Everyone can have milestones in their lives. For me, Wikimania 2024 Katowice is a milestone. I would like to share with you my experiences at Wikimania 2024 Katowice, which took place between 7-10 August 2024.

Today is the big day. The day when Mari and Nikos and I will make our presentation about the CEE Youth Group that I have been preparing for a while. So I had breakfast early in the morning and set off for the conference center as soon as possible. I also attended several sessions and I would like to tell you a little bit about some of them.

AffCom meets community by Mehman

I listened to Mehman’s presentation on AffCom (The Affiliations Committee) until my own presentation with Mari. The presentation provided the audience with a lot of useful and interesting information such as AffCom’s objectives, members and subcommittees.

As far as I checked my notes, AffCom has 9 members, 6 advisors and 3 subcommittees; Conflicts Management, Affiliate Recognition and Communications. AffCom lists its objectives as Affiliate Recognition and derecognition, Affiliate conflict management, Affiliate capacity building and Movement contribution.

Mehman then explained how they go about evaluating an application for the establishment of a user group. It’s an important point, the process now includes new elements like a live interview, a requirement for applicants to publish a public letter of intent, and a one-year trial period to demonstrate their effectiveness, which is particularly important for showcasing the group’s potential. Later in the presentation, Mehman also talked about some detailed processes such as Chapter/Thematic organization recognition, Conflict intervention, Compliance monitoring, Affiliate Health Criteria and workflow management.

CEE Youth Group: a successful youth organisation within the movement by Mari Avetisyan, Nikos Likomitros, and Y. Caner Özyayıkçı

Introducing CEE Youth Group! The group of young Wikimedians in the CEE region (Central and Eastern Europe) is still very new, but it is already known by many people. Me and my friends Mari and Nikos, as members of this group, gave a presentation about our group, our aims and what we do. We also talked about what young Wikimedians in our countries are doing. At the end of the presentation, we invited some of the youth group members who were listening to us to the podium to talk about their experiences from their own perspectives and we got some good information. Afterwards, we answered the questions and ended the session.

I would like to give you some highlights of our presentation:

CEE Youth Group was first established in May 2023 by CEE Hub coordinator Barbara Klen and SC member Klára Joklová. Our purposes include creating a safe space for young Wikimedians in the CEE region, building capacity among CEE Young Wikimedians, facilitating connections, sharing experiences and encouraging young people to contribute to Wikimedia projects.

We come together every 2 months to evaluate my current work and exchange information. Our first face-to-face meeting and presentation took place at CEE Meeting 2023 in Tbilisi. In November of the same year, we met in Prague and discussed the current situation and future of our group.

So what do we do socially as a youth group? Although the day is not fixed, some evenings we gather together on what we call CEE Youth Game Night and have fun playing games together. This way, the participants are both motivated and meet their peers.

Let’s talk a little bit about youth work in the countries. We mentioned that there are many local youth organizations such as Wiki Student Clubs Türkiye, Young Wikimedians in Greece and Wikicamps and WikiClubs in Armenia.

There are many different activities for young participants in Armenia, such as WikiClubs, WikiCamps and Internships. As of the date of this presentation, there are 8 different WikiClubs across the country with a total of 192 members. Also something very interesting; Wikimedia Armenia collaborates with 4 universities in Armenia and 145 people did internships in 2024.

Young Wikimedians in Türkiye can participate in many different activities such as Wikipedia Education Program, Wiki Student Clubs, WikiCamp and edit-a-thons on various themes. Wikimedia CUG Turkey organized various events at 25 universities in 12 cities in Türkiye. In addition, young Wikimedians, have established Wiki Student Clubs in 4 different universities in the last 2 years and organized edit-a-thons, photowalks and international collaborations on various themes.

In Greece, they organized various workshops, online presentations and hackathons. They also collaborate with other WikiClubs around the world.

Building the CEE hub – how it looks from the staff’s perspective by Barbara Klen and Toni Ristovski

In this presentation Barbara and Toni give the perspectives of two full-time (project-based) staff members on the implementation of the CEE Hub project, their communication with more than 30 communities in the region and their collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation.

What were identified as necessary steps in the presentation: HR process, communication with Wikimedia Foundation, relationships between SC members and staff members, building relationships with staff and communities and restructuring activities

WikiPortraits: Transforming the Wikipedia photo desert into a green oasis by
Kevin Payravi, Jennifer 8. Lee and Andrew Lih

I may have waited a year to listen to this presentation! Because when we were thinking of realizing a similar project with some Wikimedians in Türkiye, we learned about WikiPortraits as a result of our research. It was a great chance and an exciting moment for me to hear the project live directly from the people who worked on it.

They say that the main problem when they started this project was that quite a lot of Wikipedia biography pages had bad photos. (After seeing the examples they showed, I strongly agree with this) However, they noted that there were some challenges in this process, such as free licenses and taking good quality photographs of noteworthy people.

But with WikiPortraits, they overcame these challenges. WikiPortraits; is an initiative and brand for providing press access to events for photos to be uploaded to Commons. It brings both existing Wikipedian photographers and outside photographers into the Wiki Movement. (Sounds pretty cool and exciting)

CEE Extravaganza

We gathered together as participants from the CEE region to listened CEE Spring, preview of the CEE Meeting 2024 that we will host in Istanbul in September, updates from the CEE Youth Group of which I am a member, and finally we tested our knowledge together with the CEE quiz.

Karaoke!

For the first time in my life, I found myself singing karaoke for the first time on a spur of the moment dare, and not by myself, but as a duo with a friend from another country. I apologize if I disturbed the listeners’ ears 🙂

Gravestones have been one of humanity’s best attempt at preserving the information of a deceased person. A pillar of stone, carved with the date and place of death, and sometimes their date of birth, honorific titles, and personal information, gives a glimpse about the long (or short) life of the person below. For Wikipedia biographies, gravestones are a valuable resource for biography article, as key information about a person could be taken from their gravestones.

The key role of gravestone becomes more important in countries such as Indonesia, where there is a lack of information about a notable person that has long gone from the public view. The lack of memorial websites available in the country complicates efforts to make a complete biography of a person. Due to this lack of information, some biographies had to be left uncompleted.

As a biography author in Wikipedia, my first contact with graves was when I accidentally stumbled upon a long-dead website owned by the Ministry of Social Affairs around 2022. The website contains the database of national heroes buried in various hero cemeteries in Indonesia, with the most complete being the database for figures buried in the Kalibata Heroes Cemetery. The website was preserved intact by the Internet Archive, allowing me to traverse the website for the titles and death dates of prominent Indonesian figures. I managed to complete some of the biographies I’ve written before that lacked important information. I later informed the existence of this website to several other colleagues of mine who were also editing biographies in Wikipedia. These websites proved itself to be useful for biographies, and within the next few months incomplete biographies had been completed with the aid of the archived database.

The next major step in my involvement with graves was WikiPatriot, which was inspired by the archived database. At a Wikimedia Jakarta community regular meeting in August 2023, I proposed a project to document the graves of the Kalibata Heroes Cemetery to commemorate the Heroes’ Day on 10 November. To assist the documentation process, the archived database would act as a starting point. The project also involved fixing biography articles of the figures buried in the cemetery. The project was approved, although I wasn’t too involved in the initial proposal, as my academic responsibilities got in the way. With full approval from Wikimedia Indonesia and permission from the social ministry, WikiPatriot was in full throttle. Prior to obtaining permission from the ministry, the preparation team arranged a list of names from the database to be documented and improved.

The documentation process was done in two days. I, along with several other members of the Wikimedia Jakarta community, went to the cemetery to document the graves. We were escorted around the cemetery with a buggy driven by a cemetery’s staff. During the process, I often stopped by for a while on the gravestone, reading the details before documenting it. I also documented several unlisted graves, as I believe some of the graves which were unlisted were noteworthy enough to be made as an article. We finished the documentation at around three in the afternoon on the first day. The team held a second round of documentations on the next day, which I wasn’t able to join due to other responsibilities. During these two days, we documented around 200 gravestones, with a total of 1,236 photo files.

The next step after documentation was to upload and catalogize the files. Upon the successful completion of the task, we began editing the figure’s Wikipedia articles and its structured data on Wikidata. We did several rounds of editathon during November, before completing the entire project on 24 November 2023.

I’d later figure out during the all-Indonesia WikiNusantara conference, which was held on May 2024, that the Jakarta community wasn’t the only community that proposed a grave documentation project. The Banjarese community also did a grave documentation project under the name WikiBarakat.

My experience with graves for the past two years has taught me a valuable lesson not to downplay the value of any historical object. The inscriptions carved on this seemingly simple stone is an important key to rediscover the past and understand the actors that shaped events and incidents that formed our understanding and perception of history.

Terri Hlava teaches Justice Studies, Disability Studies, and Cultural Pedagogy courses at Arizona State University.

It wasn’t very long ago that Wikipedia meant a website to look up information, a first stop in a learning journey. But now, it means so much more to my teaching partner and me. These days, the Wikipedia assignment means an unprecedented opportunity for our students to shape knowledge and influence culture – independent of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X, an opportunity to improve accessibility and increase authentic representation of marginalized communities. It means that students engage deeply with course content.

It wasn’t very long ago that my teaching partner and I hadn’t considered incorporating Wikipedia into our courses, and now, we cannot imagine teaching about social justice topics without the Wikipedia assignment – because it requires students to understand (and engage in) the politics of knowledge production, as Dr. Tracy Perkins pointed out when she introduced us to the idea of teaching with Wikipedia with the support of Wiki Education.

As persuasive as her presentation was, we weren’t fully convinced until we tried the Wikipedia assignment in our own class and saw our students appreciate the trainings and the practice exercises. Classroom conversations went from primarily practical information about course content to more theoretical discussions with students reminding each other that all assertions had to be cited, no new knowledge could be introduced during this stage. They truly embraced the Wiki Education ideals and standards. Facilitating meaningful discussion is one thing, but incorporating technology is quite another matter…

Truth be told, I put the “no logical” in “tech-no-logical”. So, the idea of using technology in an upper division class was intimidating. OK, it was a little worse than intimidating – I was pretty scared at first. But the Wiki Education team helped us set up our course and integrate the assignments into our syllabus. Dr. Perkins helped the students open accounts and navigate the dashboard and made sure that everyone was set up for success. Thanks to this support, we eased into the experience with our students leading the way.

