While I have been an organizer of the Swedish Wiki Loves competitions while I was the executive director, being a jury member is quite a different thing. Luckily, I have been a member of the international Wiki Loves Monuments jury in 2021 and the Swedish Wiki Loves Earth in 2019 och 2020.

This year, I had the honor and pleasure to be part of the international jury for Wiki Loves Earth. It’s so enjoyable to view the about 500 winners from the national competitions. Very hard work to rate them against each other, but luckily, we have some great tooling developed over the years and a great organizing team giving guidance and reminders.

So it is with great pleasure to see that twenty winners finally have been announced. Head over to wikilovesearth.org and check them out, there are some true gems there.

Between 14-15 October, a face to face workshop training was organized in Sivas, Turkey, with the support of the European Union and Bilkent University International Children’s Center. With the project named “There is a Wikipedian in the Village!”; the aim was to increase information literacy among village children in education, to show conscious ways to read content online, and to explain with appropriate methods how to move from a consumer to a producer on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia used as a source for their homework.

We had lunch with the students on the first day of the training, which was organized for children between the ages of 9-18. Then, I showed how to create a Wikipedia account, showing the basics of how to make changes, adding source tools and internal linking methods. During the workshop, a primary and a high school teacher helped us communicate with the students. This was also the first educational event for disadvantaged children countryside in Turkey.

A village in Anatolia was specifically chosen to ensure that children who have to work in agriculture during the summer months can have a nice and quality time. In addition, encouraging them to produce digital content and showing them how to use the internet effectively other than games and social media platforms were among the main goals. The project goals also included:

• To enable children to access create, share, and transform knowledge by using, evaluating, and understanding digital technologies
• To enable students to gain skills in text and visual formatting
• Contributing to online communication skills and encouraging them to enjoy their thoughts and ideas
• To reinforce advanced research skills and to demonstrate accurate and effective use of Wikipedia, which functions as a digital library, as well as traditional printed sources.
• Contributing to the development of the child’s personality and social harmony through multi-participant activity

On the second day, work continued on the articles in the draft status. In addition, stationery items such as crayons and notebooks were given to 20 primary students, and test books were given to high school students. Within the scope of the project, an activity was planned to photograph the plants and living species in nature and natural beauties and upload these outputs to Wikimedia Commons, a sister project of Wikipedia. However, this activity was canceled due to adverse weather conditions.

The feedback was very positive, we received from students the following month. A consensus was reached on the positive impact of increasing such workshops and training activities in countryside regions in the coming years. Additionally, a WhatsApp group was established with participating high school students for any exchange of views on Wikimedia projects.

A lot can be said about the just concluded Wiki Indaba 2023 and while we acknowledge the numerous grievances over things that didn’t work well or those that could have worked better; we choose to focus on the good and amplify some of the success stories from the conference.

Wiki Indaba was established as a convening to bring African Wikimedians together to connect, learn and enhance collaboration.

There were some great and insightful conversations at Indaba 2023 that whether you are a veteran, a newcomer in the movement or attending Indaba for the first time felt empowering and thought-provoking!

Afrika Agenda

The Afrika Agenda tracks, for instance; were a great reflection of just how far we have come as a region; giving us hope that we are finally moving from “talking to actioning”.

“Thanks to my previous involvement in Afrika Baraza, I felt confident participating in important discussions despite being new to the conference. Through my participation in this forum, I had already been exposed to topics such as the Movement Charter, UC4C, and the Africa Agenda. As a result, I was well-equipped to engage in meaningful conversations and contribute to the conference.”  Terry Boke – Wikimedia User Group Kenya.

“The inception of the Africa Agenda can be linked to conversations initiated at Wiki Indaba 2022 in Kigali and subsequently formalized during the Afrika Baraza in 2023, utilizing an inclusive and collaborative approach. This involved extensive discussions conducted through a variety of online and in-person sessions, spanning both Wiki Indaba and Wikimania. The agenda underwent thorough examination through an open and transparent consultation process, resulting in the emergence of a unified voice from the diverse communities in Africa.

The learnings from this process highlight the collective commitment of fellow Wikimedians from Africa to address challenges within the Wikimedia movement, whether as a community or as individual contributors. Special recognition is extended to those who conceived the idea of Wiki Indaba, as this annual gathering has played a pivotal role in laying the foundation for this transformative journey.’’ Derrick Ndahiro, Founder and President Wikimedia User Group Rwanda 

Journalism Awards

The Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards was the Icing on the cake for most of us who attended Wiki Indaba. The Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards served as a remarkable addition to the Wiki Indaba event for many of us in attendance. It underscored the importance of fostering collaborative and meaningful relationships with members of the fourth estate, while also recognizing their contributions towards enhancing the credibility of our work as Wikipedians. The award recipients demonstrated how journalists play a pivotal role in enabling us to create reliable content by citing and referencing their published work in our Wiki articles. Moving forward, we must strive to empower and enhance their capacity to ensure that they remain integral to our efforts in narrowing the content gap in Africa. 

“As they say, One good turn deserves another. The Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards, serves as a platform for recognizing and rewarding distinguished African journalists who have helped to contribute to the evolution of Wikipedia and its sister project through their creative works, showcasing our continent’s rich cultural, ethical, and professional diversity. This initiative highlights the collaborative potential within the African community and underscores the significance of working together towards a common goal.

We now have over 2000 articles that can be used as resources that our community can draw on in creating articles on Wikipedia. In doing so, they can help editors demystify prevailing misconceptions and Eurocentric bias about Africa, and help contribute to a more accurate and inclusive representation of African narratives globally.

Beyond content enhancement, the project has played a pivotal role in introducing professional journalists into our Wikimedia community, so that they are able to understand how their work can help us to grow knowledge on Wikipedia.

In summary, as a community, we believe that the Open Knowledge Journalism Awards celebrates journalistic excellence and strengthens our collaborative efforts toward fostering a more comprehensive and diverse representation of African knowledge. We appreciate this initiative’s positive impact on our community and look forward to continued collaboration in the future”._Olushola Olaniyan, President and co-founder, Wikimedia UG Nigeria  

Diverse representation of women and youth

Wiki Indaba 2023 stood out for its remarkable embrace of youth participation in various capacities. For the first time, WikiVibrance shared the opportunity to participate in person and held its first physical meet-up with the dynamic youth organizers steering the youth community throughout Africa. They had a spotlight in the Africa Knowledge Initiative (AKI) session sharing insights from organizing the Africa Youth Month 2022 campaign alongside young African Wikimedians within the movement.

“In this collective experience, WikiVibrance found itself in the company of several young Wikimedians participating in person for the first time, including individuals such as myself, Bukola James, Lucy Iwuala, Juliet Onyeike, and others. WikiVibrance also brought in other first-time participants such as Francesc Fort from Northwestern Europe. Witnessing the involvement of emerging African communities, including those from Comoros, Gambia and Madagascar, was a source of joy. The vibrancy of these fresh voices resonated throughout various sessions, spanning topics like the campaigns tool, the Regional Grants Committee, Let’s Connect, and beyond,” Euphemia Uwandu – WikiVibrance

Noteworthy was the infusion of gender-related discussions and recognitions in a novel and impactful manner. Fascinating were the gender voices that shared interesting experiences ranging from Alice Kibombo’s session on personal data and the Wikimedian to Joy Agyepong and Stella Agbley’s exploration of equipping young girls with 21st-century digital skills.

The diverse representation of youth, women, and new participants significantly enriched conversations surrounding the Africa Agenda and Wiscom charter. These were not mere dialogues where African Wikimedians listened to one another; rather, they served as forums for self-reflection, allowing African Wikimedians to comprehend the pivotal roles they must assume in advancing the African agenda.

Recognition

Leaders in our movement have also been asking for recognition and seeing a longstanding Wikimedian, one of our own Alice Kibombo from Wikimedia User Group Uganda, who has mentored so many librarians to becoming Wikimedians was celebrated during the “Wiki Celebrate” moment, this was a great encouragement to so many of us.

Alice in her acceptance speech confessed that she was on the verge of saying goodbye and exiting the movement quietly; but the recognition, which was quite timely renewed her spirit; serving as an encouragement that her efforts were not in vain; they are seen and celebrated!

 A clear testament to the power of hard work and perseverance and a challenge for us all to keep pushing forward, stay focused, and continue putting in the work.

There was also an inspiring session on ‘Nurturing female leadership’ that pricked our conscience to be more intentional about how we are paving spaces for women to lead in the movement. We got to hear the unique challenges that female volunteers in the movement face and how they mitigate them.

Aspirations for future Indaba(s)

“Wiki Indaba ought to serve as a forum that wholeheartedly embraces authentic diversity and acknowledges the contributions of its community. It should be a space that allocates room for the inclusion of youth, women, and new contributors, providing an environment where they can join and draw inspiration to flourish within the movement.”

Euphemia

What is a mission without a plan?

“First, I would love to commend the 2023 WikiIndaba organizing team for their efforts in putting together the conference this year. However, as a community, we must decide in a clear-cut plan, what the future of WikiIndaba should be. It is nice to learn about the WiSCom charter that is being put together. It would be great to see the charter inculcate a detailed plan for the future of the WikiIndaba conference.

It’s heart-wrenching to see some people who really deserve the WikiIndaba scholarship miss out on getting it. The plan regarding the future of WikiIndaba must clearly define who deserves the scholarship for instance; is it for Africans? Is it for people who run projects in Africa? Must the two criteria be met? Is there a quota for newbies? etc. 

The plan for the future of WikiIndaba must decide if hands-on workshop sessions are a priority for the conference or not. It was awesome, for instance, to see Michael Graaf’s hackathon session on the 2023 Indaba program, but due to inadequate planning and support, the session had serious setbacks when it was time to execute. Such hands-on capacity-building sessions should be determined if they’re important to the aims and objectives of the WIkiIndaba conference or not. And if they are a priority, they should be supported efficiently”. Ceslause Ogbonnaya – Igbo Wikimedians User Group

As African Wikimedians, WikiIndaba is ours to curate based on our needs as a community, so, let’s do that with a laid down plan.

Regional Movement Communications Support Commendable

As we talk about impact stories from Indaba, we cannot afford to overlook the commendable support of our regional specialist- Winnie Kabintie. Through her selfless dedication, she has provided unwavering support to individual Wikimedians, and various affiliates, and has had a significant impact on the region.

We acknowledge and celebrate Winnie’s instrumental role in kickstarting the Afrika Baraza, which has been instrumental in amplifying our grievances and advocacy for change in the systems as a community. Her efforts have also led to the creation of meaningful connections with relevant foundation staff, making it easier for us to navigate the system and access the support we need. Overall, Winnie’s positive impact cannot be overstated. Her tireless efforts have helped to foster a more supportive and collaborative community in the region, and we are truly grateful for her continued support and contributions.

