In today’s fast-paced digital world, visuals play a powerful role in communication, especially when engaging with youth. Youth are drawn to compelling, modern, relatable designs that capture their attention and spark their curiosity. A strong visual identity conveys messages more effectively and creates a sense of connection and belonging.

For Wikimedia Iraq, focusing on impactful visuals is crucial for inspiring the next generation to engage with our mission, contribute to free knowledge, and see themselves as part of a vibrant, global movement.

We are excited to share the new identity of the Wikimedia Iraq User Group with you.

Since our user group was established in 2015, we’ve used a simple logo to represent the group’s connection to Iraq.

This year, as we revive the group after years of limited activity, we decided to take a bold step forward by creating a visual identity that truly embodies our mission and inspires others.

We started with two key questions:

1. What theme resonates deeply with all Iraqis?
2. What single symbol could represent our identity and values as a user group?

In answering these questions, we had to ensure our identity also connected meaningfully to Wikimedia’s mission and projects.

Fortunately, we draw from one of the oldest and most significant civilizations on Earth: Mesopotamia, the cradle of humanity and writing itself. Specifically ancient southern Iraq, at Ur (2000–4000 BCE), the first written words were inscribed on clay tablets—a groundbreaking moment in human history.

The Sumerians used clay tablets to record information, marking the birth of written communication. Over millennia, humanity has evolved from clay tablets to digital tablets, transitioning from the physical to the virtual realm of knowledge-sharing. This progression perfectly reflects the spirit of Wikimedia projects, which strive to make knowledge universally accessible.

Thus, our new slogan emerged:

“From Clay Tablets to Digital Tablets.”

You can see in the middle the answer to the second question: how could we represent this theme with a single symbol?

We chose Babylon, a world-renowned historical site in Iraq, and specifically its legendary Hanging Gardens. The gardens, with their iconic date palms, symbolize unity and growth, nurtured by the rivers that sustain them. For our logo, we selected the Babylon palm tree as the central symbol, encircled by the flowing rivers that keep it alive, representing the sustenance of knowledge.

To further tie this visual identity to Wikimedia, we integrated elements of cuneiform into the design. You’ll notice how these shapes and symbols appear throughout our materials, including the logo. For example, the left side of the word “Iraq” subtly forms “WM” for Wikimedia, while the right side forms “IQ,” representing Iraq.

This effort was a collaborative achievement, blending creativity and teamwork. Our user group members worked closely with a professional designer to bring this vision to life, resulting in a vibrant and meaningful identity that reflects both our heritage and our commitment to the Wikimedia mission.

After presenting the visual identity at various events, we asked attendees for their thoughts on the Wikimedia Iraq User Group and the Wikimedia Foundation. Their responses were both inspiring and thought-provoking:

“As we belong to the civilization that started the knowledge, I feel the importance of Iraqis in the Wikimedia movement, and that is now pushing me to contribute more to knowledge sharing.” Teeba Ali – Newcommer

“From a designer’s perspective, I see the rounded blue half-circle representing Wikimedia and the palm as the user group. It’s as if the foundation feeds the tree (the user group) to sustain its growth and contributions.” Event Attendee

These reflections made us realize that we had achieved more than just building an identity—we had created an infinite vision. Our visual identity is not just a design; it’s a connection point for people to describe, relate to, and find meaning in the Wikimedia Iraq User Group’s mission.

In a country rich with social, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity, creating a visual identity that represents everyone was a challenging task. Yet, we found inspiration in the deep-rooted truth that we all share the same land and the same history—a unifying bond that transcends our differences.

We’re proud to share this new identity with you and look forward to continuing our journey of connecting history, culture, and free knowledge.

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

• Two new parser functions were added this week. The {{#interwikilink}} function adds an interwiki link and the {{#interlanguagelink}} function adds an interlanguage link. These parser functions are useful on wikis where namespaces conflict with interwiki prefixes. For example, links beginning with MOS: on English Wikipedia conflict with the mos language code prefix of Mooré Wikipedia.
• Starting this week, Wikimedia wikis no longer support connections using old RSA-based HTTPS certificates, specifically rsa-2048. This change is to improve security for all users. Some older, unsupported browser or smartphone devices will be unable to connect; Instead, they will display a connectivity error. See the HTTPS Browser Recommendations page for more-detailed information. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [1]
• Starting December 16, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: arwiki, cawiki, frwiki, mediawikiwiki, orwiki, wawiki, wawiktionary, wikidatawiki, zhwiki. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF). [2]
• This month the Chart extension was deployed to production and is now available on Commons and Testwiki. With the security review complete, pilot wiki deployment is expected to start in the first week of December. You can see a working version on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug with the “Download as PDF” system was fixed. [3]

Updates for technical contributors

• In late February, temporary accounts will be rolled out on at least 10 large wikis. This deployment will have a significant effect on the community-maintained code. This is about Toolforge tools, bots, gadgets, and user scripts that use IP address data or that are available for logged-out users. The Trust and Safety Product team wants to identify this code, monitor it, and assist in updating it ahead of the deployment to minimize disruption to workflows. The team asks technical editors and volunteer developers to help identify such tools by adding them to this list. In addition, review the updated documentation to learn how to adjust the tools. Join the discussions on the project talk page or in the dedicated thread on the Wikimedia Community Discord server (in English) for support and to share feedback.

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

Discover highlights from the first MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference.

MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, or MUDCon for short, is a rebrand of the long-running Semantic MediaWiki Conference. The Fall 2024 edition took place in Vienna, and Professional Wiki was present as usual.

Wrap up

I greatly enjoyed this conference. It was a pleasure to reconnect with many of the usual suspects and make new connections. As always with these events, the most valuable part was the conversations in the hallways, over dinner, and in the hotel lobby at 2AM when Richard is fixing his slides for the next day.

Thanks to the conference organizers Bernhard Krabina and Sabine Melnicki. You did an awesome job! 🎉

View the complete MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 YouTube Playlist or our event blog posts.

Let us help you with your knowledge management or MediaWiki needs. Explore our MediaWiki services or contact us for MediaWiki consulting.

Learn about the latest Semantic Wikibase developments presented at the MediaWiki conference in Vienna.

At the recent MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, we presented Semantic Wikibase, our connection between Wikibase and Semantic MediaWiki. Our CEO Jeroen De Dauw was joined by Lozana Rossenova and Kolja Bailly from TiB Hanover, who have developed several enhancements for the extension.

User group meeting and strategy

We did have a tiny but constructive user group meeting (minutes) in November which brought up one good new idea about exploring new media and coordinating that work. I added it to the strategy which is starting to come together to the point that I think we can use it for 2025 and then incrementally improve it. As the year is quickly coming to an end, I also set up a page for our annual plan for next year to start collecting some tangible ideas.

Newsletter

The newsletter came together this month too, and this time also with a new contributor which was nice.

CEE catch-up call #8

The Central and East Europe hub have catch-up calls and for their 8th I was invited to give a brief introduction to the user group. It was recorded but neither the video nor the slides (I added mine to their slide deck) have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons yet.

21/11/2024-27/11/2024

Breaking news

• ResultMaps will be going under maintenance on December 3, 2024.

Community

• Enock4seth urged mappers in Accra, Ghana, to stop relying solely on outdated Bing imagery for OpenStreetMap updates, highlighting Esri World Imagery as more recent and better aligned.
• The data quality of the recent Foursquare 104M point of interest dataset release has garnered mixed reviews, with several concerns raised, including potential Apache 2.0 incompatibility with OSM’s ODbL, transient entries, such as ships and planes from a decade of travel logs, tourists recording activities in their native languages, complaints about traffic jams, instances of trolling and profanity, and numerous POIs inaccurately placed miles from their true locations.
• Simon Willison highlighted OpenStreetMap’s ‘share’ feature, which generates iframe HTML for embedding maps. Parameters include bounding boxes, markers, and layers like Mapnik, CycleMap, and HOT, making it easy to integrate maps into web pages using simple configurations.
• More SotM 2024 videos have been uploaded recently – check them out!
• Pieter Vander Vennet highlighted a collaborative ecosystem of OpenStreetMap tools, as shown in Paul Dassori’s screenshot from Valdivia, Chile. The iD editor displays orange dots representing locations with images available via Panoramax, a federated system integrating Panoramax.xyz, Panoramax MapComplete, and contributions from MapComplete users like Awo, showcasing a rich dataset of geolocated photos.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Arnalie Vicario reflected on the launch of the OSMF-LCCWG Sub-committee for Affiliation Models, which aims to propose ways to include informal and thematic user groups in OSMF affiliation. Highlights included a successful volunteers’ meet up, co-leads’ planning session, and clear goals for improving inclusion. The next volunteers’ meet up is set for Saturday 14 December.
• After 18 years on Ubuntu, OpenStreetMap has migrated its infrastructure to Debian 12 (Bookworm), enhancing performance and stability. This transition, driven by improved package management and performance fixes for I/O-bound systems, included upgrading core services including Ruby on Rails for openstreetmap.org. The team praised Debian’s community and maintainers for their responsiveness and support.

Events

• The first Panoramax monthly online meeting took place on Monday 25 November, gathering contributors to discuss updates, community insights, and plans for the federated geospatial image platform. Highlights included feature development, collaboration opportunities, and goals for expanding usage. Watch the screencast or review the minutes. The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 17 December.
• The State of the Map Kerala 2024 conference took place on 16 and 17 November at the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Pookode, Wayanad, Kerala, India. The event brought together over 150 mappers from across India for a vibrant annual gathering focused on learning, sharing, and collaboration in the mapping community.

Education

• Anne-Karoline Distel demonstrated how to use OpenCamera to capture street-level imagery as open data and upload it to Panoramax. The video is also available on PeerTube.
• IVIDES.org held ► a workshop on collaborative mapping using OpenStreetMap and web mapping with uMap, led by Dr Raquel Dezidério Souto. This session continues the 17 training sessions given by the Institute for mapper groups of Brazil, Central America, and Africa countries this year. The presentation was given in Portuguese and the training material is publicly available.

Maps

• WasteFreeMap is a global, crowdsourced map of recycling collection points, combining OpenStreetMap data with user contributions such as photos, reviews, and schedules. The platform highlights ► permanent and temporary recycling locations worldwide, aiming to improve transparency and participation in sustainable waste management.
• Tired of dimmed maps on OSM.org? Fix it with a simple uBlock Origin filter; add this rule to brighten up your map:

  openstreetmap.org##img.leaflet-tile:style(filter: brightness(1) !important)
  

  Also, this fix is also available as a Violentmonkey script here.

