The 10th annual Wiki Indaba conference, held from October 4–6, 2024, in Johannesburg, South Africa, has left a lasting impression and reinforced the commitment to building sustainable Wikimedia communities across Africa and the diaspora. This year’s theme, “! ke e: /xarra //ke” — “United in diversity” — perfectly captured the spirit of collaboration and unity that defined this milestone event . Code for Africa (CfA) and the African Wikipedian Alliance (AWA) joined this year’s event with renewed purpose, with its staff members- Amanda Strydom and Bukola James bringing their expertise to deliver a keynote, conduct a workshop, and engage in vital discussions on misinformation.

For AWA’s Francophone member, Emmanuelle Kakou,  who is also the Coordonnatrice Générale, Wikimedia Community User Group of Côte d’Ivoire this marked a unique milestone as the first volunteer from the AWA Francophone community to receive an all-expenses-paid sponsorship from CfA to attend the conference as a result of her commitment to promoting AWA’s mission and her unwavering support towards the community growth. Emmanuelle also had an opportunity to take back all she had learnt from participating in different conversations back to the AWA Francophone community, sharing first-hand experience with the rest of the community. 

In many ways, Code for Africa has grown to become the backbone of digital empowerment in Africa. As the continent’s largest civic tech and data journalism network, CfA supports groundbreaking initiatives, from AfricanDRONE and PesaCheck to AFCA and sensors.AFRICA. But beyond these programs, CfA is also the proud sponsor of AWA—a community initiative that has brought together over 308 African Wikipedians across both Anglophone and Francophone communities. Together, CfA and AWA represent a movement where people from all walks of life work to verify facts, close knowledge gaps, and stand as guardians against content manipulation on Wikipedia and its sister platforms.

On the second day of the conference, Amanda Strydom, CfA’s Senior Program Manager for CivicSignal, opened with a keynote that left a lasting impact on everyone in the room. Amanda spoke passionately about “The Value of Fact-Checking for Open Knowledge,” sharing insights on how CfA uses its resources to support community engagement and fight misinformation. The talk wasn’t just about CfA’s many projects but about how our communities, united by shared goals, are actively protecting and promoting African narratives. For Emmanuelle and other attendees, Amanda’s address reinforced the importance of this work and the sense of shared responsibility across African Wikimedia communities.

The commitment to accuracy came alive later that day when I led the AWA fact-checking workshop with Amanda. The session, titled “How to Tackle Mis/Disinformation on African Content on Wikipedia,” drew a diverse group of participants, eager to understand the inner workings of fact-checking on one of the world’s most visited websites. The workshop blended theory with practical exercises, guiding participants through scenarios on identifying and correcting false information on Wikipedia. Together, we tackled real issues, like debunking misinformation on an African Wikipedia article such as  Chindima Adetshina, while covering essential topics like:

• Recognising information disorder and its effects
• Tools and methods for fact-checking on Wikipedia
• Practical application through scenario-based exercises

As we walked participants through the hands-on activities, I watched the group’s curiosity deepen. The questions grew more nuanced, the discussions more engaging with everyone contributing to the questions generated from the workshop exercise fully, showing a determination that reflected their commitment to bringing these skills back to their various communities. By the end, the session felt less like a workshop and more like a mission shared by everyone in the room. The participants left with the tools they needed and a new sense of how to contribute to Wikipedia in a way that would ensure the accuracy of African content for future generations.

Throughout the conference, feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Participants expressed appreciation for the workshop, with many describing it as a unique experience in their Wikipedia journeys. Some community leaders voiced their desire to host similar workshops in their own regions, opening the door for even more collaboration with AWA and CfA. The atmosphere was alive with the excitement of potential new partnerships, and I couldn’t help but feel that this event was just the beginning.

In the days following Wiki Indaba, as we all returned to our respective countries, the lessons we learned and the relationships we built continued to resonate. For AWA, the experience offered not just the chance to help African Wikimedians acquire fact-checking skills but to be part of something larger—a community where each contribution, each fact-checked article, adds to the rich, diverse story of Africa.

As AWA and CfA look ahead, we’re reminded that this journey is about more than just workshops or conferences. It’s about building a foundation that amplifies African voices and has the resources and support they need to make factual contributions to global knowledge. By fostering these connections and empowering these voices, we are building a future where Africa’s stories are told by those who live them, ensuring they are accurate, verified, and celebrated across the world. Join our growing community of fact-checking practitioners on Wikipedia and its sister projects by completing our membership form and connect via our Anglophone and Francophone channels for instant update. Also check out all of our past and present programs via meta. 

Every year Wikimedia Ukraine brings the Ukrainian community for its annual Wikiconference. This year’s edition took place in October and early November, bringing a record 120 people across two cities and online.

Because of the ongoing Russia’s war against Ukraine, we decided to hold three smaller conferences in one to include as many participants as possible. Here’s a brief look at our biggest event of the year.

The format: three conferences in one

Since 2021, Wikimedia Ukraine has a tradition of dividing our annual Wikiconference into several separate events, both online and offline. First it was caused by pandemic restrictions, now by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Because of Russia’s war against Ukraine millions of Ukrainians are abroad or unable to travel within Ukraine. Some are serving in the Armed Forces and can join online but cannot take a leave to participate in-person. However, we still want the conference to be inclusive of everyone.

Doing a truly hybrid event where online participants wouldn’t get an inferior experience is too difficult and expensive (note: live-streaming an offline event for people to tune in on YouTube is great, and we are also doing it, but it’s still an offline event). The solution for us is organizing a separate online-only event on a separate weekend, with its own program.

In 2024, our Wikiconference consisted of three events:

• Online conference on October 19th-20th
• The main offline conference in Kyiv on October 26th-27th
• A smaller conference in Kharkiv on November 3rd

Both the online event and the Kyiv conference attracted over 60 people each, and the Kharkiv meetup gathered 25 people. Some people attended two or three events, but we had at least 124 confirmed unique participants overall (likely an undercount as we cannot capture all online participants).

Online conference: 60+ people, two days

The online edition took place on the weekend of October 19th and 20th. The conference featured 21 sessions, including our small “Wikimania at home”, as one organizing team member joked – 6 sessions from invited international speakers. 

Participants rated the program highly, and the feedback form shows that the international program was particularly popular – especially two sessions about AI and Wikimedia from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Asaf Bartov and Wikimedia Polska’s Natalia Ćwik. Other notable sessions included a slate of sessions on the Ukrainian community during the war, interactive welcome sessions, and a review of Wikimedia Ukraine’s activities. 

• See full program in English
• How to make an online conference engaging and tackle Zoom fatigue? It’s a big question for us, one that we’re hoping to tackle in a separate Diff post.

Kyiv conference: 60+ people from across Ukraine

A week later we gathered 63 people in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city. It was the biggest offline event of the year with people coming from all over Ukraine and even abroad. 

The two-day event included sessions on traditional topics like the Wikipedia Education Program, news and trends of the international wiki movement, practical workshops and project updates. We’ve also had one major innovation – an award ceremony for “Wikipedia 20”, a newly created award to distinguish people who’ve helped build Ukrainian Wikipedia over the 20 years of its existence. 

Although this event was offline-first, we also had a high-quality online stream on YouTube, which helped more people tune in virtually. 

• Photos from the Kyiv event on Wikimedia Commons
• More about the “Wikipedia 20” award (in Ukrainian)

Kharkiv conference: a meetup in a bomb shelter for 25 people

Despite being located close to the Russian border and suffering from constant Russian attacks, Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv has a vibrant Wikimedia community. On the first Sunday of November it gathered in a bomb shelter for a day-long conference for Wikimedians from the city and the surrounding region. 

Participants had a packed program, featuring everything from the experience of implementing a wikischool for high-school students held in Bohodukhiv last year to ideas for engaging young people in Wikipedia.

In the words of the Kharkiv event’s lead organizer, Wikiconference 2024 in Kharkiv showed the potential of community development in a frontline city and region, even under constant security threats.

• More about the Kharkiv event (in Ukrainian)

This month, I had the opportunity to attend the first-ever Bangla Wikiconference, held in Gazipur, Bangladesh, from November 15 to 16, as both a participant and a member of the organizing team. I volunteered as part of the operations and communications team. The conference was organized by Wikimedia Bangladesh.

Nearly 60 Bangla-speaking Wikimedians from South Asia (Bangladesh, India, and Nepal) gathered in Gazipur, including seven international participants.

I attended the event to connect with Wikimedians contributing to Bangla projects, to share and gather experiences, and to discuss new ideas, successes, and challenges related to Bangla projects. I presented two sessions, participated in a panel discussion, and awarded prizes for the Bangla Wikivoyage Article Contest 2024 at a side event during the conference. Additionally, I participated in the first Wikimedia hackathon in Bangladesh, where I developed and showcased a small project.