I presented a paper titled “Modernizing Parametric type design - A case study of Nupuram Malayalam typeface” at Typoday 2023, Banaras Hindu University. Here is the link to paper(pdf): https://typoday.in/spk_papers/Santhosh_Thottingal_Typoday2023.pdf This is 16th edition of conference, hosted by Department of Applied Arts, Faculty of Visual Arts Banaras Hindu University. One of the memorables from the conference was my opportunity to meet Muthu Nedumaran. I had an incredible 2-hour conversation with him on fonts, curves, spacing and technology of Indian scripts.

On 25 October 2023, Code for Africa’s Wikipedian-in-Residence (WiR) hosted its 8th WiR bi-weekly webinar series. The session, titled “Mastering Info-boxes & Enhancing Articles with Short Descriptions on Wikipedia,” was led by Daniel Obiokeke and facilitated by Bukola James, the WiR Community Coordinator for CfA. It attracted 23 participants from Cameroun, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda. This webinar provided an in-depth exploration of the complexities and nuances involved in creating Wikipedia infoboxes and short descriptions.

Daniel began the training by shedding light on the evolution of Wikipedia, particularly highlighting the enhancements in its web-based platform. These advancements have improved the user interface, focusing on a more intuitive and user-friendly UI/UX design. He then proceeded to unravel the intricacies of creating infoboxes and short descriptions, which, despite their apparent simplicity, often pose challenges even to experienced Wikipedians.

The Nuances of Infobox Creation

Daniel defined infoboxes as handy, fixed-format tables typically found in the top right-hand corner of Wikipedia articles. These tables summarise key information about an article such as a country’s statistics, a celebrity’s background among others. He explained the importance of understanding the blueprint of infobox creation, pointing to Wikipedia’s “Designing Infoboxes” article as a valuable resource. He also addressed common concerns, such as personal preferences in infobox design, emphasising the need to master basic principles.

Customising Infoboxes

• Infobox Structure: Daniel explained the ‘info box’ structure, highlighting its components like ‘caption’, ‘label’, and ‘data’, and stressed the importance of understanding what to edit rather than memorising the structure.
• Sandbox Utilisation: The ‘sandbox‘ was introduced as a practice space for editors to hone their infobox creation skills without impacting live articles.
• Design Aspects: The session also covered the design elements of infoboxes, illustrating how different articles on different subjects could adopt unique colour schemes, thereby enhancing their visual appeal.

Community Engagement

Throughout the webinar, Daniel emphasised community interaction, encouraging participants to engage, share progress, and assist one another. He provided resources like a list of existing infoboxes to help editors determine if their intended infobox already exists.

Infobox Alignment

A key point discussed was the typical right-side alignment of infoboxes on a Wikipedia page, with Daniel noting that certain conditions might lead to alignment shifts. This topic, although not fully resolved during the webinar, offered a significant learning opportunity.

Inquiries and Resources

One insightful participant query was about checking the existence of an infobox before creation, to which Daniel directed them to Wikipedia’s “List of Infoboxes.” This list serves as a comprehensive reference for editors.

Creating Short Descriptions and Using Twinkle

Every Wikipedia article features a ‘short description’, visible upon publishing changes. Editing these descriptions traditionally requires navigating through the ‘Edit’ function, which can be time-consuming. Here, Twinkle, a JavaScript gadget, was introduced as an efficient alternative.

Activating Twinkle

• Activation Process: To activate Twinkle, users must go to ‘Preferences’, navigate to ‘Gadgets’, and select ‘Twinkle’.
• Efficiency of Twinkle: Daniel demonstrated that Twinkle expedites editing tasks which has proven particularly useful for frequent editors who aim to increase their edit count.
• Expanding to other Wikis: While the discussion focused on English Wikipedia, there was mention of its applicability in other languages, like French Wikipedia. There, the presenter shared that they have Twinkle activated for reviewing articles, stubs, and other features.

Conclusion

Daniel concluded the session by encouraging participants to explore and contribute creatively within Wikipedia’s framework. He highlighted the platform’s vast learning opportunities and the importance of community engagement in enhancing Wikipedia.

For those interested in revisiting the session or those who might have missed it, the recorded version is available on the community programmes page and do well to test your knowledge on our academy Africa. Ensure you are registered for the upcoming CfA WiR Bi-weekly webinar and immerse in our vibrant community. To stay abreast of our initiatives, complete this form, and let’s shape the future together!

Tales from WikiIndaba

I am a member of Igbo Wikimedians User Group (IWUG). IWUG gave me the wings to fly and catch up with my dream of one day attending the WikiIndaba conference! Through a sponsorship from the Igbo Wikimedians User Group, I had an incredible opportunity to attend the WikiIndaba Conference which was held from 3rd to 5th November 2023 – a conference that brought together Wikimedians (like myself) from across the African continent to discuss and plan the future projects within the Wikimedia movement – a mind-blowing experience it was. I was truly inspired and enriched to be surrounded by so many passionate and dedicated individuals who are committed to advancing free knowledge and open access to information. During this conference, I became accustomed with novel ideas and experiences through the workshops, presentations, and discussions on topics that cut across community building, content creation, and the future of Wikimedia projects in Africa. It was an opportunity to learn from experienced Wikimedians, exchange knowledge, and ideas, and connect with like-minded individuals who share a common or similar goal of advancing knowledge equity and empowerment in Africa..

My Knowledge about WikiIndaba

I never knew how large the WikiIndaba conference was until I participated in this edition. With already piqued interest and curiosity I got to learn the origin and beginning of the WikiIndaba and what made it unique to the African Wikimedians. Through the brief overview shared at the opening ceremony, I got to know that the WikiIndaba Conference is the regional conference for Africans both within and in the diaspora with the first edition held in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2014 by Wikimedia ZA.

Delving deeper, I discovered its uniqueness to the African Wikimedians – the fact that it is the largest gathering of African Wikimedians (for African Wikimedians) hosted annually by the African Wikimedia Community on African soil – each edition, an embodiment of unique and distinctive contents and usually attended by not only the African Wikimedians in diaspora but also, individuals and organizations whose mission aligns with open knowledge goals. I deemed myself lucky to have been a part of this Edition.

The Theme of WikiIndaba 2023

In my quest to understand the theme “Empowering Africa”, I observed that it took into consideration the African Wikimedians’ empowerment and development – there was intentionality in the selection of conference sessions, the speakers, and other activities. They all veered towards enhancing an atmosphere which encouraged discussions of the place of African Wikimedians in the global space and the means through which they can leverage on opportunities and resources to help empower them in fostering sustainable development and growth. The mind-inspiring sessions, panel discussions and so many other activities that sparked lots of reactions challenged us to engage in many insightful conversations and discussions bringing about the exchange of novel ideas and knowledge. Merely looking at the faces of these fellow Wikimedians I could attest that a seed of empowerment was sown.

The WikiIndaba 2023 Chain of Activities

Going through the conference booklet, I understood the activities of WikiIndaba which focused on bringing together Wikimedians from across African continents to discuss and collaborate on various topics related to Wikimedia projects, free knowledge movement, community building, and capacity development and empowerment of the African Wikimedians. All these formed part of the conference activities and was depicted through series of workshops, panel discussions, presentations, and social gatherings. I also observed that these activities aimed at promoting the growth and development of African Wikimedians and Wikimedia projects in Africa. I was indeed inspired to strive for better options and results within and outside the Wiki space. I had the opportunity to add my input in the conference activities by co-presenting in some of the sessions, sharing insights and ideas as captured in the following:

Grant Session: A session filled with information on the WMF Grant, funding programs and understanding the funding type according to the proposed project. This session also took into consideration the impact of the outcome in a given project and also discusses the Fiscal Sponsorship and it’s role in enabling access to funding. I had the opportunity to share my thought on what is considered as an outcome in the review of proposals, pointing out important elements expected to be seen and implemented in a given project.

Wiki Loves Monuments Organizers Q&A: Being on the International Team of Wiki Loves Monuments, I had the opportunity to co-present with Ciell where we shared useful information on organizing a Wiki Loves Monuments campaign for the benefit of both the National and local organizers. It also encompasses a Q&A session that invites the organizers to share their challenges and ask questions on how to proffer solutions to these challenges in their various communities

How the new campaign tools can help your Wikimedia events: Participating in a panel discussion on the newly developed campaign tool, I got to share my user-experience as an organizer in using this tool to create and register events, pointing out one of it’s usefulness in helping the participants to bypass the issue of IP Block and lessening the workload of manually adding the participants on the Program Dashboard as an organizer.

My Learnings and Take-Home

Attending WikiIndaba 2023 was an opportunity for me to physically meet and identify with the amazing faces behind the screen, to learn, unlearn, and relearn directly from them while sharing and exchanging ideas in the spirit of communion. Listening to their presentation delivered from a place of experience made me understand the commonness in our goals. One of the most impactful aspects of WikiIndaba 2023 I observed was the sense of community and solidarity that was palpable throughout the conference – never did I feel left out as a first-timer! It was truly a space where everyone’s voice was valued, and where there was a strong spirit of collaboration and support. I left the conference feeling inspired and energized, with a renewed sense of purpose and determination to continue contributing to the Wikimedia projects in my capacity. Also, I always looked forward to the tea and coffee breaks where I venture into savoring and tantalizing my taste buds with varieties of Moroccan delicacies while interacting with others on topics of food and culture. The climax of it all was the social gathering and bonfire expedition, all of which summed up to invite us to share in the rich cultural values of the Moroccan community.

Prepared for the Future

Overall, attending the WikiIndaba Conference for the first time was a transformative experience. I returned home with a renewed sense of purpose and a deeper connection to the global Wikimedia community. The conference empowered me with the tools, inspiration, and connections needed to continue making a positive impact on Wikimedia projects and communities. I am already looking forward to attending future WikiIndaba conferences and continuing to be a part of this incredible movement for free knowledge. I arrived at WikiIndaba 2023 as a novice, but I went home with lots of ideas and insights that have rejuvenated me to dare for more challenging and result-driven engagements on WikiSpace. I am now wiser than I was. Indeed, the future has come!

Overview

Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group started its work on this issue in September 2023 as part of the Movement Charter Ambassador Program. Within the scope of the program, various meetings were held and the opinions of the participants were listened to and reported. The topics of the meetings were “Hubs” and “Global Council“, which were also suggested by the Ambassador Program.

Implementation Team

In the program, Kurmanbek (Caner) coordinated the program as Movement Ambassador. Adem helped with various aspects such as planning the process and a list of suggestions for pages to be translated. Also Mehman helped us with simultaneous translation into Turkish, English and Russian as head of the Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group. I would like to thank him for the support he gave us.

Activities

Online Meeting

The idea of organizing an online meeting, which was discussed and decided during the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2023, was held on October 1, 2023. Community members from various countries such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, and Iran attended the meeting.

The topics of “Hubs” and “Global Council” were discussed as the content of the meeting. However, beforehand, a presentation called “Movement Charter Conversations” was made and participants’ questions about the program were answered. Hubs topic was jointly explained to the participants by HakanIST and Kurmanbek. The Global Council was explained to the participants by Mehman.

