The Wikimedians of the Levant user group (WM Levant) kicked off 2024 with a groundbreaking workshop – the first ever in the region for Arabic speakers! Translating and subtitling videos created by the Basque User Group into Arabic was the focus of the program.

The workshop was a successful collaboration between WM Levant and the Wikimedia Basque User Group. More than 20 videos were translated into Arabic under the guidance of WM Levant experts Mervat and Michel Bakni. This enriched Wikimedia Commons, the free online library of videos, and provided a valuable skillset to the Arabic Wikipedians.

The workshop implied an introductory session to introduce the participants to the Basque culture and the process of translating videos on the Commons. The learning experience extended beyond video translation, where the workshop introduced the participants to the Basque language and culture, and to the creative online community, creating a more enriching experience for the 12 Wikipedians who participated from the Arabic community. 

This innovative program sheds light on the power of collaboration between user groups across borders and languages. Not only did it significantly broaden the presence of Arabic content on Wikimedia Commons, but it also served as a catalyst, empowering Arabic speakers to actively engage and contribute to the continually expanding reservoir of freely accessible knowledge.

“To bolster the second phase of this collaboration, participants were surveyed to gather their feedback. Impressively, all respondents reported an experience that exceeded expectations, expressing a keen interest in future iterations of the workshop. However, they suggested several areas for improvement, including extending project durations, diversifying subject matter, implementing more robust progress monitoring mechanisms, and amplifying project promotion across social media and official community channels.”

What’s Next?

The WM Levant group is planning for the second phase of this fruitful collaboration, which involves adding subtitled videos to the relevant articles on Arabic Wikipedia, and translating the new videos that the Basque UG is working on. 

Movement Charter Ambassadors Program, 2024

with RamzyM and KVaidla

I guess we can sing our praises better, after, louder with more feeling, but later. The consultations, conversations and ”drop-in” sessions across time zones we dived into, all to mitigate some inaccurate information that may slip through the cracks — showed a clearer map to follow. The extent of it can actually be fun, such as the drop-in sessions, the regional online conversations, the community consultations and my homespun meetups + movement charter conversations. Most especially our meetups, yes, hands down, actually being the most fulfilling. The process brings mixed feelings to me; triumph and disaster. I read the faces and determine where conversations go as they happen. What’s in this for us? What will it be like?

Today I realize the privilege of being part of the Movement Charter Ambassadors Program. And for what it’s worth, I can’t help the fandom from the flashes of inspired thinking by people I so greatly admire. Will anyone want it any other way?

Being part of a community that was once recognized, then derecognized, and now recognized again by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) this year has been quite the journey. The road to regaining trust, rebuilding, and reawakening the Wikimedia community has been challenging yet exciting.

Taking the reins from former Wikimedia leads and steering the community to where it stands today has been a journey marked by perseverance. Rebuilding trust in the wiki ecosystem, training the community in Botswana about Wikipedia, and establishing a structure for our community were essential steps along the way.

Our journey to revive the community began in 2020 with projects funded by rapid grants. However, irregular project occurrences made it difficult to maintain community engagement. Hosting regular activities became crucial to keeping the community active. The turning point came with the introduction of annual grants in 2022/23. This steady funding allowed us to grow steadily, evidenced by the significant increase in the number of Setswana articles on Wikipedia. Where once we had around 700 articles, we now boast approximately 1300, a testament to our progress in rebuilding the Wikimedia Community user group Botswana.

Our efforts to revive the user group consisted of a range of activities, including edit-a-thons, Wikipedia sister projects training, capacity-building workshops, and panel discussions etc. Each initiative played a crucial role in rebuilding our user group and rekindling interest in Wikimedia projects among our community members.

In our relentless pursuit to revive the Wikimedia community in Botswana, collaboration has been key. We’ve been fortunate to partner with various Wikimedia user groups, including Wikimedia ZA, the Igbo User Group, and Wikimedia Zambia and more great community members from other usegroups. These collaborations have been invaluable in providing training and support for our community members across different Wikimedia projects.

Our journey has been enriched by forging meaningful partnerships with institutions in Gaborone and Palapye, such as the University of Botswana, Limkokwing University, BIUST, Francistown Library and Botho University. These institutions have not only provided us with access to resources and facilities but have also helped us to expand our reach and engage with a broader audience.

Among our collaborators, Wikimedia ZA holds a special place. Serving as both a fiscal sponsor and a community from which we receive invaluable advice and support, Wikimedia ZA has been instrumental in navigating the challenges of rebuilding our community and shaping our strategies for growth and sustainability.

However, our journey hasn’t been without its challenges. One of the biggest hurdles we faced was dispelling misconceptions about Wikipedia and convincing stakeholders to collaborate with us. We also encountered difficulties due to limited resources and internet connectivity issues. Overcoming these challenges required perseverance and a commitment to consistency.

One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is the power of persistence. By consistently reaching out to potential collaborators, engaging with the community through various channels, and actively publicizing our activities, we’ve been able to gradually build trust and garner support. This advice is especially pertinent to derecognized communities aiming to regain recognition from the Wikimedia Foundation.

To any community facing similar obstacles, we would emphasize the importance of perseverance and engagement. Keep knocking on doors, keep reaching out to stakeholders, and keep advocating for your community. With time, dedication, and a steadfast commitment to your goals, you can overcome challenges, rebuild trust, and reignite the flame of the Wikimedia movement in your community.

File:Attendants of the Setswana Wikipedia Launch.jpg

As we journey forward, our commitment to nurturing our community, fostering growth, and making meaningful contributions to the Wikimedia movement remains unwavering. Together, we’re not merely rebuilding a community; we’re crafting a legacy of empowerment and knowledge dissemination that will resonate for generations.

Africa is the birthplace of our species, and the place human civilization began, but outside of Egypt and the Nile Valley, how much do you know about ancient archaeological sites anywhere on the African continent? 

Over the past decade, Kate Grillo’s classes have worked to fix that problem, at least on Wikipedia. Initially at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and now at the University of Florida, Dr. Grillo’s classes, supported by Wiki Education’s Student Program, have added almost 200,000 words to Wikipedia’s coverage of African archaeology. Student editors in the latest iteration of her class, Introduction to African Archaeology, created four new articles about archaeological sites – Takarkori in Libya, al-Khiday in Sudan, the Jarigole pillar site in Kenya, and Old Oyo in Nigeria. In addition to creating these new articles, the class also made improvements to another 20 articles.

Takarkori is an archaeological site in southern Libya, near the border with Algeria. Evidence of human habitation dates back over 10,000 years to a period when this area, now deep in the Sahara, was much wetter and supported lakes, wetlands, and flowing streams. 

The article provides readers with a sense of the depth of history of the site and manages to meet a reader’s need for background information without delving too deeply into tangential topics. 

A good Wikipedia article needs to strike a careful balance between providing the reader with enough information to keep reading without adding so much background that it ends up duplicating information that should be in a separate article dedicated to the topic. When writing in an underdeveloped area of Wikipedia like this one, getting that balance right can sometimes be a challenge.

Al-Khiday is a group of five sites on the western bank of the Nile in Sudan that were discovered in 2004. The best-studied of these sites, al-Khiday 2, was occupied at least four separate times between the pre-Mesolithic and the Late Meroitic (a time period that relates to the city of Meroë, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush).

This article provides a glimpse at life in the Upper Nile Valley at various points in time over the course of thousands of years. It also lifts the curtain as to how archaeologists learn about life in ancient times through clues like charring in food remains, starch grain sizes, and the imprints of bacteria on prostate stones. 

Jarigole pillar site, a communal burial site in northern Kenya, and Old Oyo in Nigeria, the capital city of the Oyo Empire which was abandoned in 1835 after Fulani attacks, round out the set of articles created by student editors in this iteration of Dr. Grillo’s class. Together, these articles help fill gaps in an area of Wikipedia where significant absences abound.

Popular – and sometimes scholarly – knowledge is shaped by the information that’s available. Wikipedia’s existence has put an incredible amount of information at the fingertips of anyone with an internet connection (and a decent command of English or one of the other major language Wikipedias). But the information on Wikipedia tends to reflect the biases in popular content. By adding specific scholarly content in an area that’s less visible in the public imagining of the ancient world, student editors like those in Dr. Grillo’s classes can help chip away at systemic issues in the representation of human knowledge. 

Just by doing a class assignment, they can start to change the world.

Interested in learning more about teaching with Wikipedia and getting started in your own class? Visit teach.wikiedu.org or reach out with questions at contact@wikiedu.org.

Hero image by Luca Galuzzi, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Nick Sheppard, Open Research Advisor at Leeds University and winner of Wikimedian of the Year Award 2023, and Martin Poulter, Wikimedian in Residence at the Khalili Collections and Wikimedian of the Year in 2016, have teamed up with to create a primer for researchers on how and why to use Wikimedia projects as platforms for their work.