OSM in action

• City Planner Plays reviewed City Bus Manager, a game that lets you build and manage a bus company anywhere in the world, using real-world maps based on OpenStreetMap data. Plan routes, optimise schedules, and grow your business while overcoming unique challenges in different cities.
• Ubahnverleih has investigated the OpenStreetMap data used in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and concluded, after extensive flying, building height comparisons, and Overpass API queries, that the dataset likely corresponds to the planet file from 26 August 2024.

Open Data

• ^[1] Séverin Ménard has introduced an ETL service within the Free Francophone Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), allowing users in 28 Francophone Southern countries to access OpenStreetMap data with tags either in English or translated into French. This innovation bridges the language barrier in geospatial data utilisation, particularly benefiting non-English-speaking regions, and is supported by minute-level updates for real-time accuracy. In the Les Libres Géographes‘ blog, he explained / the background, the technical approach and how to get the data.

Software

• Martin Raifer reflected on his State of the Map 2024 talk about improving the iD editor. Key points included addressing data complexity, supporting map maintenance with features such as the last checked date tagging, and making lifecycle mapping more intuitive. Collaborative efforts, such as Mattia’s on lifecycle tagging, were highlighted alongside plans for the upcoming iD version 2.31 release. Future community chats are scheduled for Wednesday 4 December and Wednesday 8 January.

Programming

• The GeoDesk team has released a lightweight, open-source OpenStreetMap toolkit for C++, designed for efficient in-process queries with minimal hardware requirements. It converts OSM pbf files into compact databases (the full planet is under 100 GB), supports advanced geospatial queries and operations, and offers compatibility with GEOS for additional functionality. Future plans include a C API for broader language integration.
• The osm-to-3dprint tool allows users to export OpenStreetMap data, convert it to STL format, and prepare it for 3D printing. Designed for easy customisation and optimised for larger area exports, it ensures models are print-ready with minimal file size and no non-manifold edges. The Python-based tool supports height adjustments and efficient processing, making it ideal for creating city models.

Did you know that …

• … OpenMapChest provides weekly updated Garmin maps using OpenStreetMap data? You can also build your own Garmin maps from an OSM extract by following this guide.
• … OpenHistoricalMap is now available as a map layer in Gramps Web, a collaborative web application for building family trees? This integration provides genealogical researchers with dynamic historical maps to explore family history and geopolitical changes over time.

OSM in the media

• Pieter Vander Vennet led two surveillance camera mapping walks, in Ghent, Belgium, using MapComplete, drawing press coverage from local TV, newspapers, and VTM, highlighting OpenStreetMap volunteers’ efforts to map cameras for better transparency in urban spaces.

Other “geo” things

• Daniel Estévez announced that there is a new feature for Maia SDR (Software Defined Radio) to integrate geolocation into the SigMF metadata using the HTML5 geolocation API to gather location data from mobile devices. The opt-in feature allows users to include or clear their location at any time, with details available in a linked GitHub pull request.
• The NH Stone Wall Mapper application provides an interactive ArcGIS map viewer, from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, that allows users to explore environmental data, including water resources, air quality, and land management for planning and analysis purposes.
• OpenCulture presented all 42 maps from Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages, highlighting their blend of real and fictional geography. Often created under Verne’s supervision, these engravings reflected his passion for cartography and storytelling, fusing science and imagination in one of the most iconic series of 19th-century literature.
• Jan Adriaenssens reviewed the web app ‘Allmaps Here’, which lets users view their location on georeferenced historical maps, offering a unique way to explore cities including Antwerp and Brussels through centuries-old cartography. Created by Bert Spaan, the app combines old maps with modern geolocation, enabling discoveries about urban history and geography.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
ঢাকা	State of the Map Asia		2024-11-29 – 2024-11-30
Chambéry	Mapathon débutant saison 24/25 CartONG		2024-12-02
Salzburg	OSM Treffen Salzburg		2024-12-03
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2024-12-03
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2024-12-04
	iD Community Chat		2024-12-04
	OSM Indoor Meetup		2024-12-04
	LCCWG Monthly Meeting		2024-12-05
Montrouge	Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris		2024-12-05
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-12-06
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-12-08
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #71		2024-12-09
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-12-11
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-12-12
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-12-12
Žilina	Missing Maps mapathon Žilina #15		2024-12-12
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-12-12
Bochum	Bochumer OSM Treffen		2024-12-12
	LCCWG SubCommittee – OSMF Affiliation Models Volunteers Meetup		2024-12-14

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

A call to action has been made to the UK’s cultural heritage sector to build a unified digital collection, or risk losing the opportunity to be a global leader in collections-based research. The proposal is laid out in Unlocking the potential of digital collections – a call to action – a policy document created by researchers from AHRC.

The policy document proposes that cultural heritage organisations and funding bodies come together to pursue a critical goal: the development of an inclusive, unified, accessible, interoperable and sustainable UK digital collection. It has been developed through extensive consultation across sector organisations, funders, large collection institutions and the programme’s research teams. In total 50 organisations contributed their knowledge and expertise, of which Wikimedia UK was one.

The researchers are part of the Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme, which is a five-year, £18.9 million UK-wide research and development programme. It’s funded through the UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The programme was set up to explore ways of connecting separate collections, dissolving barriers and unifying data in a digital network across the UK’s museums, galleries, libraries and archives. A key objective of the programme has been to inform the future of UK digital collection development through a series of policy recommendations aimed at decision-makers and funders.

Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation at Wikimedia UK says:

“Wikimedia UK collaborates with the heritage sector in the UK to facilitate their engagement with linked open data (Wikidata especially), and so we were pleased to be able to contribute to the TaNC programme over its lifecycle. It is encouraging to see the emphasis on open data standards in the policy recommendations. It is indeed through open knowledge that we can realise the programme’s ambition of dissolving barriers between separate collections. An open approach also means that agency is given to potential users of the linked collection, fostering a democratic model of knowledge consumption and creation. We look forward to supporting the implementation of the recommendations.”

Towards a National Collection Policy Recommendations

The call to action consists of ten recommendations to build a UK digital collection. They are supported by case studies and sample training materials, plus an appendix with information on all of the research that has been grant-funded or commissioned by the Towards a National Collection programme.

1. Selection – how to select materials from which to build digital collections
2. Production – how to make the data for a UK digital collection
3. Skills – the skills we have and the skills we need for a UK digital collection
4. Reuse and rights management – how to create sharable collections data
5. Access and engagement – how to make data accessible to everyone
6. Security – how to protect our collections from harm
7. Preservation – how to ensure digital collections survive change
8. Impact – how to understand the usage of digital collections
9. Models and frameworks – how to help digital collections evolve
10. Experimentation – research, development and innovation for digital collections

English and Welsh language versions of the Unlocking the potential of digital collections – a call to action are published under an open Creative Commons licence. If you would like to order free print copies for yourself and your organisation, please contact: sophie.dietrich@hes.scot.

The post Unlocking the potential of digital collections – a call to action appeared first on WMUK.

In an exciting new initiative, Google has partnered with Wikimedia Indonesia to help enrich, expand, and enhance Wikipedia articles in Indonesian (id.wikipedia.org) and Malay (ms.wikipedia.org) languages. Following Google’s recent support in sharing best practices on online information literacy during WikiNusantara 2024 (the annual gathering of Wikimedians in Indonesia), it has now offered financial support to a project by Wikimedia Indonesia that aims to invite local Wikipedia users to create new articles, strengthen these language Wikipedia communities and empower contributors with skills to keep the platform vibrant and relevant. Thus, this project aims to enrich local knowledge’s online presence, foster community growth, and develop content on topics vital to Indonesian society. 

Wikimedia Indonesia will spearhead various targeted activities in collaboration with influential stakeholders, including UN agencies, universities, and diplomatic missions across Indonesia. A central aspect of the initiative is a series of thematic edit-a-thons designed to address essential and underrepresented topics in Indonesian Wikipedia, including:

• Misinformation and disinformation: Expanding information on Wikipedia about these topics. 
• Gender and women’s health: Expanding coverage on gender issues and women’s health resources.
• Environment and sustainability: Highlighting environmental challenges and sustainable practices.
• STEM and education: Promoting education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
• Culture, history, literature, and current events: Enriching content related to Indonesia’s cultural and historical heritage.

These events will allow new and experienced contributors to fill critical knowledge gaps and provide accurate, reliable information in Indonesian and Malay languages.

WikiLatih training sessions will be conducted to cover both basic and advanced Wikipedia editing techniques. These sessions will help ensure high-quality articles by guiding contributors on maintaining standards and effectively organizing information. Additionally, in-person WikiLatih sessions will be held in collaboration with educational institutions to engage younger generations, particularly Gen Z, in contributing to Wikipedia as a learning and knowledge-sharing platform.

At the heart of this initiative is a mission to expand the content available in Indonesian and Malay Wikipedia, with a target of publishing over 1,000 new articles until December 2025. These articles will address key content gaps identified by Wikimedia Indonesia, Google, and other partners, ensuring that readers have access to a broader range of topics in their native languages. This effort will enrich the online representation of Indonesian and Malay languages, covering everything from historical milestones to scientific advancements, making the Internet a more inclusive and diverse space for Indonesian and Malay speakers.

Building a stronger community is not just a goal but a vital priority of this initiative. Wikimedia Indonesia will host meetups with members of the Indonesian Wikipedia communities to foster collaboration, gather feedback, and discuss future content creation and improvement. These gatherings will align on shared goals for the growth and development of Wikipedia in Indonesia and foster a sense of belonging and shared purpose among the community members.

This collaboration is also about empowering a new generation of digital contributors, amplifying underrepresented voices, and ensuring that knowledge is freely accessible to all. By partnering with UN agencies, the project will link global expertise with local necessities, creating a continuing impact.

Through these initiatives, Wikimedia Indonesia aims to cultivate a vibrant and engaged community of Wikipedia editors who will continue to contribute long after the project ends. The content enrichment project is a timely and essential step toward ensuring that Indonesian and Malay speakers have access to relevant, high-quality information on Wikipedia. With a focus on content expansion, community growth, and collaboration with key stakeholders, this endeavor is balanced to close the knowledge gap in Indonesia and create a richer, more inclusive digital landscape.