When students selected articles, our primary requirement was that they research from a place of authenticity, meaning that students had to identify with some aspect of the information they were evaluating – the intent with this requirement was to amplify marginalized voices – not overwrite, overshadow or exclude them. Although we didn’t ask, students eagerly explained the connections to their topics, and these explanations increased classroom community and allowed students to appreciate each other’s areas of expertise.

Following those conversations, students’ confidence grew with each training exercise and every practice activity. When they posted their edits, we celebrated their scholarship and watched as the number of readers grew, slowly at first, and then exponentially by the end of that week! Students were elated by the readership statistics! We were excited for them, and so grateful to Dr. Perkins for sharing her experience and expertise with us.

However, as usual, there was an exception. One student’s work was removed almost immediately, and he was not surprised, because he said that he hadn’t put forth his best effort. That lesson was powerful for the class – they understood the reasons for posting work that had been cited, and they saw the swift consequences for posting work that did not meet this standard. When the work vanished so quickly, we reminded students that we were not grading the longevity of their edits. This debriefing conversation took us beyond the joy that the other students experienced when their work was being seen by so many readers. Together, we discussed the removal as a requisite measure of integrity.

And it was then that our students really grasped the magnitude of their edits – they understood that their work contributed to the greater good – a perfect segue into that next conversation about the politics of knowledge production, a topic we’d visited and revisited throughout the course. In this context, we asked students how members of marginalized communities continue to be underrepresented in these spaces (though there is progress in this area) and how cultural concerns can be erased and sometimes replaced. Each student provided accurate, relevant examples, and they mentioned the work of the vigilant editors who keep watch over the content, intending to remedy these issues. By the end of our course these students also considered themselves members of the Wiki Education team!

That first time teaching with the Wikipedia assignment made me a believer in the power of this process – my co-teacher and I learned a lot, but our students learned much more, and that is always our goal.

Thank you, Wiki Education, for providing these opportunities. Thank you, Dr. Perkins for your unwavering support, and thank you Helaine, Andrés, and Brianda for supporting the work of Wiki Education worldwide.

Webinar on Wednesday! Hear directly from Dr. Perkins and other faculty teaching with Wikipedia in our upcoming Speaker Series webinar “Wikipedia & Social Justice: How students are enhancing representation and equity” on Wednesday, September 25 at 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern. Panelists will explore themes of social justice, representation, and knowledge equity within the context of their teaching and coursework on Wikipedia. Register Now.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

Wikimania is an annual conference where Wikimedians and open knowledge advocates can meet to share knowledge, network, and learn from each other. This year it took place in sunny Katowice in Southern Poland, in August. Several of our staff and Wikimedians in Residence attended the conference, delivering talks, workshops and sitting on panels. Here’s what they had to say about this year’s Wikimania…

Richard Nevell’s reflections about the conference as a whole

Wikimania was a fantastic celebration of all things Wikimedia, how far we have come over the last year and recognising the vital contribution of the community behind the world’s most important website.[neutrality is disputed] There were inspiring stories of pushing the boundaries of knowledge, lessons from working in museums and education, and so many conversations with friends old and new.

Main takeaway for the sessions I worked on

UN sessions: The UN has lots of different agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization which produce outstanding reports perfect for updating Wikipedia pages about globally important topics. We would love for Wikipedians to make sure of these reports – adding them as referencing, using the images and graphics when they’re under an open licence, and using the data.

Changemakers’ toolkit: We’re excited to share the Changemakers’ Toolkit with Wikimedians, a key audience for sharing information and bringing about positive change. We hope that the tools, developed with the Sheila McKechnie Foundation, help Wikmedians think about effective strategies for communicating and advocating for change.

Daria Cybulska main takeaway for others was a report from Open Futures Foundation, found here, about trends in the future of open culture.

Lucy Hinnie’s reflections about the conference as a whole

It was really wonderful to connect with so many Wikimedians and to see the impact of both the movement as a whole, but also the specific ways Wikimedia UK is known and admired around the globe. A very laid back atmosphere with lots going on, and a wide variety of activities outside of the conference, including paint your own Polish mug

It was particularly nice to connect with the UK community as a whole, and to put faces to the names of people we’ve connected with online and worked with/admired over the years.

tl;dr: it was huge, and also fun.

Main takeaway for others

I was there under the auspices of my work with Let’s Connect. We ran three sessions and a Connectathon. The Connectathon was like a speed dating session for Wikimedians from across the movement: it was well attended and a lot of fun. My session on ‘Managing Difficult Conversations’ was run with Jan-Baart from Wikimedia Netherlands and Chinmayee Mishra from Let’s Connect and went well. We also collaborated with the new Capacity Exchange initiative to promote skills sharing.

tl;dr: it was fantastic to collaborate with global colleagues!

Stuart Prior’s reflections about the conference as a whole

Being at the conference helped me start or progress about 3 collaborative projects by being able to speak to people in person. GLAM Global session was great for some in detail conversations with peers. Also, for someone that lives in a big city, I realised being at Wikimania is my closest experience to being in a village: you know a lot of people to varying degrees, you’re always recognising someone you haven’t seen in a while. To the point where I found myself trying to place people days afterwards while in the supermarket in Crystal Palace and then finding myself disappointed to find that they weren’t one of (in Asaf Bartov’s words) “my tribe”.

Sara Thomas’ reflections about the conference as a whole

This was my first in-person Wikimania, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect!  For me one of the main feelings was being amongst “our people”, that sense of being able to learn and talk in-depth about the projects, and have the opportunity to deep-dive and get things done with all the right people in the room. Also, being able to put faces and voices and three dimensions to folks whom I’ve only spoken to on-wiki, over email, or seen in video chat.  

A highlight

Meeting one of my co-coordinators for the Volunteer Supporters’ Network in person for the first time, after having worked together for a year. 

Lucy Moore and Onwuka Glory’s “Smell on Wikidata” session – “If you take one thing away from this session it’s DON’T TASTE CYANIDE.”

The enthusiasm for collaboration between academics in Drs Kirsty Ross and Abd Alsattar Ardati’s Demolishing the Ivory Towers session.

Main takeaway for others

Supporting volunteers within the Wikimedia movement is different from supporting volunteers in other places in society – there are a network of us at the Volunteer Supporters Network and we’d love for you to join us!

Not all knowledge, not all data, can fit into the boxes that we provide, and that’s ok – figuring that out can be delicate, careful work.

Anything else that’s relevant

Getting to spend time with the UK contingent was really lovely – strange to go so far to see those so close to us together

Lucy Crompton-Reid’s reflections about the conference as a whole

A highlight: The lightning talks from Wikimedia UK staff and volunteers really shone out – including Sara’s enchanting story weaving themes of mythology and Wikidata, Tatjana’s compelling talk on her climate residency, and Lucy’s call to action to improve documentation of (and therefore promote access to) sanitary bins, as a neglected but vital equity issue.

Main takeaway for others

I was part of a panel showcasing some of the movement’s advocacy activities over the past year. Speakers included paid staff and volunteers, and none of us were lawyers! So the main point I would like people to take away is that if you care about open access to information, you can get involved in public policy advocacy.

Anything else that’s relevant

It was a joy and a privilege to spend the week with people from all over the world, from different cultures and professional backgrounds, who are united by a shared belief that knowledge and information should be shared openly and freely.

You can find some of the talks on YouTube, such as Sara’s talk on monsters and myths at 7:49:31 in this video. The Wikimedian in Residence for Climate at GSI, Tatjana Baleta’s talk on climate at 8:08:28 is in the same video. Wikimedian and Museum Curator, Lucy Moore’s talk on sanitary justice can be found at 7:29:50 in this video. Lucy Crompton-Reid’s talk on the advocacy panel is in this video, from 1:41:55.

The post Wikimedia UK at Wikimania 2024 appeared first on WMUK.

An interview with Wikimedia Sverige

In this interview we hear from the Metabase project, developed by Wikimedia Sverige as part of the Content Partnerships Hub initiative. Metabase is a platform designed to collect and organize information about the Wikimedia movement’s activities and resources in a linked, structured format. Launched officially in 2024, after two years of intermittent development, Metabase was built on Wikibase, leveraging its features for ease of data input, querying and integration with Wikidata. The goal of the project is to create a collaborative space where affiliates and volunteers can access and share valuable data, fostering knowledge exchange and capacity building across the Wikimedia community. 

To start, please provide an overview of the Metabase project, its history and its objectives.

Metabase is a wiki – a Wikibase instance – where information about the activities done and resources produced by the Wikimedia movement are stored in a linked, structured form. It is being developed by Wikimedia Sverige as part of the Content Partnerships Hub initiative. Our intention is to build a platform where all this information can be collected and accessed by everyone, affiliates and volunteers alike.

The first item was created in October 2022, and we have been working on the project intermittently since then. In the summer of 2024, we felt the project was ready to be officially introduced to the community: we published a white paper (which elaborates on all the issues in this text) and spoke about Metabase at Wikimania in Katowice.

What’s the role and significance of Wikibase features in organizing your data?

Our most important requirement for the platform was that it should support linked, structured data. Ease of both data input and querying was also important. Since we’re Wikimedians, Wikibase was an obvious choice – it looks and feels like Wikidata. The development of the Wikibase.cloud platform lowered the threshold even more, since we didn’t have to concern ourselves with installing and maintaining our own Wikibase instance. It’s like having our own tiny Wikidata!

How do you think Wikibase will enhance findability and searchability of your data?

The data model, which we’re familiar with after years of using and contributing to Wikidata, is simple yet flexible. It allows us to break down our data into small, meaningful pieces. And SPARQL, obviously, makes the magic happen, allowing users to find whatever they need. As it allows us to run federated queries, we can collate our data with that in Wikidata, which in turn means we do not have to duplicate data from Wikidata if it’s not absolutely necessary, allowing our data model to remain pretty shallow. For example, a Wikimedia affiliate in Metabase is just an organization, a city is just a location – but since they also have Wikidata QID’s, we can run a query to find conferences arranged by organizations that are part of the Wikimedia movement and plot their locations on a map.