The new document is one of many Open Research primers published by the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) – a consortium that promotes best practice in research. The UKRN site hosts advice on open and reproducible research across all subjects; all freely available and openly licensed. The primer was reviewed by Daniel Mietchen (Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, FIZ Karlsruhe) who is a contributor to multiple Wikimedia projects as well as a scientific researcher.

It may surprise people how much content on Wikipedia and its sister projects is drawn directly from scholarly publications. If you read about peat in any of eight languages, you see a global map of peat distribution from a research database at the University of Leeds. It’s one of many images that have come from open-access research. If you read about ant species, some of the text has been repurposed from research papers.

Concentrating mainly on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, the new document describes how sharing open-access research helps to open up the process of research while reaching a public audience much larger than the typical readers of a research paper. Individual charts and diagrams can be shared on Wikimedia Commons, along with the code and data tables used to create them. Text from suitable research papers can be reused in Wikipedia articles. Large databases can build mutual links with Wikidata, using it as a hub to connect with other sources of information about a topic.

There are many reasons to make the process of research as open and transparent as possible, including rigour, reproducibility, and public trust. As part of the UKRN’s work promoting transparency, its readers now have concrete suggestions of how the Wikimedia projects help this goal.

“I think this will prompt researchers in many fields to consider how their work can be visible on the most popular reference websites,” says Poulter. “And maybe give helpful next steps to those who have thought about it but are still apprehensive.” Neil Jacobs from UKRN said “We hope that this primer will encourage more researchers to work with Wikimedia in conducting research that is rigorous and transparent. It sits alongside others on data sharing, open software / code, community engagement in research, open hardware and many more.”

Wikimedia projects are community-driven and mainly work “bottom-up” with individual scholars and experts. There is also a place for working “top-down”: shaping the advice that respected organisations give to their communities. This work with UKRN is one example of work that Wikimedia UK and its community are doing with organisations in the scientific, scholarly, cultural, and volunteering sectors.

Find the primer on UKRN.

The post New guidance for researchers on Wikimedia and open research appeared first on WMUK.

In previous years, there has being different campaigns granted by Wikimedia projects revolving around culture, bridging the gap of information, sport and games among others. However, In Nigeria, focus on health articles as a campaign is limited and this is what birth the project ‘Wiki And Health articles in Nigeria Project‘ led by Tesleemah, an event organiser who had led several other projects in the Wiki space.

Wiki and Health articles in Nigeria Project aims to create awareness and bridge the knowledge gap of health content in Nigeria. This will lead to a higher rate of youth involvement in health advocacy, bridge the existing content gap on Wikipedia and Wikidata, and increase the number of health professionals actively engaged in fighting preventable diseases in their communities.

For sustainability and to reach larger audience of health professionals, we partnered with HealthForAll Iniative for community health, Medical World and Nigerian Optometric Student’s Association, Unilorin Chapter.

To engage participants, online sessions were held by Taoheedah, Taofeeq and Ibjaja055 which involve training on Wikipedia especially rules guiding MEDR as it pertain to medical articles, Wikidata, Wikimedia common and translation of Medical articles to local languages. During the sessions, the partners were spotlighted and further engage the participants on the importance of contributing to health articles.

Also, we collaborated with the Wiki Project Medicine through the chair, Dr James Heilman, Wiki Project Medicine is a thematic organisation of Wikimedia based in United States which focused on health promotion. Dr James Heilman also facilitate during the virtual sessions where he took the participants through editing medical articles and translation to local languages.

The physical sessions of the project was held at Mustapha Akanbi library, Ilorin where selected medical students and experts were trained on how to contribute their quota to health sector through the open knowledge of Wikimedia.

You can reach out and learn more about the project through these links :

• Event:Wiki_and_Health_articles_in_Nigeria
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/wiki-health-africa/
• https://x.com/wikihealthafro

On today’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day we’re delving into the heart of inclusion and accessibility at Wikimedia through our design system Codex and beyond.
Our mission is to share knowledge universally accessible and useful by every single human being, and Codex plays a pivotal role in this journey. Let’s take a moment to review what we’ve achieved over the past year and peek into the exciting new features on the horizon.

Building on a Legacy of Collaboration

Codex is more than just a design system; it’s a beacon of collaborative effort within the Wikimedia community. It integrates insights from volunteers and the learnings from our previous system, OOUI, which has been in production for years. This rich history of community and technical evolution forms the backbone of Codex, ensuring that every enhancement we make is grounded in real-world application and user feedback.

A Commitment to Accessibility

For us, accessibility is not just a checklist—it’s a cornerstone of our mission. The Design System Team at Wikimedia has been working to weave accessibility into the very fabric of Codex. We are constantly refining our components to cater to diverse needs.

However, accessibility isn’t solely about adherence to technical standards. It’s about the actual experience we deliver to users, especially those using assistive technologies. Whether it’s 

• adding dedicated keyboard navigation to our component guidelines,
• incorporating best practices such as the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide,
• making our documentation site –as center point of guidelines– fully compliant with WCAG level AA,
• or working with our partner, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) on fine-tuning high complexity components even further

Altogether ensuring our interfaces communicate effectively by assistive technology, our goal is to create a seamless and engaging user experience for everyone.

More Than Just Colors: Embracing Dark Mode

One improvement in Codex deserves special mention. A significant part of our design ethos is ensuring visual comfort and readability across all Wikimedia projects. Years ago, we successfully committed to implementing a color palette that meets strict level AA color contrast guidelines. This year, in strong collaboration with the Web team spearheading the project, we’re thrilled to take a step further by introducing a dark mode, sparking discussions about expanding the design system’s color palette. 

Expanding the existing Codex color palette to accommodate dark mode involved considering several crucial factors. Primarily, the challenge was to extend the palette while preserving its essence, ensuring continuity with Codex’s existing feel. To achieve this, we leveraged a tool called Accessible Palette to kickstart the expansion process, drawing inspiration from our foundational colors.

Through a combination of automated processes and manual fine-tuning, we rounded out the color palette adding any missing values, ensuring that every shade was accounted for, facilitating the implementation of dark mode.

During the customization of the expanded color set and the design considerations for dark mode, our priority was to enhance the reading experience, especially in low-light settings typical of screen usage. This involved selectively decreasing saturation of certain colors intended for use in dark mode, particularly for elements like links and progressive elements. Desaturation in low-light conditions serves to reduce eye strain, optimizing readability on digital screens.

The feature was highly requested by our communities and the Web team just released dark mode yesterday to beta features.  

More than just reading: Move edit links out of section headings

Another exciting change is about a subtle markup change invisible to users of normal browsers, but a huge accessibility improvement for people using screen readers and other assistive technology. The edit link is one of the trademarks and probably the most important interface elements on every wiki article. For many years, due to technical-historical reasons, it was part of the heading elements, like <h2>.
Members of various teams, spearheaded by Bartosz Dziewoński and C. Scott Ananian have resolved the high underlying complexity of this change – the bug was first filed more than 15 years ago – and it will be rolled out in the coming version of MediaWiki and to our wikis.

It’s a common workflow to navigate around a page by the headings present on it, like an automatically generated table of contents. With the old markup, interface elements like section edit links were a part of each heading, causing them to be read out along with every heading’s text. The problem was exacerbated by extensions that added further interface elements to headings, such as VisualEditor’s “edit source” links and DiscussionTools’s “subscribe” buttons.

Looking Forward

As we continue to enhance Codex and beyond, we remain committed to learning and improving. While we’ve made significant strides, there are still areas that can benefit from further real-user testing. This feedback is crucial as it helps us identify and smooth out any rough edges in our newer components. Get in contact with your hints and wishes.

Inclusivity and accessibility are journeys—not just for us but for the entire web. At Wikimedia, we are proud to contribute to this journey, building on the collective wisdom of our community and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in making knowledge accessible to all.

Stay tuned as we continue to innovate and expand the capabilities of Codex and other Wikimedia software. Here’s to more inclusion, accessibility, and shared learning in the coming year!

Discover the improvements to MediaWiki hosting over the last two years.

In 2021, we set out to transform MediaWiki hosting into a modern, user-centric experience. Our goal was for you to be able to create a new wiki in a minute and try it out for free. We launched a premium hosting service with no ads, superb usability, many features, and excellent support.

We named our new solution ProWiki and launched it in May 2022. We have come a long way in those short two years, hosting many wikis and continuously improving ProWiki. Let’s look at some highlights!

Admin Panel

Customize your wiki via our MediaWiki admin panel.

Effortlessly configure settings, customize themes, activate extensions, and manage user permissions. Sidestep PHP configuration by using our user-friendly interface for seamless wiki customization.

We added over 100 new settings to the Admin Panel and recently redesigned it from the group up to make it even more intuitive. Learn more.