I recently enjoyed attending a small scientific event, followed by Wikimedia governance meetings held in-person in Brazil. I usually like such events, but I surprised myself by the impact these days had on me. Let me tell you how it went.

Wikimedia and Science: potentialities in scholarly extension and scientific dissemination

First, I attended the one-day event Wikimedia and Science: potentialities in scholarly extension and scientific organized by the Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB), the Dental School of Bauru of the University of São Paulo (FOB-USP) and the Center for Audiological Research (CPA- USP). It was held in Bauru, Brazil on October 30^th 2024.  Speakers were from the WMB, Brazilian research agencies and 2 universities. Presentations covered topics of great relevance such as the role of scientific outreach projects and funding opportunities from a research agency from the State of São Paulo, Brazil (FAPESP); the urgency of digital university extension; automatic reference verification in knowledge graphs; challenges and responsibilities: ethics in the era of Artificial Intelligence; and technology as a frontier for research. Myself, a public health researcher based in the US, presented on Wikimedia and science. I provided an update on a wide range of activities within Wikimedia conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). These were previously introduced in several NIOSH Science Blogs including Expanding and Improving Occupational Safety and Health Content in Wikipedia. It Matters and The Powerhouse: Students’ contributions towards expanding and improving occupational safety and health content in Wikipedia, as well as in the 2019 Wikimania presentation Multi-component strategy to improve public health content on Wikipedia.  Activities take place in several Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wiki Commons, Wikidata, Wikiversity, Wiki Edu) and in several languages. 

My presentation was followed by the launch of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Introduction to Basic Audiology in Brazilian Portuguese with Dr. Lilian Jacob, program officer of the Hearing Health project (see also previous Diff blog). Open access training and education in hearing health are critical for facilitating remote and virtual care in areas that lack hearing health services. Anyone from Portuguese-speaking countries (Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde,  Angola, Mozambique, Guinea- Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau) can also benefit from this resource as supporting material.  

As a researcher I often attend this type of meeting, but I particularly enjoyed it because of its focus on approaches to make open science a reality. Then came the part of the program that is not so typical for me.

Wikimedia governance meetings in Brazil

The WMB governance meetings took place on November 2-3, 2024 also at USP, in Bauru.  On the first day we discussed ongoing steps towards the development of the WMB strategy for 2026-2028. A Diff blog published on January 4 2023, described a previous one-year collaborative process used by  the WMB to complete its Strategy for 2023-2025. This year I felt lucky to participate in-person of the discussions and in the block-by-block revision and vote of its framework, the Theory of Change.  

The conversations centered on WMB’s Theory of Change developed and adopted in 2021, which served as the basis for the Strategy 2023-2025, and other plans (Communication Strategy, Friendly Space and for the creation of operational committees). It also describes a System for the Evaluation of Results and Learnings (Sistema de Avaliação de Resultados e Aprendizados or SARA). The  upcoming document  includes Guiding principles, Objectives, Expected Impact, Analysis of context or ecosystem, Method, Focal Groups and a report of the SARA evaluation.  The document Theory of Change 2024 was voted and approved the next day.

Also on the second day, WMB’s General Assembly covered its diversity plan, recruitment plan, absenteeism measures,  main project and activities, plans for WikiCon 2025 (to be held in Salvador, Brazil in July 2025), and the process for WMB to become a chapter. The General Assembly is the organizational higher decision-making infrastructure and is formed by open-knowledge advocates who join either onsite or remotely. I presented on the intersection of Wikimedia, education and health. I highlighted the 2024 publication Strategies for crowdsourcing hearing health information: a comparative study of educational programs and volunteer-based campaigns on Wikimedia which exemplifies education and health joint activities. I also described an ongoing project “Leveraging Wikipedia to advance occupational health equity for immigrant workers.”  The specific aim of this project is to expand and expedite the global reach of occupational safety and health resources to immigrant and non-English speaking worker populations and, ultimately, the general public. This is being accomplished by expanding the availability of occupational health content in English, Portuguese and Spanish in Wikimedia’s public digital knowledge archives. This aligns with the Wikimedia Foundation goals of supporting knowledge equity and making multilingual and intercultural information freely accessible to everyone. 

The surprise

One might be like me a bit surprised to read that I considered myself lucky to be in a long meeting on this type of activity. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, knowing of the challenge of running meetings with a large number of participants. What made it enjoyable for me was that the discussions were not restricted to the plans and documents reviewed, but towards their implementation. The group was engaged and the conversations brought to mind the concept of realistic utopia, which blends the idealism of utopia with the pragmatic constraints of reality. Unlike traditional utopias, which often describe an idealized and perfect society that may be unattainable, a realistic utopia seeks to outline a society that, while highly aspirational and positive, remains within the bounds of what is feasible given current context and challenges, human limitations, social dynamics, and technological capabilities. At the meeting we covered achievable goals, practical solutions, need for flexibility, sustainability, equity and inclusivity. 

As expressed in the 2023 Blog, Wiki Movimento Brasil remains an agent of activation, coordination and social transformation for open knowledge (re)imagining and contributing to the sociotechnical infrastructure of the Wikimedia Movement, coordinating actions with Brazilian Wikimedia agencies, fostering partnerships for open knowledge in Portuguese-speaking countries, and promoting knowledge equity.

I conclude saying that the process left me inspired and confident of the implementation of the Strategy. Ok, by now it is obvious I am a nerd who is really into all things Wikimedia. Still, disclaimer apart, the beauty of the process and the plan lies in its balance between hope and pragmatism, offering a vision of what could be possible if we harness our collective ingenuity and willpower to create a better world.

The drafting of the Wiki Movement Brazil Theory of Change (ToC) was produced between April and September 2024 by Miréia Arruda and João Alexandre Peschanski, respectively in the role of researcher and advisor. The writing of this ToC was supported by Bukola James and Érica Azzellini. The document was presented to the WMB team on September 24 and to the WMB membership on October 7, 2024. It was further analyzed and revised by the strategic subcommittees of Wikimedia in Brazil on November 1, 2024. It was voted on and approved at the General Assembly on November 2, 2024.

Photo: Some of the participants of the event Wikimedia and Science: potentialities in scholarly extension and scientific dissemination held in Bauru, Brazil on October 30 2024.

The online Edit-a-thon on Women Writers, held with great success throughout the month of October, culminated in the publication of an impressive 167 articles, 128 of which were new. These articles were distributed in several languages: 78 in Basque, 44 in Galician, 24 in Catalan, 16 in Portuguese and 5 in Spanish. In addition, the edit-a-thon was attended by 74 people, 46 of whom were women.  

The activity was organised by Wikimedia Spain, Amical Wikimedia, Basque Wikimedians User Group, Galipedia and Wikimedia Portugal. 

International collaboration and local success 

Wikimedia Portugal, in collaboration with CODA – Centre for Innovation and Digital Culture of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, has participated for the first time in this celebration, and with a in-person event. The event was publicised by both Wikimedia Portugal and the Faculty of Letters, and managed to gather more than 50 people, of which around 40 were students.   

The day was opened with presentations by Professor Marinela Freitas, on the mechanisms of concealment of women in literature, and Professor Mirta Fernández, who addressed the importance of Women Writers’ Day and the presence of Iberian women writers on Wikipedia. 

Volunteer Danielly Figueredo led a practical session on gender gap in Wikipedia, followed by an introduction on how to start editing on the platform. The students quickly got down to editing entries, supported by Wikimedia Portugal members present in the room. 

Participation of Amical Wikimedia 

Amical Wikimedia also took part in the event, achieving the creation of new articles in Catalan, as well as motivating the creation of articles in Basque and Galician. 

Although the level of mobilisation was discreet, the experience was positive and there are plans to repeat the initiative in the future, seeking more preparation time to improve the organisation and scope. 

Contribution of the Basque Wikimedians User Group  

The Basque Wikimedians User Group (Euskal Wikilarien Kultura Elkartea) contributed significantly to the event, promoting the project through the Txokoa section of Basque Wikipedia and through e-mails between members of the Association. 

Seven writers were submitted who did not have an article in any Wikipedia, 5 of whom have already been created in Basque. In addition, a further 19 writers were proposed for translation, thus expanding their presence in several languages. 

An initiative for inclusion and diversity 

This initiative was designed to enrich the content on women writers in the Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish languages. Its aim was not only to expand knowledge about female authors in these languages, but also to foster a more inclusive and diverse community on the platform, promoting the recognition and appreciation of female talent in the literary field. 

This online event has proven to be a successful first approach towards the recognition of Iberian women writers on digital platforms. With plans to expand the scope of future editions and the possibility of including face-to-face editions in Porto, Braga and Lisbon, the impact is expected to continue to grow. 

We thank all those who participated and collaborated. The experience has been valuable and encouraging, motivating us to continue working on similar initiatives that promote gender equality in the digital world. 

The Wiki Loves Butterfly project involves new volunteers through a multi-faceted, inclusive approach that focuses on outreach, education, mentorship, and community building. The idea is to make the project accessible and engaging for all levels of contributors, from those who are new to the field of butterfly documentation and Wikimedia contributions to experienced naturalists and photographers. Basically Wiki Loves Butterfly is an example of how citizen science can have a positive and impactful approach to environmental research and conservation. This initiative invites people from different parts of India to participate in documenting and learning about butterflies in their natural habitats.  Here’s the key notes that how project successfully involves new volunteers:

1.Outreach and Awareness

• Social Media Engagement: The project actively promotes its goals through various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram etc. By sharing visually captivating images, interesting facts about butterflies, and stories about fieldwork, the project attracts individuals who are passionate about nature, photography, and biodiversity.
  • Targeted Groups: Volunteers are invited to join through butterfly enthusiast groups, photography clubs, and wildlife communities, where they can find like-minded individuals who are already interested in the subject matter.
• Collaboration with Local Communities: The project partners with local schools, universities, wildlife organizations, and NGOs to raise awareness about the importance of documenting butterfly species and the broader biodiversity conservation efforts.
  • Public Talks and Events: Hosting workshops, talks, and photo walks is an effective way to introduce new volunteers to the project. It provides them with an opportunity to learn about the work being done and the role they can play in it.