What challenges did you encounter while working with Wikibase in the Metabase project, and how did you address them?

We’ve had some technical challenges related to Wikibase.cloud – even though it looks like Wikidata, there are some major differences. For one, it lacks support for gadgets and user scripts. You don’t realize how much you depend on things like Merge, LabelLister, DuplicateReferences, MoveClaim and Constraints until you have to do without them! It would also be nice to be able to modify our editing experience with custom CSS and JavaScript.

The biggest challenge, however, was of an ontological nature. It turns out that being faced with an empty Wikibase and the complete freedom to decide what it should be filled with is quite overwhelming. After all, we were not just making a toy for ourselves, but a platform that would hopefully be used by other members of the Wikimedia movement. New contributors needed to be able to understand both the scope of the project and how to model the data.

In order to address this issue, we really took our time at first. The Metabase team at WMSE is small – two persons in the beginning, with another member joining us later on, all experienced Wikidatans. We had a content-driven modelling workflow, focusing on the questions we wanted Metabase to help us answer and working our way back from there to figure out how the data should be structured. Our properties and modeling practices are very close to Wikidata’s for a reason – it should be as easy as possible for Wikimedians to understand the ontology and start contributing.

What practices do you employ to ensure the sustainability of your Wikibase infrastructure?

This is a very big question. In fact, we were asked it when speaking about Metabase at Wikimania 2024 – if people are to invest time into learning and contributing to our platform, they need to feel their work is meaningful and will benefit others in the future. We feel safe hosting the data in Wikibase.cloud, and we appreciate the fact that it can be exported in a standardized format.

There’s also the question of, shall we say, organizational sustainability. The bigger Metabase becomes, the more important it will be to curate the content, clean up any vandalism and take care of the community (not that we expect our contributors to misbehave!). Right now Metabase has three admins, the WMSE team members. But it might not be enough very soon. When we have active users with a track record of great contributions, we hope they will be willing to help out with admin tasks and helping newcomers. We would love to see a community around our project!

In your view, what role could Wikibase play in the wider Wikimedia Movement? How might other Wikimedia chapters and user groups benefit from Wikibase and the Linked Open Data web?

As mentioned in the beginning, Metabase is an attempt to address a real problem in our movement. We do not know whether it will be successful – it’s way too early to tell. Even though we have been working on the project on and off for two years, we only started getting contributions from non-WMSE people very recently. The way we see it, Wikimania 2024 could be seen as a sort of “real” launch for the project, since that’s when we finally felt we were ready to invite the movement to contribute – not only with data, but also with ideas and discussions (and criticism!).

Our hope for Metabase is that it will become an important part of our shared knowledge ecosystem, a place for affiliates and volunteers alike to learn from each other. Metabase should make it easier for everyone to share and discover capacity-building resources, which in turn will help everyone build up their skills faster and do more great Wikimedia things. 

In this interview we heard from:

• Alicia Fagerving, developer, Wikimedia Sverige
• André Costa, Deputy Executive Director, Wikimedia Sverige

Perhaps you’re busy with your daily lives and have no time for a physical conference. You’re maybe that kind of guy that can end up being frozen just by looking at a large crowd of people. Or perhaps you failed to obtain that scholarship to travel to your dream conference.

Whatever it is, sometimes we have to resort to going for a virtual Wikimedia conference, whether it’s Wikimania, a regional conference or anything in particular. A blessing from disguise from the coronavirus pandemic; the Wikimedia movement’s embrace of remote conferences enable the movement to go beyond the venues into our gadget screens, bringing up a much more rapid and open dissemination of conference content within the movement, individual or organizational, wherever they are.

Landmarked by the offline edition of Wikimania in 2021, the hybrid system has stayed since, embraced by later Wikimania editions and other conferences such as ESEAP Conference 2024, where I proudly participated in person. However, that’s not the case for this year’s Wikimania in Katowice, where I participated merely behind my laptop screens.

However, it should never be seen as a bad thing after all! Despite missing chances from a few only in-person streams, having active communications and tons of side cultural activities, one can make the most of their remote times in a way that satisfies themselves and brings apparent impacts for their local Wikimedia communities.

Here, I would like to share my remote experiences in Wikimania 2024, so you can make the most out of your at-home Wikimedia conference, and beyond!

Before the conference

Register for the conference!

At the first of the list: register, of course! Two good things about being virtual is: 1) it’s free, and 2) you can just register anytime! Just go to Meta-Wiki, search for the conference name that you want to participate in, and follow the steps for registration. Likely (as in the case of Wikimania for example), you’ll be given an e-mail with your registration details, i.e. the “ticket”, where you’ll access the virtual conference.

Well, to be fair, you can just go under the radar and join virtually without registration; Wikimania 2024 for example, also has live streams directly in YouTube, but there’s some drawbacks:

• You won’t have access to a more immersive virtual interface. Virtual Wikimedia conferences are held in virtual presentation platforms such as Eventyay and Zoom, where you have the chance to share your thoughts and inquiries live rather than if you just watch it through YouTube.
• You won’t be counted within the official attendance statistics! Yes, you’re just a single person and it’ll mostly won’t make a large dent, but basically you’ve missed (officially) being part of something bigger.

Planning on what streams to watch

Cool, now you’ve registered! Then, you’d probably have to wait for a bit until the presentation list is announced? How do you know this? Just look at their social media! (take Wikimania’s Instagram account for example).

You’ve (probably) waited, and now the schedule is out! You’ve entered the next step: choosing what conference to join live! Why? Sadly, you can only taste one timeline, but there’s many sessions occurring at the same time-you’ve got to choose! (But it’s not the end of the world, don’t worry; more on this later).

Determine the part of the conference that suits your timezone—the part that suits your sleep schedule and other things (we don’t want to make you tired, you know, plus it’ll make your conference experience less effective). Then, from the sessions that occur at the same time, pick the ones that:

• You have a great interest on;
• You probably have a lot of knowledge of so you can share your knowledge together in the session;
• The ones presented by your friend(s) just for support.

During the conference

You’ve waited and it’s time! It’s time to storm yourself, become the Wikimedian weekend warrior and enter the Wikimedian uhh … “holy grounds” … behind the screen. Anyway, here’s some steps to enhance your virtual experience, and give a larger impact to your community, even beyond the conference weekend.

Note-taking

You’ve probably been told of note-taking during class, or heard of the journaling trend in recent times. Note-taking is a serious deal; our memory isn’t perfect, and note-taking complements that. More than that, taking notes gives you a bigger movement impact; it enables you to easily re-read what you’ve learned, pondering on it, and enhancing it with further actions. Take notes when watching the streams. Maybe you can leave some personal tidbits later on, insert examples that you know of, or probably ask something over your notes to the presenter(s).

What I do is pull out a Google Sheets blank page, and just start writing notes during a session—it’s that simple. It’s up to you on how you want to write and customize your notes; it’s fully yours, after all. If you like it on paper, sure. Make it colorful or you’re a black-and-white dude, it’s up to you. Probably put a meme or two, why not … yes, I did that in my notes.

Discuss with your group

You’re in a Wikimedia group? Cool! Now you can share your experience and what you’ve learned with them! They’re likely joining the fun, perhaps even physically, and as excited as you are for the conference!

Oh wait, you don’t have any groups to start with? You can start looking for your project’s Internet groups, perhaps in your main wiki page, or in Meta-Wiki. Or you can just search it up in your searching engine such as “Wikimedia Indonesia” etc., you’ll find it, eventually.

Hyping up the participants

“Hyping up the participants” is just my cool word for “socializing”. Well, how can you socialize in a virtual conference? Firstly, we have various online groups for Wikimania itself, for example! Here are some Telegram groups that you are more than welcome to enter:

• Official Wikimania group
• Wikimania Social group
• Wikimedia collectors group—a group for collectors of stamps, coins, banknotes etc. They host exchange sessions and meetups during Wikimania, among others. You can look for the 2024 example here!

As usual, per above, you can refer to the official sites in Meta-Wiki for localized groups on your hometown. (Or you can ask the members in the groups above!)

Then, be kind! Greet the members, share some tidbits, discuss notes, or just simply know each other. They’ll definitely be more cheerful to you! Just remember to not push them too much; they’re likely to be tired during the conference, anyway. That’s how I feel sometimes in a Wikimedian conference.

After the conference

Ok, now the conference’s over, so what are you gonna do now? Don’t worry; the weekend’s maybe over, but Wikimedian conferences (and conferences in general) are about impact-the impact that’ll drive your projects, and your movement forward.

Watching other streams

Remember just now when I said don’t worry about not being able to watch all the sessions live? Oh well, you can find the sessions on YouTube! The Wikimedia Foundation channel will host all recorded streams of Wikimania. Do remember that it’ll take some time for the responsible committee to upload each stream into it, so just subscribe to it, and be patient while they’re managing and uploading the records.

Have further discussions

Now that your friends are back in their homes, it’s time for subsequent actions from your movement! You can discuss more on what you’ve learned, figuring out what’s the best for your team, and act on it. Perhaps you can host a post-mortem session, a sharing meet-up, it’s up to you. Just keep the ball rolling, and don’t let your experience be kept in vain.

Share!

Share your findings! Let other people (i.e. the public) know what you’ve up to and join in the fun. Do it through your LinkedIn, your social media accounts, your personal blogs, anything on your reach. My friend, for example, shared his experience in his weekly periodical in one of Malaysia’s prime newspapers. Perhaps it’ll not go that far, but likely, there’s some people who will support and follow you in your movement. As people said, failure is not by not succeeding, but not trying.