Single Sign-On

We're thrilled to announce that ProWiki now supports Single Sign-On (SSO), enabling you to authenticate seamlessly using various identity providers such as Google, Microsoft, Okta and Slack. You can also authenticate via Generic OpenID Connect or authentication services like Auth0.

SSO streamlines your workflow by reducing the need to manage multiple passwords and enhances security. Additionally, with our new OAuth Server support, you can use your wiki as an identity provider, allowing login to other applications with your ProWiki accounts.

As a cherry on top, we recently improved support for Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). Administrators can now mandate 2FA, enhancing the security of your wiki.

Wikibase

Get started quickly with Wikibase via ProWiki. You configure Wikibase via the admin panel and enable various Wikibase extensions. Our most recent additions include Wikibase Client and a configuration UI for formatter URLs.

Create your own Wikibase today.

Slash Commands

Improve your editing productivity with Slash Commands, our new Visual Editor plugin.

“Slash commands” are an intuitive way to add content to your wiki pages. You are probably already familiar with slash commands from tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Notion.

Slash Commands for MediaWiki are available exclusively on ProWiki and our other MediaWiki hosting options. They are part of our ongoing efforts to make MediaWiki as user-friendly as it can be.

Learn more about Slash Commands.

100 MediaWiki Extensions

We are continuously making additional MediaWiki extensions available on ProWiki. Over the last two years, we have added over 50 extensions.

Some of the extensions we added recently are ApprovedRevs for approval workflows, External Data for integration with external systems, Wikibase Client for access to Wikibase data, Moderation for vandalism protection, and Import Users.

To ensure your wiki remains secure and performant, we only make high-quality and sustainable extensions available on ProWiki. Even so, there are many options to choose from. Find out our picks for the best MediaWiki extensions.

Happy Customers

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More To Come

We have many exciting features in the pipeline. Stay tuned for more improvements to ProWiki.

We are working on artificial intelligence in MediaWiki, radically improved usability, knowledge management integrations, and more.

If you have feature requests or feedback, please let us know. We are always looking for ways to provide more value.

Secure Your Discount

On July 1st, we will increase the price of ProWiki hosting. Secure your discount by signing up before then. Existing customers will be grandfathered in at their current rate.

Did you know that with ProWiki, you do not have to pay per seat? You can have as many users as you want on your wiki without any additional cost. You can also create as many wiki pages as you want.

With 100 users, SharePoint Business Standard, Confluence Premium and Notion Team all cost roughly 1000 EUR per month. For their higher tier plans, you pay roughly a quarter of a million EUR per year. With ProWiki, you pay 119 EUR per month for our Premium plan and 279 EUR for the Ultra plan.

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Snippet of the Online Launch of W4HR in the Igbo Wikimedians Community

The #WikiForHumanRights Campaign is a global event organized by Wikimedians with the aim of ensuring that everyone has access to neutral, fact-based, and up-to-date information for a sustainable future centered around human rights. This includes topics that are concerned with the Right to a Healthy Environment and other human rights topics. The 2024 edition of this campaign themed Knowledge for a Sustainable Future, focuses on topics that are important to human rights in a sustainable future. It encourages organizers to identify the human rights central to sustainability issues in their context. These include sustainable agriculture and the right to food, sustainable construction and cities and the right to housing, as well as other human rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights documents (such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) that affect how we implement the Sustainable Development Goals and create a sustainable future for all.

Igbo Wikimedians Community Participation in #W4HR 2024

Keying into the theme of the campaign, the Igbo Wikimedians Community focused on two crucial Sustainable Development Goals – SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). The primary objective of the campaign was to create awareness about the global issue of poverty and to encourage responsible consumption and production of food to address the issue. The campaign aimed to deliver the message that poverty is a complex issue that requires a multi-pronged approach, including sustainable development practices, responsible resource management, and equitable distribution of resources. It takes into consideration of these by curating valuable content on responsible food production and consumption to encourage participants to make informed choices that contribute to sustainable development. With this in view, its message was designed to be inclusive, informative, and engaging, with a focus on highlighting the impact of poverty on communities worldwide and the role of responsible consumption and production in addressing the issue.

Implementation Team

The implementation of the 2024 W4HR in the Igbo Wikimedians Community was organized by 2 dedicated members of the Igbo Wikimedians community, both bringing their skills and human capacity on the table for the success of the project. The team is made up of:

Iwuala Lucy: A Wikimedian and language professional with a degree in Language Studies. An advocate for indigenous language revitalization and free knowledge dissemination. Iwuala Lucy is the team for the implementation of this project.

Charles Chiemerie (Lebron jay): A dedicated mass media professional with a degree in Mass Communication. Also a member of the Igbo Wikimedians User Group. He has background in coordinating community-driven projects, and excel in bringing together diverse groups to address key issues and drive positive change. I am also known for my strategic approach and ability to communicate effectively across various platforms, ensuring that every project I took part in is impactful and inclusive. Lebron jay is the Co-team lead for this project.

Activities

On April 1st, 2024, the community launched its project with an online session that had about 50 participants present. During this session, the participants were informed about the project’s W4HR 2024 campaign general theme and the IWUG topic of focus. They were also enlightened about the relevance of the chosen topic to the community members. The Wikimedia projects selected for the contribution were also introduced to the participants, along with their respective rules governing the contest. The session included a hands-on demo on contributing to the WikiData and Wikipedia projects, while a Wiktionary video tutorial was made available for the Wiktionary project. Additionally, resources were provided for all three Wikimedia projects, and the rules for awarding points were made clear to the participants. They were encouraged to contribute within the confines of the rules to avoid disqualification. At around 5:30 PM UTC, the contest was officially opened, and the participants joined the event dashboard. The session was recorded and was made available for those absent during the launch

Edithaton Contest Timeline and Outcome

With the official online launch on the 1st April 2024, the contest spanned for a period of 15 days and the Wikimedia projects worked on were the ig.wikipedia.org, ig.wiktionary.org and WikiData. Participants contributions were tracked using a designated Event Dashboard and hashtags (#W4HR2024IWUG). At the end of the contest, a total of 2.97K articles were created on the ig.wikipedia.org, 94 on ig.wiktionary.org and 689 on www.wikidata.org.

W4HR 2024 in the Igbo Wikimedians Community Event Dashboard

Review Processes

At the end of the contest, a 5-Man Jury team (members of the community) with keen expertise across the 3 Wikimedia projects was set-up to ensure a transparent and unbiased review process which saw the announcement of the top contributors across the 3 Wikimedia projects worked.

This project was implemented through the support of the Igbo Wikimedians User Group.

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

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

________

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

Submitting comments on AI on the topics of global development, international governance, and the benefits and risks of open models
[Read our submissions to USAID, to the UN AI Advisory Board, and to the NTIA]

The Wikimedia Foundation and the global volunteer communities have over two decades of experience with developing and implementing machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to benefit the Wikimedia projects and the public interest. Drawing on this experience, during these past months we have submitted public comments to various requests for feedback from US and United Nations (UN) bodies that are interested in the benefits and challenges of these technologies.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides foreign aid and global development assistance, requested comments as part of its obligations under US AI Executive Order (EO) 14110. We offered comments in order to help inform USAID’s decisions about how, where, and which AI-related projects to fund abroad, including those that can benefit public interest projects focused on the free knowledge and the online information ecosystem.

The UN AI Advisory Board is a multi-stakeholder, multidisciplinary group of experts that offer analysis and recommendations on the international governance of AI. The Advisory Board released an interim report in December 2023, titled Governing AI for Humanity, on which it requested feedback from stakeholders. The Foundation provided comments in order to promote our values—including decentralized community-led decision-making, privacy, stakeholder inclusion, internet commons, and free and open knowledge—within the efforts at building a global consensus on AI governance policy.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which provides the US president with recommendations on telecommunications policy, advancement, and regulation, requested feedback on the risks and benefits of making AI models more or less open. The Foundation submitted comments to highlight how the benefits of openness outweigh its risks, which we hope will better inform policy recommendations that concern the dual-use of widely available AI models.

Wikimedia Chile and local allies call to amend bill that could threaten access to information, culture, and art

On 13 March 2024, Wikimedia Chile, together with other allied civil society organizations and professional associations of the cultural sector in the country, published a letter in El Mercurio—one of the most widely circulated Chilean newspapers. The Wikimedia chapter and its allies warned that a bill seeking to modify the country’s Law on Intellectual Property by restricting freedom of panorama could have negative consequences for civil society’s access to art, culture, and information. The letter noted that the bill had ambiguities that could impact the work of Wikipedia volunteer editors, along with journalists, content creators and, even, the tourism industry’s ability to promote Chilean culture and landmarks.

For more details, read the published letter (in Spanish). 