During the panel discussion, I explored the uses, advantages, and disadvantages of Large Language Models (LLMs) on Bangla Wikipedia. Some participants asked insightful questions following my presentation. One of my sessions focused on the future of recent-changes patrolling, emphasizing the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence for anti-vandalism efforts and future tools. In another session, I teamed up with Maruf to discuss a GA review drive.

At the conference, one participant reflected, “After attending this event, I found the answer to what the Wikimedia movement is and why I contribute to it.” Another participant, Mamunur Rashid, an AI researcher, remarked, “If you cut Wikipedia off from generative AIs, the AIs will go offline.” I learned a great deal from the knowledgeable discussions led by the speakers. I also attended a workshop on Wikidata Lexeme, discovering new tools I hadn’t encountered before.

As you can imagine, the two days of the conference were extremely busy. However, my busyness exceeded expectations! Each night after the main events, the organizers held meetings to review the day’s activities. Before dinner, we played football and basketball, followed by late-night chats. Most of our conversations centered around new ideas, the future of the Wikimedia movement, and various aspects of the Wikimedia ecosystem. Honestly, I felt I gained more insights and exchanged ideas more freely during these informal chats outside the main sessions.

This conference made me realize that the Bangla-speaking community is united, unbroken by borders. I left with renewed hope that the energy and dedication of our members can continue to support unity among Bangla speakers through volunteerism, knowledge sharing, and learning.

See more images of the event on Wikimedia Commons.

From November 5th to November 7th, 2024, The Library Fair 2024 was held in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, and the booth “Wikipedia Exhibition” was exhibited.

What is the Library Fair?

The Library Fair is an exhibition for the library industry held every autumn. It takes place in the Pacifico Yokohama hall, and attracts approximately 10,000 visitors per day, for a total of 30,000 visitors over the three days.

Exhibitors include companies that undertake library management services, companies that sell library fixtures, publishers, bookstores, and university research groups. Visitors include librarians from public and school libraries, employees of various library-related companies, and students studying library and information science.

What is the “Wikipedia Exhibition”?

In order to spread awareness of the compatibility between libraries and Wikipedia among participants of the Library Fair, the “Wikipedia Exhibition” booth has been exhibited since 2022, led by Soseki-no-Neko. The exhibition of this booth is financially subsidized by the Wikimedia Foundation.

In addition to exhibiting a booth over the three days of the Library Fair, we also exhibited posters in the poster session. In the morning of November 6th, Yuriko Kadokura, author of the book “The 70-Year-Old Wikipedian,” gave a presentation titled “The Current State of the Wikimedia Movement” at the forum venue.

About 10 staff members were involved in managing the booth and broadcasting the forum via Zoom. The staff explained the basic structure of Wikipedia and how to edit to visitors, introduced them to Wikipedia Towns being held all over Japan, and even let them try editing Wikipedia.

Wikipedia exhibition booth

Many of the people who visited the booth happened to find the Wikipedia exhibition booth at the Library Fair. Many people probably wondered, “Why is there a Wikipedia booth at a library exhibition?”

Wikipedia has a rule that “writing must be based on sources.” From Wikipedia’s perspective, when editing, we use library documents, and from the library’s perspective, we use documents that they own.

Because of this close relationship between libraries and Wikipedia, citizen-participation workshops called “Wikipedia Town” are held all over Japan. Wikipedia Town typically involve editing local Wikipedia articles using materials from public libraries, but there are also edit-athons that specialize in subjects such as literature or art, or use materials from specialized libraries.

A variety of people visited our booth at the Wikipedia exhibition. Many of them worked in public or school libraries, but we also had people who worked at the National Diet Library, people from an encyclopedia publishing company, and people who teach library and information studies at universities.

When I talked to people who visited our booth, I got the sense that Wikipedia itself is well-known, but most people still don’t know that Wikipedia can be used in more ways, so I think it was worth it to have a booth.

On Sunday, November 3, 2024, I participated in “Wikipedia BUNGAKU 12 Abe Kobo” held in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

“Wikipedia Town” in Japan

Since 2013, “Wikipedia Town”, a citizen-participation workshop in which participants work on “Wikipedia” editing with “town” as the theme, has been held all over Japan.

Because it is an event that makes use of the local materials held by libraries and the reference skills of librarians, it won the Excellence Award at Library of the Year 2017. The short comment at the time of the award was “Co-creation activities of public information assets using local information resources”.

Bungaku means literature in Japanese. “Wikipedia BUNGAKU” is a literary-themed event that is a derivative of Wikipedia Town, which is based on the local theme.

“Abe Kobo Exhibition” at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature

In the morning, I visited the special exhibition “Abe Kobo Exhibition” at the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature.

In Wikipedia BUNGAKU, participants are given the choice of which article to edit, and this time, the candidates for articles to be edited were people and regions that Abe Kobo was involved with, works he wrote, and projects he worked on.

Kanagawa Prefectural Library Wikipedia Editing Meeting

The venue for the afternoon was the multipurpose space on the 4th floor of the Kanagawa Prefectural Library.

Hundreds of books prepared by the executive committee were lined up. After receiving a lecture on Wikipedia from executive committee member and instructor Tago Tamaki, all participants declared the topic they wanted to edit and began editing.

There were various ways to participate, including a group of several people editing the existing article “Abe Kobo,” a group of experienced Wikipedians and first-time editors creating a new article “Monami (Higashinakano),” a person creating a new article “Tadeusz Kantor” alone, and a person participating remotely from Hokkaido creating a new article “Asahikawa City Chikabumi Daiichi Elementary School.”

Two librarians from Kanagawa Prefectural Library will be on hand for the event, so even if you are editing a topic that the executive committee did not anticipate, you can provide on-site references. In addition, many experienced Wikipedians will be participating, and the executive committee members will also provide thorough support to first-time editors, making this an event that is easy for first-time editors to participate in.

Hopes for a ripple effect throughout Japan

There are many Good Articles (GA) on modern Japanese literature on the Japanese Wikipedia. However, the coverage of contemporary literature and foreign literature on the Japanese Wikipedia seems to be in its infancy.

A huge amount of literature on authors and literary works has been accumulated in various forms, including books, magazine articles, and academic papers. Wikipedia and literature have a very high affinity. I hope that projects similar to Wikipedia BUNGAKU will spread outside of Yokohama City.

🕑 1 hour

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

Links for some of the topics discussed:

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

This year the CEE Meeting regional conference was larger than ever. Among 195 participants, there were many representatives of the Central Asian communities, including Kazakh, Karakalpak, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Uzbek language projects. We asked some of them what they took home from the conference and what their personal highlights were from this event.

Mustafaalmas

“I am from Kazakhstan and representing the Russian language community.  It was my first experience. It was absolutely great. I especially appreciate meeting colleagues from other Central Asian countries. I liked the session about using AI in the projects. I guess it may become a challenge and an opportunity for the community at the same time.”

Mamatkazy

“I am from the Kyrgyz Wikipedia language community. I mostly translate articles from Russian to Kyrgyz, and this year I was in the organizing team of the Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in Kyrgyzstan. As a civic activist, I translate articles on stereotyped topics into Kyrgyz, so that accurate and reliable knowledge becomes accessible to Kyrgyz-speaking people.

The opportunity to participate in this meeting, despite being a newbie to the Wikimedia movement, gave me the motivation to be more active. I’m very grateful that this meeting connected me with the global Wikimedia family and made me feel like a part of it. 

One of the most interesting sessions for me was the results of a study conducted by the participants from Poland “Youth – the end or the future of Wikimedia?”. The topic was why young people do not read or edit Wikipedia. Based on this, the Polish participants shared how they attract and engage young people. 

Darafsh

“I am part of the Tajik Wikimedians User Group and edit Wikimedia projects under user: Darafsh. This was my second time attending the CEE Meeting. The learning day, conducted by Asaf Bartov, was especially informative and useful for me. I gained valuable insights into capacity building and learned effective ways to facilitate discussions and meetings within our user group.

One key takeaway I’d like to share is the importance of patience in building a sustainable community. For small communities, such as the Tajik Wikimedians User Group, it’s crucial to spend time with each member, help them through challenges, gradually give them responsibilities, and guide them. This approach fosters a more sustainable and effective community.”

Muzaffar Turgunov

“I am a member of the Kazakh and the Uzbek Wikipedia groups. I have been editing for more than 2 years. I started first with the Uzbek Wikipedia. Now I write articles in both languages. My favourite subjects are medicine, politics and history.