2. Educating New Volunteers

• Workshops and Training Sessions: Once new volunteers express interest, the project organizes workshops where they can learn about the tools and methods for documenting butterflies, including:
  • Photography Techniques: Training volunteers on how to take high-quality photographs that are suitable for Wikimedia Commons (e.g., proper lighting, focus, composition). Read the Diff post about Butterfly Photography.
  • Butterfly Identification: Educating volunteers about identifying different butterfly species, their habitats, and behavior.
  • Uploading to Wikimedia Commons: Teaching volunteers how to properly upload their photos and contribute metadata, including scientific names, habitat information, and location details, which are essential for accurate documentation.
• Online Tutorials and Resources: For volunteers who are unable to attend in-person sessions, the project provides online tutorials and resources. These resources cover everything from basic photography skills to how to use Wikimedia tools for uploading images and contributing data.

3. Mentoring and Support

• One-to-One Mentoring: New volunteers are paired with more experienced team members or mentors who can guide them through the process. This personalized support includes:
  • Answering Questions: Volunteers can reach out to their mentors with any questions or challenges they face during their fieldwork or while uploading their contributions.
  • Constructive Feedback: Mentors provide feedback on the quality of the images or data contributed, ensuring that volunteers feel supported and empowered to improve their skills.
• Online Communities: The project fosters communication among volunteers through platforms like WhatsApp groups, where they can share their progress, ask for advice, and collaborate with others. These online spaces also encourage peer-to-peer learning and the exchange of ideas.

4. Encouraging Leadership and Ownership

• Empowering Volunteers: Volunteers are encouraged to take ownership of their contributions and develop leadership skills. They are invited to:
  • Lead Local Photo Walks: As they gain confidence, volunteers can organize and lead their own photo walks or fieldwork in their local areas. Read the Diff post about How to organize a butterfly photo-walk.
  • Host Workshops: Volunteers who are comfortable with the material can be asked to lead training sessions for newcomers, passing on the knowledge they’ve gained and contributing to the growth of the community.
• Recognizing Contributions: Regularly recognizing volunteers for their efforts, whether through public appreciation or showcasing their work in media coverage or online galleries, helps to motivate them and foster a sense of accomplishment and pride.

5. Fostering a Collaborative Environment

• Photo Walks and Fieldwork: Volunteers are invited to participate in photo walks or field trips, where they can actively document butterfly species in their local environments. These events often involve group activities, creating opportunities for volunteers to interact with others and collaborate.
  • Real-Time Collaboration: Volunteers often work together on field trips, where they share tips and strategies for butterfly photography, identify species together, and discuss conservation efforts in their region.
• Project Contributions Beyond Photography: While photography is a central component, volunteers are also encouraged to contribute in other ways, such as:
  • Researching Butterfly Species: Some volunteers may become involved in researching the butterflies they photograph, adding valuable information to their Wiki entries and helping others identify species.
  • Writing Articles: Experienced volunteers may write articles for Wikipedia or other platforms, helping to expand knowledge on butterfly species and their ecosystems.

6. Ushering competitive aptitude

• Friendly Competition: The project may host healthy competition where volunteers can compete to identify and document the most butterfly species or take the best photos. These events encourage engagement and provide a sense of achievement.

7. Expanding the Community

• Global Collaboration: Although the project initially starts with local efforts, new volunteers are introduced to a global community of Wikimedia contributors, where they can collaborate on a larger scale. This helps the volunteers understand that their contributions are part of a global effort to preserve biodiversity.
• Building Long-Term Relationships: By providing both online and offline spaces for communication, the project builds long-term relationships with volunteers, making them feel like part of a larger family that values their contributions.

8. Continuous Engagement and Growth

• Ongoing Involvement: Volunteers are encouraged to remain engaged long-term by:
  • Continuing to document butterfly species regularly and participating in ongoing projects.
  • Helping organize larger events or collaborating with other volunteer groups across regions.
• Expanding Skill Sets: Volunteers are also encouraged to expand their skillsets by:
  • Learning about data analysis, contributing to the Wikidata entries, and helping to organize data on butterfly populations and ecosystems.
  • Participating in cross-disciplinary collaborations with conservationists, educators, and researchers.

Conclusion

The Wiki Loves Butterfly project involves new volunteers by providing clear pathways for engagement, education, and support. Through outreach, mentorship, and ongoing collaboration, the project encourages active participation, which leads to personal growth and community development. Volunteers not only contribute to biodiversity conservation but also become ambassadors for the Wikimedia movement, spreading the values of open knowledge and global collaboration. As the project grows, so does the sense of ownership and responsibility among the volunteers, leading to sustainable and lasting contributions to the preservation of butterfly species and the broader natural world.

The necessity to innovate in free knowledge was one of the key lessons learnt from the implementation of the Capacity development for underrepresented communities (CDUC) project, which led to the idea of producing videos documenting frequently used scientific terminology in the Macedonian Sign Language. In the first half of 2024, Wikimedia MKD collaborated with economic and legal experts from one hand and a professional interpreter in the Macedonian Sign Language on the other hand on a project that resulted in the recording of 199 videos documenting slightly over 200 basic economic and legal terms.

Why are such videos necessary?

The results from the research on the Macedonian Sign Language community, which was conducted for the purpose of the CDUC project, revealed that the users of this sign language are not fluent in the Macedonian language. As a result, these people oftentimes face difficulties when communicating in public or private institutions (e.g. when visiting a bank, when requesting a legal service, when visiting a medic etc.). These difficulties are primarily caused by their inability to comprehend the meaning of some scientific terms, which puts them in disadvantage and makes them more vulnerable to hoaxes by other parties. In order to solve this problem, there is a growing necessity to convey the meaning of the basic scientific terminology that these people are frequently exposed to in the Macedonian Sign Language as their system of communication.

How was the project implemented?

The project was implemented in three phases, which were mostly carried out in the first half of 2024. In the first phase, economic and legal experts were commissioned to compile two lists of 100 basic terms in their respective fields. The experts were guided to prepare a brief definition and an example for each term. After the lists were compiled, they were submitted to a professional interpreter in the Macedonian Sign Language, who had to devise a way to interpret them so that they could be easily comprehensible. In the second phase, the production of the videos took place. Following the positive experience from Wikiexperiments, the years-long producer of the scientific experiments was hired to record and process the videos so that the desired quality is achieved. The economic and legal experts attended and monitored the recording of videos. A total of 100 videos documenting 100 economic terms and 99 videos documenting slightly over 100 legal terms were produced. In the third phase, the videos were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons where they are available in corresponding categories for economic terms and legal terms. Additionally, each video was enriched with Macedonian subtitles of the interpreted content.

On 18 October 2024, a gala event was held in Skopje at which the project was presented to the members of the Macedonian Sign Language community. At the beginning, the rationale behind the project was explained with a reference to the results from the research phase of the CDUC project. Then, the sign language users were guided to the categories on Wikimedia Commons containing the recorded videos. Finally, sample recordings of both economic and legal terms were played.

Future plans

Considering the positive impact of the project and the value added for the Macedonian Sign Language community from its implementation, there are plans to carry on with its implementation and produce more videos in other scientific fields. This would involve collaboration with specialists in other fields who will have to compile lists of 100 commonly used terms. Once multiple sets of 100 scientific terms in different fields are documented, a long-term plan is to create a digital library of systematically organised content as an open educational resource.

If you’ve ever taught with a Wikipedia assignment or enrolled in one of our Wiki Scholars & Scientists professional development courses, you’re familiar with Wiki Education’s Dashboard and all of the ways it tracks your Wikimedia work, not to mention the thrill of watching the readership statistics of your contributions climb.

To date, more than 150,000 people have engaged with the Dashboard through our educational programming and nearly 4,000 instructors have used it for their courses. But the impact of this open source technology reaches beyond even our own programming – used by the broader Wikimedia community, our global Programs & Events Dashboard has supported more than 110,000 users and thousands of editing events worldwide. 

As an open source technology, the Dashboard is developed through public collaboration and its source code is freely available for anyone to use. But who exactly works to create and sustain the Dashboard, and how? Wiki Education’s Chief Technology Officer Sage Ross and a few of its many contributors took us under its hood during last month’s Speaker Series webinar, “Open Source Technology: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard.”

“A huge number of other people [beyond myself] have come along to make major contributions to this code base,” said Ross, recognizing the work of nearly 200 Dashboard contributors since its inception.

Panelist Matthew Fordham, a software developer based in Seattle, helped oversee the initial development of the Dashboard and has collaborated with Ross for many years.

“It’s amazing and so gratifying to hear how what we started so long ago has continued to evolve and grow, and become so much deeper and more sophisticated,” said Fordham. “With open source and with this project, there’s a lot of potential.” 

Ross and Fordham were joined by university students Sulagna Saha and Om Chauhan, who discussed their experiences working to improve the Dashboard.

Saha, a senior at Mount Holyoke College studying computer science, came to the project in summer 2023 through Outreachy, a program that provides internships in open source and open science. 

In the year since her internship, Ross said he “[hadn’t] had to touch [Saha’s] code at all,” something that’s rare in a field where maintainers frequently have to tweak older code so it can work with changes elsewhere in the code base. “It makes me really proud as a mentor. You made a product worth its weight in gold.”

When asked to reflect on her experience working on the open source project, Saha explained how she transitioned from feeling nervous to feeling welcome.

“Open source is kind of like entering a room where it feels like everyone knows everything, because it’s collaborative,” explained Saha. “But because it is collaborative, it is the best space to feel safe and ask anything.”

Chauhan, a junior at Bennett University, brought his experience as a computer science major to the Dashboard this past summer through Google’s Summer of Code program. Like Saha, Chauhan underscored the community-driven nature of working on open source technology, as well as the importance of exploring the documentation and existing contributions when entering an open source project.

“For someone who is new to the project, be patient, integrate gradually, and engage with the community,” advised Chauhan.

Fordham, who works in both open source technology and the private sector, finds that contributing to open source projects can be particularly rewarding.

“The more open source contributors, the more opinions on what the goal is, so it’s a totally different thing [than the private sector], and in so many ways, more gratifying,” said Fordham. ”It doesn’t simplify things to have more cooks in the kitchen, but the reasons they are there are sometimes more heartfelt.”