Providing input about digital public policy ahead of the UN ECLAC’s 9th Ministerial Conference on the Information Society in Latin America & Caribbean

The Wikimedia Foundation has continued its efforts to provide constructive input in the interregional work of the European Union-Latin America and Caribbean (EULAC) Digital Alliance—a strategic framework to foster cooperation on a wide spectrum of digital issues. Amalia Toledo (Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) participated in a preparatory meeting for the 9th Ministerial Conference of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The preparatory meeting allowed for political and technical dialogue across a variety of stakeholders ahead of the conference in November, and focused on reviewing the digital agenda and guiding digital policy priorities until 2026 (known as eLAC). At the same meeting, the EULAC Digital Alliance met to continue their policy dialogues on the topics of connectivity and artificial intelligence.

The meeting included several discussion sessions, during which the progress made by the eLAC working groups was evaluated. Our participation offered an opportunity to learn where the ECLAC’s 2024-2026 digital agenda is headed, and to identify how to best influence the development of the agenda to offer greater protection and promotion of digital public goods. We were also able to contribute to the EULAC Digital Alliance’s policy dialogues by explaining how the Wikimedia model can inform the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulation to encourage that AI and machine learning (ML) systems be more open, transparent, and helpful in building trust between people.

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

Participating in a Women’s History Month Wikipedia edit-a-thon
[Read a student newspaper article about the event, and watch and/or share Wikimedia District of Columbia’s edit-a-thon training video]

The Massive Data Institute at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, the Georgetown University Library, and the Georgetown University Women’s Center commemorated Women’s History Month in March with the  “Channeling ‘Rage’ to Transform Knowledge About Women Leaders” Wikipedia edit-a-thon. Rebecca MacKinnon (Vice President of Global Advocacy) was the closing speaker at the event, and Wikimedia District of Columbia was a key event partner, with representatives offering hands-on editing support.

Rebecca had the opportunity to offer thoughts on why efforts (such as this event) to close gender gaps on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are so important: A world in which everyone thrives requires universal access to free knowledge projects like Wikipedia. In order to serve people across the world with well-sourced comprehensive knowledge, the projects must represent all the world’s people, and their knowledge. This in turn requires the participation and perspectives of half of the world’s population: women and girls. For those workshop participants who are unhappy about the representation of women and girls online, contributing to Wikipedia is a great way to take direct action for change.

Read student journalism coverage of the event, and watch Wikimedia District of Columbia’s edit-a-thon training video and/or share it with someone who wants to start participating on the Wikimedia projects.

Discussing digital public infrastructure and digital public goods at the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women
[Watch our virtual side event co-hosted with Access Now]

During 11 to 22 March, representatives from United Nations (UN) Member States, UN bodies, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—including the Wikimedia Foundation—were invited from all over the world to contribute to the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). As the UN commission that promotes the empowerment of women and girls as well as gender equality worldwide, the theme of the CSW session this year was how to advance its goals “by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.”

Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) participated in the session and also co-hosted a virtual side event with Access Now titled “Digital Public Infrastructure: A Tool for Gender Equality?” The side event aimed to discuss the critical need for a robust digital public infrastructure that supports and safeguards digital public goods for everyone in order to fulfill the promise of the internet. Wikimedians as well as members of the World Wide Web Foundation and Access Now were invited to  speak about potential barriers to women and girls’ access to and safety using digital public infrastructure and digital public goods in a live streamed discussion, which Costanza moderated.

To learn more, watch the virtual side event.

Participating in the Summit for Democracy

The Summit for Democracy is a global convening of government, civil society, and private sector leaders to form a global agenda for democratic renewal in the face of challenges to democracy globally. This year the event was held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, and focused on three themes: defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, and advancing respect for human rights.

Rachel Judhistari (Lead Public Policy Specialist for Asia) spoke at a session organized by the Freedom Online Coalition titled “Upholding Information Integrity Online to Reinforce Democracy and Human Rights.” It was an opportunity to continue having constructive exchanges with allied organizations such as the Global Network Initiative (GNI), Access Now, and Asia Democracy Network, and to meet with Wikimedia Korea/Hanguk—the local Wikimedia chapter.

________

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

On May 03, 2024,  Africa Wiki Women hosted the 4th Inspire Inclusion 2024 Campaign. The online session continued with “Office Hour for wikipedia ”. The training session was led by Miracle James, a core team member of the Africa Wiki Women, and moderated by Linason Blessing. The session attracted over 10 participants, including project leads and community members from Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania,  Ruby D Brown  provided a brief overview of the campaign, she elaborated further on the scholarship criteria which was followed by the Question and answer sessions. 

Key highlights: 

The session commenced with the welcoming of participants, followed by a general overview of the projects, their targets, and statistics detailing what has been achieved. The Office hour was utilised to address challenges encountered during editing or any steps participants might have overlooked. Additionally, it served as a refresher on how they could contribute effectively to Wikipedia. Participants posed questions such as, ‘When is the deadline for this project?’, ‘What types of articles will they be working on?’, and ‘How do we update Wikipedia articles?’ These questions were answered by Miracle and other team members during the call. Subsequently, Miracle led the practical editing sessions on Wikipedia.

She gave more emphasis on the kind of sources to be used when adding references on Wikipedia article and how blogs are not allowed on Wikipedia because it is self owned, she did practical on how to add internal link on keywords on Wikipedia, she went further to add reference on an article making minor edits on the article and how to add categories on an article on Wikipedia.

Furthermore Miracle made major edits on wikipedia, by expanding an article and creating an article from scratch, she added a new section and also created an article from scratch.

In case you missed the session, the link to access it is available on the community meta page. Additionally, we encourage you to register for our upcoming sessions to ensure you receive timely email notifications one hour before each online session begins. We encourage you to visit our YouTube channel as well for previous sessions recordings. If you wish to become an active member of our community, please take a moment to complete the registration form. Let’s work together to bridge the gap on information about women on Wikipedia and sister projects.

The Wikimedia Medan Community, one of the 14 communities under Wikimedia Indonesia, will celebrate its third anniversary on May 20, 2024. Founded by Rafarahh, Astari28, and HaidirAndiNovianto, the community initially had only six members. Some members are also volunteers in other Wikimedia communities. Now, this community has grown to 12 active volunteers who contribute to various activities, such as Kopi Darat, WikiLatih, and others.

Even though it is relatively young, the Wikimedia Medan Community has shown its commitment to enriching local content on Wikimedia. Six volunteers carried out the WikiBerastagi project in 2022, successfully immortalizing the cultural riches of the Karo Regency area. This community is also active in organizing various events, such as a friendly evening in Bukit Lawang, Langkat, in 2023, and WikiTeroka 4.0, which involves a writing competition in Mandailing. The next grant from Wikimedia Indonesia in 2024, namely WikiKaldera in the Toba Caldera, will be a historic moment in the exploration of the Wikimedia Medan Community’s journey. Ten volunteers participated in a night of familiarization in Kec. Pandan, Kab. Central Tapanuli. Not only that, this community has succeeded in completing projects on a wider scale, such as WikiMelayu and Wikisource Cinta Bahasa Melayu.

This community’s dedication has yielded satisfying results. At WikiNusantara 2023 in Banjarmasin, five volunteers received scholarships. Not only that, at WikiNusantara 2024 in Bogor, this community managed to get 10 scholarships for its volunteers. In fact, Wikimedia Indonesia recognized this community’s hard work by naming it the Most Active Community this year. This is a proud achievement for this young community. This is the most beautiful gift for the third anniversary of the Wikimedia Medan Community. All of these achievements would not have been possible without the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Indonesia.

In the future, the Wikimedia Medan Community is enthusiastic to continue to grow and contribute to freeing up knowledge. The Wikimedia Medan Community also hopes to become an inclusive forum for everyone who cares about preserving Indonesian culture and knowledge. For those of you who want to connect, follow his social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and X. Let’s preserve knowledge and culture together!

The internet world has been full of colorful and unique frames for a few days. The solar storms and explosions on the Sun on May 10, 2024, caused visual feasts and memories that people in a large part of the world will never forget. So, how was this very interesting, exciting, and intriguing event reflected in Wikimedia projects?

Wikipedia

The first article about the storms was opened by the User:UpEpSilon on the English Wikipedia on May 10, 2024.

As of May 13, 2024 (16:08 UTC+3), articles about the incident have been opened in 17 different Wikipedia versions. I hope the number of articles opened until I publish this article increases. Because, as I said above, such an interesting, exciting, and rare event should be included in every Wikipedia version!

Wikimedia Commons

Here’s the most exciting part! We are fortunate because there are now many photos of these solar storms on Wikimedia Commons, which can be considered a digital heritage to the future! As of May 13, 2024 (16:08 UTC+3), a total of 267 photos from 18 countries have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. If you wish, you can access the relevant categories from this link.