One of the most mentioned points at the meeting was the advantages of Hubs. Because the idea that we could reach more people and organize bigger events through hubs was the common discourse of all participants.

Notes taken during the meeting can be read from this Etherpad link.

MCDC Workshop @ Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2023, Istanbul

MCDC Workshop was held during the Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2023, Istanbul. After the presentation made by Kurmanbek about past events and our goals, the opinions of the community members regarding the Movement Charter began to be received and these opinions were discussed and a brainstorming session was held.

Diff article about this workshop can be found at the link below:

Translation Section

After the Turkic Wikimedia Conference 2023, Istanbul, participants who wanted to start translating the 20 Movement Charter pages we suggested into their local languages. As a result of the project ending on November 29, 2023, the translation status in Turkic languages is as follows:

Feedback Section

We created an online form consisting of questions suggested by the Ambassador Program to obtain the opinions of users who cannot attend online and face-to-face meetings. Click this link to read feedbacks on Meta-Wiki. (This information was blended with data collected during face-to-face and online conversations)

Results

We can say that these MCDC studies, which we carried out within the Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group, were found interesting by the participants and we received the feedback we wanted from the community about the “Global Council” and “Hubs” topics we focused on. Our community members will continue to work on the Movement Charter Draft and work on this issue in their local communities.

3,000 medical images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. In this blog post, we will explain how the first larger project supported by the Helpdesk of the Content Partnerships Hub was technically carried out – in collaboration with Netha Hussain, who requested the support.

Early in 2023, The Content Partnerships Hub initiative, through its Helpdesk function, supported the Wikimedia Community by uploading a couple of thousand medical illustrations shared by the Les Laboratoires Servier. We have previously written about the material and its potential for the Wikimedia platforms. In this post, we delve into the technical aspect of how this project was done.

Copyright questions

The first step was confirming that the images were compatible with the Wikimedia platforms copyright-wise. This is something that you should always research before you even start thinking about uploading something. If you need support on how to understand free licenses, or how to request them, we are happy to support you.

Fortunately, the  Les Laboratoires Servier have marked the files very clearly with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, leaving no doubt that they are indeed free for us to use.

The files

The images on the Smart Servier websites are organized in a number of categories, such as Glands, Nucleic acids and Infectiology. This logical structure was easy to replicate on Wikimedia Commons. What was less convenient was the limited information available about each individual file and what it depicts. The files have short names such as muscle fiber or embryo but there’s no additional text information. If you’re an expert, of course, you can look at the files and know in what context they are appropriate to use – for example, which section of the Wikipedia article on muscles they can illustrate, but it does make it harder for non-experts.

The Smart Servier website does not have an API through which the images can be accessed. The best way of downloading the files was to simply crawl and scrape the HTML of all the gallery pages.

The upload

Once a local copy of the image catalog was saved, they were ready to upload to Wikimedia Commons. The first step was choosing a suitable tool to do that. When you want to work with a large collection of files, you have several options. Pattypan, which has been around for years, is a very popular and useful upload tool, but recently more and more people have been using OpenRefine (OR). This open-source data cleaning tool, already popular among prolific Wikidata editors, has supported Wikimedia Commons – both uploading files and editing their Wikitext and structured data – since about a year ago. As you can see in the category Uploaded with OpenRefine, it has been used to upload over 85,000 files already.

We have been using OpenRefine for working with Wikimedia Commons since the new functionalities have been implemented, and chose it for this project as well. Two factors weighed in favor of it. Firstly, OR gives you access to both Commons and Wikidata – for example, when you have a word like “kidney” in the filename, you can automatically look it up on Wikidata and add a link to the item in the file description or as structured data. Secondly, OR makes it possible to not only upload files but also edit existing files, regardless of whether you uploaded them yourself or not. This is practical for operations like adding categories to a large batch of files. While there are several batch-editing tools available, like Cat-a-lot or VisualFileChange, it’s incredibly convenient to be able to do everything in one tool.

The data

When you upload a large batch of files, you want to make them easy to find and understand. Apart from informative file names and descriptions, you can also add Structured Data on Commons – links to the Wikidata items of the objects depicted in the images. Structured metadata has several advantages over plain text descriptions. For one, by plugging into Wikidata it uses its multilingual potential. A plain text description in English doesn’t help users who want to search Wikimedia Commons in other languages. On the other hand, if the corresponding Wikidata item has labels in several languages, the file can be found by searching in any of those languages. Moreover, the structured data is machine-readable, making it more reusable, for example for external applications.

For this reason, we chose to add as many structured depicts statements to the files as possible. We used the reconciliation feature of OpenRefine to try and identify the correct Wikidata items based on the file names. In many cases this was not possible to do automatically – human input was necessary to ensure that the matchings were correct. As the Helpdesk team does not have medical terminology expertise, we got a lot of help from Netha Hussein, who requested the support, and who did a magnificent job looking up the terms on Wikidata. Thank you!

Learnings

This was one of the first Commons projects we did using OpenRefine, and we got a very positive impression. We have since continued to use OR to work on large batches of media files, both for uploading and editing. Its built-in support for structured data is an important feature for us. However, we must admit we did have a head start, as we had been active users of OR for all things Wikidata, and as such we were already familiar with its interface and workflow.

Complete newcomers will have a learning curve. If you have a spare hour, make sure to watch Sandra Fauconnier’s tutorial on uploading files with OpenRefine.

The Wikimedia Foundation has filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the US Supreme Court supporting challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that threaten the right to freedom of expression as enshrined under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Our brief aims to inform the Supreme Court about how those laws also threaten community-governed free and open knowledge projects like Wikipedia.

In 2021, the state legislatures of Texas and Florida, alleging “censorship” by large social media platforms of some of their citizens’ viewpoints, passed laws limiting how internet platforms can engage in content moderation. NetChoice, a trade organization representing many of the largest multinational technology firms, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) promptly sued the attorneys general of both states, citing violations of the First Amendment and other elements of the US Constitution. 

As the US Supreme Court prepares to consider this contentious pair of cases in 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation is proud to have filed a “friend-of-the-court” or amicus curiae brief calling on the Court to strike down both laws.

An amicus brief is a document filed by individuals or organizations who aren’t part of a lawsuit but who have an interest in the outcome of the case and want to educate the court about their concerns. We believe that the US state laws and judicial precedents at issue in the NetChoice cases present a significant risk to the Foundation’s ability to host Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. These laws and precedents also jeopardize the ability of volunteer editors to continue governing projects like Wikipedia as they have for more than twenty years. We hope that our brief helps the Supreme Court understand the threats posed by Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 to community-governed free and open knowledge projects like Wikipedia. We encourage the Court to rule in favor of NetChoice in order to protect Wikipedia and its community governance model in service of neutral, well-sourced free knowledge. 

Why the cases are relevant to Wikimedia projects 

The Supreme Court combined the cases against the Texas and Florida laws because both raise the same question: whether a state can prohibit website operators from removing the speech and content of users or banning users based on the “viewpoint” of the users in question. In addition to this limitation on content moderation, both laws have substantial compliance obligations, which require that social media platforms explain each and every single action taken to delete content or ban users. Proponents of these laws claim that they only apply to the largest companies, but since they are written with vague and differing definitions, we are concerned that they could also apply to Wikipedia and many other specialized websites. We are also concerned that if these laws are allowed to remain in place, they will set a precedent that will allow even stricter restriction of Wikipedia in the future. 

What we explained in our filing

The Foundation’s filing makes two primary arguments on behalf of the Wikimedia projects and the volunteers who govern them. First, we argue that the laws are too vague and broadly written. This vagueness creates legal risks for Wikipedia volunteer editors and makes the laws unconstitutional. Second, we argue that, even if the laws were more clearly written, forcing websites or the companies and communities that manage them to host speech they don’t want would violate their freedom of expression, which is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. 

The Wikimedia Foundation believes both of these laws are unconstitutional under the First Amendment of the US Constitution because they would violate the rights of both the Foundation and the community of volunteers who create Wikipedia

We believe these laws are unconstitutionally vague (as we will explain further below). In addition, even if the laws were clear, we would still see major problems with them under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting the free expression of its citizens.

In particular, both of these laws fundamentally misunderstand the protections offered by the First Amendment (and, more globally, protections offered to freedom of expression under international human rights law). These protections not only protect people in the US when they speak, but they also stop the government from forcing people to speak. Just as the government cannot target people for their views, it cannot force them to express a viewpoint that they do not support. Instead, free expression includes the choice to remain silent, to say some things but not other things, and to associate or not associate yourself with the speech of others.

These protections are crucial because they cover a wide range of issues, well beyond allowing political debate. A core viewpoint of Wikipedia, for example, is that only notable topics should have articles. The volunteers who edit Wikipedia decide what is and is not notable, whether that’s deciding which Pokemon deserve their own article or deciding not to write about a Texas rock band because they don’t have enough verifiable sources. The viewpoint of the Foundation, as a website host, is that Wikipedia content is of the highest quality when the community makes decisions about content. We also believe that Wikipedia’s quality benefits because the Foundation is not forced to intervene in decisions by volunteer editors about what information should appear on Wikipedia. Furthermore, the Foundation has no particular expertise in identifying which sources are reliable for which topics, whereas the volunteer communities have spent decades figuring it out and establishing guidelines.

We believe that it is extremely important that the Supreme Court hears from the Foundation on these points. The Texas and Florida laws, as well as some of the lower court judges who ruled on them, apparently believe that all large websites should allow anyone to post about anything they wish. Wikipedia, however, by its very nature, is a limited scope project, and this limitation should be protected by the US Constitution. Wikipedia is neither a guidebook nor a place to collect recipes, nor is it a blog nor a collection of people’s personal thoughts and opinions. The government should not be able to force Wikipedia volunteer editors to let the website become an opinion board or rumor mill.

Wikipedia volunteers must be able to maintain the project’s scope as an encyclopedia, to restrict the type of information documented there, and to require that the content have certain qualities like verifiable sources and neutral tone. Without the discretion to make these decisions, Wikipedia would be overwhelmed with irrelevant information that would take away from the purpose of the project. The same is equally true for other Wikimedia projects like Wikisource or Wikimedia Commons: Each of these websites accepts a limited set of content and rejects things that are out of scope, in effect discriminating against the viewpoint of people who want to contribute out-of-scope content.

We hope that courts, as well as legislators, recognize that websites and the people who manage them need and should be able to decide what kinds of content are appropriate for their purposes, and also to take action to remove content that does not fit.

The Wikimedia Foundation believes that these laws also violate the US Constitution because they are vague and poorly written 

Under the US Constitution, laws that affect constitutional rights like freedom of expression need to be carefully written. It should be clear who must comply with the law and what they are expected to do. Furthermore, the law should be focused on fixing a specific problem without affecting other behavior or activity.