Conclusion

Wikimedia conferences, as with academic conferences in general, are the hearts of our movements, and it’s imperative that the spirit of it continues and expands beyond it. With the upbringing of hybrid sessions, the spirit of knowledge is more than easier to thrive. In the end, it’s up to us on how to maximize its potential, and accelerate the progress of our noble movement forward. And of course, have some fun as the weekend warriors of knowledge. I really hope to see you soon in a Wikimedia conference, between faces or online! Of course, if you have any more tips that you would like to add up to this post, feel free to share!

A couple of weeks ago, we wrapped up the Chiquitanian photo contest that Wikimedians of Bolivia organized with the participation of young people from the group “Jóvenes Chiquitanos Unidos por el Medio Ambiente” (JUMA – Chiquitanian Youth United for the Environment), in Lomerío and Concepción.

The contest ended with the publication of just over 20 images of different features in the Chiquitano region.

The municipalities of San Antonio de Lomerío and Concepción are located in the department of Santa Cruz, in eastern Bolivia, and they are considered indigenous due to the vast majority of the population that self-identifies as part of the Chiquitanian indigenous people. The second language of the region is Bésiro, although its use is still limited.

From landscapes, festivities, typical costumes of the Monkox culture to representative places of the regions in which they live – all of these were photographed by indigenous youth and adolescents and later, of course, these were used to enrich the information available on Wikimedia Commons.

This is a first step in the work of liberation of information that we’re doing in the Chiquitania and we are happy with the results because, beyond the quantity, it should be noted that the photographs were taken and released by the same indigenous youth who live and know the region, who identified these spaces as representative and important to be shown in the free encyclopedia. That is to say: they worked from their narratives.

In addition, the number of photographs published (which is still important) was added to those already existing in the category “Chiquitanía region, Bolivia” and little by little it’s adding to information available from and about Bolivia, which is still scarce.

The Chiquitano indigenous people inhabit over 12 of the 56 municipalities in the Santa Cruz region, making it one of the indigenous peoples with the largest registered population in Bolivia (145,653 people self-identified as members of the community during the 2012 Population Census).

That is why the effort made by young people to share information from this region is important, especially for those who live in the community Puquio Cristo Rey, in the municipality of Lomerío, who despite the poor internet connection managed to publish photos on Wiki.

The Wikimedians of Bolivia User Group arrived in this region and we connected with the JUMA youth group at the invitation of the institution Apoyo Para el Campesino Indígena del Oriente Bolivia (APCOB – Support for the Indigenous Farmer of Eastern Bolivia), which works to advance the rights of indigenous communities in the Bolivian east.

The work is not finished, because, as we indicated, this is only a first step to move forward, together with the new allies, in the liberation of information available in this magical region of Bolivia.

Current trends among the digital citizens are leaning towards social media as a platform for sharing information through various creative content. This content usually turns something abstract into video form with an explanation that is easier to understand. This approach could actually be adopted by Wikimedians to educate others about Wikimedia projects. While this might not sound new, imagine if the exploration of Wikimedia projects were presented in a similar way and shared on social media. This would allow for greater public interest and clearly explain the Wikimedia Movement.

In the Wikimedia community, I used to be more familiar with hearing about Wikimedia project campaigns in Indonesia through specific activities like Kopdar (meetups), WikiLatih (training), or writing or proofreading competitions. These events usually get a lot of attention from the community, and we can embrace new contributors as a result.

However, i recently had a different experience when I participated in a training program called Creatio Cognito, Science Storyteller Academy. Supported by the Wikimedia Alliances Fund, this course was a series of activities organized by Indika Foundation and Kok Bisa, involving both the general public and members of local Wikimedia communities in Indonesia. The goal was to enhance participants’ skills in creating high-quality knowledge content, whether in Indonesian or regional languages. Additionally, the aim was to empower these participants to produce even more valuable knowledge content after the course ended.

During the training, i and other participants spent around three months through online sessions and completed assignments, including writing video scripts, producing content, and learning how to attract potential viewers on social media based on branding we have. I personally attempted to create a simple video about the history of scripts used in Sundanese Wikisource, while also educating viewers about exploring the Wikisource project itself. Another participant made a video about various vocabulary related to a verb in Javanese and linked it to filling in entries on Javanese Wiktionary. One participant even created a video about the uniqueness of the Nias language commonly found on the Nias Wikipedia. This method can actually be an alternative for us to sharing knowledge more elegantly. However, the challenge lies in how we find ideas from existing materials to be processed into creative content that is enjoyable. And this requires specific training and a considerable amount of time.

In the end, training program concluded with a grand event held in Jakarta from June 7-9, 2024. What impressed me most during this event was that the video content we had created was showcased in a special exhibition room. This exhibition room was open to the public during the event, allowing visitors to freely explore the creative video content. Moreover, participants also had the chance to meet content creators from various backgrounds and experienced experts in the creative sector.

How’d we do in our strive for operational excellence last month? Read on to find out!

Incidents

We've had quite an eventful month, with 8 documented incidents in September. That's the highest since last year (Feb 2020) and one of the three worst months of the last five years.

• 2021-09-01 partial Parsoid outage
  • Impact: For 9 hours, 10% of Parsoid requests to parse/save pages were failing on all wikis. Little to no end-user impact apart from delays during RESTBase retries.
• 2021-09-04 appserver latency
  • Impact: For 37 minutes, MW backends were slow with 2% of requests receiving errors. This affected all wikis through logged-in users, bots/API queries, and some page views from unregistered users (e.g. pages that were recently edited or expired from CDN cache).
• 2021-09-06 Wikifeeds
  • Impact: For 3 days, the Wikifeeds API failed ~1% of requests (e.g. 5 of 500 req/s).
• 2021-09-12 Esams upload
  • Impact: For 20 minutes, images were unavailable for people in Europe, affecting all wikis.
• 2021-09-13 CirrusSearch restart
  • Impact: For ~2 hours, search was unavailable on Wikipedia from all regions. Search suggestions were missing or slow, and the search results page errored with "Try again later".
• 2021-09-18 appserver latency
  • Impact: For ~10 minutes, MW backends were slow or unavailable for all wikis.
• 2021-09-26 appserver latency
  • Impact: For ~15 minutes, MW backends were slow or unavailable for all wikis.
• 2021-09-29 eqiad kubernetes
  • Impact: For 2 minutes, MW backends were affected by a Kubernetes issue (via Kask sessionstore). 1500 edit attempts failed (8% of POSTs), and logged-in pageviews were slowed down, often taking several seconds.

Remember to review and schedule Incident Follow-up work in Phabricator, which are preventive measures and tech debt mitigations written down after an incident is concluded.

Image from Incident graphs.

Trends

The month of September saw 24 new production error reports of which 11 have since been resolved, and today, three to six weeks later, 13 remain open and have thus carried over to the next month. This is about average, although it makes it no less sad that we continue to introduce (and carry over) more errors than we rectify in the same time frame.

On the other hand, last month we did have a healthy focus on some of the older reports. The workboard stood at 301 unresolved errors last month. Of those, 16 were resolved. With the 13 new errors from September, this reduces the total slightly, to 298 open tasks.

For the month-over-month numbers, refer to the spreadsheet data.

Did you know

• 💡 The default "system error" page now includes a request ID. T291192

• 💡 To zoom in and find your team's error reports, use the appropriate "Filter" link in the sidebar of the workboard.

Outstanding errors

Take a look at the workboard and look for tasks that could use your help.

View Workboard

Summary over recent months:

Thanks!

Thank you to everyone who helped by reporting, investigating, or resolving problems in Wikimedia production. Thanks!

Until next time,

– Timo Tijhof

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

Improvements and Maintenance

• Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
• The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [1]
• References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag “Edit Check (references) activated” was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [2]
• It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [3]
• Tool authors can now access ToolsDB’s public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry’s internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [4]

Technical project updates

• Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [5]

Tech in depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) – 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
  • Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) – a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.

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

Many thanks to Wikimedia Argentina for sharing this experience!

Hi, I’m Agustín Zanotti and I live in the city of Mendiolaza, Córdoba, Argentina. I work as a university professor and scientific researcher. Since 2016 I edit mainly in the Spanish Wikipedia, although over time I was dabbling in Wikimedia Commons, Wikiviajes and Wikidata. I am interested in editing about science and technology, as well as social, cultural and political issues. Together with colleagues from Córdoba, we organize talks to spread open culture and editathons on topics such as democracy, indigenous peoples and local populations. To do this, we partner with high schools and colleges. In particular, I am interested in fostering links between students, teachers and specialists in different areas, who often feel an affinity with these initiatives.

When I was told that I would receive the scholarship to attend Wikimania, it was a great surprise and joy. I had been following some discussions on the web or Wikimedia Foundation channels for years, but participating in person has a particular intensity. It was the biggest event for me so far, with more than 1,000 people from 140 countries and about 300 conferences, hackathons and workshops. The trip to Katowice involved about 25 hours, counting three planes and two buses.

Once there, I felt the festive tone of the meeting, with the desire to share customs of each place and generate collaborations. The opening ceremony, with the recognition of the Wikimedians of the year, was a moment full of emotion, where the people behind a wide variety of daily tasks become visible: newcomers and long-time users, foundation and chapter staff, technical and content contributors and administrators, among many others. The organization, led by Wikimedia Polonia, was in every detail and ready to welcome us. The conference also stood out for its openness to ecosystem organizations and for its multiple forms of participation.

The cultural activities allowed me to get to know the Silesian culture, with visits to historical sites and museums, as well as music and typical food. There was also a Wiki Orchestra, composed of Wikimedians from all over the world who gathered to perform traditional melodies. In addition, I participated in a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, located in the Polish city of Oświęcim, dedicated to the memory of the victims of that concentration and extermination camp. This site was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1979.

My experience at the conference

As for my participation in the conference, I attended activities on education and open knowledge, as well as research and governance. It was inspiring to meet first-hand with global leaders in the movement and their visions for the coming years. I also caught up with new projects, ideas and tools that can be transferred to local communities. 

The most important thing I took away with me is having been able to share with Wikimedians from all over the world, particularly from the Ibero-American region. I also took the opportunity to do some “hacking” and improve the infrastructure for the Wikiproyecto:Portales, a task I have been involved in for some time now (thanks Lahi, Ezarate y Jmmuguerza!). Content portals allow you to explore and enhance the visibility of featured articles on different topics, so that Wikipedia offers its own thematic paths.