At the CEE Meeting 2024, I had the opportunity to meet different people and learn new ideas. This is my first international conference. As for what I learned in this conference, it is mainly about the need to act in line with the times, the development of Wikipedia in the era of artificial intelligence, engaging new participants, creating and fostering Wikimedia communities, running a WikiClub in cooperation with each other, organizing edit-a-thons and competitions.”

Nataev

“It just so happened that I celebrated 15 years of being a Wikimedian during the conference in Istanbul. This was my second CEE meeting, and I absolutely loved it! Everything, from the program to the delicious food, was fantastic. I reconnected with old Wikimedia friends and met new fellow Wikimedians. Importantly, we held the first-ever meeting of representatives from the Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek communities, where we exchanged ideas about learning from the CEE community and applying those lessons to foster regional cooperation in Central Asia.

I was glad to learn about both the dangers and opportunities that AI presents for wiki projects. My main takeaway is that AI is a double-edged sword: while we can harness it to accomplish many useful tasks, we must also stay vigilant about its potential to cause harm.

I really enjoyed the group facilitation session led by Asaf Bartov during the Learning Day, which took place before the main conference. The skills I learned will be useful not only for online and offline wiki activities but also for my professional career. I also found the AI workshop organized by John Cummings quite interesting. I also highly recommend checking out the recording of Marios Magioladitis’ session on AutoWikiBrowser, which is a tool that makes boring or repetitive editing tasks easier.

During the conference, Casual, a fellow Uzbek Wikimedian, and I presented on WikiStipendiya, a multi-year project led by the Uzbek Language User Group in partnership with the Youth Affairs Agency of Uzbekistan. We also discussed the challenges that a specific application of AI, namely, machine translation has created on the Uzbek Wikipedia, as well as how we have been addressing this issue. We greatly appreciate the feedback we received from those who attended our session, and we returned from the conference feeling even more motivated and energized to continue our important cleanup work.

For the future, I would love to see even more sessions on supporting and learning from small communities, as there are still quite a few of them in the CEE and CA region.”

30 October 2024 marked a significant landmark for the Tulu community with the launch of Tulu Wikisource, a platform dedicated to preserving and sharing its literary heritage. Tulu is a Dravidian language spoken by approximately 2.5 million people and is predominantly found along the coastal region of Karnataka, India. The Tulu language’s journey in the Wikimedia movement began in 2016 with the launch of Tulu Wikipedia. Since then, a group of volunteers also started working on the Wiktionary incubator and the Tulu Wiktionary is also live now. This achievement reflects years of dedication from Tulu speakers committed to making their language accessible in the digital age.

The journey towards Tulu Wikisource started in September 2023 when the Karavali Wikimedians User Group, led by organizer Kavitha G. Kana in collaboration with CIS-A2K, held a two-day workshop focused on relicensing and digitization. Renowned author M. Prabhakara Joshi’s relicensing inspired the team, with technical support from Prof. Sanjiv Bonde of Lek Ladki Abhiyan, Satara, and facilitation by Subodh Kulkarni from CIS-A2K.

Soon after Kavitha G. Kana participated in the 2023 Train the Trainer (TTT) program, where she actively engaged in discussions around collaboration with libraries, digitization, and relicensing published texts. Motivated by these learnings and backed by CIS-A2K, Kavitha continued her mission by organizing a Kannada Wikisource workshop in May 2024 under the She Leads campaign, sparking broader community interest in Wikisource.

Active engagement in creating a Wikisource in Tulu started a few months ago, with community members eager to learn how to digitize and share Tulu literature. In July 2024, CIS-A2K initiated and conducted a series of training sessions designed to introduce Wikisource processes to new volunteers and provide demonstrations on how to contribute effectively. These sessions offered hands-on experience and empowered community members to begin working on Tulu texts. 

Training Sessions and Community Involvement

A series of online training sessions were organized to lay the groundwork for Tulu Wikisource. Each session was designed to build essential skills and knowledge among participants, enabling them to contribute effectively. These sessions were supported by CIS-A2K’s Nitesh as coordinator, WMF staff Satdeep Gill as a trainer, and community coordinator Kavitha G. Kana. The initial session introduced foundational topics, including the motivations of the Tulu community and the steps required to establish a Tulu Wikisource. The second session was focused on updates from the community, tackling challenges, and utilising tools to track contributions. The third session dived into technical topics like translating system messages, creating Wikidata entries, and managing text transclusions. 

Following the first training session, several volunteers, including Babitha Shetty, Vinoda mamatharai, Kavitha G. Kana and ~aanzx made significant contributions to the Tulu Wikisource project. In August, Shreelatha.Halemane stood out with an impressive 654 edits within the month, and her contributions have continued consistently since then. Many other dedicated editors actively contributed to multilingual Wikisource.

Community-driven training in local language

In addition to the above-mentioned sessions, Kavitha and active community members like Anoop (Kannada Wikisource admin) and Babitha Shetty organized local training in Tulu. These sessions, led by knowledgeable community members who had undergone prior training, provided an accessible and relatable learning environment. Anoop and Babitha Shetty, both deeply involved in the Karavali Wikimedians User Group and Kannada Wikisource and other Wikimedia projects, played instrumental roles as trainers, addressing queries and offering personalized guidance to new volunteers or to those Wikimedians who did not have any idea regarding Wikisource editing.

Looking Ahead

Through this initiative, the Tulu language’s rich literary heritage will be preserved and disseminated in the digital realm, inviting new volunteers and ensuring free access to everyone. The birth of Tulu Wikisource is a testament to the collaborative spirit of the Tulu community and the support provided by CIS-A2K and a WMF staff.

Here is what Kavitha G. Kana, who went on to become the founding admin of Tulu Wikisource, said about their plans for the future:

WikiForAll is a series of training programs designed to train the Alumnae student chapter of the iGiver in association with the Women In Tech collectives(WITc) India. iGiver is a Not for Profit organisation to help the women students from marginalised backgrounds to pursue their skills in tech. As part of the Alumnae chapter initiative iGiver and WITc have associated with the CIS-A2K to co-design, develop, research and implement training programs on WIkipedia and sister projects. 

The Orientation program of the WikiForAll was held on 20th October 2024 at Shri Krishnaswamy College for Women and around 25 participants took part in the event.

In the first phase of this program series (timeline is for next 2-3 months) we will be introducing MediaWiki projects to the students. This program would help the students to learn beyond engagement on Wiki platform, they shall get an understanding on web development languages and scripts. This also would help them improve their practices in learning fundamental programming languages and logical thinking.

We expect that this program would help the students understand various technical skills that shall associate with their careers and academics. Moreover, this is their first time of engagement with an Open Knowledge community. Their volunteer interest to learn and contribute would add more to the MediaWiki developers community in India.

My previous research with the CIS-A2K titled “Bridging the Gender gap: A report on Indian Language Wikimedia Communities” includes an observation on Outreach and Training for women in technical aspects. Therefore, the output of this program would be to meet the needs for skill and knowledge gap for women who have lack of access to resources. 

The inaugural event included an orientation and introduction to Free and Open Source Software, Wikimedia projects, communities and explaining about how to participate in the local Wiki events happening in India.

“WikiForAll is an initiative to bring together all the Alumnae to learn and contribute to the FOSS and Open Knowledge projects. This would help us learn how global intiatives work so that we can participate in an educational movement, and also share Open Knowledge. We also believe that this program will bring us a good exposure to many tools and programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, also using GitHub and other command line interfaces. This way it will help us in our career front and also to empower other fellow women in our family and surroundings to easily get introduced to learning new technologies. We look forward for this collaboration with the Wikimedia movement where we are keen to learn, educate, research and empower our community of first-gen of Women in Tech.” – Mahalakshmi, an Alumnae of the Vizhuthugal program by iGiver

We also discussed the challenges that the students face to learn the tech skills and the medium/platform that can work best for them to learn and contribute to FOSS projects. Mr. G. Srinivasan who is an experienced tech enthusiast also addressed the students and shared his insights about how students must choose their passion and follow them to aspire a career that they wish to pursue.

As a follow up to this event we are co-designing a curriculum and an interface along with the help of User:Ranjithsiji (contributor from Wikimedians of Kerala User Group) to mentor and help the students to contribute to MediaWiki projects. This being a recurrent event we are initially planning this for 2-3 months and the output will also include a research project on how to implement this prototype on a large scale.

Thanks to Mr. Raghav and Mrs. Vijaylakshmi from the iGiver team and also the management of the Shri Krishnaswamy College for Women, Chennai for bringing up this unique initiative to take forward FOSS to the suburbs.

Image credites: User: Reshmak0615, CC BY-SA 4.0

When it comes to rectifying the historical underrepresentation of Black and Brown women in various fields, we tend to focus on the achievement and visibility of women in the formal sector, corporations, governance, entertainment, and politics, among other fields.