However, the laws passed by Texas and Florida do not meet this standard. Instead, they define their terms poorly, making it unclear who is subject to the law and what they must do. For example, the state of Texas has argued that only the three largest social media companies—i.e., YouTube, Meta, and X (at the time, Twitter)—would be affected by the law.

Despite this assertion, the law’s definition of “social media platform” is extremely broad, potentially covering any websites or services that allow people to exchange information with each other over the internet. In theory, the laws only apply to “social media platforms” with a large number of users (50 million users per month), but the term “user” is not defined. If “users” include people who visit a website, then the law could apply to Wikipedia as well as many other specialized websites that were neither meant to be nor are social media platforms.

In addition to being vague in scope, the laws are also unclear in their application. The laws seem to have been drafted with a top-down, centralized content moderation model in mind, like that used by for-profit companies such as Meta or X. For this reason, it is not clear how these laws would apply to a community-led content moderation model like Wikipedia, where most editorial decisions are made by communities of volunteer editors, who in turn elect administrators and other platform functionaries who act according to their own established guidelines and decision-making processes.

It is possible, on the one hand, that the law does not apply to actions taken by volunteer communities. On the other hand, however, under the vague terms of the Texas and Florida laws, it is also possible that the administrative actions and edits made by volunteers to the work of other volunteers could all be considered “content moderation.” If that were found to be the case, the laws could be used to try and force the Foundation to reverse decisions made by community volunteers and/or administrators. Relatedly, the laws could be used to bring legal claims against volunteers and/or administrators for their editorial decisions and potentially undo them if their explanations are not adequate or consistent enough.

The vagueness of the Texas and Florida laws creates unnecessary uncertainty for the Wikimedia projects and the volunteers who manage them. We believe these laws are, therefore, unconstitutional.

Conclusions

The Texas and Florida social media laws pose an unacceptable risk to free and open knowledge projects like Wikipedia. Attempting to force “viewpoint neutrality” might seem reasonable on the surface, but could actually make it nearly impossible to host most websites that focus on a limited scope project. This includes Wikipedia’s choice to limit its content to notable topics with reliable sources that are neutrally written.

Vague, overly broad laws intended to shape how online platforms can or cannot moderate content present a risk of covering far more than legislators intended. As a consequence, such laws can be abused to force websites like the Wikimedia projects—and even individual users—to allow information that not only violates their own content and speech guidelines, but which also runs counter to the website’s very purpose. Forcing website hosts and communities to do so violates the US Constitution and the right of all Wikipedia volunteers to their own freedom of expression.

We have filed our amicus brief to explain these issues to the Supreme Court. We are hopeful that the Justices will rule that the laws are unconstitutional. By striking down these two laws, the Court will establish a precedent that protects the Wikimedia projects and many other similar websites from harm.

If you’d like to read and learn more about these cases, including filings from other amici, NetChoice, and the states of Texas and Florida, you can do so at the SCOTUSblog website. We will continue to update you as new information concerning the cases becomes available. For email updates from the Foundation on public policy topics, sign up for our quarterly newsletter.

Great thanks to our friends at Cooley LLP for their pro bono representation in this matter. 

קרן ויקימדיה מביעה את דאגתה העמוקה ממקרי ניתוק האינטרנט הנמשכים ברצועת עזה, הפוגעים באופן ישיר ביכולתם של אנשים לקבל ולשתף מידע מוויקיפדיה וממיזמי ויקימדיה אחרים. בתור המלכ”ר המארח את מיזמי ויקימדיה, הקרן מאמינה שמקרי הניתוק האלה מאיימים על משימתנו לשתף ידע ברחבי העולם ולהגן על הגישה לידע כאחת מזכויות האדם.

מאז 7 באוקטובר 2023, קרן ויקימדיה עוקבת מקרוב אחר המשבר הישראלי-פלסטיני הנוכחי. בראש סדר העדיפויות שלנו עומדת התמיכה בביטחונם של אנשי סגל הקרן ושל מתנדבי ויקימדיה באזור. מאמצינו התמקדו גם בהבטחת הגישה של כל אדם למידע המהימן והמאוזן הזמין בוויקיפדיה, שהיא קריטית אף יותר מהרגיל בזמנים של עימות.

אתמול, ספק האינטרנט שממנו מגיעה עיקר תנועת הגולשים בעזה לוויקיפדיה ולמיזמי ויקימדיה האחרים – פלטל, חברת טלפוניה פלסטינית – נתקל שוב בניתוק בחלקים של עזה. הדוחות הפנימיים שלנו מראים גם הם ירידה בתנועת הגולשים לוויקיפדיה. על אף חזרתם של שירותי האינטרנט שנפגעו בניתוק האחרון, תנועת הגולשים מעזה לאתרי ויקימדיה ירדה ב-75% בסך הכול מאז אוקטובר. דיווחים אחרים מאשרים את קיומן של הפרעות נרחבות לתקשורת ולמערכות אינטרנט בתוך עזה, ואת הקשר שלהן לתקיפות צבאיות, וגם מקרים של ניתוק מוחלט כתוצאה מנזק לתשתיות תקשורת, ניתוק החשמל והגבלות על דלק.

קרן ויקימדיה פועלת למען גישה בלתי מוגבלת לאינטרנט באמצעות חברותנו ב’יוזמת הרשת העולמית‘, בקואליציית #KeepItOn של ארגון Access Now וב’קואליציית החופש המקוון‘ – כולם ארגונים ובעלי ברית השותפים למחויבותנו להגן על ידע חופשי ופתוח ברשת המקוונת.

מאז אוקטובר נרשמו מיליוני צפיות לערכים בוויקיפדיה העוסקים בעימות. הערך המרכזי על המלחמה זמין ב-75 שפות, ויותר מאלף עורכים מתנדבים תרמו לכתיבתו. המדיניות של ויקיפדיה דורשת להציג מידע “באופן הוגן, מידתי, ובמידת האפשר, ללא הטיה מצד העורך”, והיא ממלאת תפקיד חשוב בקידום הבנה בזמנים של פילוג. הערכים בוויקיפדיה נבנים באמצעות דגם שיתופי הנשען על יחידים התורמים לכתיבת התוכן ולעדכונו בהסתמך על מקורות מהימנים.

בלא גישה לאינטרנט נמנע מאנשים מידע מציל חיים החיוני לקבלת החלטות מושכלות. ניתוק האינטרנט מונע את זרימת המידע אל תוך עזה וממנה, ומפריע לדיווח החדשותי שמתנדבי ויקיפדיה נסמכים עליו כדי להביא מידע מעודכן על המשבר. דבר זה, נוסף על הרס מוסדות חינוך או הפרעה להם,  מציב מחסומים בפני סיקור הוגן יותר של המשבר, ומסכל באופן ישיר את יעדיה של הקרן להבטיח שכל אדם יוכל להשתתף ביצירת הידע.

ויקיפדיה משמשת כמקור חיוני של ידע למיליארדים ברחבי העולם, בפרט בעת מצבים של משבר. ברגעים אלה, בשעה שהגישה למידע מנותקת או מוגבלת, החזון שלנו מאוים. אנחנו קוראים לעצירתן של הפעולות המונעות גישה לאינטרנט והפצתו של ידע חופשי.

אודות קרן ויקימדיה

קרן ויקימדיה היא ארגון ללא כוונות רווח המפעיל את ויקיפדיה ומיזמי ויקימדיה אחרים של ידע חופשי. החזון שלנו הוא עולם שבו כל אדם יוכל להשתתף באופן חופשי בסך כל הידע. אנחנו מאמינים שלכל אחת ואחד יש היכולת לתרום משהו לידע המשותף שלנו ושלכל אחת ואחד צריכה להיות גישה לידע הזה באופן חופשי. אנחנו מארחים את ויקיפדיה ואת מיזמי ויקימדיה; בונים חוויות תוכנה לקריאת תוכן ויקימדיה, להשתתפות ביצירתו ולשיתופו; ותומכים בקהילות המתנדבים ובשותפים המאפשרים את קיומה של ויקימדיה. קרן ויקימדיה היא ארגון אמריקאי פטור ממס (לפי סעיף 501(c)(3)) שמשרדיו בסן פרנסיסקו, קליפורניה, ארצות הברית.

The post קרן ויקימדיה קוראת לאפשר חיבור לאינטרנט, וגישה לידע, בלי הפרעה בעזה appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, understanding the nuances of online platforms is crucial. Wikipedia, one of the world’s largest and most popular online encyclopaedias, provides a valuable knowledge-sharing platform. One of the fundamental aspects of contributing effectively to Wikipedia is mastering the art of categorisation. In a recent webinar led by Lucy Iwuala, 25 participants from Cameroun, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Spain, Tanzania, and Uganda delved into the intricacies of categorisation on Wiki platforms. This blog post provides a comprehensive summary of the key insights shared during the webinar, offering valuable tips and tricks for anyone looking to enhance their skills in this domain.

Understanding the Basics:

Lucy kicked off the webinar by emphasising the importance of categorisation in organising content on Wikipedia and Wiki Commons. Categories serve as digital folders, enabling seamless navigation for users exploring related topics. Participants gained insights into the significance of accurate categorisation, ensuring that content reaches the right audience and remains accessible to those seeking specific information.

The Guiding Principles: Hierarchical, Modular, Simple, and Selective

Lucy outlined the principles governing categorisation. The hierarchical principle emphasises structured categorisation which ensures every content piece fits into at least one category. The modular principle underscores the importance of specificity. By creating sub-categories, information is organised, making navigation intuitive; simplicity is key!to advocate for straightforward, clear categorisation. Lastly, the selective principle which underscores the importance of relevance, i.e. categories should align with the subject matter, ensuring cohesive organisation.

Activating Your Hot-Cat:

One of the noteworthy points Lucy highlighted was the significance of activating Hot-Cat on Wiki platforms. Activating the Hot-cat not only offers benefits like content suggestions but also simplifies the process of adding new categories. Participants learned that a simple click on the activated Hot-Cat could automatically provide relevant options, streamlining the categorisation process significantly. It is advised that before you start creating or managing categories, it is important to ensure you have activated the Hot Cats feature and here is how:

• Go to Preferences: Log into your Wikipedia or Wiki Commons account and navigate to the Preferences section.
• Access Gadgets: Within Preferences, find the Gadgets tab. Scroll down to locate the Hot Cats option.
• Enable Hot Cats: Check the box next to Hot Cats to activate the feature.
• Now that you have activated Hot Cats, you’re ready to manage categories efficiently.

Creating New Categories:

Lucy demonstrated how easy it is to create new categories on Wikipedia and Wiki Commons. Participants were guided through the step-by-step process, starting with clicking the plus icon. By typing the desired category name and clicking “okay,” a new category is created. Lucy emphasised the importance of providing a concise explanation for the category, enhancing its clarity for users.