The event allowed me to get closer to the communities that support Wikimedia and reaffirm my commitment to free knowledge. In the future, I wish to continue collaborating and participate again in Wikimania!

05/09/2024-11/09/2024

About us

• Bastian Greshake-Tzovaras has started using weeklyOSM to practice their Spanish.
• darkonus marked ► two years since the launch of the Ukrainian version of weeklyOSM. They celebrated the work of the translators and highlighted the project’s success in making OpenStreetMap news accessible to Ukrainian mappers. They encouraged community contributions and invited volunteers to help with the translation and editing.

Mapping

• Luna explained how to use the seats:separated=* tag to map ‘anti-homeless‘ bench separators.
• Comments are requested on:
  • The proposal to introduce the divider=* tag for more accurate mapping of physical separators between traffic lanes.
  • The proposal to add oneway:foot=* for marking one-way restrictions on pedestrian paths and improving data for routing in areas with controlled pedestrian movement.

Mapping campaigns

• OSM India has initiated a humanitarian mapping campaign in response to the flooding caused by heavy rainfall in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Community

• The Belgian chapter, in particular Jonathan Beliën, has announced that after more than three months of downtime, the OSM Welcome Tool will soon be working again. The current SQLite-based setup struggles to handle multiple regions, leading to suggestions including migrating to Platform.sh, Laravel Forge, or Laravel Vapor for better scalability. Testing is underway with Platform.sh and Laravel Forge to determine the best option for efficiently managing server resources.
• Amanda McCann recommended a new OSM Mastodon account to follow, @[email protected], where each week a different OSM person will take the helm to manage the account.
• Jiri Podhorecky blogged ► about how adding smaller features to maps can make them more intuitive and appealing. These details help users navigate more easily, especially in rural areas. It emphasised the importance of including both natural and human-made elements to enhance the clarity and beauty of maps.
• Christoph Hormann talked about how to make map symbols look better, especially in OpenStreetMap. The new method makes overlapping symbols look nicer by cutting rather than blocking and taking into account things such as view angles and elevation. The article also talks about the new technology in Mapnik that makes this possible, making maps easier to read and interact with.
• The Swecha Andhra Pradesh Community celebrated the 20th anniversary of OSM with a mapping party.
• Following the collapse ► of Dresden’s Carola Bridge into the River Elbe, on the night of 10 and 11 September, the bridge tags were updated in OpenStreetMap just a few hours after the accident. Fortunately nobody was injured ► according to the latest news.

Local chapter news

• Meta and ESRI have joined OpenStreetMap US as a strategic members. There are three strategic level members now.

Events

• Christoph Hormann wrote a short comment about the State of the Map 2024.
• Hawa Adinani shared her experience of attending the State of the Map conference in Nairobi, the first global OSM conference to be held in Africa. She nominated the diversity of projects, the networking with non-technical members of the OSM community, and the inspiring lightning talks from young participants as highlights. Hawa reflected on the balance between organising and attending the event, and shared her excitement for future academic collaborations. She also enjoyed her first game of golf at the social event.
• Raquel Dezidério Souto wrote ► about the participation of IVIDES.org at the State of the Map 2024, which took place in Nairobi (Kenya), where some of the institute’s ongoing research was presented.
• The video recordings of each talk from State of the Map France 2024 have been released .

Education

• Jiří Eischmann demonstrated ► several different methods for adding points of interest to OSM using StreetComplete, OsmAnd, and Organic Maps.

OSM research

• In a project inspired by Harry Beck’s iconic London Tube map, researchers at the University of Freiburg, Germany, are automating the creation of schematic transit maps around the world using OpenStreetMap data using SPARQL queries and a line network graph. The study tests different transit systems (e.g. subways, trams) and evaluates map quality and scalability.
• HeiGIT reported that a paper called ‘Enriching building function classification using Large Language Model embeddings of OpenStreetMap Tags’ by Memduhoğlu et al. has been published. Their findings underscore the value of deep contextual understanding in enhancing automated classification methods.

OSM in action

• Henrique et al. have classified over 67 million US buildings by using an unsupervised machine learning method to categorise building types based on building footprint data and available OpenStreetMap information.
• ANYWAYS has recently analysed bike-sharing systems around the world and ranked cities according to the quality of cycle routes between bicycle stations. The top three cities are Helsinki (1.7), Antwerp (1.4) and Seville (1.3). They invite proposals for cities outside Europe to be evaluated for inclusion.
• openclimbing.org is a community-driven platform for managing climbing topos using a cartography-first approach. The site allows users to contribute under a free licence, with all data stored in public databases like OpenStreetMap and Wikimedia Commons. The platform encourages open collaboration similar to Wikipedia.
• The Surprise Date Spot website offers a fun way to discover restaurant recommendations by allowing users to randomly select locations on a map. It helps plan spontaneous dining experiences by suggesting places based on the selected area.
• Tobias Jordans noticed that Komoot has made it easier to show POIs, which can ease the planning of routes.
• The Sparta Coding Club interviewed ► the developer of the ‘Deepfake Victimised Schools Map’. This website shows where sex crimes exploiting deepfake technology have occurred in South Korea.

Software

• Pedro Leão summarised his Google Summer of Code project, during which he added new field types to OpenHistoricalMap’s fork of the iD editor, helping mappers to cite their sources more rigorously.
• Cartes reported ► that they have recently integrated Panoramax, a self-hosted, open-source street view platform, into their app.
• Strava’s Patchwork tool helps identify missing paths in OpenStreetMap using data from their traces of public activities. It visualises potential new ways on a map, marking these paths in orange, and allows users to compare them with existing ways for validation.

Programming

• Tobias Zwick has developed a Kotlin-based API proposal for MapLibre layers, aiming to improve usability and flexibility compared to the Java API. It includes examples for defining and styling map layers, such as roads and bridges, using Kotlin idioms and Jetpack Compose-like parameters. The main goal is to simplify working with MapLibre layers, reduce verbosity and improve the developer experience, although dealing with expressions remains a challenge.
• James Birkett showed how to display the location stored in geotagged photos on OpenStreetMap using Linux Bash.

Releases

• This Organic Maps’ GitHub issue tracks the release process for September 2024 update. It outlines steps such as alpha and beta testing, release candidate reviews, and app store submissions for Android, iOS, and F-Droid.
• The flutter_osm_plugin package provides a plugin for integrating OpenStreetMap in Flutter applications. It supports map rendering, interactive markers, custom map styles, and location tracking, making it a useful tool for building map-based applications.
• The new Maps app for GNOME 47 release included vector-based maps, improved public transit routing, a redesigned search bar, and localised highway shield updates. The article also mentions bug fixes and enhancements to rendering highway shields using Cairo.
• The 2.6.0 release of uMap included several updates, such as enhanced support for external tile servers and improved metadata handling. Bug fixes addressed issues such as layer transparency and URL handling. Other improvements included the addition of pop-up options for markers and improved compatibility with mobile devices.
• The Merkaartor 0.20.0 release introduced OAuth2 authentication, AppImage builds, and various bug fixes, including improvements to CI builds, external library handling, and Windows localisation. It also removes obsolete code and the qmake build configurations.
• Version 59.0-beta1 of StreetComplete has introduced new features and fixes, first and foremost the changeover from tangram-es to MapLibre as the map renderer. Meanwhile, iOS development has continued, with the lead developer putting considerable effort into bringing the application to Apple’s platform. However, challenges such as adapting to iOS-specific features and codebase changes remain. Support is urgently needed.
• zby-cz announced the release of OsmAPP 1.5.0, highlighting its new features such as an opening hours editor, support for multiple image sources, and improvements in mobile usability. He also mentioned bug fixes, feature panel improvements, and updates in the OpenClimbing project.

Other “geo” things

• [1] A map of every tree, something that’s truly possible within the OpenStreetMap project, was parodied in a recent xkcd comic. Paul Eberhardt, on the explainxkcd wiki, noted that mapping individual trees is an actual thing and mentioned several research projects utilising maps of every tree.
• Bluesight’s demonstration showed how satellite data can be searched for objects in San Francisco using natural language or images. They used OpenAI’s CLIP model and Meta’s Segment Anything Model.
• Jürgen Wallner tooted some Austrian basemap styles as a QGIS project. They also include contour lines and offer optional visualisations of terrain and surface details in various styles.
• As part of its gender equality policy, the Grenoble municipality is now naming ► all new or unnamed public spaces and facilities with exclusively feminine names.
• Tom MacWright tooted a flowchart diagram that shows the interrelationship between map-related companies, technologies, and key individuals within them.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Lynnwood	Mapping Lynnwood		2024-09-14
Bielefeld	OSM Ostwestfalen-Lippe		2024-09-16
England	OSM UK Online Chat		2024-09-16
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2024-09-17
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-09-17
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-09-17
Bonn	180. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-09-17
London	Geomob London		2024-09-18
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-09-18
Kiel	OSM auf den 22. Kieler Open Source und Linux Tagen		2024-09-19 – 2024-09-21
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam End of Summer Meetup		2024-09-19
Dresden	Stammtisch Dresden		2024-09-19
Dresden	OSM auf den Datenspuren Dresden		2024-09-21
Dublin	OpenStreetMap Ireland AGM 2024		2024-09-21
Lamego (Almacave e Sé)	Dia do Software Livre		2024-09-21 – 2024-09-22
Lebach	Craft Mapping an der “Thalexweiler Wegekreuz-Tour”		2024-09-22
Strasbourg	1er Atelier de cartographie sur OpenStreetMap		2024-09-23
Arlon	Rencontre OSM Luxembourg		2024-09-23
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2024-09-26
Lübeck	146. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-09-26
Málaga	Quién es quién en el Cementerio Inglés		2024-09-27
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-09-27
Rapperswil-Jona	16. Mapathon & Mapping Party Rapperswil 2024		2024-09-27
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-09-27
কক্সবাজার	State of the Map Bangladesh – SotMBD ‘2024		2024-09-27 – 2024-09-28
Marpingen	Craft Mapping an der “Marpinger Wegekreuz-Tour”		2024-09-29

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

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

GitHub has always been a great code host. But GitHub’s code review system was an afterthought. Even now, Pull Requests still lag behind.