I would like to share with you a few photos of the auroras, also known as the northern lights, created by these solar storms.

With love to all our users who documented this unique natural phenomenon and added it to the internet heritage with free licenses!

Jessica Hernandez challenges the norms of traditional Western scholarship in her work as an environmental scientist, author, and activist. Hernandez, who is Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec, brings her lived experience as an Indigenous scholar into her research, building a bridge between activism and academia.

Like many notable women of color in STEM, Hernandez’s work was missing on Wikipedia – until just two months ago, when four undergraduates living across the country from Hernandez came together to add her story.

“Jessica Hernandez is an Indigenous scientist who gets very little exposure and advocates for communities and groups that are also underrepresented,” said Dayanara Mendez, a first-year English student at Lone Star College-Kingwood, a community college in Houston, Texas. “To get the chance to write an article about a woman of color in STEM, especially since I’m Hispanic and I always love the chance to learn more about other Latinos, made this a great opportunity.”

Classmates Natalie Ramirez, Alexandria Ravina, and McKenna Sealy joined Mendez to create the new Wikipedia article for Hernandez, working collaboratively to outline sections, find high quality sources for citations, and review each other’s research and writing. For Sealy, the Wikipedia assignment was a chance to share an inspiring and important perspective.

“Jessica Hernandez has a lot to offer our world from her Indigenous perspective and research as an environmental scientist, activist, author, and researcher,” said Sealy. “She’s learned a lot through her family heritage about the environment, and that, combined with her formal education, can be very powerful in helping us to better understand the world around us and how to take care of it.”

Sealy noted the power of Wikipedia in shaping awareness and understanding of notable figures like Hernandez, emphasizing its accessibility.

“Because of Wikipedia, no one needs a database that costs money to learn more about people making a great impact on the world,” Sealy explained. “The assignment helped me realize that we can all contribute to big and important things even if we feel small and don’t think we can have an impact.”

At first, Mendez dreaded the research for the project, but once she began, quickly changed her mind.

“When I actually started, I found that it was pretty fun,” Mendez shared. “It was kind of challenging and I’m grateful for it because it was something new. It helped kill the boredom that I normally get from writing the same kind of essay consistently.” 

While she was a little nervous for the Wikipedia page to go live for the world’s eyes, Mendez received positive feedback from friends and would look forward to another Wikipedia assignment in the future.

Sealy agreed, noting the feeling of accomplishment when they finalized and published the article.

“This was a great assignment compared to a traditional assignment because rather than turning in a paper no one will ever see again, I’m actually making a difference and my work will be seen,” said Sealy.

Guided by course instructor Dr. Brian Shmaefsky, the group’s Wikipedia assignment is part of a larger Wiki Education initiative sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation, which encourages the creation of new biographies of diverse people in STEM on Wikipedia.

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

Explore other related stories:

• Adding Claibourne Smith’s Wikipedia article: “like it was a piece of art that I kept looking at”
• Telling the story of an African American chemist
• Clovis students add biographies of diverse people in STEM

 

As an organisation deeply committed to the principles of open knowledge and free information, Wikimedia UK has always sought innovative ways to engage with our community and promote our cause. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a new chapter in our outreach efforts: the launch of our new animations, designed to illuminate our work and bring about a greater understanding of our mission.

Since November 2023, we have been collaborating with a fantastic animation studio called Ritzy Animation who have helped us to bring our ideas to life, using images from Wiki Commons, which they’ve beautifully animated. 

There are four animations in total, providing an overview of us as an organisation and our three strategic themes. We have also created Welsh language versions, to support our projects and programmes across Wales.

Why animation?

In a world inundated with information, we recognise the importance of finding creative ways to communicate our message effectively. As a result, we have identified a need for a more dynamic and accessible approach to engage with diverse audiences. Animation offers a unique medium to communicate new, and at times complex, concepts into digestible and visually appealing narratives, making our work more relatable and engaging to everyone.

What do our animations cover?

Our animations cover both Wikimedia UK’s mission and objectives, offering insights into the wide-ranging impact of our work. From highlighting the significance and impact of open knowledge, to showcasing our three strategic themes of knowledge equity, information literacy and climate & environment, each episode offers a glimpse into our work and our mission.

Through captivating storytelling, and vibrant visuals, our aim is to demystify the concept of open knowledge and inspire viewers to become active participants in the creation and dissemination of knowledge through Wikimedia- these animations serve as an invitation to join us on our mission to empower individuals and communities through knowledge sharing.

What we hope to achieve

At Wikimedia UK, our ultimate goal is to help build a world where every person has access to the sum of all human knowledge. With these animations, we hope to reach new audiences, ignite curiosity, and spark meaningful conversations about the importance of open knowledge in today’s society. 

By showcasing the breadth and depth of our work, we aim to raise awareness about the Wikimedia movement and the vital role it plays in promoting access to knowledge for all. We also hope to inspire individuals to actively contribute to Wikimedia projects, whether through editing articles, participating in community discussions, or supporting our initiatives in other ways.

Join us on our animated journey!

We hope that these animations help to convey to you what working with Wikimedia can do for you, your organisation or your community. Whether you’re a seasoned editor or someone new to our movement, there’s a place for you in the world of Wikimedia. Together, let’s harness the power of open knowledge to build a brighter, more informed future for generations to come.

The post Bringing our mission to life through animation appeared first on WMUK.

This year's Wikimedia Hackathon was held in early May in Tallinn, Estonia. Like last year, it was a great opportunity to both see people I work with regularly, including people in my own team that I had not seen in person before, and to work with and help people that I have had very limited interactions with before. Image by Olari Pilnik is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. I presented a session about Puppet (slides), the configuration management tool used on Wikimedia infrastructure (and some other projects I've been involved on) which I think went quite well.

Wikimedia Europe has signed an open letter, penned by the Wikimedia Foundaiton, that calls on UN Member States to protect Wikipedia and other public interest projects in the forthcoming Global Digital Compact.

The Global Digital Compact initiative is a unique and pivotal opportunity to shape our digital world in a manner that advances the public interest and supports sustainable development for everyone, everywhere. 

UN Member States have the chance to embrace a positive vision for the internet’s future that supports and empowers diverse communities everywhere to build and operate free and open knowledge projects. The Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, provide the world with the largest free and open, multilingual, intercultural, universally accessible repository of educational materials ever created. The volunteer-run Wikimedia projects have formed a community-led ecosystem that champions information integrity. They serve as digital public infrastructure for openly licensed, neutral, encyclopedic content in over 300 languages.

Wikipedia’s experience of over two decades has taught us that the internet needs to be open, global, interoperable, and inclusive in order to serve all of humanity. To that end, three essential commitments should be included in the text of the Global Digital Compact:

1. Protect and empower communities to govern online public interest projects.  Free knowledge projects such as Wikipedia should not be rare. UN Member States should—through regulation, public policy, funding, and other resources—support a world where diverse online communities can build and govern their own public interest projects, designing them to be equitable and contributing to a healthier online information ecosystem. 
2. Promote and protect digital public goods by supporting a robust digital commons from which everyone, everywhere can benefit. Digital public goods such as Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects aim to make multilingual and intercultural information freely accessible to everyone. A thriving public domain that enables the sharing of free and openly licensed content for everyone to use and reuse is key to advancing many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
3. Build and deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to support and empower, not replace, people who create content and make decisions in the public interest. AI and machine learning tools should support, and not replace, the work of humans. They should be designed and deployed in a manner consistent with international human rights standards, ensuring clear and consistent attribution. Such tools should also ensure participation and control by affected communities through transparent, accountable, and open processes.

02/05/2024-08/05/2024

Mapping campaigns

• contrapunctus has suggested hosting a mapping party to coincide with DebConf24, which will be held from 28 July to 4 August at Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea. Hwang Dongha said that attracting the local OSM community, Debian user groups, and Ubuntu user groups to the mapping party would be an easy way to get people together, and would also create an opportunity to promote OSM in South Korea.

Community

• In response to the recent OSM vandalism controversy, caused by some players of Niantic’s Pokemon GO, Ilya Zverev has written a short essay ► titled ‘Не вина Niantic‘ (It’s not Niantic’s fault), justifying Niantic’s move to join Overture Maps rather than the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
• Jiří Eischmann, a Red Hat desktop engineering manager among other things, made the following recommendation on Mastodon: ‘If you’re exploring OpenStreetMap like me and [you find] openstreetmap.org is too heavy for you, try OSMapp…’, a statement that triggered a few comments.
• … elsewhere, Jiří Eischmann also commented on OsmAnd and mapycz. David Heidelberg, a Czech Linux developer, suspects that Jiří has fallen in love with OSM.
• Julien Coupey shared his favorite OSM note of the moment (or possibly the year) : ‘Note 4097195 : The former sex shop has become a “evangelical protestant church”. I’m announcing I’m not touching that’.
• Maurizio Napolitano presented a webinar entitled ‘OpenStreetMap: A collaborative Ecosystem Serving Society and Business’. The webinar discussed the role of OSM in enhancing innovation in the public and private sectors.
• Kamil Monicz has published his OpenStreetMap NextGen Development Diary #5.5. At the end of May, OpenStreetMap-NG will include the necessary functionality to run on a testing server, as well as to invite new contributors into the project.
• The UN Mapper of the month for May is Modo Levo Engelbert Steve, a geomatics student from Cameroon.
• Brian Sperlongano has conducted a statistical analysis of the distribution of the populations of places in OpenStreetMap.