However, indigenous women’s contributions and knowledge, particularly that of women in the informal sector and professions considered traditional, are often shoved into obscurity.

This year’s #VisibleWikiWomen campaign aims to acknowledge our place in history and the collectiveness of our struggles and resistance by highlighting images and stories of the work of our collective liberation.

However, how will history be complete without the inclusion of informal ways of knowing? What about the role and contributions of marginalized individuals based on race, gender, disability, and other factors?

Talk of black/brown women, persons with disability, and the aged.

All of these thought processes lingered while strategizing our approach for this year’s campaign.

As the lead for the #VisibleWikiWomen 2024 campaign in Ghana, my team and I initially planned to focus on curating festive images. However, we observed that even within the invisibility of marginalized black/brown women lies another layer that needs to be tackled to ensure that true visibility is achieved. As the Whose Knowledge team? team puts it, nobody is free until everybody is free.

In addition to capturing festivals, we focused on marginalized women in Ghana, their critical role in social justice, and their efforts toward the local economy.

At the end of the campaign, we curated and uploaded over 500 quality images from three regions in Ghana.

Below are selected images from the curation that highlighted the role of Indigenous forms of knowledge and contributions from women who have committed to liberating their communities behind the scenes.

Amesuwo Kunugbe, age 60, is a traditional birth attendant (TBA). She has offered free birth delivery services to several underprivileged women for over nine years in the Volta Region of Ghana. Traditional birth attendants are often based in rural and disadvantaged communities and assist women during pregnancy. They do not have formal training and practice based on their skills; skills passed from a family member or by working with other TBAs.

84-year-old Esowoeka Bleku is also a traditional birth attendant (TBA) in Ghana. Over the last twenty years, she has offered free birth delivery services to women in the Volta region who cannot afford to deliver in a health facility, primarily due to financial constraints.

During the protest against the Ghana Football Association to demand an end to corruption, we captured two incredible women: one physically challenged individual and Emelia Okine, a 75-year-old woman. Disabilities (Disablism) and aging (ageism) are both stigmatized concepts. As such, individuals in these social groups are often marginalized and unrecognized for their contribution to their communities and nation-building. The two individuals mentioned above participated in the protest to advocate for better governance in the Ghana Football Association, thereby contributing to social change.

Enyonam, a single mom with five children, ventured into the coconut-selling business last year to enable her to care for her children. Her customer service skills have been her unique selling point and have kept her in a business considered the preserve of men.

Aside from catering to her customers’ health needs by selling fresh coconut juice, her customer service has remained the main push for her growth. Will she ever be nominated for an award in customer service? Probably not, because she is in an informal business.

However, that does not diminish her contribution to her community. Her effort to ensure her children live dignified lives and her boost to the local economy are incredible feats!

Who is looking out for them (women like Enyonam)? How do we ensure that their efforts are not erased from history?

These are the questions that motivate us and keep us anticipating the #VisibleWikiWomen Campaign each year!

By Pamela Ofori-Boateng

Connect with #VisibleWikiWomen Ghana Team

Pamela Ofori-Boateng

Francis Quasie

Connect with WhoseKnowledge Team

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

Updates for editors

• Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn’t exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [1]
• View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

• On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [3][4]

In depth

• There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.

Meetings and events

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
• Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
• A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.

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

The report “Open Movement’s Common(s) Causes” maps the current threats and opportunities facing the open movement, based on the ongoing work of the organisations behind the Common(s) Cause event, which took place in Katowice, Poland; as a pre-conference event for Wikimania 2024 on 6 August, 2024.

The meeting was organised by Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Future, and Wikimedia Europe in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation. The goal of the meeting was to create links between different advocacy efforts so that a shared advocacy strategy for the Knowledge Commons can be created.

One of the calls that jumped out for us was a call for defining new open principles – principles that could clarify what openness means in the context of today’s digital space and ensure its pro-public, democratic potential. Formulating such principles could help against several challenges, e.g. open washing.

Another clear call is the one confirming the assumptions behind the Common(s) Cause project: it is the call for a shared advocacy agenda, which could help ensure that Knowledge Commons are treated and sustained as critical digital infrastructures.

The event gathered over 55 participants from 20 countries, most of whom travelled to Katowice to attend the Wikimania conference. The majority of attendees were from open advocacy communities. The event not only enabled the organizers to build stronger working ties with one another, but with the many other organisations who were represented at the event. 

Participants acknowledged that the power of the open movement is only as strong as the bonds of the people working to advance an open, equitable agenda, and collective impact can only be achieved through individuals from different organisations working closely together.

The report identifies a few common causes that can be found at the intersection of open movement organisations’ strategies, the socio-technological zeitgeist, and current policy opportunities, such as: 

1. (Re)defining openness in a new technological era.
2. Creation of a shared advocacy strategy and enhanced regional and thematic cooperation across the organisations.
3. Developing and testing governance approaches for our digital commons.
4. Advancing openness and sustainability for the technology, data, content, and governance of Digital Public Infrastructure.

This report is a starting point and serves as an invitation to the wider open community to join these causes as well as to formulate their own, which could then be backed by other organisations. The next step in this process will be disseminating its findings, hopefully resulting in further backing and refinement of the causes and additional feedback from the wider community, which this small convening could not fully represent.

Read the full report

Pode parecer uma pergunta filosófica, mas atualmente essa é uma pergunta bastante prática, considerando os recentes avanços na inteligência artificial generativa e nos modelos de linguagem de grande escala (do inglês large language models, ou LLMs). Devido ao uso generalizado da tecnologia de IA generativa, projetada para prever e imitar respostas humanas, agora é possível criar, quase sem esforço, textos que parecem ter saído da Wikipédia.

Minha resposta a essa pergunta é simples: não, não seria a mesma coisa.

O processo de criar conhecimento de forma livre, compartilhá-lo e aperfeiçoá-lo ao longo do tempo, publicamente e com a ajuda de centenas de milhares de pessoas voluntárias, é o que, há 20 anos, tem definido a Wikipédia e os diversos outros projetos da Wikimedia. A Wikipédia contém conhecimento confiável e de fontes seguras justamente porque esses conteúdos são criados, debatidos e selecionados por pessoas. Ela também se baseia em um modelo aberto e não comercial, o que significa que a Wikipédia é livre para acessar e compartilhar, e sempre será. E em uma internet inundada de conteúdos gerados por máquinas, isso significa que a Wikipédia tem ainda mais valor.

Nos últimos seis meses, dezenas de LLMs foram lançados ao público, treinados com base em amplos conjuntos de dados capazes de ler, resumir e gerar textos. A Wikipédia é uma das maiores bases abertas de informação da internet, com versões em mais de 300 idiomas. Até o momento, todos os LLMs são treinados com base nos conteúdos da Wikipédia, e ela é quase sempre a maior fonte de dados de treinamento nos conjuntos de dados desses LLMs.

Uma coisa óbvia a se fazer com alguma  desses novos sistemas é tentar gerar artigos da Wikipédia. É claro que as pessoas já tentaram. E, tenho certeza de que muitos leitores já perceberam isso em primeira mão, essas tentativas mostram muitos desafios no uso de LLMs para produzir o que wikipedistas chamam de conhecimento, ou seja, textos e imagens confiáveis, em formato enciclopédico, com fontes seguras. Algumas dessas limitações incluem as seguintes:

• Atualmente, os resultados dos LLMs não passam por uma checagem de fatos, e já há muitos casos conhecidos de pessoas que usam a IA generativa para tentar realizar seus trabalhos. Há inúmeras situações de baixo risco em que os resultados podem ser úteis sem causar nenhum risco, como prompts para criar textos de agradecimento, planos para férias divertidas ou um roteiro para dar início a uma redação. No entanto, em outras situações, os resultados não são tão bons, como no caso em que um LLM fabricou processos judiciais, e o advogado que usou esses resultados em um tribunal acabou sendo multado. Em outra situação, um médico demonstrou que um sistema de IA generativa apresentava diagnósticos inadequados ao analisar sintomas de pacientes atendidos no pronto-socorro. Com o tempo, acredito que esses sistemas ficarão muito melhores e se tornarão mais confiáveis em uma variedade de contextos. Uma possibilidade interessante é que a demanda por melhores fontes melhorará o acesso a pesquisas e livros on-line. Mas será preciso tempo para chegar lá e, provavelmente, uma pressão significativa por parte dos órgãos reguladores e do público para que haja melhorias que beneficiem todas as pessoas.
• Os LLMs não podem contar com informações que não foram usadas em seu treinamento para responder aos prompts. Isso significa que todos os livros do mundo que não estão disponíveis na íntegra on-line, conteúdos de pesquisas anteriores ao advento da internet e informações em outros idiomas que não o inglês não fazem parte daquilo que um LLM típico “sabe”. Consequentemente, os conjuntos de dados usados para treinar LLMs atualmente podem ampliar as desigualdades e os vieses existentes em muitas áreas – como nas contratações, na medicina e em sentenças criminais. Talvez um dia isso mude, mas estamos muito longe de poder acessar livremente e treinar LLMs em todos os diferentes tipos de informações que as pessoas em todos os idiomas usam atualmente para criar conteúdo para a Wikipédia. E, mesmo então, será necessário mais trabalho para mitigar os vieses.
• Por fim, já foi demonstrado que LLMs treinados a partir dos resultados de LLMs têm um desempenho comprovadamente pior, e chegam até mesmo a esquecer de coisas que eles já “sabiam”, uma condição chamada de “colapso do modelo”. Isso significa que, para que os LLMs tenham bons resultados e continuem melhorando, eles precisarão de um abastecimento constante de conteúdos originais, escritos por humanos, o que torna a Wikipédia e outras fontes de conteúdos gerados por humanos ainda mais valiosas. Também significa que as empresas de IA generativa de todo o mundo precisam descobrir como manter as fontes de conteúdos humanos originais, o elemento mais importante do nosso ecossistema de informações, sustentável e crescendo com o tempo.