Catch up on our Speaker Series on our YouTube channel, including “Open Source Tech: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard,” and join us for a very special edition of our Speaker Series on Tuesday, December 10: 

Celebrating 10 Years of Wiki Education

Tuesday, December 10 at 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern

Learn more and register now

By Rupal Karia, Outreach and Community Coordinator for Wikimedia UK

We currently have 62 trainers in 33 different locations across the country, all involved in Wikimedia work in different ways. Volunteer trainers are at the heart of delivering Wikimedia UK programmes. They act as community leaders, extend our work to underrepresented communities and they train new and existing editors. Based on feedback we received from trainers, we decided to focus on upskilling existing WMUK trainers rather than recruiting and training a new cohort of trainers.

We conducted a survey with WMUK accredited trainers on topics that they would like to learn more about, or that would be useful for their work and the communities they work with. Based on these results we came up with a programme of training which people could join in-person or online, culminating in a hybrid event in Leeds in October 2024. We know meeting in-person allows for trainers to build relationships and make connections with others but not everyone has the flexibility and time to do so, therefore we opted for a mostly hybrid set up where people could join in-person or online to the sessions that were relevant to their work and training needs.

The training was fully funded by WMUK. 16 people attended some or all of the events over a two week period. Most of these sessions were recorded so that those who couldn’t attend had the opportunity to watch and learn in their own time. 

Below is a rundown of the programme of events.

Making an impact with minimal time commitments

This session came about due to feedback from trainers and the people they work with who don’t have the time to design and deliver events but want to do something worthwhile and impactful. Over the last few years, we have received feedback that volunteers are struggling to find time to design and run training sessions but still want to be involved within Wikimedia projects. This session was designed to give volunteers ideas on small tasks they can carry out when time allows. It ties in with a wider project we are exploring to have an ongoing microvolunteering task list for volunteers to access and use when they have a little bit of time as well as exploring other ways volunteers can be involved.

How to carry out research to improve the representation of underrepresented groups 

This session focussed on the process of creating a worklist for an event or campaign, ways to find gaps on Wikipedia, with tips & suggestions for research strategies and places to go to find sources.  

This session ties in with our Strategic Aim of Knowledge Equity. Many of the trainers focus on underrepresented groups and one of the challenges reported by them is knowing what is missing on Wikipedia and then compiling worklists based on this research.

Marketing your events with Dr Lucy Hinnie

Feedback we had from trainers was that although the Train the Trainer course equips them with skills to design and deliver Wiki training events they’d value additional training on how to market events.

Dr Lucy Hinnie discussed her experience of marketing events and wiki influencing people in the Connected Heritage Project, with a particular focus on marketing with low to no budget, and also exploring options other than edit-a-thons / wikithons. We explored pot luck edit-a-thons rather than theme focussed sessions. There was also a space for participants to share their own examples of what has worked or not worked. Lucy also asked participants to reflect on some of the following questions: 

• Is this process exploitative or extractive?
• Is my event open and accessible?
• Is my description clear and concise?
• Have I offered something actionable?
• Where do my network and audience intersect?

Open Space

This session was designed to be open in nature, to give people an opportunity to ask questions, to learn about a tool they haven’t used but would like to, to talk about a project they are working on, get support, share ideas and learn from peers. We explored the on-wiki event registration tool, and the process of nominating a featured article or a “Did you Know” Article on the front page of English Wikipedia.

Introduction to Wikidata and batch editing Wikidata using Open Refine

These sessions were led by Dr Sara Thomas and Stuart Prior from WMUK. This session was divided into two strands: Strand 1 aimed at beginners to Wikidata, and Strand 2 to increase existing Wikidata skills in batch editing and item creation using Open Refine. 

The OpenRefine tool has received funding and support from the Foundation, including support for a Train the Trainer programme, which Sara attended, and subsequently is now providing training for Wikimedia UK staff, partners and volunteers.  OpenRefine is a powerful tool with functionality for data cleaning, as well as reconciliation and batch editing and upload to Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.  Whilst it is not a tool for beginners, and requires existing knowledge of Wikidata and Structured Data for Commons, it is a solid option for volunteers and GLAMs looking to work in batch upload and editing. 

Conclusion

It was an inspiring two weeks and it was great to see so much enthusiasm and openness to learning and sharing. Trainers reported they found all aspects of the training useful and that they found the in-person sessions supportive and valuable, as a way of meeting other trainers and sharing ideas and experiences. 

“It was really good to meet up with other trainers and share experiences too.”

 One of our trainers wrote a blog post about the training which can be read here.

Trainers have already started implementing what they have learned from the sessions. We will follow up with participants as to what they need to embed learning as well as additional training going forwards, and look at how WMUK can support that process for them. 

“… I’ve continued to work through the Open Refine work since returning from Leeds.”

“I came away with loads of ideas for planning future engagement with our Wikipedia network and much more confident that this is possible in the time I have available for it. It was also great to hear from other people during the sessions and be inspired by the projects they’re involved in and knowledge they have.”

If you are interested in becoming a WMUK trainer, our next Train the Trainer (for new trainers) will take place in 2025. If you would like to find out more about becoming a WMUK trainer or would like to register your interest email rupal.karia@wikimedia.org.uk.

The post Developing community leaders – investing in our Trainers appeared first on WMUK.

I routinely point out in my outdoor naturalist explorations that one of the great innovations in evolutionary history is indirect communication - communication via the substrate - rather one-to-one communication. What this does is to make the information more permanent and less vulnerable to the death of individual organisms. It is the reason why you cannot destroy an ant colony by stomping on the workers walking on a trail. 

You might see that to some extent this is what internet forums do, or what books do, they pass on information even after the death of the originator. But books are not location specific, I cannot find out who has walked at a specific spot, the way a dog or tiger might find out by sniffing a tree. Books are not sensitive to temporality - the dog or tiger might find out by the scents left on a tree how recent the last passer by was.

Social insects like ants and termites have evolved indirect communication to coordinate the activities of individual organisms without the need for centralized command and control. The terms stigmergy and stigmergic collaboration have been used for this and here is an explanation I found online (slightly edited):

The word stigmergy comes from the Greek stigma, meaning sign/mark, and ergon, meaning work, capturing the notion that the environment is a stimulus that causes particular work (behavior) to occur. It was originally coined by zoologist Pierre-Paul Grassé,who explained the mound-building behavior of termites by appealing to the stigmergic control of the mound itself.

So if a termite mound is breached - the workers passing by might use a chemical marker saying - there is a breach here - as more and more workers pass the point, the chemical scent becomes stronger and it recruits workers who specialize in fixing breaches to the specific breach location. Workers might also mark trails towards the breach for others to follow. Once the breach is sealed, the trail scents and breach indicators fade away, leaving workers to follow their other activities. Notice that there is no central control and that chemical markers of different kinds may be produced by agents who may not know how to deal with the specific situation. Agents that do know how to deal with the situation are guided to a specific location. 

Insect societies have task specialization - some workers specialize in foraging, some in nest care, some in defense and so on. Task specialization is sometimes based on the age of the insects, with older ones taking up risky activities.

I have tried to explain how this might or should guide construction of software such as the MediaWiki system - but evidently with little success - among some in the Wikipedia community. Agents need to be able to indicate centrally about areas of Wikipedia that are undergoing disturbance. Other agents need to be able to find, act at the areas of disturbance. Currently Wikipedia does this through central bulletin boards where agents explicitly post their notices. Unfortunately this is too taxing for a naive agent. WikiRage was a third party system that could detect increased editing activity and show articles that were currently "hot". There is no real-time system that shows currently highly visited articles. There is no system for currently highly sought after article - although this might be something for a search engine company like Google/Bing to think of. Now look at this also from the point of view of an agent with specialization - I as an editor might only act if I know that I can help, so overwhelming me with too many stimuli might only push an agent like me into confusion and inaction. If I were a specialist editor working in a particular cluster of articles, I should be able to filter out and indicate only if there is a rise in activity within articles in my cluster of interest. Ideally I shouldn't have to declare my own interest explicitly but article clusters should be determined from linkages or past editing history and so on. For a while now I have sought a rather simple means to detect traffic spikes in articles that I have on my watchlist. Now some software designers will immediately object that such as system could impinge on user privacy - although much of this information (other than mere reading) is already public in the MediaWiki system. I think many of these security concerns can be reduced by "aging" - the deletion of data over time - to simulate the dispersal of scents in social insects. Further such a system could perhaps be designed as a browser plugin, keeping data entirely local and off from the center. For instance if I wanted to look at what is hot on my watchlist - I could easily do with some kind of coloring and sorting of entries on my watchlist with a factor  = yesterday's (or the last available) traffic / (average of the previous N days of traffic) [dealing of course with division by zero etc.] - that might help me narrow down my responsiveness to improve articles that I have an interest in. It would also make the system more responsive to user needs.

A super-organism - the term used for colonies of social insects - needs to have mechanisms for how its agents act as sensors, how those sensations are quantitatively expressed, how those quantitative expressions tip thresholds that drive actions or reaction.

Note: I have been bumbling with these ideas for a while and my knowledge of software development for implementing this particular idea has been rather limiting. I hope some talented software developer feels inspired to create something along these lines. I for one would be grateful for it! 

PS: WikiRage went defunct and there is now a site called WikiShark which gives trending pages globally (for the English Wikipedia) but there is still a role as mentioned above for what is trending in what one can contribute to - ie based on task specialization.

As search engines ferry us to Wikipedia articles and most AI tools are trained on its content, the work to fill in gaps on Wikipedia with well-sourced, high-quality information is more important than ever. Thanks to the increased support of the Guru Krupa Foundation (GKF), 1,875 students at universities and colleges across the U.S. will join these critical efforts to improve Wikipedia’s STEM content while developing their research, writing, and digital media literacy skills along the way.

“Giving college students an opportunity to curate Wikipedia STEM articles (by verifying research references and adding to the articles), is an excellent way to introduce them to the scientific research process and incubate their interest in STEM,” said Mukund Padmanabhan, President of Guru Krupa Foundation. “These articles also then become a credible and valuable source of information, provided in accessible, easy-to-read formats, that benefit the public worldwide. This project preserves existing knowledge and encourages higher study among students — both of which align with GKF goals. We are happy to continue extending our support for this project for the third year.”