Steps to Creating a New Category

Creating a new category is straightforward. Whether you are working with a Wikipedia page or a Wiki Commons upload, follow these steps:

• Identify the Need: Determine the category you want to create. Make sure it aligns with the content you are managing.
• Click the Plus Icon: If the category doesn’t exist yet, click on the plus icon (+) next to the existing categories.
• Enter Category Name: Type the name of your new category in the text field. As you type, the field will indicate if the category already exists or not.
• Publish Your Category: After typing the category name, provide a brief description, then click publish. The new category is created and ready to use.

Managing Existing Categories

Managing existing categories involves adding or removing them from your content. Here’s how:

• Identify the Category: Determine the category you want to add or remove.
• Add a Category: To add a category, click the plus icon next to the existing categories and enter the category name. Once done, click OK.
• Remove a Category: To remove a category, click the minus sign next to the category you want to remove. Confirm the action and the category will be removed.

Modifying and Deleting Categories:

The webinar also covered modifying and deleting categories, ensuring participants understood the dynamic nature of content management on Wiki platforms. Participants were introduced to the minus icon, which facilitates the removal of categories. Additionally, Lucy explained the modification process, allowing users to refine categories to align better with the content they represent.

Advanced Techniques and Troubleshooting:

Lucy shared advanced techniques for handling categorisation challenges. Participants learned about modifying subcategories and parent categories, enhancing their proficiency in organising content hierarchically. The webinar addressed common troubleshooting queries, ensuring participants left with a comprehensive understanding of how to navigate potential issues. Here’s a step-by-step guide on modifying sub categories and parent categories:

Modifying Subcategories:

• Identify the Category: Begin by identifying the category you wish to modify within the existing hierarchy.
• Access the Category: Click on the category to access its page. Here, you’ll find options to modify the content.
• Click on the Edit Icon: Locate the edit icon (usually represented as a pencil) and click on it. This action allows you to make changes to the category information.
• Modify the Description: Within the editing interface, modify the description or any relevant information about the category. Ensure clarity and relevance for users seeking content within this category.
• Save Changes: Once you’ve made the necessary modifications, click on the ‘Save’ or ‘Publish’ button to update the category. The changes are now reflected in the category description.

Modifying Parent Categories:

• Identify the Category: Identify both the subcategory and the desired parent category you wish to associate it with.
• Access the Subcategory: Navigate to the subcategory you want to modify.
• Edit the Category: Click on the edit icon for the subcategory, allowing you to edit its information.
• Associate with Parent Category: Within the editing interface, find the option to associate the subcategory with a parent category. This could be a dropdown menu or a field where you can type the parent category’s name.
• Save Changes: After associating the subcategory with the parent category, save your changes. The subcategory is now part of the designated parent category, enhancing the organisation’s hierarchical structure.

Troubleshooting Common Issues:

Participants also gained insights into troubleshooting common categorisation issues. Here’s a summary of the troubleshooting tips shared during the webinar:

Issue: Incorrect Category 

• Solution: Double-check the category names and descriptions. Ensure accurate and precise language to avoid confusion. If an incorrect category is identified, follow the modification steps to rectify it.

Issue: Missing Categories

• Solution: If a category is missing, use the hotspot feature or the plus icon to create a new category. Provide a clear description to guide users and enhance searchability.

Issue: Confusing Category Names

• Solution: Choose category names that are straightforward and indicative of the content they encompass. Avoid jargon or overly technical terms that might confuse users. Clear naming enhances user experience.

Issue: Incomplete Descriptions

• Solution: When modifying or creating categories, craft detailed and concise descriptions. Clearly state the scope and purpose of the category. Think from the user’s perspective, ensuring the description provides valuable context.

By addressing these troubleshooting scenarios and utilising advanced techniques, participants left the webinar equipped with the knowledge to handle complex categorisation challenges effectively. These skills are invaluable for enhancing the organisation, accessibility, and overall user experience on Wikipedia and Wiki Commons.

Conclusion:

The Code for Africa WiR Anglophone 7th bi-weekly webinar focused on teaching participants the essentials of categorisation on Wikipedia and WikiCommons. This skill is important for those looking to contribute to the digital free knowledge space. The session covered how to accurately categorise content, create new categories, and approach common categorisation challenges on both Wikipedia and WikiCommons. Following the webinar, participants gained an understanding of these practices, which apply to their contributions.

For those interested in revisiting the session or those who might have missed it, the recorded version is available on the community programmes page and do well to test your knowledge on our academy Africa. Ensure you are registered for the upcoming CfA WiR Bi-weekly webinar and immerse in our vibrant community. To stay abreast of our initiatives, complete this form, and let’s shape the future together!

Iris Leung, Juntong Shi, Peiyi Sun, and Nicole Zhang are students in professor Helen Choi’s fall course WRIT 340 for Engineers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering.

For an upper-division composition course for engineers at the University of Southern California (USC), we edited a Wikipedia article on the Chinese online marketplace, Temu, by adding over 3,700 words and 56 references and raising the article’s maturity rating from start-class to intermediate-class. This article is very popular with daily average views in excess of 6,700, and our edits have been viewed over 110,000 times. By doing this assignment, we honed our writing, research, and collaboration skills and we were also able to integrate our multilingual skills in a formal classroom assignment. In addition, writing for a real-life and public audience helped us to view our abilities as students in a U.S. university in a more expansive way, as we could see how our language skills are valued in the classroom and on Wikipedia. 

While we all are proficient in Mandarin, we come from different backgrounds in North America and China. Nicole was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up in Beijing, speaking Mandarin at home. However, she spoke English almost exclusively at school starting in the sixth grade, as she attended an international school where speaking English was strictly enforced. Nicole majors in Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation at USC’s Iovine and Young Academy (IYA). Peiyi also majors in Arts, Technology, the Business of Innovation at IYA  and is from Beijing. Peiyi’s first language is Mandarin, and he began learning English from an early age. Iris, from Northern California’s Bay Area, studies at IYA alongside Peiyi and Nicole. Iris is proficient in Cantonese and attended an English and Mandarin immersion school from grades K-8. The engineering major of the group, Juntong, studies computer science and applied mathematics, and like Peiyi, he was born and raised in Beijing. He expanded his English-language skills by taking Advanced Placement classes and studying abroad in high school.

We chose to work on the Temu article because we were familiar with Temu’s parent company, PinDuoDuo in China, and also because the article received a lot of daily page views but was missing a lot of key information. We wanted to help make the page more comprehensive and balanced, as it originally consisted mostly of the company’s negative reviews. As a team, we discussed some of the potential biases of the English-language sources towards Chinese businesses and brainstormed new ways of creating a well-rounded article that included the company’s problems, as well as information about how it operates. We used our Chinese-language abilities to conduct research to find quality sources to add more reliable content to the Temu article. For example, Nicole suggested we use a Chinese database, CNKI, to find academic research about Temu’s discounting and marketing policies. Because of her experience with working with CNKI sources at Tsinghua University, she was confident with the database’s credibility. Juntong also used popular Chinese news sources like NetEase for company information and facts about Temu’s parent company, PinDuoDuo. Applying these sources, we added information that is difficult to find in English-language sources.

Despite choosing the Temu page for its high volume of readers, we were still surprised at the negative and positive reactions of other editors to our additions and some of their wholesale reversions caught us off guard. Rather than engage in edit wars, however, we worked with our professor to reach out to editors and learned that they perceived our initial edits to be overly promotional and biased; in response, we removed any content that lacked a neutral tone and added more reputable sources. In this way, vigilant editors helped improve our work, and our subsequent edits about Temu’s logistics, lawsuits, and pricing strategies were not reverted. As of today, Peiyi, who, along with Iris and Juntong, made the edits on Wikipedia on behalf of our group, is the top editor for the article in terms of amount of text added.

We take great pride in our contributions to Temu’s Wikipedia page, as they contribute to the world’s understanding of a growing global company. Like many college students, we have been taught to avoid Wikipedia because anyone can edit it. However, looking at the obstacles we encountered even when adding information from reliable sources, we realized that information on Wikipedia is highly scrutinized by editors who care about Wikipedia’s quality. We also learned that adding information is not enough – we must also consider the geopolitical context in which editors operate while keeping in mind the goal of providing neutral information. 

As one of the few instances in the U.S. composition classroom in which our multilingual skills were officially part of the curriculum, the Wikipedia assignment helped boost our confidence in our communication skills. We not only added information that might not otherwise be available to English-speaking Wikipedia, but we also learned that our cultural insights can be critical tools for making meaningful and lasting contributions to the world’s encyclopedia.

🕑 55 minutes

Birgit Müller is the Director of Product for MediaWiki and Developer Experiences at the Wikimedia Foundation. Before that, she was Director of Technical Engagement. From 2014 to 2019, she worked at Wikimedia Deutschland.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Birgit's user page on mediawiki.org
• MediaWiki Product Insights
  • Monthly MediaWiki Insights reports
  • November 2023 report - includes statistics about review time improvements

Movement Charter online conversations in Indonesia are being held with 6 Wikimedian Communities in Indonesia (Wikimedia Bandung, Wikimedia Banjar, Wikimedia Denpasar, Wikimedia Manokwari, Wikimedia Medan, and Wikimedia Yogyakarta). These conversations purpose to introduce about Movement Charter and to ensure that communities involved in process of decision-making. This activity is supported and funded by the Movement Charter Ambassador Program Grant.

Pre-implementation Project

Before this Movement Charter Online Conversations are started, there are things to be done first, such as understanding Movement Charter new drafts and reaching out several communities in Indonesia by contacting communities’ coordinator and providing them form to decide the schedule of conversations. Those steps are done two months before the first conversation started.

Implementation Project

As the purpose of Movement Charter Ambassador Program is to ensure that there are person who will be reaching out communities to ensure that communities involved in process of decision-making for Movement Charter, this project implemented any steps that help communities understanding Movement Charter new drafts such as translating, and community engaging (online conversation) in purposes for obtaining any needs or feedback of Hubs & Global Council drafts from the communities.

Translation

Language target for translation activity is Banjar language as lingua franca in South Borneo, and one of language Wikimedia Projects (Wikipedia Banjar, Wiktionary Banjar, and Wikiquote Banjar). This language is also language that being spoken by Wikimedia Banjar communities’ members, one of the communities which will be engaged in conversation about Movement Charter. While, Others communities use Bahasa as language instruction for Movement Charter drafts or during conversation.

Conversation Phase 

Conversation phase was held in online way using google meet with the schedule that been decided by every community.

• September 1, 2023: Wikimedia Bandung community (5 attendees)
• September 2, 2023: Wikimedia Banjar community (6 attendees)
• September 2, 2023: Wikimedia Medan community (8 attendees)
• September 3, 2023: Wikimedia Yogyakarta community (5 attendees)
• September 9, 2023: Wikimedia Manokwari community (7 attendees)
• September 17, 2023: Wikimedia Denpasar community (5 attendees)

The conversation was held for an hour and a half with several sections such as, presentation, reading session, asking and question session, and providing feedback. Every community are also provided with google document so that they would provide feedback during and conversation directly writing it into document.