Oh yeah, there’s pull requests now

– GitHub blog, Sat, 23 Feb 2008

When GitHub launched, it had no code review.

Ten years later, when Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 Billion, GitHub’s Pull Request model—“GitHub flow”—had become the default way to collaborate via Git.

But the Pull Request was never designed. It emerged. Though not from careful consideration of the needs of developers or maintainers.

GitHub swallowed software by making it easy to host code. Code review was an afterthought.

First-generation Pull Requests

Git has built-in pull requests—git request-pull. The Linux kernel has used them since 2005. But GitHub never used request-pull.

According to Linus Torvalds—Git’s creator—GitHub “decided to replace it with their own totally inferior version.”

When the Pull Request debuted in 2008 it worked like this:

1. Create a fork and click “Pull Request.”
2. Send a message to someone¹ with a link to your fork, asking them to merge it.

But while git request-pull generated a message template including a diff stat and changelog, GitHub hamstrung Pull Requests.

GitHub provided only a small, empty <textarea>—Pull Requests were little more than unstructured emails to other GitHub users.

And Pull Requests still lacked any way to see changes via the web.

“Code Review = Discussion + Code”?

It took two years for GitHub to show the git diff between two repos on GitHub.

In 2010, “cross repository compare view” coupled with an unthreaded comments section and became Pull Requests 2.0².

Of course, the code and the comments were still on two different pages. It took another year before you could comment in the code.

TL;DR: My updated take is Lockfiles for Node.js apps, not for other projects.

When you run npm install, after you add or change a dependency in package.json, npm finds and selects the latest compatible version, downloads it, and replaces your package-lock.json file to describe what it found.

The npm install command does not consider lockfiles from upstream packages you depend on. This is not a bug. It’s by design. The npm publish command explicitly omits lockfiles from any package.^[1]

This and other factors led Sindre Sorhus (@sindresorhus), author of some of the most well-known and popular packages on npm, to adopt this policy in 2017:

Lockfiles for apps, but not for packages.

This was in response to npm enabling package-lock.json in the npm 5.0 release.

Lockfiles are useful

Over the past decade, I found lockfiles to really shine and be “worth it” when:

• You maintain a Node.js-based application that you deploy as a finished product. Or;
• You maintain a command-line application that developers should install globally on their workstation, via npm install -g.

When developing a Node.js-based service, you can commit a package-lock.json file alongside it. Combine this with a production deployment that runs npm ci (instead of npm install), and you can safely deploy changes (especially rollbacks, time-sensitive reverts after a faulty deployment) to your service without untimely updates to dependencies piggybacking as part of your deployment. There are other and better ways to accomplish this, but lockfiles are a decent start. In this case, I’d also run npm shrinkwrap, which renames the lockfile to npm-shrinkwrap.json. That clearly communicates that this lockfile is tied to your application’s deployment. But, any lockfile will do for this use case.

When installing a package globally, e.g. npm install -g fresnel, npm can consider an upstream lockfile. Such upstream package must supply a shrinkwrap for npm to consider it. And, npm can only utlize it when installing the package standalone, i.e. globally. When developing an end-user application that you expect developers to install via npm install ‑g, by all means use a lockfile. Any lockfile that isn’t “shrinkwrapped”, won’t be published by npm as part of your package, and thus cannot benefit installations.

Global dependencies

Back in the early 2010s, it was common to find projects that couldn’t locally pass linters and tests, because it assumed a different version of JSHint or ESLint than I installed, for another project I contribute to. These kinds of problems tormented many frontend developers, when they first dabbled in CLI and server-side scripting. They would have their project rely on globally installed tools and, invariably, on a specific (yet undocumented) version.

Over the past decade, the Node.js ecosystem has slowly learned its lesson. Packages now generally take care of their own dev tooling. In package.json, each package declares the relevant dev dependencies. We use "scripts" entries to execute commands like eslint, qunit, or grunt. This is especially convenient given that the commands of any dependency can be used directly in "scripts". You need not specify the path to node_modules or call npx here.^[2]

Benefits and costs

Most repositories containing a package.json file are either:

1. packages published to npm, for use as dependency in another project, or
2. projects that use Node.js tooling during development only — such as PHP, Ruby, Python, or C++ projects that may use tools like ESLint and QUnit for frontend testing. This includes Composer packages, WordPress plugins, and MediaWiki extensions.

Note that neither of these fall under the categories outlined earlier (Node.js services, and Node.js global tools), and thus have no use for a lockfile. However, as maintainer, it costs you in busywork, support tickets, and sunkcosts you further into justifying other equally-fruitless busywork.

Security updates

Okay, so you’re working on a project or package where you ostensibly don’t need a package-lock.json file. Can this impact security?

For packages, we’ve already established that the lockfile can’t benefit your users. Hence, it does not delay or provide any protection from problematic updates. When they install your package, npm selects the latest compatible version of your dependencies. To pin a dependency, you have to pin it in package.json. This is best paired with a general reduction in risk by reducing your dependencies. Either way, a lockfile cannot help you.

Okay, what about you? Does it help you as maintainer?

For maintainers and contributors to your project, the first install downloads dependencies over the network, either way. Subsequent installs resolve versions against the online registry, then utilize the local npm cache, either way. Lockfiles accomplish nothing but a constant stream of patches (and conflicts) to said lockfile, to keep it identical to… how npm install leaves it. Also, notice what just happened. Yes, when you have a lockfile and run npm install, it changes. That’s because npm isn’t required to follow it. You could locally run npm ci, which does. However, assuming you semi-automatically update the lockfile regularly, what’s the difference? Have you ever not merged a patch that updates a lockfile to match npm install? Any issue captured by that would still be experienced by people using npm install, which is most people.

Pinning dependencies

Perhaps you have scars from a badly behaved dependency that broke compatibility in a semver-minor release. I know I do. It’s rare, but it happens. Lockfiles are an ineffective approach to pinning dependencies, though, as they aren’t applied in most cases, and get overwritten the very next time anyone runs npm install.

A more effective solution, even if you do utilize a lockfile, is to pin dependencies in package.json first.

I like to use the “overrides” key, to further separate these from my own dependencies.

npm audit

npm audit is great, mostly, and works regardless of whether you commit a lockfile.

Dependency update notifications

Perhaps you use GitHub Dependabot, or Wikimedia LibUp. Whether for security, or for other reasons, it’s useful to learn about available software updates, right? Yes! And, the great thing is, these work even better on package.json — without lockfile.

GitHub scans for CVEs in indirect dependencies. It scans package.json too, and knows about affected packages and their downstream dependants. By not checking in your lockfile, it will inform you if, and only if, a change to package.json is needed. In most cases, a CVE or other bug is fixed in a patch release, and your package.json (or the one of the intermediary package) has a caret or tilde version that expands automatically to the newer version. By definition, if the Dependabot only changed package-lock.json, then it didn’t need to be done^[3]. Whether you change the lockfile or not, anyone installing your project was already getting the update. The lockfile is ignored by npm-install, and isn’t part of your package. The lockfile merely describes what npm install last did.

Suppose your project uses eslint and @typescript-eslint/parser, which has an indirect dependency on micromatch. Then, a CVE emerges. The intermediary package uses a tilde or caret version, and the patch release is compatible and in-range. With a lockfile, you’d get notified and “have to” merge a patch to update your lockfile. Without a lockfile, this is a non-event as npm install was already installing said update. Okay, that one was easy.

Suppose the intermediary dependency pinned micromatch to an exact version (or maybe the fix was outside its semver range). To get this update, you’ll need to upgrade @typescript-eslint/parser. And you can, because GitHub Dependabot scans your package.json, notifying you of package versions you rely on that have insecure dependencies. By removing the lockfile, it now only notifies you when your own dependencies are affected and/or when you have to use a newer version of your dependencies to obtain the update.

Adding a lockfile in this scenario only serves to invite noise and churn over already-solved issues. In the event of malicious activity and compromised packages, the company behind npmjs.com (Microsoft/GitHub) deletes those releases from the registry. This isn’t what npm audit or lockfiles are for.

We all care about security. I care about security. But, be wary of performative security, which can cost you valuable code review time, CI resources, and support tickets (from users who mistakenly think you must update your lockfile to help them, when actually they need to update their own).

Except when deploying Node.js apps, a lockfile brings you nothing but lost oppertunities.

Further reading

• Practicing Security At Wikimedia, Timo Tijhof, 2023.
• npm audit: Broken by Design, Dan Abramov, 2021.
• Office theatrics: The rise of performative work (archive), The Economist, 2022.

This post appeared on timotijhof.net. Reply via email

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of September 2024. Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta. Let askcacwikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

Upcoming and current events and conversations 

Talking: 2024 continues

• The Voting period for the 2024 Board of Trustees election is open until September 17. Go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.
• Scholarship application for Wikisource Conference 2025 in Bali, Indonesia is open until September 20.
• WikiConference Nigeria 2024 will be held in Abuja, Nigeria from September 12–14.
• Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 will take place in Istanbul, Türkiye on September 20–22.
• Celtic Knot Wikimedia Languages Conference will take place in Waterford City, Ireland on September 25–27.
• Italian WikiConference will be held in Padua, Italy on September 27–29.
• Join Wiki Loves Onam, a photo campaign dedicated to documenting the vibrant and colorful festival of Onam on Wikimedia Commons. The campaign runs until September 30.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure 

See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on Mediawiki.org

• Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes.
• The Alternative Text suggested edits feature has now been fully deployed to production on the iOS App for Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and French Wikipedias! This feature, part of WE1.2, is designed to enhance how newcomers add alt text to images, aiming to improve accessibility and engagement. For more details, visit the project page and explore the new feature in the app!
• Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualization can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help test the charts.
• A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia’s APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
• More recent tech updates from Tech News.
• The latest status updates from Wikifunctions.
• Help us find WikiProjects or other online collaboration spaces!