Wikipedia remains one of the most visited and influential platforms for sharing information about science; the readership of its science articles far exceeds that of traditional scientific publications. Moreover, the content on Wikipedia can directly impact the conceptual and semantic structures in the scientific literature, a relationship underscored by Neil Thompson’s research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

With the support of the Guru Krupa Foundation and the framework of the Wikipedia assignment, students will research STEM topics to identify and fill the gaps on Wikipedia, writing new articles and enhancing existing coverage of science information. Collectively, they will create or improve more than 1,500 Wikipedia articles, adding 200,000 words across the online encyclopedia that will be read by millions.

Since 2016, more than 60,000 students studying STEM have added nearly 53 million words to Wikipedia as part of Wiki Education’s Communicating Science Initiative, thanks to the generous support of the Guru Krupa Foundation and our other dedicated partners. The students’ collective work on Wikipedia has been viewed more than 3 billion times! 

We express our deep gratitude to the Guru Krupa Foundation for their continued commitment to enhancing both student learning and public access to high-quality STEM information for the benefit of all.

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. 

How many times did you look up something on your phone today? Did you ask ChatGPT a question? How about Alexa or Siri or a social media site? 

Receiving immediate responses is a huge benefit of how this technology has improved our lives. But it has also made it harder to sort through a flood of information to make sure we are getting the most accurate and reliable answers. The overwhelming speed of change in today’s online information ecosystem makes it more urgent to have a place for trustworthy and verified facts. 

Wikipedia was created more than 20 years ago with that goal in mind. Edited by nearly 260,000 volunteers globally, it now receives more than 15 billion visits each month. Wikipedia sees the same (if not higher) levels of global traffic as well-known, for-profit internet companies at a fraction of the budget and staffing. It’s the only top ten most visited website hosted by a nonprofit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation. 

Since becoming CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2022, I’ve asked hundreds of people all over the world how they think Wikipedia works. This usually leads to a conversation where someone says: 

“I sometimes see that message asking for donations, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that there are no ads until now.” 

“I had no idea Wikipedia was supported by a non-profit.”

“I use Wikipedia every day. I can’t imagine a world in which it doesn’t exist.”

They usually leave the conversation understanding why the Wikimedia Foundation’s work is vitally important for ‘the encyclopedia that anyone can edit’ to remain freely available to people everywhere.

The Wikimedia Foundation does four critical things to make sure Wikipedia can get closer to its vision of representing the sum of all knowledge. (1) We provide a highly sophisticated technology backbone that keeps Wikipedia secure, fast, and accessible all over the world; (2) we innovate in the latest technologies to deliver accurate, up-to-date Wikipedia content to you, even when you are using other sites online; (3) we help fight misinformation, disinformation, censorship, and other threats; and most importantly, (4) we support volunteers in all regions of the world to build thriving communities of editors and contributors. These people brought Wikipedia to the world more than 20 years ago with a radical belief that humans remain at the core of realizing technology’s promise.

What does all of this take?

1. A sophisticated technology backbone to keep Wikipedia secure, fast, and accessible

It may surprise you to learn that Wikipedia is recognized as one of the fastest sites in the United States. Fast and reliable access to Wikipedia’s website should not have to depend on where you live. The Wikimedia Foundation continues to grow this technology backbone to deliver a similar experience to users across the Middle East, Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe. 

This essential infrastructure has expanded over the years to handle extreme spikes in global traffic. These spikes can happen when there is a significant newsworthy event, such as when a famous person dies. In these moments, we see countless other sites begin to simultaneously pull up-to-the-second information from Wikipedia because it is the source they trust. This in turn creates increased pressure on our technology backbone to keep the site up and running when people need it most. Our engineers pride themselves on making sure Wikipedia doesn’t go down.

We manage to do this with two data centers, five caching centers, and over 30 internet peering and transit connections, all supported by about two thousand servers (we run our own servers for lots of reasons, but especially to protect user privacy). This supports the website and also other digital properties like mobile apps.

But the real investment is in supporting our hundreds of engineers. They write complex code in the open, make hard trade-offs to balance spikes in incoming traffic, and add new databases when needed. They handle the often invisible but critical maintenance of software from reducing memory consumption to fixing bugs to removing code that threatens the security and safety of our systems. 

The Wikimedia Foundation must continue to invest in the security, speed, and reliability of Wikipedia. This lean and highly sophisticated backbone is operated by mission-driven technologists who are utterly dedicated to making sure Wikipedia is always up and running for the billions of visitors that have come to depend on it as always being a click away.

2. Making Wikipedia content available anywhere on the internet

Most people I meet don’t know that the content they use all over the internet comes from Wikipedia, even if they never visit our website. Where does Google get the link to answer your query? Have you ever asked Siri or Alexa where they found the answer? Do you know that ChatGPT and similar tools are all trained on Wikipedia’s data? 

This phenomenon was captured well in a New York Times Magazine story that described Wikipedia as “a kind of factual netting that holds the whole digital world together.” Search engines depend heavily on Wikipedia’s up-to-date articles; video sites point users to Wikipedia to learn more information; and AI chatbots regularly pull from Wikipedia in generating their responses. How does Wikipedia keep up, while staying true to our purpose and values? 

It’s not easy, and this drives a lot of the growing investments we are making now at the Wikimedia Foundation. We are doubling down on protecting user data and privacy, bucking many industry trends. We are doubling down on keeping our content available at no cost to everyone, everywhere, under what is known as a free license. And most importantly, we are doubling down on a belief that high-quality, human-generated content is going to be irreplaceable for generative AI tools like ChatGPT. 

We’ve been reflecting a lot on this last topic. As longtime Wikipedia watcher and Slate reporter Stephen Harrison put it: “the implementation of A.I. technology will undoubtedly alter how Wikipedia is used and transform the user experience. At the same time, the features and bugs of large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT intersect with human interests in ways that support Wikipedia rather than threaten it.”  At the Wikimedia Foundation, this has meant continuously investing in AI and machine learning, while always making sure that humans remain a central part of the equation.

Another area for increased investment is in tools that the Foundation created to help volunteer editors translate articles across languages. As the most multilingual digital enterprise in the world, Wikipedia and its sister projects support content creation in more than 300 languages. 

Meeting Wikimedia’s global mission requires ongoing creativity and innovation in translation across languages and cultural contexts. This started years ago with a content translation tool that is regularly maintained and improved; it has been used to translate more than 2 million of the nearly 64 million Wikipedia articles so far. We added resources last year to launch this into a translation service called MinT (“Machine in Translation”) that is designed to support underserved languages that are using machine translation for the first time. MinT adds bi-directional translation between 155 languages to Wikipedia using an open source language translation model, greatly simplifying the process for editors who translate content to and from these languages. This includes supporting machine translation in Fula for the first time, a language spoken by around 35 million people in West and Central Africa.

Alongside all of this, we have year-in-year-out costs that are required to keep Wikipedia’s ‘factual netting’ healthy and strong. Recently, this has meant making user-guided improvements to the usability of our website for readers. And prioritizing the needs of volunteer editors and technical contributors globally — ranging from customized software, personalized tools, specific bug fixes, and sometimes individualized patches across 300+ languages and in all regions of the world! 

This is why we readily spend most of our roughly $189 million budget on growing teams of world-class engineers, designers, product managers, researchers, and analysts who are up to this monumental task: building a world in which every human being can share in the sum of all knowledge.

3. Fighting mis/disinformation, censorship, and other threats

Most of us have seen or experienced first-hand the negative consequences of misinformation, polarization, and censorship online. These harmful realities, along with threats to our personal data and privacy, often leave us to fend for ourselves. For me, that’s why Wikipedia’s goal to provide evidence-based, unbiased, and free information for everyone has never been more urgent. 

Wikipedia’s volunteers are the world’s first line of defense. Last year, I told government leaders that the day-to-day process of building and improving Wikipedia requires these contributors to collaborate, debate, and discuss their edits in order to write thoughtful, informative articles. They hold themselves to high standards of reliability, verifiability, and neutrality by providing citations and sources. On the “Talk” page of every Wikipedia article, they weigh multiple perspectives in the open so that they can make good faith decisions about content together. And they set and enforce rules for what does and doesn’t belong on the Wikimedia projects, guided by a Universal Code of Conduct and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to human rights standards.

This requires expanding our legal, policy, and advocacy strategies to push back against a trend of increasing authoritarianism and government censorship (including blocks of Wikipedia itself, which we helped overturn in Turkey); promoting responsible regulations to support open access to knowledge in legislation like the Digital Services Act; and when necessary, defending volunteers in countries where contributing to Wikipedia remains an act of bravery. 

In today’s world, we see that it is getting harder to ensure that technology serves people, not the other way around. 

I believe that this work of the Wikimedia Foundation — promoting the values of open and equitable access to knowledge to people and societies everywhere — must be supported now more than ever before.

4. Supporting volunteers to build thriving communities of contributors

The Wikimedia Foundation is part of an extensive ecosystem of communities that also includes local chapters representing countries, user groups of volunteers with common interests, allied partners who advocate for open knowledge, and individuals editing Wikipedia who often have no idea that any of this even exists behind the online platform.

One of the most important tasks of the Wikimedia Foundation is to share the financial support we receive with these individuals, groups, and organizations around the world to collectively build thriving communities of contributors. This requires operating a very complex administrative and financial infrastructure that can fund 90+ countries – one that is annually given the highest possible ratings from independent watchdogs like Charity Navigator.

With the guidance of volunteer committees, we balance funding priorities between deeper innovations in more established regions with high-scale growth efforts in newer communities like Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, closing what we call ‘knowledge gaps’ is a strategic goal of our movement; just one example of this is the collective efforts of countless individuals and organizations to increase the representation of women’s biographies on Wikipedia.

The goal of this work is to invite anyone who shares our vision and values to join us. This extends from welcoming newcomers to supporting more established editors; it can take the form of a small donation to an individual to a large, multi-year grant enabling a chapter to grow its local activities; and it can support partnerships with hundreds of educational and cultural institutions around the world. 

It means meeting people where they are, and not expecting them to find us. I think about recent grants that have supported co-creating open knowledge projects with the Atikamekw First Nation in Canada; addressing gender gaps with US-based Art+Feminism; edit-a-thons in Japan; the development of Kyrgyz Wikipedia in Central Europe; building the base of Wikimedia contributors in Nigeria; and helping teachers use Wikipedia in the classroom in Morocco.