To ensure that the conversations kept in line with purpose of this 2^nd round of Movement Charter Ambassadors. The communities were given with guideline questions about Hubs and Global Council. However, it is welcome for community to share what they need to Movement Charter.

Community Responses

Various responses given by 36 attendees in communities. Most of them never heard about Movement Charter, how Movement Charter impacts on their communities, and what their roles in this Movement Charter. However, they are interested in progress of Movement Charter and ask to keep in touch with them regarding to progress of Movement Charter.

Communities, as well, provided feedback to new drafts of Movement Charter, Hubs, and Global Council. One of example is about Hubs. Some of them wanted affiliates can join many Hubs because effectiveness and diversity value. In other hand, some of them thought that it should be a rule to limit affiliates can join Hubs.

Gallery

By Dr Richard Nevell, Programme Manager for Wikimedia UK

Since 2012, Wikimedia UK has held the UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards to recognise the efforts of people and organisations who contribute to our work as a charity. Volunteers and partnerships are vital to what we do. From supporting new users to addressing Wikipedia’s content gaps, we want to celebrate the collaborative work of our community.

This year’s winners were announced at the online Community Meeting in late November. Thank you to all of the shortlisted contributors, and to everyone who made a nomination. The rewards will return next year, and nominating someone is a great way of making sure they get some recognition.

Partnership of the Year

This prize was won by the Royal College of Nursing’s History of Nursing Forum (HONF) “Nurses in Red”. The forum established an editing group to improve and create content relating to the history of nursing on Wikipedia. So far they have improved more than 200 articles which have been viewed nearly 4.5 million times. The group’s focus is explicitly diversity focused too: nurses have often been from under-represented groups and making their lives and careers more visible on Wikipedia is so important.

Our Honourable Mention was awarded to the Khalili Collections and Dr. Glaire Anderson of the University of Edinburgh. Glaire has supported two classroom projects in which her History of Art students evaluated articles about Islamic Art and Science on Wikipedia, and then improved them. Many of the pages are now illustrated with beautiful 10th/11th century Caliphate images from the Khalilli Collections, which were released on Wikimedia Commons. Prior to this project, the Khalili images were not viewed by as many people, but are now reaching a wider audience on pages with high engagement.

Up and Coming Wikimedian

This prize was won by Heidi Berg, a prolific editor who has updated or created over 300 articles, vastly improving coverage of the Norwegian women’s football team. She also undertook Train the Trainer courses and helped other newbie editors on a regular basis. At monthly Women in Red editathons, she helps others and even lent her own laptop to one forgetful participant!

Our Honourable Mention was awarded to Sophie Whitfield, one of Wikimedia UK’s trainers who has shown incredible dedication over the last year in attending, designing, and delivering open knowledge workshops and projects. Sophie has supported projects at Durham University and Newcastle University, helping Wikimedia UK’s collaborations with higher education.

UK Wikimedian of the Year

This prize was won by Nick Sheppard, a Wikimedia volunteer and Open Research Advisor at the University of Leeds. Nick has advocated for Wikimedia projects within Leeds and in the university sector like few people ever have, and he’s really taken on the values of the Wikimedia movement, not just in his professional life. Nick has also been pushing for the UK Reproducibility Network to include guidance on Wikimedia in its advice to researchers. The Wikimedia Champions project they ran at Leeds has been an unusually successful student project, getting PhD students to contribute to Wikimedia in a variety of ways.

Our Honourable Mention was awarded to Ian Pigott. Ian has been the engine that keeps Women in Red going. He has organised an astonishing 270 editathons over the last eight years. His efforts have inspired others and he has been tireless in helping the Women in Red project, addressing Wikipedia’s gender gap.

Join us

These winners were announced at our 2023 UK Community Meeting in November. We were so impressed with every talk and presentation given at the meeting, so to recognise these winners feels like just a small gesture of thanks for the commitment our community has to the Wikimedia projects. To watch the talks and find out ways to get involved in some of the projects, you can view recordings of the Community Meeting in this blog. You can also hear about our projects via our newsletter, or sign up to our membership to help govern the charity.

The post The winners of the 2023 UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards appeared first on WMUK.

هذا المنشور متوفر أيضًا باللغة العربية

5 DECEMBER 2023 — The Wikimedia Foundation is deeply concerned about ongoing internet shutdowns in the Gaza Strip, which directly interfere with people’s ability to receive and share information from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. As the nonprofit that hosts Wikimedia projects, the Foundation believes these shutdowns threaten our mission to share knowledge globally and protect access to knowledge as a human right.

Since 7 October 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation has been closely monitoring the current Israel-Palestine Crisis. Our priority throughout has been supporting the safety of Foundation staff and Wikimedia volunteers in the region. Our efforts have also focused on ensuring that everyone has access to the reliable, balanced information available on Wikipedia, which is even more critical in times of conflict.

Yesterday, the internet service provider from which Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects see the most traffic in Gaza — Paltel, Palestine Telecommunications Company — again experienced a disconnection in parts of Gaza. Our internal reports also show traffic to Wikipedia decreased. While internet services related to the latest disruption are being restored, traffic to Wikimedia sites from Gaza has declined 75% overall since October. Other reports have confirmed widespread disruptions to communication and internet systems within Gaza related to military strikes, as well as complete shutdowns, resulting from damage to communications infrastructure, power cuts, and fuel restrictions.

The Wikimedia Foundation advocates for unrestricted access to the internet through our memberships in the Global Network Initiative; Access Now’s #KeepItOn Coalition; and the Freedom Online Coalition — organizations and allies that share our commitment to protecting free and open knowledge online.

Since October, Wikipedia’s articles related to the conflict have received millions of pageviews; the main article about the war is available in 75 languages, and more than 1,000 volunteer editors have contributed to the article. Wikipedia’s policies require that information be presented “fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias,” fulfilling an important role in fostering understanding in times of division. Articles on Wikipedia are built through a collaborative model that relies on individuals contributing and updating content based on reliable sources.

Without access to the internet, people are deprived of life-saving information that is essential for making informed decisions. Internet shutdowns prevent the flow of information in and out of Gaza, interfering with news reporting that Wikipedia’s volunteer editors rely upon to provide up-to-date information about the crisis. This, coupled with the destruction and disruption to educational institutions, creates barriers to more equitable coverage of the crisis, and directly impedes the Foundation’s objectives to ensure everyone can participate in knowledge creation.

Wikipedia serves as an indispensable knowledge resource to billions worldwide, particularly during situations of crisis. In these moments when access to information is cut or restricted, our mission comes under threat. We call for an end to actions that prevent internet access and the spread of free knowledge.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects; build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content; support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

For media inquiries, please contact press@wikimedia.org.

The post Wikimedia Foundation calls for unrestricted internet connectivity and access to knowledge in Gaza appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

People around the world have a lot of questions. And when they’re looking for answers, they turn to Wikipedia. English Wikipedia received over 84 billion views this year alone, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia.

The most-viewed Wikipedia articles of 2023 tell the story of you and society at large seeking out knowledge about our ever-changing world from the world’s largest encyclopedia. 

Your curiosity shows the joy of discovery. The sadness of untimely death. The adrenaline of a cricket final. The magic of a day at the movies. The exuberance of hearing your favorite singer. 

This is 2023 through your eyes.

The top five articles of the year

• #1: ChatGPT, 49,490,406 pageviews 
• #2: Deaths in 2023, 42,666,860
• #3: 2023 Cricket World Cup, 38,171,653
• #4: Indian Premier League, 32,012,810
• #5: Oppenheimer (film), 28,348,248

ChatGPT is English Wikipedia’s most popular article of the year. The fastest-growing consumer application in history recently reached its one-year anniversary. In that time, it has surpassed one hundred million users and has dominated headlines around the world, sparking debates around the changing role of artificial intelligence, its potential impact on humanity and the tech sector, and the ethics behind it all. 

In line with this mass public interest, the English Wikipedia article carried a remarkably consistent level of attention throughout the first half of the year: its pageviews ranged between 100,000 and 400,000 nearly every day. In fact, across all of the languages Wikipedia supports, we registered over 78 million pageviews to ChatGPT articles.

Coming in at second place is the annual list of deaths, a perennially popular article on Wikipedia. To keep its length down, at the end of each month, Wikipedia’s editors split the article into smaller month-by-month lists. 

Scroll to learn more about the other top articles, with the full list featured at the bottom.

Sports

• #3: 2023 Cricket World Cup, 38,171,653 pageviews 
• #4: Indian Premier League, 32,012,810
• #6: Cricket World Cup, 25,961,417
• #9: 2023 Indian Premier League, 20,694,974
• #14: Cristiano Ronaldo, 17,492,537
• #15: Lionel Messi, 16,623,630
• #16: Premier League, 16,604,669

Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world, but since the Wikimedia Foundation started publishing these year-end most popular articles lists in 2015, no cricket article has ever been among them.

Until now. 

In 2023, cricket comprised a full 16% of English Wikipedia’s top 25 articles. The third most-viewed article in our annual list is about the 2023 Cricket World Cup, which received 304% more interest this year vs. its last edition. That included over 1.25 million views on the day of the tournament final. 

In the end, Australia was crowned as the World Cup champion, with India coming in second. India’s Virat Kohli was awarded Player of the Tournament, and he received more pageviews on Wikipedia this year (over ten million) than all those recorded for the 2019 Cricket World Cup that year (a bit under 9.5 million).

Our data suggests that a healthy percentage of the pageviews to the World Cup, Indian Premier League, 2023 Indian Premier League, and English football’s Premier League English Wikipedia articles came from people returning to the pages over an extended period of time. While we imagine this was a way to check the latest scores and information, we don’t collect the data necessary to confirm this due to Wikipedia’s strict privacy policy.

Film and television

• #5: Oppenheimer (film), 28,348,248 pageviews 
• #7: J. Robert Oppenheimer, 25,672,469
• #8: Jawan (film), 21,791,126
• #10: Pathaan (film), 19,932,509
• #11: The Last of Us (TV series), 19,791,789
• #13: Barbie (film), 18,051,077
• #20: Avatar: The Way of Water, 14,303,116
• #23: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, 13,392,917

For a good number of people, “Barbenheimer” hype was the story of the middle of 2023. (If you would like to learn more about that phenomenon, Wikipedia has a lengthy and well-cited article for you.)

While Barbie may have outpaced Oppenheimer‘s global box office total by around 50%, Oppenheimer reigned supreme on English Wikipedia with about 57% more pageviews.

People came to Wikipedia to learn more about the race to build the world’s first atomic bomb, led by the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and how filmmaker Christopher Nolan crafted its narrative and visuals. 

Interest in the film was far from limited to English-speaking audiences: more than 47 million people have viewed Oppenheimer‘s Wikipedia articles in all languages this year. Journalists in Italy, for example, took note of the phenomenon in September, writing a slew of articles about the increase in pageviews relating to the film and history of the atomic bomb. 