Esses são apenas alguns dos problemas que precisam ser resolvidos enquanto internautas exploram como os LLMs podem ser usados. Acreditamos que internautas darão cada vez mais valor a fontes confiáveis de informações que tenham sido validadas por pessoas. As políticas da Wikipédia e nossa experiência de mais de uma década no uso do aprendizado de máquina para apoiar voluntários humanos oferecem lições valiosas sobre esse futuro.

Princípios para uso da IA generativa

O conteúdo gerado por máquina e as ferramentas de aprendizado de máquina não são novidade na Wikipédia e nos demais projetos da Wikimedia. Na Wikimedia Foundation, desenvolvemos ferramentas de aprendizado de máquina e IA com base nos mesmos princípios que tornaram a Wikipédia um recurso tão útil para tantas pessoas: dando centralidade à moderação de conteúdo e à governança humana. Continuamos a experimentar novas maneiras de atender às necessidades das pessoas por conhecimento de forma responsável, inclusive com plataformas de IA generativa, com o objetivo de colocar a contribuição humana e a reciprocidade em primeiro plano. As pessoas editoras da Wikipédia têm controle sobre todo o conteúdo gerado por máquina – elas editam, aprimoram e auditam qualquer trabalho feito por IA – e criam políticas e estruturas para controlar as ferramentas de aprendizado de máquina usadas para gerar conteúdo para a Wikipédia.

Esses princípios podem ser um bom ponto de partida para o uso dos LLMs atuais e em desenvolvimento. Para começar, os LLMs devem considerar como seus modelos auxiliam as pessoas de três maneiras principais:

1. Sustentabilidade. A tecnologia de IA generativa tem o potencial de afetar negativamente a motivação humana para criar conteúdo. Para preservar e incentivar mais pessoas a contribuir com seu conhecimento para o bem comum, os LLMs devem procurar aumentar e apoiar a participação humana no cultivo e na criação de conhecimento. Eles não devem jamais impedir ou substituir a criação humana de conhecimento. Isso pode ser alcançado mantendo sempre os humanos no processo e dando o devido crédito às suas contribuições. Continuar a apoiar os seres humanos no compartilhamento de seus conhecimentos não só é algo que está alinhado à missão estratégica do movimento Wikimedia, como também será necessário para continuar a expandir nosso ecossistema geral de informações, que é o que cria os dados de treinamento atualizados dos quais os LLMs dependem.
2. Equidade. Na melhor das hipóteses, os LLMs podem ampliar o acesso às informações e oferecer formas inovadoras de fornecer informações a quem busca conhecimento. Para isso, essas plataformas precisam incorporar verificações e contrapesos que não reproduzam os vieses de informação, não ampliem as lacunas de conhecimento, não perpetuem o apagamento de histórias e perspectivas tradicionalmente excluídas nem contribuam com danos aos direitos humanos. Os LLMs também devem considerar como identificar, tratar e corrigir vieses nos dados de treinamento que podem produzir resultados imprecisos e extremamente injustos.
3. Transparência. Os LLMs e suas interfaces devem permitir que os humanos entendam a origem dos resultados do modelo, verifiquem e corrijam esses resultados. Uma maior transparência na forma como os resultados são gerados pode nos ajudar a entender e, então, mitigar vieses sistêmicos nocivos. Ao permitir que os usuários desses sistemas avaliem as causas e as consequências dos vieses que podem estar presentes nos dados de treinamento ou nos resultados, pessoas criadoras e usuárias poderão contribuir para uma maior compreensão e a aplicação criteriosa dessas ferramentas.

Visão para um futuro confiável

A contribuição humana é parte essencial da internet. As pessoas são o motor que impulsionou o crescimento e a expansão da web, criando um espaço incrível para o aprendizado, os negócios e a conexão com outras pessoas.

A IA generativa pode substituir a Wikipédia? Ela pode tentar, mas essa é uma substituição que ninguém realmente deseja. Não há nada de inevitável nas novas tecnologias. Em vez disso, cabe a todos nós escolher o que é mais importante. Podemos priorizar a compreensão humana e sua contribuição com o conhecimento no mundo – de forma sustentável, equitativa e transparente – como um dos principais objetivos dos sistemas de IA generativa, e não como algo secundário. Isso ajudaria a mitigar o aumento da desinformação e das alucinações dos LLMs; garantiria que a criatividade humana fosse reconhecida pelo conhecimento criado; e, o mais importante, assegurará que os LLMs e as pessoas possam continuar a contar com um ecossistema de informações atualizado, em evolução e confiável a longo prazo.

Selena Deckelmann é Diretora de Produtos e Tecnologia na Wikimedia Foundation.

The post O valor da Wikipédia na era da IA generativa appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

David-James Gonzales is an Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University and the host of New Books in Latino Studies. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. 

I began teaching with the Wikipedia assignment in the spring of 2018. At the time, I sought an alternative to the standard term paper that had been, and likely remains, the staple of most college history courses. My motivation was to find an assignment that students would enjoy completing and that I would enjoy grading. Over my previous six years of university teaching, I developed a dread for grading term papers as it became apparent that most students either did not have the time or did not see the point in writing a well-researched argumentative paper. Moreover, I noticed that many of my students were developing bad habits in their rush to complete term papers, including committing to an argument before establishing a research question, cherry-picking sources that confirmed unfounded assumptions, and ignoring counterevidence. I desired an assignment that would reinforce the teaching of historical methodology and leverage the accessibility of the internet, allowing students to reach a broader audience, which I hoped would motivate them to take greater pride in their work.

After speaking with colleagues and searching the internet for ideas, I stumbled upon the Wiki Education website and found the Wikipedia assignment. Despite my lack of experience editing or authoring Wikipedia pages, I was drawn to the assignment because it facilitates experiential learning by requiring students to apply the knowledge acquired through course readings, lectures, and research to a public-facing project. In my US history survey course, for example, I use the Wikipedia assignment instead of a final paper to evaluate students’ ability to do the work of a historian by choosing a topic, developing a research question, selecting and evaluating sources, and writing a historical narrative. 

I also use the assignment to help students build social and professional skills applicable beyond the classroom. To promote peer collaboration in larger classes, I have students work in pairs. Admittedly, most groan when they hear this is a group project; however, by the end of the semester, they overwhelmingly express appreciation for their partner and the flexibility the assignment provides to capitalize on each person’s strengths. For example, those interested in computer programming and coding tend to enjoy learning about wikitext and the formatting aspects of the assignment. For others, conducting research, locating images, videos, and sound clips, or writing the text of the article is preferred. While I require them to work in pairs, students decide how to manage their workload by deciding who does what and evaluating each other’s performance at the end of the term.   

To facilitate student-teacher mentoring, I require students to meet with me throughout the semester to approve their topics and receive feedback on sources and drafts. These interactions help break down the reluctance and intimidation students feel towards interacting with authority figures and often lead to future opportunities to advise them about their degree progress, university resources, and career opportunities. To teach information and media literacy, I have students turn in an annotated bibliography halfway through the term. Although not a required part of the Wikipedia assignment, I find that it reinforces the dashboard’s trainings on evaluating sources according to the credibility of the author and publication. It also teaches students to pay as much, if not more, attention to the sources used in a publication than the text itself. 

I have used the Wikipedia assignment in thirteen courses over the past six years and have been thrilled by the results. Overall, my students have published 180 new articles, edited an additional 492 articles, and added 8,500 references to Wikipedia! Incredibly, their work has received over 13 million views as of spring 2024. But the best part is that my students admit they enjoy the assignment. 