Annual Goals Progress on Equity

See also a list of all movement events: on Meta

• Revamping Movement Strategy Grants with Hub Focus.
• Watch the recordings of Let’s Connect Grantee Partner Learning Conversation: Conversation #1 with Wiki in Africa, Wiki Advocates Philippines, and Indic MediaWiki Developers UG and Conversation #2 with Wikimedia Community UG Malta, Wikimedia MA UG, and Wikimedia Canada.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity

See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Wikimedia Foundation defeats gambling magnate’s lawsuit in Germany.
• Wikimedia Indonesia and UNESCO Jakarta Team Up Against Harmful Content Online.
• Child Rights Impact Assessment at EduWiki Knowledge Showcase and more: Latest updates from the Global Advocacy team.
• Protecting the people: Some recommendations for safety while contributing to Wikimedia projects.

Board and Board committee updates

See Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard · Affiliations Committee Newsletter

• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee published their recommendations and bid farewell.
• Read updates from the July 2024 Wikimedia Endowment Board Meeting.
• Learn more about 12 candidates running for 4 seats on the Board by reading their statements and their answers to community questions.
• See the new members of the U4C following the results of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) special election, a new decision making group that will enforce the UCoC in specific circumstances.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news 

See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Wikimedia World · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

Subscribe or unsubscribe · Help translate

The Centre for Internet and Society Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program is thrilled to announce the ninth iteration of our annual event, Train-the-Trainer (TTT), scheduled for 2024. Since its inception in 2013, TTT has been a cornerstone for cultivating leadership and training skills among Wikimedia community members across India. Over the years, TTT has grown in significance, empowering hundreds of community members to take on leadership roles and contribute meaningfully to the movement.

Building on past successes, TTT 2024 is set to introduce innovative approaches that will deepen the learning experience and foster stronger engagement among participants.

Key Features of TTT 2024

1. Experiential Learning Focus:

This year, we are placing a stronger emphasis on experiential learning, allowing participants to immerse themselves in practical experiences and hands-on activities. This approach is designed to enhance the real-world application and retention of skills, ensuring that the training extends beyond the workshop and into everyday practice. The activities will be tailored to meet the participants’ needs, including exercises on leadership, collaboration with other community members, working on grants and etc.

2. Bias Awareness and Inclusivity:

TTT 2024 will include dedicated sessions on identifying and mitigating biases that can impede the development of inclusive and diverse communities. Participants will explore strategies to foster a more welcoming environment for all contributors, reflecting our commitment to building a more equitable Wikimedia community.

3. Collaborative Hosting with Odia Wikimedians User Group

In 2023, the TTT was hosted by the Kerala Wikimedians User Group, continuing with this trend we are excited to announce that the Odia Wikimedians User Group will co-host TTT 2024. Their involvement brings unique insights and perspectives, enriching the event and broadening the diversity of thought and discussion. This collaboration underscores the value of regional communities in shaping the future of the Wikimedia movement.

4. Interactive Workshops and Networking

Participants will engage in interactive workshops designed to hone their training techniques and leadership skills. The event will also provide ample networking opportunities, and fostering connections among community members from diverse backgrounds. These interactions will help build a stronger, more interconnected community of trainers.

5. New Initiatives and Tools

TTT 2024 will introduce new initiatives and tools that participants can leverage to enhance training effectiveness and community engagement. These resources are integral to the continuous growth and evolution of the Wikimedia movement, equipping trainers with the skills needed to inspire and lead their communities.

Event Details and Scholarship Information

The scholarship application for TTT 2024 received 78 responses from contributors in 14 languages, including the Tech community. The scholarship process is being led by the co-host community and CIS-A2K, with decisions made collaboratively by the A2K team and the Odia Wikimedians User Group. This initiative ensures that deserving participants have the opportunity to join us, regardless of financial constraints.

Event Dates: October 18-20, 2024
Location: Odisha
Co-Host: Odia Wikimedians User Group

If you have any further queries or questions you can reach out to us at [email protected].

This is an English translation of my book entitled “A 70-year-old Wikipedian talks about the charm of libraries.” Chapter 1, The Road to Wikipedia. Previously, click here.

Meet various Wikipedians (Chapter 1-6)

Wikipedia writing had not progressed much since 2016, but at the 2018 Library Fair in Yokohama, I found the “Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap Editing in Practice” event hosted by OpenGLAM JAPAN, applied for it, and went to the venue, Pacifico Yokohama, on October 31, 2018. I was already familiar with editing Wikipedia to some extent, but this was my first experience with OpenStreetMap, where people create open data maps together, and it was quite interesting. I guess this is another form of collective knowledge. After the explanation, Wikipedian Sakaori gave us some tips on how to edit Wikipedia during the practical training. I was glad that he was so attentive to beginners’ questions.

While strolling around the venue after the event, I bumped into Kazue Takano. I first met Ms. Takano at the Library Camp planned by Makoto Okamoto of ARG (now arg). When I heard from her that she was going on a tour to Onna Village in Okinawa Prefecture in February 2019 to do a Wikipedia Town Editathon, I was very interested in going and applied to participate. The 25th issue of “Library Resource Guide”, published just before the tour, was a special issue on Wikipedia Town, so of course I bought and read it.

Finally, I arrived in Okinawa on February 3, 2019, and headed to the Onna Village Culture And Information Center, the venue for the event on the following day, a wonderfully located library with a view of the Okinawan sea from between the stacks on the second floor. Wikipedia Town was first guided by the Cultural And Information Center staff to various spots in the village. I was in charge of “Yamada Castle (山田城),” so I listened to the talk and took pictures with particular interest. In Okinawa, a castle is called a “gusuku”. Yamada Castle itself does not exist today, but the ruins of the castle are a national historic site. I was surprised to hear the Center staff vividly describe the centuries-old history of the castle.

After lunch, we returned to the Center to start editing Wikipedia. The “Yamada Castle” group consisted of two people from the Center, myself and one other person. The article itself was already on Wikipedia, but it was very simple, so we all added information to it. The participants from Tokyo were not familiar with local information, but they were all very experienced in using the bibliography, so they were able to add proper references to the information one after another. Whenever we were not sure how to edit a page, we asked a veteran Wikipedian, Racco, who was participating via Zoom from Tokyo, and we all agreed that we understood each other. We managed to finish editing the article within the time limit, and each group presented their results to each other to check the finished article, which was then reviewed by Racco. The photo shows “Cape Manzamo (万座毛),” where the article was enhanced at that time.

I could see that Wikipedia Town was an excellent initiative, but on the other hand, my own interests are not in geography or tourist information, but in music and literature, so I began to wonder vaguely if a different approach was needed. It was at this time that Racco invited me to participate in an event called Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 2019. This was an event to put information about women and artists on Wikipedia, and the lecturers were Sae Kitamura a.k.a. Saebo and Racco. 15 people attended the event, including Norimaki, a veteran of Wikipedia. At that time, I had been wanting to write about a certain Japanese person for a long time, and I put the outline in my sandbox while learning various things from Norimaki. Meanwhile, a number of others were working on translating articles, and I became interested in translating foreign language articles.

After this event, I attended two study sessions of Wikidata, a sister project of Wikipedia, which I learned about from Racco, and got an overview of the project. I also got acquainted with Shusaku Higashi, the leader of the project, and Araisyohei, one of the participants. Recently, I read Ikki Omukai‘s article “Everything becomes Q” about Wikidata, and I think I have a better understanding of the reason for Wikidata’s existence. This wikidata is really useful when creating translation articles. I don’t know enough about Wikidata to be able to explain it, but it is true that my world has expanded a lot since then. Whenever I open a Wikipedia article, I open the corresponding Wikidata page, and if the “Description” field is empty, I copy the definition from Wikipedia to fill in the blanks. This makes me feel happy: “Ah, I’ve made another contribution to the world of the Web today!”

Written by Jacob Rogers, Associate General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation. Here, you may find the link to the original interview.

We share some considerations about the application of the recently adopted Digital Services Act (DSA), which lays down a new set of rules for online platforms. Under these new rules, Wikipedia has been designated as a VLOP and therefore bears some specific obligations. After one year of formal application, a first preliminary evaluation can be done. In this sense, the interview highlights Wikipedia’s specific characteristics, analyses the compliance burdens for the Wikimedia Foundation and offers some guidance for the future in order to preserve the Wikimedia model.

This week marks one year since the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) formally applied to Wikipedia. The DSA is a law that governs how to host websites for people in the European Union (EU). Wikipedia is just one of 19 platforms to be designated as a “Very Large Online Platform”; (VLOP) under the DSA because of its many European readers, meaning it now faces greater regulatory scrutiny. Notably, Wikipedia stands apart as the only VLOP that is hosted by a not-for-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation.

For many, including tech journalists and policymakers, it may come as a surprise to learn that Wikipedia is in the same DSA category as some of the best known for-profit social media websites, such as Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), and YouTube. Besides its nonprofit status, Wikipedia is unique because it is truly community governed. The information on Wikipedia is written and verified by a global community of over 265,000 volunteers, contributing to more than 63 million articles in over 300 languages. Moreover, those users, and not the Wikimedia Foundation as website host, set the editorial policies that determine what information will be on Wikipedia and how to write about it.

Volunteers compile and share information on notable subjects, citing reliable sources such as newspaper articles and peer-reviewed journals, according to the encyclopedia’s editorial policies and guidelines. Only encyclopedic content is allowed on Wikipedia. Personal experiences, opinions, or original research are not permitted. The site is not funded by advertising; it does not track your activity, sell your information, or use algorithms to promote content. No matter where you are in the world, which device you are using, or what’s in your browser history, everyone sees the exact same information on Wikipedia.

After one year of working to meet a wide range of obligations under the DSA, we are reflecting on our learnings and perspectives on this law and its possible impact in the EU and beyond. While there are many positive aspects of the DSA — such as its emphasis on human rights, transparency, and accountability — the law presents compliance burdens for nonprofits like ours, and its approach may backfire if applied to countries with weaker governance systems.