Not far behind Oppenheimer were two more films that shared wildly successful 2023 releases: Pathaan and Jawan became two of the highest-grossing Hindi-language films of all time. Pathaan was released first in January 2023, and broke several box office records. Those accomplishments were short-lived, as Jawan surpassed them after its release in September.Both films featured Shah Rukh Khan as the main lead actor. Around their release dates, both films peaked at over one million views in a single day on English Wikipedia alone.

Celebrities

• #12: Taylor Swift, 19,418,385 pageviews 
• #17: Matthew Perry, 16,454,666
• #19: Elon Musk, 14,370,395

#22: Lisa Marie Presley, 13,764,007

In late 2022, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour became the fastest-selling in history by a wide margin. Since then, her fandom has only continued to rise, including on Wikipedia. The impact of the tour is so notable that it is documented in a 5,500-word, 300-citation Wikipedia article, separate from another lengthy article about the tour itself. In July of this year, Swift became the woman with the most number-one albums in history. “Swiftmania” is so captivating that it has helped to uplift pageviews of her new romantic partner, American football player Travis Kelce, to about 11 million views this year.

Sadly, two other entries in the most-read list are due to untimely deaths: Matthew Perry, the actor best known for his role on the TV show Friends, and Lisa Marie Presley, the singer and only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.

The full top 25

These are the top 25 most-popular English Wikipedia articles of 2023 based on pageviews.

1. ChatGPT, 49,490,406 pageviews 
2. Deaths in 2023, 42,666,860
3. 2023 Cricket World Cup, 38,171,653
4. Indian Premier League, 32,012,810
5. Oppenheimer (film), 28,348,248
6. Cricket World Cup, 25,961,417
7. J. Robert Oppenheimer, 25,672,469
8. Jawan (film), 21,791,126
9. 2023 Indian Premier League, 20,694,974
10. Pathaan (film), 19,932,509
11. The Last of Us (TV series), 19,791,789
12. Taylor Swift, 19,418,385
13. Barbie (film), 18,051,077
14. Cristiano Ronaldo, 17,492,537
15. Lionel Messi, 16,623,630
16. Premier League, 16,604,669
17. Matthew Perry, 16,454,666
18. United States, 16,240,461
19. Elon Musk, 14,370,395
20. Avatar: The Way of Water, 14,303,116
21. India, 13,850,178
22. Lisa Marie Presley, 13,764,007
23. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, 13,392,917
24. Russian invasion of Ukraine, 12,798,866
25. Andrew Tate, 12,728,616

Wikipedia allows anyone who wants to learn more to consult a free and collaborative online encyclopedia. Every Wikipedia article is created, curated, and maintained by a global community of 265,000+ volunteers—people just like you. It is their work and time that has made Wikipedia into the reliable, trusted resource we all rely on.

Moreover, Wikipedia is the only top global website run by a nonprofit, the Wikimedia Foundation. It is primarily funded by millions of readers, which supports its independent model. Its mission is to sustain free knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, ensuring these resources remain accessible and valuable for billions of people around the world.

If you’re curious to learn more about how Wikipedia works, check out the video below. To make a donation to Wikipedia, please visit donate.wikimedia.org.

Written by Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist, the Wikimedia Foundation

Appendix

• This list was originally published using English Wikipedia data pulled by the Wikimedia Foundation on 28 November 2023. It will be updated with the full year’s data on 3 January 2024. All of the data includes pageviews that went directly to the articles and indirectly through any redirects.
• This list has been screened for false positives by cross-referencing the data against the percentage of mobile views and the percentage of articles without a referrer:
  • We removed any Wikipedia articles with less than 20% or more than 75% mobile views, as that correlates strongly with spam, botnets, or other concerns. This affected articles like Cleopatra, which @depthsofwiki reported is a default voice search on Google devices; Index (statistics); XXX: Return of Xander Cage; and others.
  • We removed several articles that had concerningly high percentages of pageviews without a referrer. For the top 25, this impacted the articles about YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. We saw similar issues with other articles about large websites, including Wikipedia itself. We suspect that a significant number of these pageviews are mistakes that occur when viewers are trying to access those websites.
• Previous lists of most-popular English Wikipedia articles are available for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

The post Announcing Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2023 appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Dec 4, 18:06 UTC
Resolved - This incident has been resolved. A summary will be posted here later.

Dec 4, 15:43 UTC
Investigating - We are aware that some users are having trouble editing or reverting on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis, and we are investigating.

21/11/2023-27/11/2023

Mapping

• The proposal highway=cyclist_waiting_aid, to map street furniture and devices for cyclists that are intended to make waiting more comfortable, was approved with 26 votes for, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions.

Community

• Karlos argued the importance of separating OpenStreetMap for end-users (map users) from power-users (map developers). Mweper added that this separation has been quite successful in the Android (end-user) and Linux (power-user) ecosystems.
• MapAmore tooted that custom emojis for OpenStreetMap are available on the Mastodon instance en.osm.town. The list is impressive.
• Miguel Sevilla-Callejo, from the Spanish OpenStreetMap community, is collecting data to assess the importance of OpenStreetMap as a source of spatial data in quantitative terms.
• Raquel Dezidério Souto, from Brazil, was selected as the UN Mapper of the month for November 2023.

Imports

• Martijn van Exel has devised a MapRoulette challenge to improve the historic mine data imported from the GNIS database.

Local chapter news

• Frederik Ramm has proposed ► closing the talk-de mailing list.

Events

• The OpenStreetMap community of Colombia and TomTom recently organised ► a face-to-face event in Medellin with the purpose of improving the city map by adding missing buildings through a number of MapRoulette challenges.
• Ivy Perez, a Viscan YouthMapper, visited Pista ng Mapa 2023 in Tacloban City and blogged her impressions of the event.

Humanitarian OSM

• [1] Sige published a photo-summary of the OSM training course and Mapathon, held to support the victims of the 8 September earthquake in the High Atlas, attended by 230 Moroccan students in geomatics. This action is part of the cartographic support for Morocco in response to the earthquake for which Sige is actively looking for sponsors.

Maps

• The 30DayMapChallenge 2023 on Mastodon, LinkedIn, X, and BlueSky continued.It is not possible to adequately acknowledge the multitude of outstanding works. The selection we make is purely random and not an evaluation. Please take a look at the works yourself. The hashtag #30DayMapChallenge will help you.
  • Day 20: Outdoors
    • Ridges of the Ivano-Frankivsk region
    • Grand Canyon
    • A map of Miyajima
    • Torridon in the North West Highlands of Scotland
    • The Holohory-Kremenets Ridge, Podilian Upland, Ukraine
    • Exits on the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technologies
  • Day 21: Raster
    • The vineyards of Caramany, a French wine-producing commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales
    • Map of population change in Japan between 2000 and 2020
    • Wildfire probability of Utah, USA
  • Day 22: North is not always up
    • Arctic Sea Ice extent
    • Marseille, a southern city facing the Mediterranean
    • The first known map of Portugal, drawn between 1559 and 1561 by Fernando Álvares Seco
  • Day 23: 3D
    • OpenStreetMap inside?
    • 3D map of Sussex, elevation data from Copernicus Global DEM (ESA) via PlanetaryComputer
    • Iceland’s topography
  • Day 24: Black and white
    • Black & White, only two colors allowed
    • One city I love so much, Alcalá de Henares, España
    • Some Points behind Bars
    • The Long Mynd, South Shropshire
  • Day 25: Antarctica
    • A map of Fire and Ice
    • The McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica – Elevation from Copernicus Global DEM (ESA); peaks and lakes from OpenStreetMap
    • Emperor Penguin colony locations
  • Day 26: Minimal
    • Saint-Brieuc, France – check the tool: https://koenderks.shinyapps.io/rcityviews/
    • Railways of Finland
    • Play around with the python package Prettymaps – check the code: https://github.com/marceloprates/prettymaps
• Christopher Beddow has written an article discussing the trend towards decentralisation in local mobile map apps around the world.

OSM in action

• The Find My District feature on the New York City Council website displays a CARTO basemap of New York, which is based on data from OpenStreetMap. Guillaume Rischard has reminded the website’s development team of the need to follow OpenStreetMap’s attribution rules properly.

Licences

• Kathleen Lu, from the OpenStreetMap Foundation Legal/License Working Group, suggested that the EU member governments release their open data under a CC-0 licence rather than CC-BY-4.0, so that it can be used by OpenStreetMap. If this is not possible, they have proposed a slight modification to the CC-BY-4.0 licence to make it compatible with OpenStreetMap’s licence.

Software

• The next version of SMASH (formerly known as Geopaparazzi), yet unreleased, will support GeoJSON layers, and fix the long-standing bug that caused OSM tiles to not be visible at very high zoom levels.

Programming

• rtnf showed how to search for active OSM contributors around an area, including their edit count, and frequently used tags.

Releases

• GDAL 3.8.0 has introduced significant speed-ups in the creation of GeoPackage files (can be 3 to 4 times faster). Instead of delegating the spatial RTree creation to SQLite, as was done before, the GDAL codebase now embeds a specialised algorithm. The developer has proposed the improvements in the algorithm to the SQLite project.
• Christoph Hormann announced the release of OpenStreetMap Carto version 5.8.0.
• The November update of Organic Maps (an OSM-based mobile application) has been released, with an outdoor style preview, fixes in map styles and routing, and updated map data. Organic Maps now also has a referral link to a travel metasearch engine, which some users think conflicts with the privacy-focus mantra of the app. F-Droid has discussed adding an Anti-Features warning for users.

Did you know …

• … that you can create a StreetComplete quest icon ball animation screensaver using fallingQuestsScreensaver?
• … TomTom will be a financial backer of MapRoulette? See the OSM US’s website for details.
• … the amazingly comprehensive OSM Apps Catalog? It is a web app for filtering and searching OSM apps that are described in the OpenStreetMap wiki.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Mbankomo	State of the Map Africa 2023		2023-11-30 – 2023-12-02
Oakland	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise and Santomieri-Farhadian Duo		2023-12-02
Comuna 13 – San Javier	Resolución de dudas del evento Levantando Construcciones		2023-12-02
Budapest	Walk around Etele Plaza, indoor mapping demo and brainstorming		2023-12-04
	Missing Maps London Mapathon		2023-12-05
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #53	✓	2023-12-05
	Mapping Pedestrian Infrastructure Mapathon: Rome		2023-12-06
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2023-12-06
San Francisco	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise and John Ingle; Loan Agreement by John Davis; Change of Uniform by Dave Defilippo		2023-12-07
	OSM Indoor Meeting		2023-12-08
Berlin	186. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2023-12-08
Comuna 13 – San Javier	Resolución de dudas del evento Levantando Construcciones		2023-12-09
Saint-Martin-d’Hères	Cartopartie à vélo des zones commerciales de Saint-Martin d’Hères		2023-12-09
København	OSMmapperCPH		2023-12-10
Chambéry	Mapathon débutant saison 23/24 CartONG		2023-12-11
Zürich	OSM-Stammtisch		2023-12-11
Grenoble	Debriefing Cartopartie à vélo du samedi 9 déc à Saint-Martin-d’Hères		2023-12-11
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #59		2023-12-11
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2023-12-13
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2023-12-13
Stainach-Pürgg	11. Österreichischer OSM-Stammtisch (online)		2023-12-13
Bochum	Bochumer OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2023-12-14
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2023-12-14
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2023-12-15
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam – A very Mappy Christmas!		2023-12-15

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 Leonardo Gutierrez, MatthiasMatthias, TheSwavu, YoViajo, barefootstache, derFred, isoipsa, rtnf.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

I had this bit saved in my drafts for a while now. Getting it out there even if unfinished.

