platform.

Guided by a platform council: Google Maps

Google Maps influences individual mobility and the mobility planning of municipalities and sharing providers, the use of local services and tourism. Advertisers who pay for prominent display in the app, such as restaurants or retailers, are increasingly playing a role. The platform also has an indirect effect on car manufacturers and petrol stations.

There is currently no transparency in Google Maps – let alone any influence – over why the app shows users certain routes, modes of transport and search results. We can only assume that users’ interests are weighed against the advertising revenue and commission that Google collects from mobility providers. For example, Google owns shares in the sharing provider Lime whose services have long been displayed as the preferred mode of transport

A platform council responsible for data governance would have a rather narrow scope. It could decide how and to what extent the platform collects usage data and to what extent Alphabet is allowed to pass it on. Such a council could also decide that other map providers or urban planning departments should be given access to real-time data in order to improve their services, such as bus routes. When making such decisions, a platform council could also consider how granular such data should be in order to prevent the movement patterns of individuals or groups from being traceable.

Broadening the platform council‘s scope could allow it to determine the parameters according to which search results are designed and selected on Google Maps. Currently, a green leaf indicates the ‘environmentally friendly’ route. However, this is based purely on Google’s goodwill and is not externally verifiable.

An even broader scope could include the core operations of Google Maps. Such a platform council would decide on data, algorithms and connections to other products and platforms. This would be compatible with unbundling Google Maps from the Alphabet group. In this case, a platform council could also take steps to integrate Maps with the non-commercial community project OpenStreetMap.

A Prime platform council: Amazon

Amazon offers countless products on its sales platform, from koala costumes to 3D printers, some from its own production and some from third-party suppliers. Amazon combines these with its own warehouses and logistics, along with an increasing amount of advertising. Platform decisions also affect employees (from highly paid technical experts to precariously employed logistics staff) and customers (some with and some without a Prime subscription).

Currently, Amazon is free to design the platform as it wishes. In recent years, some barriers have been added through antitrust law and the Digital Markets Act at the EU level. But Amazon can freely set prices (for its own products) or charge commissions (for third-party products and for logistics and other services). And the company can design search results and suggestions – including ads. It is completely opaque how Amazon balances the interests of the parties involved. It is plausible that Amazon uses its large customer base to ask third-party providers and advertisers to pay up.

A platform council with a narrow scope could focus on the design of recommendation algorithms. It could set parameters for such an algorithm, such as the proportion of advertising, the weighting of price, rating and commission. Or it could decide to allow algorithms from external providers, such as Greenpeace or consumer associations.

A broader scope could include decisions on data access and use, for example, whether less data should be used for advertising and more data should be made available externally – such as for market analyses. A platform council could have a say in how employment relationships are structured, similar to trade unions – from issues such as workplace surveillance and delivery times to wages.

A council could also get a say in core business decisions, for example, whether the focus should be on further growth or whether other indicators should be given more weight – such as reducing resource consumption or avoiding waste.

Let’s work together to tame Big Tech and build alternatives!

Making platform governance collective can go hand in hand with other approaches. The power of large corporations should continue to be limited by breaking them up, taxing them adequately and reducing their lobbying influence. It is also important to build public-interest alternatives.

Ideally, platforms governed by councils will coexist with public-interest alternatives, giving people a range of good options. We already know that community-based platforms operate according to fundamentally different principles. We see this in the decentralised fediverse with the social medium Mastodon. The OpenStreetMap project and, of course, Wikipedia are further examples of collectively governed projects. These and other currently small platforms could grow more easily if they were not in competition with large, profit-oriented platforms. What is more, the latter repeatedly buy up potential competitors or keep them small through exclusivity agreements or other measures.

There are many ways in which we can manage platforms collectively. There is a lot to learn. But we know the principles of negotiating different interests and should apply them to our digital infrastructures. We can start with narrower scopes and expand them over time. More societal control can only make platforms better. It is high time for us to demand control – and for policymakers to create the necessary legal framework.

About the author: Aline is an applied economist with expertise in the data and platform economy. As part of the policy team at Wikimedia, she works on creating suitable conditions for free knowledge, e.g. through data access and free software. Previously, she led analyses on online platforms, privacy and algorithms at Oxera. She was co-chair at an organisation for data collaboration and spent two years at a digital policy think tank.

The shared web proxy used on Wikimedia Cloud VPS now has technical support for using arbitrary domains (and not just wmcloud.org subdomains) in proxy names. I think this is a good example of how software slowly evolves over time as new requirements emerge, with each new addition building on top of the previous ones.

According to the edit history on Wikitech, the web proxy service has its origins in 2012, although the current idea where you create a proxy and map it to a specific instance and port was only introduced a year later. (Before that, it just directly mapped the subdomain to the VPS instance with the same name).

There were some smaller changes in the coming years like the migration to acme-chief for TLS certificate management, but the overall logic stayed very similar until 2020 when the wmcloud.org domain was introduced. That was implemented by adding a config option listing all possible domains, so future domain additions would be as simple as adding the new domain to that list in the configuration.

Then the changes start becoming more frequent:

• In 2022, for my Terraform support project, a bunch of logic, including the list of supported backend domains was moved from the frontend code to the backend. This also made it possible to dynamically change which projects can use which domains suffixes for their proxies.
• Then, early this year, I added support for zones restricted to a single project, because we wanted to use the proxy for the *.svc.toolforge.org Toolforge infrastructure domains instead of coming up with a new system for that use case. This also added suport for using different TLS certificates for different domains so that we would not have to have a single giant certificate with all the names.
• Finally, the last step was to add two new features to the proxy system: support for adding a proxy at the apex of a domain, as well as support for domains that are not managed in Designate (the Cloud VPS/OpenStack auth DNS service). In addition, we needed a bit of config to ensure http-01 challenges get routed to the acme-chief instance.