The Global Implications of the DSA: A Cautionary Note

The DSA aims to create a safer internet by requiring platforms to implement measures that mitigate risks, prevent the spread of illegal content, and ensure users’ rights are protected. These principles have long been championed by Wikipedia: The platform’s open-editing system, combined with robust moderation by volunteers, has made it a trusted source of information for people worldwide.

We believe the DSA is a solid blueprint for legislation in other democratic jurisdictions with strong regulatory institutions, free press, and independent legal systems. It has the potential to help protect the rights of internet users across Europe. However, we are concerned about how the DSA’s approach and requirements could be misused in countries with weaker democratic institutions, where the law’s provisions could be used to intimidate website hosts into stifling free expression and access to information.

Even within the EU, during this past year, several people have attempted to use claims of illegal content to get legitimate information removed from Wikipedia. These “SLAPP” (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) cases are lawsuits in which powerful individuals or entities try to use claims of illegal content to prevent public discussion and knowledge sharing on important topics. In regions without robust safeguards, regulations like the DSA that require platforms to respond to these demands of illegality could push platforms into the role of censors on behalf of governments or those with power.

Compliance Burdens for Nonprofits

A major challenge of the DSA is the compliance burdens it places on nonprofits like the Wikimedia Foundation. While we recognize the value of Wikipedia’s compliance with the DSA, and are working tirelessly to meet its requirements, the burden is substantial.

Other VLOPs are primarily for-profit corporations with vast resources that are able to absorb the DSA’s regulatory impact more easily. Wikipedia, on the other hand, relies on donations and volunteer support. Even with highly efficient compliance efforts, the DSA likely represents a larger share of the Wikimedia’s Foundation’s resources than for any other VLOP. Despite these challenges, we have adapted to the DSA with resilience, demonstrating the strength of our model, centered on the contributions of hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world who strive to make reliable knowledge accessible for all.

A Call for Harmonized Risk Assessments

We applaud that the DSA asks VLOPs to consider the risks their platforms pose to society, requiring annual risk assessments. When looking ahead to how internet regulations are developed worldwide, we advocate a harmonized approach to risk assessments that supports global human rights standards. This would minimize additional legal burdens on platforms and avoid a situation in which we must repeat nearly the same exercise to satisfy multiple jurisdictions.

Further, a harmonized approach would be particularly beneficial for platforms like Wikipedia, which operates on the basis of language, not country or jurisdiction. The online encyclopedia must appear the same wherever it is accessed in order to enable volunteer editors, wherever they are, to collaborate together in their chosen language.

By streamlining compliance, we can continue to focus on what we do best: providing free and open access to knowledge for everyone.

Community Resilience and Positive Impact Under the DSA

Over the past year, Wikipedia’s volunteer communities have successfully navigated the threats of misinformation and disinformation to multiple elections held within the EU. By providing reliable and accurate information about candidates and issues to millions of people across several languages, volunteers demonstrate the alignment between Wikipedia’s mission and the intent of the DSA to benefit society.

The DSA’s respect for and support of this community-led approach have been crucial to protect Wikipedia as a vital information resource. The DSA has played a role in ensuring that platforms like ours can continue to serve the public good without compromising our values of openness and neutral point of view.

We are proud of our progress in meeting the DSA’s standards. While we share in much of the DSA’s spirit, there are important learnings from our experiences of working to comply with the law. Looking to the future, there are opportunities for improvement in how internet regulations are developed worldwide. To support websites like Wikipedia that are built in the public interest, governments must ensure compliance burdens are reasonable for nonprofits. Further, we encourage all governments to ensure that their laws do not inadvertently force websites to become censors for the rich and powerful.

As the Wikimedia Foundation reaches this one-year milestone, we reaffirm our commitment to transparency, accountability, and free knowledge. With the support of our global volunteer community, we’re ready to continue to make reliable knowledge available for everyone, everywhere.

• Aruba report: Vacancy Wikimedian in Residence for Wikipedia on Aruba – Aruba on Wikipedia project
• Brazil report: Technology and biodiversity: “Amazonian Knowledge on Wiki”
• Colombia report: Colombia in Wikimania Mood
• Czech Republic report: Cooperation between National Library and Wikimedia CR was presented at Wikimania 2024
• India report: Wikimedians-in-residence assigned to add lexicographical data of 5 endangered languages of West Bengal
• Netherlands report: 10 reasons why the National Library of the Netherlands moved its Wikimedia-related publications from SlideShare to Zenodo, and keeps them on Wikimedia Commons
• New Zealand report: Looking for Aotearoa’s next roving Wikipedian, a Wikidata Te Papa research expeditions publication & the Wikidata WikiProject IBC follow-up workshop
• North Macedonia report: An insight of Wkikimedia MKD’s 2024 GLAM Programme
• Poland report: What’s up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland
• Switzerland report: Swiss GLAM Programme
• UK report: Indonesian Featured Article award
• USA report: Wikimania report and meetups
• Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group August monthly highlights
• Special story: Global GLAM Wiki Meetup – Future meetings and outcomes
• AvoinGLAM report: AvoinGLAM at Wikimania
• Content Partnerships Hub report: Content Partnerships Hub at Wikimania; The Helpdesk; Metabase; UN collaboration day
• WMF GLAM report: Commons Impact Metrics, WikiLibCon25, and WikiConference North America
• Calendar: September’s GLAM events

🕑 23 minutes

It's another BTB Digest, with highlights from five recent episodes. Jeffrey Wang discusses competing for European users, Taavi Väänänen describes the RealMe extension, Megan Cutrofello defends video game wikis with "spoilers", Moritz Schubotz analyzes MediaWiki as a math publishing tool, Viktor Schelling reminisces on the early days of a consulting company, and more!

When you think of the ocean, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps you envision well-known animals like whales or sharks, or the seemingly-endless horizon across the water. Few of us would picture the estimated 25 million underwater mountains rising from the ocean floor, and even fewer would think of the unique and diverse microscopic ecosystems which live on these seamounts.

Ecologically critical yet underrepresented in public knowledge, these underwater microbial communities piqued the interest of two science students at the University of British Columbia. The duo teamed up to enhance the way we understand the ocean and some of its smallest life forms – through a new Wikipedia article for all to read.

“Seamount microbial communities play significant ecological roles that are not well-documented, and we wanted to shed light on their potential impact on oceanic nutrient cycling and biodiversity conservation,” said fourth-year student Alia Kogiso. “This topic offered a unique opportunity to explore an underrepresented area in marine microbiology.”

Kogiso, an Integrated Sciences major with a focus on Environmental Chemistry, Ecology, and Structural Geology, worked with biology major Alyssa Jung to collect, review, and synthesize the related existing literature on the microbial communities. Together they brought the new, robust article to Wikipedia as their final project for Dr. Curtis Suttle’s marine microbiology course this spring.

As the article outlines, seamounts provide a variety of habitats, including rocky surfaces and hydrothermal vents, which support a wide range of microbial life. The microbial communities, characterized by their microbial diversity and adaptability to extreme conditions, such as high pressure, low temperatures, and limited nutrient availability, play crucial roles in nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning, making them a critical part of ocean life. 

“Our main goal was to ensure literature was being well-documented in an easier format than scientific paper,” said Jung, underscoring Wikipedia’s role as the world’s go-to source of information. “We hope that readers get a glimpse of the importance of microbes in an underexplored biodiversity such as seamounts.”

Jung and Kogiso also ensured greater awareness of the implications of microbial communities in seamount ecosystems on biodiversity and ecological productivity, known as the “seamount effect.”

“The seamount effect alters ocean current patterns, enhancing biodiversity and productivity, making these areas crucial for understanding microbial community structures and ecosystems,” explained Kogiso. “We hope that our article helps readers unravel this complexity and inspires further exploration in this field.”

The science students added an impressive 9375 words and 89 references to create the article, contributing to the incredibly impactful work of their class. Collectively, Suttle’s students in the spring 2024 course added 86K words to Wikipedia while creating 10 new articles and enhancing 35 existing articles through their Wikipedia assignments. Their work on Wikipedia has been viewed nearly 500K times. 

“I loved this assignment because it allowed us to engage with a wider audience and develop skills in communicating science to the public, which I believe will be invaluable in a professional setting after graduation,” said Kogiso, who plans to pursue a career in environmental consultancy and project management. “This kind of opportunity is often lacking in traditional assignments.”

From scientific research to writing in a neutral, accessible style, both assignment partners noted a range of skills and knowledge they developed throughout the process. 

“Writing this article not only enhanced my research skills but also deepened my understanding of marine ecosystems from a microbiological perspective,” said Kogiso, reflecting on her assignment experience. “I learned how to adapt complex scientific information for Wikipedia, which requires unique editorial considerations such as maintaining neutrality and citing reliable sources extensively.”

Echoing her classmate’s reflection, Jung also emphasized the fun of learning new science-related concepts.

“My family is very science-oriented,” Jung explained. “My father always taught me the fundamentals of the scientific method and different topics he was working on – I am glad to have something new to tell him!” 

Kogiso particularly enjoyed the collaborative nature of working on Wikipedia, noting both the challenge and pleasure of bringing different perspectives and expertise into a cohesive, unbiased narrative, a process that enhanced her own understanding of the topic.

“The project was meaningful because it allowed me to contribute to a public platform that educates both myself and others, reinforcing my passion for environmental science and biology,” said Kogiso, who plans to continue to edit Wikipedia.

Like Kogiso, Jung also emphasized her interest in editing Wikipedia in the future as topics and new research catch her eye. Jung plans to pursue a career in secondary education, bringing her biology expertise to the high school classroom.

Our support for STEM classes like Alia’s and Alyssa’s is available thanks to the Guru Krupa Foundation.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

[Just a quick post to get info in one place, sorry!] Info I have a GPD Pocket: running Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS with a BCM4356 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (PCI ID 14e4:43ec) with some issues: It appears like only 2.4GHz networks are being detected, and not 5GHz networks. That being said, our router is dual-band and I can’t see either network. Attempting to connect to a random 2.4GHz network crashes the network manager (WiFi icon/settings entry disappears, then reappears after a few seconds).