Here are a few examples of what students appreciate about the Wikipedia assignment: 

“The Wikipedia project we had over the course of the semester was very effective in getting us all to participate in the learning process. It helped us to be more involved in research and in learning how to be historians.”

“I loved the Wikipedia project we worked on throughout the semester. We got to pick our own topic and I appreciated what it taught me about doing accurate historical research.”

“I loved the Wikipedia Assignment in this class and using our research skills to be able to put something useful out onto the internet.”

“The incorporation of making a Wikipedia article was the best way to actually be part of making and recording history.”

As reflected in the comments above, students relish the “hands-on” opportunity provided by the Wikipedia assignment to apply what they learn through a medium that allows them to create something that makes a public contribution beyond the classroom. And this is the primary reason why I continue to teach with Wikipedia; it encourages students to become more informed knowledge producers rather than passive consumers of information.

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

As far as the English Wikipedia is concerned, there is no red nor a blue link for the 2024 awardees of the Brewster medal. Its information ends in 2021. The German Wikipedia is up to date. There are no articles for Renée A. Duckworth and for Juan C. Reboreda on both Wikipedias, the German has two red links.

When you maintain information like this, there are three options. You can include an awardee in text or as a link and as luck will have it the link will turn red or blue. This is complicated because a link may have homonyms. With a red link you will only know an homonym issue once an article is created, with a blue link you may know immediately.

The Wikimedia Foundation solved a similar problem a long time ago for another type of link, the "interwiki link".  The solution is Wikidata. It works because there is only one identifier for every topic and every article needs a link to a Wikidata item to have a more global relevance.

Thanks to the ongoing development of Wikidata, there is the Wikibase. We should do a similar job for the red and blue links. It will do away with the false friends problems in Wikipedia. It will improve quality for each Wikipedia and it will improve the quality of Wikidata. Any data related updates that are not strictly local will remain at Wikidata because that helps us in the sharing of the sum of all knowledge.

When a new a link is to be added in any of the 333+ Wikipedias, it starts with disambiguation.. Is the subject already known in any of the other Wikipedias? If not a new Wikidata item will be created and extend options in any future disambiguation. If it is, available information and references are available from the start and consequently a Scholia, a Reasonator or any other generated view of the information may become available dependent on the policies of a Wikipedia.

Implementing such a Wikibase is not really problematic because all the blue links still refer through the local Wikipedia article to Wikidata. The red links are the more tricky bit. They are opened up once they are linked to a Wikidata item. 

With such a Wikibase in place, we can start doing the smart things. The Brewster medal, Q612041, could have a red or blue link to all the awardees. When they don't the article is to be reported for maintenance..

Cool?

     GerardM

07/11/2024-13/11/2024

Mapping

• Requests for comments have been made on these proposals:
  • amenity=travellers_lounge for mapping public seating areas in transport facilities, such as airport lounges or railway station waiting areas.
  • virtual_tour=* to tag virtual 3D tours of places such as museums, hotels, or shops.
  • rental:powerbank=yes, to map stations where users can rent portable power banks to charge mobile devices on the go.
  • addr:milestone=* to allow the tagging of street addresses that use the distance from a reference point as part of the address.
  • languages:official=* and languages:preferred=*, to enable the specification of languages for name rendering, for example the targeted display of street names in different languages or scripts in map applications.
• The proposal to delete busway=* for bus lanes was accepted with 21 votes in favour, 0 against, and 0 abstentions.

Mapping campaigns

• Julien Minet reported ► on the status of address completion in Wallonia, Belgium, on OpenStreetMap, noting a current coverage of 65.9% compared to the ICAR database, although progress has been slowed by recent adjustments to official address sources. A map shows completion rates per commune, highlighting areas with significant updates, and challenges due to pre-assigned addresses in undeveloped areas.
• If you ever visit Mexico and want to try the delicious esquites/elotes which are sold mostly on street stalls, there’s a collaborative map, so you will know where to find them.
• The 50,000th challenge on MapRoulette, created just this week, marked a significant milestone in the platform’s journey to enabling collaborative map improvement around the world.

Community

• OpenStreetMap Belgium, an independent NGO since 2023, continued to work with key supporters such as TomTom and the Belgian National Crisis Centre, organising events including the first European State of the Map in a decade, and providing updated resources such as free Belgian map tiles twice a year.
• Pieter Vander Vennet explained how OpenStreetMap users can verify their accounts on Mastodon by linking profiles between the two platforms (we reported earlier).

Events

• ^[1] Lars Lingner summarised ► the OpenStreetMap community’s Hackweekend in Berlin, Germany, where over 20 participants worked on creative projects and technical challenges while engaging in an open exchange on social and cartographic issues.
• OpenStreetMap Belgium is hosting a mapathon in Bruges on Friday 29 November to support the Lili app, which helps visually impaired users navigate safely by mapping essential infrastructure such as tactile paving and audio-enabled traffic signals in Bruges.
• On Monday 18 November, during the annual ‘Geography Awareness Week’, HeiGIT, in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, the German Red Cross, and the University of Würzburg, is hosting a mapathon in Heidelberg to produce essential map data for humanitarian aid. The event welcomes participants of all experience levels.
• Mapping USA 2025, a virtual OpenStreetMap conference, is taking place on 24 and 25 January and will feature two days of talks, workshops, and community-driven discussions to engage mappers and advocates from across the US.
• Geomob’s recent London, England, event to celebrate OpenStreetMap’s 20th birthday, on 18 September, is now available as a video, with slides and audio, thanks to volunteer Andrew Braye.
• Calling all creative minds: #SotM2025 needs a logo. Submission is via email. Deadline: Saturday 30 November at 23:59 UTC. More details can be found on the Wiki page.

OSM research

• A new study presented a dataset of classified building footprints for the US derived from OpenStreetMap data, distinguishing between residential and non-residential buildings. The classification, performed using an unsupervised method based on OSM tags and ancillary geospatial data, has been validated with high accuracy across different regions of the US, indicating its usefulness for urban planning, emergency response, and population studies.

Maps

• 2hu4u has detailed a straightforward way of creating beautiful time-lapse videos of your mapping progress from historical OSM data, all from the comfort of QGIS and without the arduous process of downloading planet files, generating tiles or running a server. In the finished video you can watch the amazing transition, from a nearly blank canvas to a comprehensively mapped Australian city, over 16 years.
• The open-source DeFlock project shows the global locations of automated licence plate readers, with over 5,600 identified worldwide, to raise awareness and help people avoid surveillance; it uses OpenStreetMap to document camera directions and create warning signs.
• Andy Townsend described the development of a ‘rural pedestrian’ vector map for England and Wales, focusing on offline usability. This new vector schema, created with Tilemaker and MapLibre, simplifies the original raster schema by reducing data layers and enhancing feature styling, such as UK/IE road shields and handling of previously missed features such as derelict canal bridges. The vector format reduces map size significantly, making it suitable for offline use.
• Vector tiles are now available on OSMF hardware (we reported earlier). The usage policy is not yet final, but you can use them now, according to Paul Norman. The map style is accessible via the new domain vector.openstreetmap.org and the tiles are available through a MVT address (https://vector.openstreetmap.org/shortbread_v1/{z}/{x}/{y}.mvt). There is a demonstration of the tiles rendered as a map.

OSM in action

• pl6025 has created a map of commercial POIs in Loire (France) on uMap, which can be reproduced > with Overpass queries.
• MetroDreamin’ is an interactive platform where users can design and share custom public transit maps, creating their ideal transit systems while connecting with a community of fellow map enthusiasts.

Open Data

• Daylight Map Distribution v1.58 is the final release of this open geodata project (we reported earlier), concluding its efforts to provide curated and enhanced OSM data. More details about its closure are available in the official announcement.
• Frederik Ramm, of Geofabrik, discussed access to historical OpenStreetMap data, explaining the tools and datasets available to researchers, the limitations due to OSM’s growth and historical changes, and offering assistance in extracting specific data.