Events

• Pieter Vander Vennet announced that he will be holding an OpenStreetMap workshop for beginners in Ghent, Belgium on Thursday 16 May.

Education

• As a special guest, Dr Raquel Dezidério Souto gave a workshop on the creation of web maps with uMap and OSM data for a class at the Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. This was part of the PACES course coordinated by Professor Michael McCall. She described ► her expeience in her diary and shared the link to the recorded video for those who want to create a map like this.
• The Trufi Association drew attention to its free ‘Public Transport‘ online courses.

OSM research

• A study published in Geo-spatial Information Science analysed how the provision of OpenAerialMap images is associated with changes in the underlying editing patterns of OSM features.

Maps

• [1] MapAmore reviewed ‘Sustainable Map‘, an OpenStreetMap-based web map that focuses on environmental sustainability themes.

OSM in action

• Tykayn used MarineTraffic, a website displaying global marine traffic using OpenStreetMap data, to ponder how many people are currently at sea.

Open Data

• As part of their migration process to Overture Maps, Meta has decided to discontinue the Daylight Map Distribution, a dataset derived from OpenStreetMap data, first released in March 2020. The last release is scheduled for November 2024.
• Shizuoka Prefecture is known as an innovative region of Japan. In an article on the prefecture’s website they explained ► the ‘VIRTUAL SHIZUOKA concept’ (an open point cloud database available under CC BY 4.0). This enables Shizuoka Prefecture to be captured and experienced virtually.

Software

• Ilya Zverev has released Every Door version 5.0. Now, you can try the freehand line drawing mode to sketch streams, culverts, walls, fences, cycleways, power lines, footways, paths, roads, and tracks by using the fourth mode for notes.
• TrickyFoxy has developed ► a Tampermonkey script to add some functionality to the OpenStreetMap website.
• Jeyseni recommended ► using OsmAnd as it is reliable enough to be used as an offline map application in Japan.

OSM in the media

• Jomo noted that Germany’s most prominent TV news show, the Tagesschau (Review of the Day), is using OpenStreetMap and Maptiler to render maps in their brand design.
• Tama Plaza News, a local news site covering the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan, recommended ► OpenStreetMap as a site for looking up street names.

Other “geo” things

• Grant Slater is annoyed with Wikipedia, which rejected his attempt at creating a new article for a large dam, as it was not deemed notable enough.
• OpenCage explained the annotation feature in its geocoding API. This feature serves to provide various additional information about a location.
• OpenCage shared a news story about the local residents protesting as a result of the policy of the North Yorkshire council that is forcibly removing apostrophes from the local addressing system, allegedly due to the computer security risk they may pose.
• Rakushouke, a keen Pokémon GO trainer, embarked on a short trip to Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest freshwater lake, located near Kyoto. With the help of OpenStreetMap, they successfully tracked down Wiglett (ウミディグダ/Umidigda in Japanese) and documented their findings in a photo blog ►.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Localidad Chapinero	GeoBeer Mayo 2024		2024-05-11
	SotM Asia 2024 monthly meeting		2024-05-11
	Webinaire sur la campagne d’adhésion à OSMF		2024-05-11
Mainz	OpenStreetMap-Stammtisch Mainz		2024-05-11
Bengaluru	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party		2024-05-12
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-05-12
Zürich	163. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich		2024-05-13
Grenoble	Réunion groupe local Grenoble : Panoramax – L’alternative libre pour photo-cartographier les territoires		2024-05-13
Grenoble	Atelier du groupe local OpenStreetMap		2024-05-13
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-05-15
	UN Mappers training – Validating OSM data – session #9		2024-05-15
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-05-15
Zagreb	State of the Map Croatia 2024		2024-05-16 – 2024-05-17
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2024-05-16
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-05-17
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-05-16
Gent	OpenStreetMap workshop for beginners		2024-05-16
Durham	Mapping around University of New Hampshire		2024-05-19
England	OSM UK Online Chat		2024-05-20
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-05-21
Bonn	175. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-05-21
	UN Mappers training – Validating OSM data – session #10		2024-05-22
	iD Community Chat		2024-05-22
Zürich	Missing Maps Zürich Mai Mapathon		2024-05-22
Rio de Janeiro	Oficina de mapeamento de feições importantes na redução de riscos de desastres (RRD) – YouthMappers UFRJ		2024-05-24
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-05-24

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 SeverinGeo, Strubbl, TheSwavu, TrickyFoxy, YoViajo, adiatmad, barefootstache, derFred, euroPathfinder, miurahr, rtnf.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

• Albania report: International Roma Day Editathon in Albania and Kosovo, 2024
• Australia report: New images from Central Australia on Wikimedia Commons, Library Science WikiProject students edit Wikipedia & 1Lib1Ref in Australia and New Zealand
• Brazil report: Wiki Library Month
• Czech Republic report: 2023 became a promissing year for wiki-residents and partnerships in CR
• Kosovo report: International Roma Day Editathon in Albania and Kosovo, 2024
• Netherlands report: Informal GLAM hack session
• New Zealand report: Te Papa research expeditions and the Wikipedian at Large
• North Macedonia report: Climate Changes and GLAM
• Poland report: What’s up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland in April
• Spain report: SMALL GLAM SLAM
• Sweden report: 100 000 bildminnen; Metabase
• Switzerland report:
• UK report: Swiss GLAM Programme
• USA report: Heaven on Earth at last?
• Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group April monthly highlights
• AvoinGLAM report: AI Sauna quick reflection
• Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: OpenRefine online courses in more languages, and certified trainers
• WMF GLAM report: OpenRefine course in three more languages and International Museum Day challenges
• Calendar: May’s GLAM events

Take a guess – what content gap in the Wikipedia articles on Lysol, the Great Depression in the United States, and the Black Panther Party is now filled, thanks to the work of Utah State University student editors? The answer might surprise you! You can now learn about the role of contraception in each subject’s histories.

These student editors may have channeled their research on birth control into unexpected areas of Wikipedia, but they weren’t the only students in Chris Babits’ History of Sexuality class who focused on adding information related to contraception to the online encyclopedia. Classmates also enhanced related pages including the Cornstock laws and Family planning in the United States. And until one Utah student jumped in, the Views on birth control in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints page was missing arguably the most relevant view: the church’s current stance on contraception. 

Just as real-world events can lead to spikes in readership of related Wikipedia articles, student editors can be motivated to work on topics that experience a peaked level of public interest, wanting to add information to the in-demand area of knowledge.

Babits’ students’ decision to explore the topic of contraception may have been influenced by the real-world interest in the information following a milestone decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 24, 2022 the Supreme Court officially ruled to reverse Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion no longer exists. The decision undoubtedly drew attention to Wikipedia’s abortion article, which noted a significant jump in page views the following day, as well as to Wikipedia’s article on birth control, which nearly quadrupled in daily readership by June 25. 

So it should come as no surprise that Babits’ class, who’s collective edits on Wikipedia articles have been viewed nearly one million times, isn’t the only recent class in our Wikipedia Student Program to address knowledge gaps related to contraception. 

In fall 2023, three of Caroline Smith’s students at The George Washington University collaborated to create a new article on emergency contraceptives on college campuses, exploring the history, accessibility, and legislation of access at colleges and universities across the country. Their article explores the first time morning-after pills were sold in vending machines on a college campus at The Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, the spread of the concept to other institutions, and the related legislation.

This spring term, four of Smith’s students also worked together to create another new Wikipedia article to share the history of Julie, a healthcare company that markets a non-prescription emergency contraceptive pill. Julie launched their product in September 2022 in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade with a mission of removing stigmas around emergency contraception and increasing access for marginalized communities.

By filling in missing information for topics of public interest and need, student editors like Babits’ and Smiths’ can make tremendous impact through the Wikipedia assignment. Interested in learning more and getting started in your own class? Visit teach.wikiedu.org or reach out with questions at contact@wikiedu.org.

The Wikimedia Endowment is delighted to welcome Mayree Clark as a new member of its Endowment Board. Mayree, a finance expert, will bring her extensive governance expertise to the Wikimedia Endowment, a nonprofit charitable organization providing a permanent safekeeping fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity.