—

I’m currently sitting in a gigantic convention center. It’s part of a larger multi-block series of interconnected hotels and shopping malls. It’s in Singapore, which is 9,545 miles from my home. The furthest distance I’ve ever been from home, my family.

It isn’t the first time I’ve traveled since Covid. But it is the first time being around this many people and having to be “on” for long periods of time.

Im surrounded by happy people who are excited to be with one another.

It’s overwhelming, in what is quickly becoming “in a good way”.

Exploting a long-standing git bug for my own amusement.

And I think there is one known race: the index mtime itself is not race-free.

– Linus Torvalds, Re:git bugs, 2008

A well-known race condition skulks through git’s plumbing.

And I can demo it via a git magic trick 🪄¹

$ tree -L 1 -a .
.
├── file
└── .git

$ cat file
okbye
$ git status
On branch main
Changes to be committed:
        new file:   file

$ git ls-files --modified  # No output. A clean working directory.
$ git commit --message="The file sez $(cat file)"
$ git log --oneline HEAD -1
600fcac (HEAD -> main) The file sez okbye
$ git status
On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

Nothing up my sleeves:

• The git repo had one staged file, file, containing okbye—nothing else
• I committed it
• And the commit message is The file sez okbye

Now, the big reveal:

$ cat file
okbye
$ git show HEAD:file
hello
$ git status
nothing to commit, working tree clean

Boom. ✨Magic✨

Git is clueless that the wrong file is in your work tree.

Even git restore has no effect:

$ git restore file
$ cat file
okbye

Git maintainers know this sleight-of-hand well—dubbing it the “Racy Git Problem” circa 2006.

But it can still generate heisenbugs in unexpected places.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo hello > file

# Stage the file for commit
git update-index --add file

# Send .git/index's mtime INTO THE FUTURE!!!1!
touch --date='1 second' .git/index

# Now modify "file" behind git's back. So. Sneaky.
echo okbye > file

# CAVEAT OF DOOoooM: this has to happen within a single second to work---yeah. git's good. :D

This month, most of our time and efforts went to reviewing intern selections, solving selection conflicts, developing new strategies to manage difficult decisions in a short timeframe, submitting proposals to FOSDEM 2024, and planning activities for the next 4 months. As the majority of my tasks this month were confidential in nature, I’d like to talk about two interconnected aspects of our program: connections and promotion of the program. We had a particularly challenging time defining the amount of interns we could select this cohort due to the expiration of grants.

Nov 28, 16:00 UTC
Resolved - This incident has been resolved.

Nov 28, 15:29 UTC
Identified - We are receiving large floods of traffic that degrade performance for many users, and are working on fixes.

Nov 28, 14:58 UTC
Investigating - We are aware that many users are having trouble accessing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites, and we are investigating.

For all you top.hatnote.com readers out there, we just added some shortcuts to do a web search (🔍) and news search (🗞️) for each article. Hope this saves you a click or two!

14/11/2023-20/11/2023

Mapping

• Thelone1986 has released ► several videos about OpenStreetMap mapping in the city of Seraing, Belgium.
• The amenity=bicycle_wash (bicycle washing service) tag proposal is currently under discussion.

Community

• Andy Allan gave an update on the development of the OpenStreetMap website: the addition of a map edit rate limit feature and a presentation at SOTM Europe 2023 entitled ‘Maintaining OpenStreetMap.org‘.
• In a rare in-person summit, the Trufi volunteers in Cochabamba, Bolivia, mappers, developers, and community leaders met to celebrate their achievements.
• lhirlimann shared ► his experiences working at the OpenStreetMap community booth during the Capitole du Libre 2023 event. The booth was well visited by participants and they asked various questions about OpenStreetMap.
• Martijn van Exel reported on the monthly OpenStreetMap Salt Lake City meeting that he organised.
• Ponciano da Costa de Jesus reported on the launch of Timor-Leste’s OpenStreetMap community on 18 November 2023.
• Simon Poole expressed his opinion on the potential disruption the Linux Foundation could have on the geo-business ecosystem that has been relying on OpenStreetMap data.
• unsungNovelty shared some of his most memorable OpenStreetMap edits.
• Ilya Zverev wrote about his thoughts on Overture Maps after he attended the State of the Map Europe 2023 event.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The next public OSMF Board meeting will be held on Thursday 30 November at 20:00 UTC.
• The OpenStreetMap Foundation board member election committee has released the candidates’ manifestos and Q&A session results.

Local chapter news

• Jochen Topf has been appointed ► as an OpenStreetMap staff consultant at the FOSSGIS Coordination Centre.

Events

• [1] FOSSGIS recounted ► their participation in the State of the Map Europe 2023 event.
• Bart Louwers shared his impressions of the State of the Map Europe 2023 event.
• Courtney Cook bloged her story of SotM Europe 2023 and why a good story is important for OpenStreetMap.
• The IVIDES ► Institute organised GIS DAY 2023 ►, which included mapathons ► in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

Humanitarian OSM

• Rabi Shrestha reported on the humanitarian mapping activities carried out by the OpenStreetMap Nepal Community following the earthquake in Jajarkot district, Nepal, 3 November 2023.

Maps

• The 30DayMapChallenge 2023 on Mastodon, LinkedIn, X, and BlueSky continued.It is not possible to adequately acknowledge the multitude of outstanding works. The selection we make is purely random and not an evaluation. Please take a look at the works yourself. The hashtag #30DayMapChallenge will help you.
  • Day 13: Choropleth
    • Political rights in Africa for the year 2020
    • High School Graduation Rates in Appalachia (2021)
    • Estimated Population in Sri Lanka 2020
  • Day 14: Europe
    • Shipping Routes through the Fjords of #Norway
    • dolomiti di brenta, italy – btw: the code for all of his 30DMC23 maps is available on GitHub – including the code for this map
    • Forest area per country
    • The biome community of Europe
  • Day 15: OpenStreetMap – Given today’s topic a few more links than usual 😉
    • In order to do justice to our core topic and not to make this section too long, derFred has tried to collect all the examples that appeared on Mastodon and LinkedIn for Day 15 – OpenStreetMap in a blog post
    • From Cabo to Rabó – means from ‘head to toe’
    • A rendering of Ljubljana using government lidar data and an OSM standard background
    • Henningsvær in the Lofoten islands in Norway
    • The richness of OSM data and the capabilities of rayshader – Breathtaking GIF of five overlays on shaded relief – roads (line), buildings (polygon), woods (polygon), rivers (line), and historic sites (point)
  • Day 16: Oceania
    • National Parks in New Zealand
    • Where are the Numbats?
    • Pacific atolls: guide for cleaning data up in Oceania
  • Day 17: Flow
    • City bus routes in Pergamino, A, B, C, D, and E branches. Round trip
    • The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage routes from Flickr data
    • Ukraine refugee situation
    • Annual glacier surface flow velocity
  • Day 18: Atmosphere
    • Air quality of Europe from 2017 to 2021
    • Variations of the word ‘atmosphere’ in various European languages
    • The emissions of fire and smoke that would be expelled by the brick factory chimneys in Limousin, France, if they were still operational
  • Day 19: 5 minute map
    • The roads in the city centre of Vienna, Austria
    • Hourly isochrones of Ukrainian cities. Where you can go in 60 minutes by car
    • Mapping ‘minute’ using #GeoNames
    • Cassini map #oldMap using #Opendata @IGNFrance vector tile #geocomuns #Macarte
• Zkir analysed ► several statistical maps showing the age of OSM objects. Using these maps, we can see which areas were first mapped a long time ago and which areas have been inactive recently.

Software

• Sarah Hoffmann announced the release of Nominatim versions 4.3.2 and 4.2.4. These versions contain fixes for SQL injection security holes in the Nominatim CLI.
• Sarah Hoffmann reported on an experiment to improve the performance of the Nominatim Python frontend by tuning SQLAlchemy. This optimisation successfully improved the performance of the Python frontend, although it is still not as good as the previous PHP implementation.
• In response to the inaccessibility of Bing satellite imagery in some OSM editors, Microsoft’s Milos Brzakovic explained the new rules for using the Bing Maps imagery API for OSM editors. This is due to the new policy of separating the free version of the API for OSM editors from the paid version of the Bing Maps imagery API.

Did you know …

• … the map with all hackerspaces, fablabs, and makerspaces?
• … that the Mastodon MapComplete bot account reports MapComplete user statistics regularly?
• … that you can see the historical Java Great Post Road on OpenStreetMap?

Other “geo” things

• Nate Berg, from FastCompany, has reviewed Felt, an online service for creating custom maps.
• OpenStreetMap isn’t the only place where people are prepared to fight over seemingly minor issues. In Hampshire, England, locals have been campaigning for the correct use of apostrophes on street signs. OpenStreetMap has always had the apostrophe.
• Robert Thorson explained how stone walls became a signature landform of New England.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
London	London pub meet-up		2023-11-23
Lübeck	137. OSM-Stammtisch für Lübeck und Umgebung		2023-11-23
Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen 2023 Nummer 20		2023-11-24 – 2023-11-26
Biarritz	Rencontre festive Groupe local OSM Pays Basque Sud Landes		2023-11-24
Chambéry	Mapathon débutant saison 23/24 CartONG		2023-11-27
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen		2023-11-27
Saint-Étienne	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire		2023-11-28
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2023-11-29
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2023-11-29
소공동	OSM Mapping Party @ FOSS4G Asia 2023, Seoul		2023-11-30
Mbankomo	State of the Map Africa 2023		2023-11-30 – 2023-12-02
Oakland	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise and Santomieri-Farhadian Duo		2023-12-02
Budapest	Walk around Etele Plaza, indoor mapping demo and brainstorming		2023-12-04
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2023-12-06
	OSM Indoor Meeting		2023-12-08
Berlin	186. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2023-12-08
Saint-Martin-d’Hères	Cartopartie à vélo des zones commerciales de Saint-Martin d’Hères		2023-12-09

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

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, Nordpfeil, Strubbl, TheSwavu, barefootstache, conradoos, derFred, renecha, rtnf.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.