Software

• Daniel Schep introduced ‘Ultra v3’ (formerly Overpass Ultra), an enhanced mapping tool that now functions as a MapLibre GL JS IDE. New features include query providers for multiple GIS file formats, auto-sorting of map style directives, bundled icon sprite sheets, fallback glyphs, and an HTML control for adding map titles and custom controls, extending Ultra’s utility for geospatial queries and map customisation.
• The latest update of Jake Coppinger’s Australian Cycleway Stats project improved the efficiency of data processing by adding features such as exclusive cycle lane detection for safer routes on low-speed roads, parallel processing for Australian and international data, and hard-coded Overpass API endpoints for different regions, improving the reliability and speed of data collection for cycleway infrastructure across Australia.
• The Every Door project, funded by NLNet’s NGI0 Commons Fund, focuses on building the best OpenStreetMap mobile editor for point of interest and address capture, with planned features such as vector tiles and customisation to improve mapping and interoperability.
• PinPoi is an app for managing and navigating to Points of Interest (POI) by importing files in various formats (e.g. GPX, GeoJSON, CSV) directly to mobile devices. It supports location-based POI searches and displays results in a list or on a map, integrating with users’ preferred navigation applications.
• TripGeo is offering Map Snake, an interactive map-based game where players navigate a snake on a map to explore different locations, combining geography with classic game elements.
• The VeloPlanner project is an interactive map focusing on European cycle routes and points of interest such as campsites, shelters, and historic sites, using OpenStreetMap data. It’s currently a map viewer, but planned updates include a route planner and detailed surface and infrastructure data. The platform uses a robust tech stack including MapLibre, Planetiler, osm2pgsql, and Elixir, hosted on Heroku and processed by a dedicated server.

Programming

• zabop shared a streamlined workflow for editing OpenStreetMap tags, combining the Overpass API, Python, and MapProxy to efficiently identify, visualise, and edit features, emphasising simplicity and fun in the process.
• ‘Overture to OSM’ is a Python package designed to translate map data from the Overture schema into OpenStreetMap compatible tags, supporting layers such as places, buildings, and addresses, while ensuring OSM compliance.
• Gregory Peony shared a markdown-based validation feedback template for OpenStreetMap task managers, designed to streamline responses by including standard feedback, reasons for validation results, tips for revisiting tasks, and links to resources. This template aims to support efficient communication, guide contributors in accessing relevant data, and encourage constructive feedback through organised, reusable comments.
• HOTOSM’s tech updates for November 2024 highlighted ongoing projects, including the alpha launch of Drone Tasking Manager with OpenDroneMap integration, testing of FastAPI for the Tasking Manager, and development of fAIr 2.0 with YOLOv8 model for building detection, as well as improvements to uMap authentication.

OSM in the media

• For years, two families in Tannhausen suffered ► from unwanted through traffic from hikers, cyclists and motorists who used their garden as a shortcut. The reason was a map error on OpenStreetMap incorrectly identifying the private path as a public path. After the family discovered this, Florian Fränzl familiarised himself with the OpenStreetMap system and corrected the access to ‘private’. In addition, they have put up official ‘no passing through’ signs, which now ensure peace and quiet and protection of their privacy.

Other “geo” things

• Berlin (Germany) has introduced ► a digital overview of all public car parks, which provides real-time information on availability and parking conditions and is intended to make it easier for citizens to find a parking space.
• Lund University’s (Sweden) ‘mGPS’ system can identify locations with high precision using unique bacterial samples and offers new applications in medicine, epidemiology, and forensics.
• In Ukraine, military GNSS spoofing to defend against Russian drones is causing problems for the civilian population, as smartphones switch to the wrong time zones and navigation services display inaccurate location data, leading to confusion and delays.
• Grab has developed its own hyper-local mapping system across Southeast Asia, using input from drivers equipped with special cameras to overcome the challenges of narrow, unmapped roads and improve navigation accuracy, differentiating itself from Google Maps with its regional focus and real-time updates.
• Google’s Open Buildings Dataset, now enhanced with AI-powered temporal updates, provides detailed building footprint data across Africa and Southeast Asia, supporting applications in urban planning, disaster response, and environmental research.
• Last month, the US states of Oklahoma and Texas exchanged 0.54 hectares of territory within a reservoir so that a pipeline could resume sending drinking water to a water works without illegally transporting zebra mussels, an invasive species, across the state border.
• South Korea has accused North Korea of using GNSS jamming signals to interfere with South Korean ships and aircraft, which represents a considerable security risk. The jamming is part of military actions that affect satellite navigation and has already disrupted civilian infrastructure and transport operations.
• Transit App has introduced an offline feature to track the location of underground trains using motion detection and vibration patterns, allowing users to predict their location, update ETAs, and receive stop reminders without GPS or internet, while maintaining complete privacy.
• Phoebe Yu explained, in an amusing video, how the problem of Indian addresses in Google Maps was solved. Spoiler: they include places of interest and shops in the route guidance to provide orientation points.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Град Зрењанин	Okupljanje u Zrenjaninu		2024-11-17
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-11-18
Grenoble	Atelier du groupe local de Grenoble		2024-11-18
	Internationale GeoWoche – Online Mapathon von DRK, HeiGIT, MSF Deutschland & Österreich		2024-11-18
England	OSM UK Online Chat		2024-11-18
	Workshop: OSM tagging standards for informal settlements		2024-11-19
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2024-11-19
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-11-19
Bonn	182. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-11-19
City of Edinburgh	OSM Edinburgh Social Meet-up		2024-11-19
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2024-11-20
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-11-20
València	XI Jornadas Anuales de Wikimedia España		2024-11-22 – 2024-11-24
Gent	Bewakingscamera’s op de kaart (wandeling)		2024-11-22
Bangalore East	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party		2024-11-23
Lyon	Campus du Libre 2024 – Lyon – France		2024-11-23
Gent	Bewakingscamera’s op de kaart (wandeling)		2024-11-23
명동	국경없는의사회 2024 글로벌 지오위크 매파톤		2024-11-23
Saint-Étienne	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire		2024-11-25
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-11-27
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #64	✓	2024-11-26
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-11-27
Lübeck	148. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-11-28
Sint-Michiels	LiLi-app mapathon		2024-11-29
Olomouc	SotM CZ+SK 2024		2024-11-29
ঢাকা	State of the Map Asia		2024-11-29 – 2024-11-30

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

Over the past six months, I’ve tracked my money with hledger—a plain text double-entry accounting system written in Haskell. It’s been surprisingly painless.

My previous attempts to pick up real accounting tools floundered. Hosted tools are privacy nightmares, and my stint with GnuCash didn’t last.

But after stumbling on Dmitry Astapov’s “Full-fledged hledger” wiki¹, it clicked—eventually consistent accounting. Instead of modeling your money all at once, take it one hacking session at a time.

It should be easy to work towards eventual consistency. […] I should be able to [add financial records] bit by little bit, leaving things half-done, and picking them up later with little (mental) effort.

– Dmitry Astapov, Full-Fledged Hledger

2024-01-01 Payday
    income:work      $-100.00
    assets:checking   $100.00

2024-01-01 Payday
    income:work              $-100.00
    assets:checking           $100.00
2024-01-02 QUANSHENG UVK5
    assets:checking          $-29.34
    expenses:fun:radio        $29.34

Transaction Date,Description,Category,Type,Amount,Memo
09/01/2024,DEPOSIT Paycheck,Payment,Payment,1000.00,
09/04/2024,PizzaPals Pizza,Food & Drink,Sale,-42.31,
09/03/2024,Amazon.com*XXXXXXXXY,Shopping,Sale,-35.56,
09/03/2024,OBSIDIAN.MD,Shopping,Sale,-10.00,
09/02/2024,Amazon web services,Personal,Sale,-17.89,

# checking.rules
# --------------
# Map CSV fields → hledger fields[0]
fields date,description,category,type,amount,memo,_
# `account1`: the account for the whole CSV.[1]
account1    assets:checking
account2    expenses:unknown
skip 1

date-format %m/%d/%Y
currency $

if %type Payment
    account2 income:unknown
if %category Food & Drink
    account2 expenses:food:dining

# [0]: <https://hledger.org/hledger.html#field-names>
# [1]: <https://hledger.org/hledger.html#account-field>

$ > 2024-09_checking.journal \
    hledger print \
    --rules-file checking.rules \
    -f 2024-09_checking.csv
$ head 2024-09_checking.journal
2024-09-01 DEPOSIT Paycheck
    assets:checking        $1000.00
    income:unknown        $-1000.00

2024-09-02 Amazon web services
    assets:checking          $-17.89
    expenses:unknown          $17.89

$ hledger incomestatement \
    --depth=2 \
    --file=2024-09_bank.journal

Revenues:
               $1000.00 income:unknown
-----------------------
               $1000.00


Expenses:
                 $42.31 expenses:food
                 $63.45 expenses:unknown
-----------------------
                $105.76
-----------------------
Net:            $894.24

$ hledger areg expenses:unknown \
    --file=2024-09_checking.journal \
    -O csv | \
  csvcut -c description,change | \
  csvlook
| description              | change |
| ------------------------ | ------ |
| OBSIDIAN.MD              |  10.00 |
| Amazon web services      |  17.89 |
| Amazon.com*XXXXXXXXY     |  35.56 |
l

if OBSIDIAN.MD
    account2 expenses:personal:subscriptions
if Amazon web services
    account2 expenses:personal:web:hosting
if Amazon.com
    account2 expenses:personal:shopping:amazon

$ > 2024-09_bank.journal \
    hledger print \
    --rules-file bank.rules \
    -f 2024-09_bank.csv
$ hledger bal expenses \
    --depth=3 \
    --percent \
    -f 2024-09_checking2.journal
              30.0 %  expenses:food:dining
              33.6 %  expenses:personal:shopping
               9.5 %  expenses:personal:subscriptions
              16.9 %  expenses:personal:web
--------------------
             100.0 %

Goals and non-goals

Why am I doing this? For years, I maintained a monthly spreadsheet of account balances. I had a balance sheet. But I still had questions.