Mayree Clark is a former director of the Stanford University Endowment. She brings a diverse background in investment banking, equity research, and investment management to the Wikimedia Endowment Board. Mayree spent over 20 years at Morgan Stanley, where she held various leadership roles, including deputy to the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of finance company MSCI. After leaving Morgan Stanley, Mayree joined the investment management industry and later founded Eachwin Capital, an investment management firm. She has served on the boards of Ally Financial, Taubman, and Deutsche Bank AG, contributing her expertise in risk management, governance, and corporate turnaround. Mayree is also involved in multiple philanthropic organizations and holds degrees from the University of Southern California and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She has been a dedicated donor to the Wikimedia Foundation since 2007.

“Mayree’s dedication to the Wikimedia Endowment is palpable. She enriches our Board, as her financial expertise guides us forward, enhancing our collective mission of knowledge building, equity, and dissemination,” said President of the Wikimedia Endowment, Lisa Seitz-Gruwell.

With Mayree’s addition, the Endowment Board now has eleven members who all serve as volunteers; Board members are appointed for three years and may serve up to three terms.

Mayree’s appointment follows the recent release of the Wikimedia Foundation’s digital-first, interactive Annual Report and Endowment Report, spotlighting Wikimedia’s achievements and the vital role of donors. Emphasizing the theme “Knowledge is Human,” the reports honor the diverse individuals, including volunteers, staff, and donors, who contribute to the mission of making free, reliable knowledge accessible to everyone, everywhere.

“I am thrilled with the opportunity to play an active part in supporting this precious community and all that it brings to the world,” said Mayree Clark.

About the Wikimedia Endowment

Launched in 2016, the Wikimedia Endowment is a nonprofit charitable organization providing a permanent safekeeping fund to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. It aims to create a solid financial foundation for the future of the Wikimedia projects. As of December 31st, 2023, the Wikimedia Endowment was valued at $130 million USD. Endowment Board members are selected based on active involvement in philanthropic endeavors, prior nonprofit board experience, fundraising and investment expertise, and a strong commitment to the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission. They serve as volunteers. The Wikimedia Endowment is a U.S.-based 501(c)3 charity (Tax ID: 87-3024488).

The post The Wikimedia Endowment welcomes Mayree Clark as its newest Board member  appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

 Back in January, I discovered a stored XSS vulnerability in core MediaWiki (T355538; CVE-2024-34507). Essentially by setting a specific edit summary when editing a page, you could run javascript (And take over the account of anyone viewing the edit summary, for example on the history page or recentchanges)

MediaWiki core is generally pretty good when it comes to security. There are many sketchy extensions, and sometimes there are issues where an admin might be able to run javascript, but by and large unauthenticated XSS vulns are fairly rare. I think the last one was CVE-2021-44858 from back in 2021. The next one before that was CVE-2017-8815 in 2017, which only applied to wikis configured to have a site language of certain languages (e.g. Serbian and Chinese). At least, those were the ones I found when looking through the list. Hopefully I didn't miss any. In any case, finding XSS triggerable by an unprivleged attacker in MediaWiki core is pretty hard.

So what is the bug? The proof of concept looks like this - Create an edit with the following edit summary:

[[Special:RecentChanges#%1b0000000|link1]] [[PageThatExists#/autofocus/onfocus=alert("xss\n"+document.domain)//|link2]]

This feels a bit random at first glance. How does it work?

The edit summary parser

Whenever you edit a page on MediaWiki, there is a box for your edit summary. This is essentially MediaWiki's version of a commit message.

Very little formatting is allowed in this summary. A major exception is links. You can link to other pages by enclosing the link in [[ and ]].

So this explains a little bit about the proof-of-concept - it involves 2 links. But why 2? It doesn't work with just 1. What is with the weird link targets? They are clearly abnormal, but they also don't look like typical XSS. There are no < or >, there aren't even any unclosed quotes.

Lets take a deeper look at how MediaWiki applies formatting to these edit summaries. The code where all this happens is includes/CommentFormatter/CommentParser.php.

The first thing we might notice is the following line in CommentParser::preprocessInternal: "// \x1b needs to be stripped because it is used for link markers"

In the proof of concept, the first part is [[Special:RecentChanges#%1b0000000|link1]], where %1b appears. This is a good hint that it has something to do with link markers, whatever those are.

Link markers

But what are link markers?

When MediaWiki makes a link, it needs to know whether the page being linked to exists or not, since missing pages use a red colour. The most natural way of doing this is, when encountering a link, to check in the DB whether or not the page exists.

However, there is a problem. When rendering a long page with a lot of links, we have to do a lot of DB lookups. The lookups are simple, but still on a separate (albeit nearby server). Each page to lookup involves a local network request to fetch the page status. While that is happening, MW just sits and waits. This is all very fast, but even still it adds up a little bit if you have say 500 links on a page.

The solution to this problem was to batch the queries. Instead of immediately looking up the page, MW would put a small link marker in the page at that point and carry on. Once it is finished, it would look up all the links all at once, and then do another pass to replace all the link markers.

So this is what a link marker is, just a little marker to tell MW to come back to this spot later after it figured out if all the links exist. The format of this marker is \x1B<number> (So \x1B0000000 for the first one, \x1B0000001 for the second, and so on). \x1B is the ASCII escape character.

Back to the PoC

This explains the first part of the proof of concept: [[Special:RecentChanges#%1b0000000|link1]] - the link target is a link marker. The code has a line:

                                // Fix up urlencoded title texts (copied from Parser::replaceInternalLinks)
                                if ( strpos( $match[1], '%' ) !== false ) {
                                        $match[1] = strtr(
                                                rawurldecode( $match[1] ),
                                                [ '<' => '&lt;', '>' => '&gt;' ]
                                        );
                                }

Which normalizes titles using percent encoding to use the real characters. Thus the %1B gets replaced with an actual 0x1B byte sequence. The code did try and strip 0x1B characters earlier, but at that point, it was still just %1b and did not match the check.

We now have a link with a link marker inside of it. An important note here is that Special:RecentChanges is not a normal page. It is a special page. MediaWiki knows it exists without having to consult the database, so it does not get the link marker treatment. This is important because we cannot use it as a fake link marker if it gets replaced by a real link marker.

At this stage after inserting link markers, the proof of concept becomes the following string:

<a href="/w/index.php/Special:RecentChanges#\x1B000000" title="Special:RecentChanges">link1</a> \x1B0000000

The second link

The \x1B0000000 is a stand in for [[PageThatExists#/autofocus/onfocus=alert("xss\n"+document.domain)//|link2]].

The replacement at the end is a normal replacement, and everything is fine. However there are now two replacements - there is also the replacement inside the link: href="/w/index.php/Special:RecentChanges#\x1B000000"

This is the fake link marker that we contrived to get inserted. Unlike the normal link markers, this is inside an attribute. The replacement text assumes it is being inserted as normal HTML, not as an attribute. Since it is a full link that also has quotes inside it, the two layers of quotes will interfere with each other.

Once the replacements happen we get the following mangled HTML for our proof of concept:

<a href="/w/index.php/Special:RecentChanges#<a href="/w/index.php/Test#/autofocus/onfocus=alert(&quot;xss\n&quot;+document.domain)//" title="Test">link2</a>" title="Special:RecentChanges">link1</a> <a href="/w/index.php/Test#/autofocus/onfocus=alert(&quot;xss\n&quot;+document.domain)//" title="Test">link2</a>

This obviously looks wrong, but its a bit unclear how browsers interpret it. A little known fact about HTML - /'s can separate attributes so long as no equal signs have been encountered yet. After the browser hits the second " mark, it thinks the href attribute is closed and that the remaing is some additional attributes. The browser essentially parses the above html as if it was:

<a href="/w/index.php/Special:RecentChanges#<a href="https://201708014.azurewebsites.net/index.php?q=oKipp7eAc2SWr3Hft8re1auTuMydvNzasNnHnLvB06BzcsvKl9epj4O6ts6kUpjcrNjWoA"na">w="" index.php="" Test#="" autofocus onfocus="alert(&quot;xss\n&quot;+document.domain)//&quot;" title="Test">link2</a>" title="Special:RecentChanges"&gt;link1</a> <a href="/w/index.php/Test#/autofocus/onfocus=alert(&quot;xss\n&quot;+document.domain)//" title="Test">link2</a>

In other words, an <a> tag, that has an attribute named autofocus and an onfocus event handler. On page load, the link is automatically focused, which triggers the javascript in the onfocus attribute to run, allowing the attacker to do what they want.

Take aways

I think the major take aways is that running Regexes over partially parsed HTML is always scary. We've had similar issues in the past, for example T110143.

The general pattern we've used to fix this and similar issues, is make sure the replacement token has special characters that would be mangled if it appeared in an unexpected context. Concretely, we added " and ' to the token, which would get escaped if placed in an attribute, and thus no longer matching and no longer being replaced.