The people who do all this can’t be seen on your computer screen, but they power the human world of Wikipedia, one that makes everything else I’ve talked about here possible.

… 

I hope this explanation helps you to better understand what the Wikimedia Foundation does, especially when we ask you to donate. 

By design, we don’t only ask a privileged few to write us big checks. That’s because Wikipedia belongs to everyone, and why people are asked to contribute what they can if they’ve found it useful. This funding, given by only 2% of readers, helps keep the site ad-free and independent. 

As you’ve read, the Wikimedia Foundation has grown to meet technical, geographic, and social changes that are only accelerating their pace of change. Alongside today’s investments, we are also planning for the future – by doing things like growing an endowment to accelerate technical innovation and making big bets to reimagine the role of language on the internet. If you agree that this work is important, please consider supporting the Wikimedia Foundation. 

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, representing the best of human knowledge. It is not a social media platform or an opinion page. Nothing quite like it exists anywhere. And it belongs to all of us.

… 

Maryana Iskander is Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.

If you’d like to support our work, you can make a donation at donate.wikimedia.org.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on 30 October 2023. It was updated with more recent information in November 2024.

Related resources

7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation ensures that every donation we receive is invested back into serving Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and our free knowledge mission. 

Read more

Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI

If there was a generative artificial intelligence system that could, on its own, write all the information contained in Wikipedia, would it be the same as Wikipedia today?

Read more

20 years of the nonprofit behind Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an indispensable part of the internet — no matter if you’re searching for a fact to win a round of trivia or doing a deep dive on what’s happening in the world around you.

Read more

The post Love Wikipedia? Get to know the nonprofit behind it appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

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People give to Wikipedia for many different reasons. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, ensures that every donation we receive is invested back into serving Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and our free knowledge mission.

While many visit Wikipedia on a daily basis, it’s not always obvious what it takes to make that visit possible. Here are 7 reasons to donate to the Foundation that also clarify who we are, what we do, and why your donations matter: 

1. We’re a nonprofit, and readers and donors around the world keep us independent.

Many people are surprised to learn that Wikipedia is hosted by a nonprofit organization. It is actually the only website in the top-ten most-visited global websites to be run by a nonprofit. That’s important because we are not funded by advertising, we don’t charge a subscription fee, and we don’t sell your data. The majority of our funding comes from donations ($11 is the average) from people who read Wikipedia. Many see fundraising messages on Wikipedia and give through those. This model preserves our independence by reducing the ability of any one organization or person to influence the content on Wikipedia.

We’ve long-followed industry best practices for nonprofits and have consistently received the highest ratings by nonprofit groups like Charity Navigator for financial efficiency and transparency. We also publish annual reports about our finances and fundraising that are open for anyone to review.

2.  Wikipedia serves millions of readers and runs at a fraction of the cost of other top websites. 

Wikipedia is viewed more than 15 billion times every month. We have the same (if not higher) levels of global traffic as many other for-profit internet companies at a fraction of the budget and staffing. 

Nearly 650 people work at the Wikimedia Foundation. The majority work in product and technology ensuring quick load times, secure connections, and better reading and editing experiences on our sites. They maintain the software and infrastructure on which we operate some of the world’s most multilingual sites with knowledge available in over 300 languages. While our mission and work are unique, by comparison, Google’s translation tool currently supports 243 languages; Meta has more than 70,000 employees; and Reddit has about 2,000 employees.

3. Reader donations support the technology that makes Wikipedia possible and improvements to how people read, edit, and share knowledge on Wikipedia.

Around half of our budget goes directly towards maintaining Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This supports the technical infrastructure that allows billions of visits to Wikipedia monthly, including a new data center in Brazil that decreased loading times across Latin America. It also supports the staff who play a vital role in contributing to the maintenance of our systems, including site reliability engineering, software engineering, security, and other roles.

Because Wikipedia is available in over 300 languages, it needs top-notch multilingual technology to ensure readers and editors can view and contribute knowledge in their preferred language. Funding also helps with improvements to the user experience on Wikipedia and supporting the growth of global volunteer editor communities to increase knowledge on the site, so that it remains relevant, accurate, and useful.

4. We’re evolving to meet new needs in a changing technology landscape and respond to new global threats.

If you regularly visited Wikipedia in our first decade, there was a good chance you’d get an error message at some point. Because of our steady investments in technology, that’s no longer the case—Wikipedia now handles record-breaking spikes in traffic with ease, preventing any disruption to the reading or editing experience. 

We’re also adapting to meet new challenges, including sophisticated disinformation tactics and threats of government censorship, as well as cybersecurity attacks and changes to how the internet is governed. New security protocols limit the potential for attackers to take advantage of our sites, while our legal staff help to protect our free knowledge mission.

More than half of our traffic now comes from mobile devices. AI training models, voice-activated devices, and websites increasingly leverage Wikipedia to serve their users’ knowledge needs. We’re continuing to evolve to meet these preferences, including developing new experiments to learn more about how to reach new generations of readers and contributors in a changing internet.

5. We manage our finances responsibly and balance Wikipedia’s immediate needs with long-term sustainability.

You probably don’t use your checking account in the same way you use a savings account. One is probably for more day-to-day expenses and the other is likely for emergencies, like if your car suddenly breaks down, or for long-term financial goals, like retirement.  

It’s similar for nonprofits. We have two accounts that act like savings accounts for us. Our reserve is like a rainy day fund for emergencies, such as an economic crisis. 

Our endowment is a long-term permanent fund. The investment income from the endowment supports the future of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. These funds are set aside for particular long-term purposes. However, we use the vast majority of the donations we receive from Wikipedia readers to support the current work we are doing that year.

Sustaining healthy financial reserves and having a working capital policy is considered a best practice for organizations of all types. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors defined our working capital policy to sustain our work and provide support to volunteers and Wikimedia affiliates—a global network of groups that support Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and the mission globally. It is also designed to cover unplanned expenses, emergencies, or revenue shortfalls. The policy enables us to have sufficient cashflow to cover our expenses throughout the year.

6. Supporting Wikipedia means you’re helping it become more representative of all the world’s knowledge.

The Wikimedia Foundation supports individuals and organizations around the world with funding to increase the diversity, reach, quality, and quantity of free knowledge on Wikipedia. Over the last four years, we have given over $55 million to members of the volunteer Wikimedia community in over 90 countries. 

While we recognize there are still big gaps to fill, the knowledge on Wikipedia has become more globally representative of the world, as have the editors that contribute to the site. For example, the community of volunteer editors in Sub-Saharan Africa has grown by 44% percent since 2020. This is because of steady programmatic efforts led by Wikimedia volunteers, affiliates, and others—many of whom have received funding, training, and other support from the Foundation.

Why does global representation of Wikipedia volunteer editors matter? It matters because Wikipedia is a reflection of the people who contribute to it. Diverse perspectives create higher quality, more representative, and relevant knowledge for all of us.  

7. Contributions from readers keep us going.

The humans who give back to Wikipedia—whether through donations, words of support, edits, or through the many other ways people contribute—inspire us every day. All of us here at the Wikimedia Foundation want to take this opportunity to thank them. We’d like to share some of our favorite messages from donors over the years. We hope they move you as much as they have moved us:

“Wikipedia has been an endless sea of adventure for my curious soul. Where I had been admonished throughout my childhood for asking ‘stupid questions’, what you do has been a safe space for me to satisfy all curiosity and to foster a skill for learning my entire life now.

What stories will be told of you hundreds of years from now I cannot imagine. An endless Alexandria, every one of you a part of something that is sure to be treasured for as long as humanity draws breath.”

Donor from Ireland

“Thank you so much. Because what I am today in my life, it is only possible because of knowledge I have got from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is part of our life. It is emotion. Internet without Wikipedia is like a body without [a] soul. Thank you for being with us and keep enlighten[ing] our minds.”

Donor from India

We hope that we helped to deepen your understanding about how important reader donations are to Wikipedia. If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ.

If you are in a position to give, you can make a donation to Wikipedia at donate.wikimedia.org.

Lisa Seitz-Gruwell is the Chief Advancement Officer and Deputy to the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on 3 November 2022. Several data points, figures, and links were updated on 23 October 2023 and again in November 2024.

Related resources

Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI

If there was a generative artificial intelligence system that could, on its own, write all the information contained in Wikipedia, would it be the same as Wikipedia today?

Read more

20 years of the nonprofit behind Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an indispensable part of the internet — no matter if you’re searching for a fact to win a round of trivia or doing a deep dive on what’s happening in the world around you.

Read more

Wikipedia’s new sound logo: Winner of The Sound of All Human Knowledge contest announced

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, announced the winner of its global Sound of All Human Knowledge contest, ending the search for a sound logo for Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects.

Read more

Wikimedia Foundation calls for protection and fair treatment of Wikipedia as UK Online Safety Bill becomes law

The Wikimedia Foundation is calling on the UK government and independent regulator to ensure the implementation of the Online Safety Bill does not harm Wikipedia, and other projects that the public relies on to create and access free, reliable knowledge.

Read more

The post 7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

14/11/2024-20/11/2024

Mapping

• Detroit has become the most comprehensively mapped city on Mapillary, achieving 99.8% street coverage through a pioneering street-level imagery (SLI) programme launched in 2018 to address asset management challenges, improving city planning and even addressing census undercounts, demonstrating the transformative power of open SLI platforms in municipal operations.
• Andy Townsend highlighted the issues with using the generic highway=path tag in England and Wales, noting its lack of descriptive clarity and challenges in tagging legal access rights. He suggested using alternative tags such as highway=footway, where applicable, and adding detailed attributes to improve mapping accuracy.
• Requests for comments have been made on these proposals:
  • amenity=travellers_lounge for mapping public seating areas in transport facilities, such as airport lounges or railway station waiting areas.
  • rental:powerbank=yes, to map stations where users can rent portable power banks to charge mobile devices on the go.
  • addr:milestone=* to allow the tagging of street addresses that use the distance from a reference point as part of the address.
  • languages:official=* and languages:preferred=*, to enable the specification of languages for name rendering, for example the targeted display of street names in different languages or scripts in map applications.
  • education=* to tag various educational facilities, programmes, or initiatives, such as schools, training centres, or extracurricular services.
  • railway:train_protection=* to tag specific train protection systems used on railway lines, such as Automatic Train Control, European Train Control System, or similar technologies.
  • shared_green=* to tag pedestrian crossings where vehicles and pedestrians share a green light, helping to identify potentially hazardous situations and improve route planning and safety information.