Before diving into accounting software, these were my goals:

• Granular understanding of my spending – The big one. This is where my monthly spreadsheet fell short. I knew I had money in the bank—I kept my monthly balance sheet. I budgeted up-front the % of my income I was saving. But I had no idea where my other money was going.
• Data privacy – I’m unwilling to hand the keys to my accounts to YNAB or Mint.
• Increased value over time – The more time I put in, the more value I want to get out—this is what you get from professional tools built for nerds. While I wished for low-effort setup, I wanted the tool to be able to grow to more uses over time.

Non-goals—these are the parts I never cared about:

• Investment tracking – For now, I left this out of scope. Between monthly balances in my spreadsheet and online investing tools’ ability to drill down, I was fine.²
• Taxes – Folks smarter than me help me understand my yearly taxes.³
• Shared system – I may want to share reports from this system, but no one will have to work in it except me.
• Cash – Cash transactions are unimportant to me. I withdraw money from the ATM sometimes. It evaporates.

hledger can track all these things. My setup is flexible enough to support them someday. But that’s unimportant to me right now.

Monthly maintenance

I spend about an hour a month checking in on my money Which frees me to spend time making fancy charts—an activity I perversely enjoy.

Here’s my setup:

$ tree ~/Documents/ledger
.
├── export
│   ├── 2024-balance-sheet.txt
│   └── 2024-income-statement.txt
├── import
│   ├── in
│   │   ├── amazon
│   │   │   └── order-history.csv
│   │   ├── credit
│   │   │   ├── 2024-01-01_2024-02-01.csv
│   │   │   ├── ...
│   │   │   └── 2024-10-01_2024-11-01.csv
│   │   └── debit
│   │       ├── 2024-01-01_2024-02-01.csv
│   │       ├── ...
│   │       └── 2024-10-01_2024-11-01.csv
│   └── journal
│       ├── amazon
│       │   └── order-history.journal
│       ├── credit
│       │   ├── 2024-01-01_2024-02-01.journal
│       │   ├── ...
│       │   └── 2024-10-01_2024-11-01.journal
│       └── debit
│           ├── 2024-01-01_2024-02-01.journal
│           ├── ...
│           └── 2024-10-01_2024-11-01.journal
├── rules
│   ├── amazon
│   │   └── journal.rules
│   ├── credit
│   │   └── journal.rules
│   ├── debit
│   │   └── journal.rules
│   └── common.rules
├── 2024.journal
├── Makefile
└── README

Process:

1. Import – download a CSV for the month from each account and plop it into import/in/<account>/<dates>.csv
2. Make – run make
3. Squint – Look at git diff; if it looks good, git add . && git commit -m "💸" otherwise review hledger areg to see details.

The Makefile generates everything under import/journal:

• journal files from my CSVs using their corresponding rules.
• reports in the export folder

I include all the journal files in the 2024.journal with the line: include ./import/journal/*/*.journal

Here’s the Makefile:

SHELL := /bin/bash
RAW_CSV = $(wildcard import/in/**/*.csv)
JOURNALS = $(foreach file,$(RAW_CSV),$(subst /in/,/journal/,$(patsubst %.csv,%.journal,$(file))))

.PHONY: all
all: $(JOURNALS)
    hledger is -f 2024.journal > export/2024-income-statement.txt
    hledger bs -f 2024.journal > export/2024-balance-sheet.txt

.PHONY clean
clean:
        rm -rf import/journal/**/*.journal

import/journal/%.journal: import/in/%.csv
    @echo "Processing csv $< to $@"
    @echo "---"
    @mkdir -p $(shell dirname $@)
    @hledger print --rules-file rules/$(shell basename $$(dirname $<))/journal.rules -f "$<" > "$@"

If I find anything amiss (e.g., if my balances are different than what the bank tells me), I look at hleger areg. I may tweak my rules or my CSVs and then I run make clean && make and try again.

Simple, plain text accounting made simple.

And if I ever want to dig deeper, hledger’s docs have more to teach. But for now, the balance of effort vs. reward is perfect.

Wikidata did not know the award. 

The list of fellows on the RZS website is formatted in a "last name, first name" format. There are too many fellows so converting it by hand is inconvenient. As so many people are enamoured by ChatGPT, I gave it a spin. ChatGPT does NOT process websites for me. So I copy pasted the list and asked it to change the order of the surname and the first name. 

I asked it who had a Wikipedia article. It could not tell me but it gave me a list of fellows who likely have a Wikipedia article. For many of them I added the award in Wikidata and for some fellows  I added a new Wikidata item. For many of them I linked publications and this results in a nice Scholia for the award. 

It would be really cool when there is a Wikimedia AI that will answer questions like: "for the people in this list change the order of the name and check if these Australian award winners have a Wikipedia article or a Wikidata item". Maybe start with a tool for editors and then open it up to the general public. 

Given that Wikipedia is multilingual, what would be the effect of the data for the answers being all Wikipedias AND Wikidata.. Given that Wikifunctions is language agnostic, why not have functions that are a front end to such a Wikimedia AI?

Thanks,

       GerardM

Wiki Education is pleased to announce the appointment of Richard Gingras, a long-time executive at Google focusing on news, to our Advisory Board. Gingras steps into his role with extensive experience in digital media, deep engagement in the evolution of internet policy relating to the open Internet and a free press, and a strong commitment to Wiki Education’s mission.

“There are few things more foundational than building a society’s communal knowledge,” said Gingras. “Wiki Education’s effort to evangelize and develop Wikipedia authorship are critical to achieving that objective.”

Throughout his 50-year career, Gingras has focused on the advance of news and information systems in an evolving digital society – from the evolution of search engines to enabling the next generation global news ecosystem. 

“Richard’s innovative spirit and deep knowledge about the web will bring invaluable insights to our work,” said Frank Schulenburg, Executive Director of Wiki Education. “His contributions will help us advance our goals and strengthen Wiki Education’s impact in the ever-evolving digital information landscape.“

For many years, Gingras served as the Global Vice President for News. In his current role, Gingras provides strategic guidance on how Google presents news to its users as well as advising Google’s efforts to enable a healthy, open ecosystem for quality journalism, including various programs to enable journalists and news providers to be effective and sustainable in our digital world. 

Gingras co-founded the Center for News, Technology, and Innovation, an independent global policy research center, that seeks to encourage independent, sustainable media, and foster informed public policy conversations to maintain a free press and an open internet. Gingras also served as a member of the Knight Commission o n Trust, Media, and Democracy, and helped found the Trust Project.

His broad experience with digital ventures includes leading Salon.com, as well as positions at Apple, the @Home Network, and the Excite search engine. Gingras also serves on the boards of the First Amendment Coalition, the International Center for Journalists, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and PRX, the public media podcast network.

The shitpost ASN is (soon to be) no more

• Albania report: Wiki Loves Monuments in Albania and Kosovo, 2024
• Brazil report: Amazon holotypes: how the species were discovered
• Canada report: FIMS Graduate Library Wiki Club Lunch & Learn
• Colombia report: ¿Por qué y para qué usar Wikidata en Colombia? / Why and for what purpose should Wikidata be used in Colombia?
• Italy report: Empowering Italian GLAMs
• Kosovo report: Edit-a-thon at the City Museum of Mitrovica
• Latvia report: Wikidata Workshop 2024: National Library of Latvia
• Netherlands report: Highlights from the Third Wiki Loves Fashion Campaign in the Netherlands
• New Zealand report: Auckland Museum Wikimedian in Residence, Te Maori edit-a-thons & NZ Species edit-a-thons
• North Macedonia report: WIKIMEDIA MKD’s successful GLAM programme!
• Poland report: What’s up in GLAM-Wiki in Poland
• Spain report: General Archive of the Palace
• UK report: Memory of the World baseline
• USA report: October meetups
• Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group October monthly highlights
• AvoinGLAM report: European encounters
• Memory of the World report: Baseline report
• Wikidata report: Wikidata’s 12th birthday celebration
• Calendar: November’s GLAM events