More generally though, I think this is a good example of why even a minimal CSP policy would be helpful.

CSP is a complex standard, that can do a lot of things and has a lot of pieces. One of the things it can do, is disable "unsafe-inline" javascript. This means javascript from attributes (like onfocus) and javascript URLs. Usually this also includes inline <script> tags without a nonce, but that part is optional. A key point here, is this also generally means you cannot execute javascript via .innerHTML anymore, which is a fairly common vector for XSS via javascript.

Normally disabling unsafe-inline would be part of a broader effort to secure javascript, however its possible to take things a step at a time. This vulnerability would have been stopped just by disabling event attributes. A surprising portion of MediaWiki & extension XSS vulns [Excluding boring - an admin can change something in an unsafe way issues] involve just html attributes (or javascript: urls), which is a web feature that nobody really needs for legit reasons and is generally considered bad practise in normal usage. Even the most minimal CSP policy might really help MediaWiki's overall security posture against XSS vulns.

For more info about the vulnerability, please see the original report at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T355538.

In the last few weeks I have stumbled on various little bits during Wikipedia edits that I thought were worthy of airing! One of them was a re-realization of the boon and the curse of iron and steel. It starts with something I heard a few years ago by economist Sashi Sivramkrishna and others who were following the trail of Buchanan Hamilton in Mysore (listen to the talk here) and they were apparently impressed by the impact of iron production particularly on the destruction of forests in southern India. And last week I found a Wikipedia entry that someone from Parangipettai had written as a draft and which had been left languishing. I went and ensured that it got moved from a draft version to a mainspace entry - it was on the Porto Novo Iron Works, one of the first large-scale iron smelting enterprises in India. The venture, started by a J.M. Heath, did not last long, one of the big factors being the lack of coal for smelting, and he had to make do with charcoal. In a few years, he ran out of charcoal, after depleting the forests of several districts nearby, and the factory had to move to the west coast near Calicut (Beypore). The first director general of forests Dietrich Brandis also noted the role of iron smelting in deforestation. 

Now to Josiah Heath, who is a real character and it is quite a surprise to see that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does not even have an entry for him, and there appears to be no available photograph of him (at least online). Heath sent out skins of various animals to the Zoological Society of London and there is a species of bat named after him. More interestingly it seem the fishing cat was described based on a specimen that he sent from India - which it would appear from all likelihood to have come from the Parangipettai region - more likely Pichavaram (wonder if the species still exists there). He also collected a specimen of a Eurasian Griffon Vulture from the same region. Heath apparently was impressed by traditional ukku (better known as Wootz steel) steel-making near Salem where he was initially posted and he seems to have discovered an important factor which he patented. It involved the use of carbon and manganese and he made money initially by distributing packets of his mixture - and later made the mistake of giving its composition. The steel makers of Sheffield, England quickly started using his technique and decided not to pay him any royalty - and he died in poverty. Of course today we could ask whether he actually stole the idea from traditional Indian blacksmiths and whether it could have been patented at all in the first place or of the numerous other injustices involved in all of this. 

Herr Meves

In another Wikipedia-related iron-connection, I found a little-known ornithologist who now has a Wikipedia entry (Wilhelm Meves). Meves was a German pharmacist turned ornithologist - and he decided to treat the brown feathers of lammergeiers with hydrochloric acid and tested them for iron and found that the colour was largely due to iron oxide. He found that this coating was on the outer surface and that the inside of the feathers was largely iron free. He suggested that the birds were bathing in iron-rich waters. Meves worked in Stockholm and mostly wrote in German but some of his findings made their way into the Ibis in English - thanks to John Wolley. And it seems both T.C. Jerdon and A.O. Hume were careful readers of Meves' works. Jerdon was aware of the bleating sound of snipes being produced by air-flow induced vibrations of the outermost tail feather. And Hume even repeated Meves' chemical analysis on his lammergeier specimens from Shimla and confirmed the presence of iron. Hume however noted that neither he nor any of his "intelligent native sportsmen" had ever seen a lammergeier bathe in water and suggested that the red staining may be derived from the blood of dead animals. Hume's original text (emphasis mine):

Anyway, it seems that India's large iron-deposits have a habit of lying in regions rich in biodiversity and ethnic diversity often on ancient tribal lands. It is little wonder that the steel industry barons are involved in disempowering tribal peoples or paying governments to water down environmental laws. I was truly surprised by the amount of work from around the world on related topics.

• Goucher, C.L. (1981). Iron is iron ’til it is rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting. The Journal of African History. 22(2):179-189. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700019393 
• Siran Liu, Thilo Rehren, Dashu Qin, Jianli Chen, Wenli Zhou, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Xin Huang, Wei Qian (2019). Coal-fuelled crucible lead-silver smelting in 12th-13th century China: A technological innovation in the age of deforestation. Journal of Archaeological Science 104:75-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2019.01.004
• The impact of ancient iron mining and smelting on the landscape balance on Elba Island, Tuscan Archipelago, Italy - Fabian Becker, Raphael A. Eser, Philipp Hoelzmann, Brigitta Schütt (2019). The environmental impact of ancient iron mining and smelting on Elba Island, Italy – A geochemical soil survey of the Magazzini site. Journal of Geochemical Exploration 205 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gexplo.2019.04.009
  
• Iles, L. (2016). The Role of Metallurgy in Transforming Global Forests.. J Archaeol Method Theory 23:1219–1241 https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9266-7

Someday I ought to visit Parangipettai and Pichavaram! 

I recently learned about a new book titled “Tamil Computing” by Dr. R. Ponnusamy. It sparked my own long-held desire to write a book on Malayalam Computing, which friends have encouraged me to publish. I am still not convinced that a “printed book” is a good idea to present this topic yet. Not to mention the amount of time it require for such initiatives. So, I was intrigued by this book promptly purchased a copy from amazon.

🕑 1 hour 3 minutes

Viktor Schelling is the Senior Principal MediaWiki Developer at Pegasystems.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Pegasystems Wikipedia article
• Wikibase Solutions
• FlexForm MediaWiki extension
• Open CSP

By Lucy Moore, Archeologist, Curator and Wikimedian

“Mmmm! Inhale that fresh vintage aroma!” is a sign that welcomes buyers and browsers to the vintage shop Blue Rinse in Leeds. It struck a chord with me, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about smell and culture, in particular how data about smell can be represented in a database like Wikidata.

This train of thought started early in 2024, at an event in York that is part of a research project at the university called ‘Bespoke, Open, Collaborative Approaches to Heritage Documentation’. It brought together heritage workers and researchers to think creatively about documentation in that sector. During the day I was chatting with people about how recording sensory information, like the smell of an object, could, and perhaps should, be part of museum records. Like a good Wikimedian, I turned to Wikidata to see how it recorded examples of ‘things smelling like other things’, and to my surprise a property for ‘smells of’ was absent. 

Why was I surprised you might be thinking? Why would most people want to record how objects might smell or taste? We’re not (usually) licking things when we visit museums. I have definitely heard people talk about a ‘museum smell’. When I worked as a museum curator, I also used smells in a few exhibitions to bring topics more to life for visitors.

What captures my imagination, especially when you think about smell, is that as a sense it is both intensely personal, and also something shared. I began to think about all the cultures represented in museum collections, but also across the Wikimedia movement and started to imagine what potential there might be to represent this way of understanding the world on Wikidata.

So what smells connect what objects? How can we ‘follow our noses’ to find common scents in cultural data? Once the topic was raised lots of people in our Wikimedia family had suggestions. From the sculpture 5318008 by artist Tasha Marks (it smells of human breast milk!), to Agatha Christie-inspired ways to detect poison through scent, new smell-horizons opened with each conversation. The natural world is full of nose-surprises too. Did you know that a binturong smells of popcorn? Or that jasmine tea smells of otter poo (or is it the other way around)?

Whilst pondering these relationships and questions, I saw that  XLab– The Cultural Heritage Informatics Collaboratory at Carleton University in Ottawa was due to run a conference on futures in heritage informatics along with a ‘book sprint’ on the topic. This looked like a great opportunity to talk to others thinking creatively about data. With funding from Wikimedia UK partly covering my costs, I was able to travel to Canada and take part in the workshops, discussions and book revision in person. Being able to participate in events like these is really important for researchers. At Carleton I spoke with lots of people working at their digital humanities centre, the XLab, and attended a celebration of their public history graduates’ work too. It exposed me to new ideas, and has helped me to shape how I’m thinking about smell and data. I’m now revising the chapter I have written for the book, and am looking forward to sharing wider ideas about linked open sensory data elsewhere. I’m also collecting “things that smell like other things” so drop a message on my talk page!

The post Smelling data at the XLab – The Cultural Heritage Informatics Collaboratory appeared first on WMUK.

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