Mapping campaigns

• Barro examined ► the state of bike parking at daycare centres and schools in Finland’s capital region, highlighting outdated infrastructure and its mismatch with sustainable mobility goals. Using OpenStreetMap data, Barro’s mapping project reveals challenges like inadequate bike racks, underscoring the need for improved planning, and compliance with Helsinki’s 2016 bike parking guidelines.
• As part of the EU Green Diplomacy Weeks across the ASEAN countries, more than 450 Filipino youth participated in a Map for Climate mapathon, using OpenStreetMap to identify climate-vulnerable areas to promote disaster resilience and sustainable planning, showcasing ASEAN-EU cooperation on climate action.

Community

• ASRvwde shared ► their journey from frustration with proprietary mapping systems like Google Maps and TomTom, to embracing the open, editable nature of OSM and its tools, culminating in a deeper commitment to open-source solutions.
• Pieter Vander Vennet detailed the transition of MapComplete’s image hosting from Imgur to Panoramax, citing changes to Imgur’s terms of use and functionality, while encouraging the wider adoption of Panoramax for OpenStreetMap projects.
• Christopher Beddow explored the challenges of maintaining up-to-date maps in a rapidly changing world and examined how digital tools, sensors and crowdsourced data such as OpenStreetMap aim to synchronise geospatial data with reality. While OSM provides near real-time updates, the delivery of maps often lags due to the need for error correction and cost efficiency. Advanced tools such as AI, sensors, and augmented reality promise better mapping, but the Sisyphean task of creating a perfectly dynamic map highlights the limits of technology and human effort. Ultimately, mapping validates our ever-changing world, bridging subjective experience with objective geospatial records.
• The Trufi Association congratulated the Duitama Mapping Stars, a group of 12 Colombian high school students from Salesano College, who received volunteer certificates for their mapping contributions under the guidance of teacher Leonardo Gutiérrez and principal Pd. Peña.

Imports

• spalinger wrote a guide outlining a detailed process for importing Swiss GWR address data into OpenStreetMap using JOSM, emphasising preparation, merging, and validation to improve data accuracy and consistency, while identifying areas for further improvement.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OSMF Board’s 2024 report highlighted achievements including improved governance, support for global and regional State of the Map conferences, enhanced onboarding processes, and progress on relocating the organisation into the European Union. Diversity milestones were also celebrated, with the Board having its highest female representation yet.

Events

• Save the date for the first monthly online Panoramax meeting, in English, on Monday 25 November at 16:00 UTC.

Education

• Ray Berger’s guide explains how to add a brand preset to OpenStreetMap using the Name Suggestion Index, aiming to simplify a process that even experienced mappers and developers can find confusing.

OSM research

• HeiGIT has released a global dataset of road surface types (paved versus unpaved), filling the 67% gap in OpenStreetMap road surface data. Developed using geo-AI and funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation, this dataset improves road safety, economic development, and environmental planning by optimising emergency routes and supply chains, particularly in under-mapped regions.

Maps

• ^[1] Prasanna Venkadesh has updated StreetLightsMap to use Protomaps’ PMTiles vector format as its base map, replacing the standard OpenStreetMap raster tiles and reducing the load on OSM’s tile servers thanks to Protomaps’ free non-commercial API access.
• OpenStreetMap’s new dark mode has updated the user interface to match the user’s system settings, but many users have criticised the dimming effect on map tiles for reducing contrast and usability, particularly in terms of accessibility. The developers acknowledged the concerns and mentioned future plans for improvement, including possible vector tile updates, while noting the limitations of the current infrastructure.

OSM in action

• There are two Geoguessr-like games based on Panoramax images available, PANOGUESSR and PanoramaxGuessr.

Software

• MapMatrix showcased a React-based application built by Claude AI that enables synchronised multi-view map comparisons with features such as MapLibre integration, custom layers, and configurable layouts.
• Emilio Mariscal has developed ChatMap, a simple tool for creating maps from WhatsApp chats, designed to assist emergency services and humanitarian organisations by converting shared locations into actionable maps during disasters and emergencies. Users can export chat data as a ZIP file and upload it to ChatMap to visualise locations, with potential applications beyond crisis response.
• The osmapiR v0.2.2 update improved compatibility with the httr2 library, enhanced documentation for OpenStreetMap server changes, introduced new query parameters for changesets, and resolved bugs related to time-based queries, further streamlining OpenStreetMap data management in R.
• Traili Map is a user-friendly route planner for bike touring, focused on utilising existing bike trails and infrastructure, primarily sourced from OpenStreetMap. It allows users to explore and plan routes based on official bike trails, currently covering Europe, with North America and other regions planned soon. The app employs Graphhopper for fast route calculations and uses Next.js and .NET for its web interface, with plans to transition to self-hosted map tiles for greater flexibility.

Programming

• Mark Litwintschik reviewed OpenStreetMap’s move to hosting Mapbox Vector Tiles (MVT), which allow users to customise map styles and extract data more flexibly than static raster tiles. Mark provided a step-by-step guide to visualising these tiles using tools such as QGIS and Jupyter Notebook, discussed hardware and software setups, and highlighted how vector tiles can improve the clarity and usability of mapping applications.
• Overpass.jl is a Julia package that provides a lightweight wrapper for the Overpass API, allowing users to perform spatial queries, parse results flexibly, and customise API endpoints with minimal dependencies.
• Greg Smith explored the process of importing the global OpenStreetMap database into PostgreSQL in less than four hours using tweaked settings, advanced hardware, and updates in PostgreSQL and osm2pgsql. Improvements in GIST index building, osm2pgsql’s index compression techniques, and state-of-the-art SSDs significantly improved performance, demonstrating how advances in database and hardware technologies are streamlining the handling of massive geospatial data.

Releases

• OsmAnd Android 4.9 introduced new features such as route recording with speed analysis, improvements to the GPX viewer, and search capabilities, the ability to add bookmarks while navigating, better map rendering performance, and updated public transport tools, improving both the user experience and the versatility of the application.
• A new beta version of the Panoramax Android app, for taking street-level photos, has been released.
• OsmAPP v1.6.0 has introduced major updates such as driving directions, enhanced search capabilities using the Overpass API, improved public transport and feature panels, multi-language support and innovative sharing tools, as well as a beta climbing app with features tailored for climbers, emphasising usability and open source principles.

Did you know …

• … that BBBike Map Compare lets you view maps from OpenStreetMap, Google, and other sources side by side?
• … that GPSLogger is a lightweight Android app for recording GNSS data in multiple formats (such as GPX, KML, and CSV) and supports uploads to services including Google Drive and Dropbox, all while being optimised for battery efficiency?
• … that you can find local OSM communities in your area by exploring the OSM Teams web app?
• … that Scrambled Hex Maps by Tripgeo is a map-based puzzle game in which you rearrange city hexes to reveal the correct order?

Other “geo” things

• Foursquare announced the release of FSQ Open Source Places, a freely available dataset of over 100 million global points of interest updated monthly under the Apache 2.0 licence. This release is aimed at generating geospatial data by combining AI and human contributions for comprehensive and accurate mapping, and inviting community collaboration to build this foundational layer.
• Simon Poole has expressed mixed reactions to Foursquare’s announcement. While acknowledging the value of releasing the data, he questioned the use of the Apache 2.0 licence, pointing out that it is not a standard licence for data and raises uncertainties about its application and compatibility with other data licences.
• The F24 ferry in Berlin shows that informal, community-driven transport deserves recognition, whether it’s a small ferry in Europe or a minibus in Lagos.
• Google has used ► anonymised GNSS data from millions of Android smartphones to accurately map the ionosphere and thus minimise interference from this layer of the atmosphere, which is particularly beneficial to regions with few monitoring stations. In some cases, the method surpassed existing models in terms of accuracy and provided scientific insights, for example the detection of plasma bubbles and equatorial anomalies.
• Niantic has announced the creation of a Large Geospatial Model (LGM), developed using visual scans collected by Pokémon Go players and users of the Scaniverse app, to build an AI navigation system for physical spaces. This model draws from over 10 million scanned locations globally, capturing unique pedestrian perspectives, and processes geolocated images to create neural networks representing specific locations. With over 150 trillion parameters, the LGM aims to enable precise spatial understanding and has applications in AR, robotics, and logistics. While the scans were gathered under the relevant terms of service, some players have expressed concerns about their use in AI development.
• The Berlin City Traffic Information Centre has published ► a parking space dataset that covers all public street parking within the Berlin S-Bahn ring and selected adjacent areas. They have also launched an interactive ► map providing detailed information for each parking space, including its exact location (street and house number), orientation, parking times, and associated fees with corresponding time slots.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Strasbourg	Strasbourg 3ème Atelier de cartographie sur OpenStreetMap		2024-11-25
Saint-Étienne	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire		2024-11-25
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-11-27
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #64	✓	2024-11-26
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-11-27
Lübeck	148. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-11-28
Olomouc	SotM CZ+SK 2024		2024-11-29
Sint-Michiels	LiLi-app mapathon		2024-11-29
ঢাকা	State of the Map Asia		2024-11-29 – 2024-11-30
Salzburg	OSM Treffen Salzburg		2024-12-03
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2024-12-03
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2024-12-04
	OSM Indoor Meetup		2024-12-04
	LCCWG Monthly Meeting		2024-12-05
Montrouge	Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris		2024-12-05
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-12-06
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-12-08
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #71		2024-12-09

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The scripts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Improvements

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

There are also possibly a few issues with the current process

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

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

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

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

🕑 1 hour

Stephen Harrison is a tech lawyer and journalist who has been writing about Wikipedia since 2018, including dozens of articles for the online magazine Slate as part of his Source Notes column. He is the author of the 2024 novel The Editors, which is about a group of editors of the fictional user-editable online encyclopedia "Infopendium" who are drawn together by dramatic events.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Stephen Harrison website
• Source Notes blog/newsletter
• Stephen Harrison's list of Wikipedia-related articles
  • More comprehensive list
• Reddit /r/pics subreddit (my apologies for casting aspersions - it's not that political any more! It was more political during the recent U.S. presidential election.)
• "Times of London: Wikipedia, AI, & THE EDITORS | An Audiobook Update" (October 2024 blog post)