As LGBTQ+ individuals around the globe continue to pursue the freedom to express themselves openly, the work to record their histories is as crucial as ever. During Pride Month, Wiki Education’s June Speaker Series panel “Who is preserving LGBTQ+ history?” explored the ongoing documentation work on Wikipedia by LGBTQ+ people, students, scholars, and allies, and how anyone can contribute to the preservation efforts for current and future generations.

“It feels like where theory means practice in a really powerful way for students,” said panelist Dean Allbritton, who teaches with the Wikipedia assignment at Colby College. “[My students] are saying, I’m not just researching or understanding the plight or the lives of LGBTQ people throughout the world, but I’m actually making the invisible feel visible in a way that they feel personally and ethically edified by. And it’s just beautiful.”

The associate professor of Spanish enjoys the pivotal moment where the assignment “clicks” for his students – at the beginning, students often tell Allbritton that they’ve been taught to mistrust information on Wikipedia, but when they understand the need to cite all added content, their perceptions change.

“I just love that moment of discovery for them of what Wikipedia can do, and what it can offer particularly to groups that have been underrepresented throughout history,” emphasized Allbritton, reflecting on the Wikipedia assignment’s role in his course “Queer Spain”. “They learn a different, fact-based style of writing, research skills…and all of this is available through the Wiki Education program, which is incredible.”

Panelist Juana Maria Rodriguez, professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, echoed Allbritton’s experience in empowering students to add LGBTQ+ content to Wikipedia as part of their coursework. Students quickly realize they are writing for a global audience and can’t simply jump to analysis without substantive research to support their edits, she explained. 

“It actually gives [my students] a sense of the incredible resources they have,” said Rodriguez, noting their access to information held behind paywalls. “That sense of reaching out, speaking to the world, is really impactful for them. Some have taken that extra step to translate pages, coming from their own desire to make this information more widely available.”

The panel also featured the perspective of historian Dan Royles, who traded his usual role of professor to become a student himself in a 2022 Wiki Scholars course focused on enhancing LGBTQ+ histories and content on Wikipedia. 

Drawing from his deep expertise and research for his book To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle for HIV/AIDS, Royles completely transformed the Wikipedia article on American AIDS activist Reggie Williams, expanding the brief text by adding nearly 3,000 words and 20 references.

Royles explained that just like students, he developed an appreciation for the rigor required to significantly improve a Wikipedia article. As part of his edits to Williams’ article, Royles added the names of William’s notable collaborators to encourage future additions on Wikipedia of their own impactful histories.

“The kind of iterative nature of Wikipedia, where our work is the groundwork for the work other people do later, is really valuable,” said Royles.

Margaret Galvan, Speaker Series panelist and assistant professor of Visual Rhetoric at the University of Florida, has taught with Wikipedia for several years, primarily in her course “Queer Comics”. 

“Wiki Education’s platform makes it really easy to teach with Wikipedia,” said Galvan. “They have modules where students learn about Wikipedia throughout the semester that you can adapt to your course.”

Galvan encouraged fellow faculty to teach with Wikipedia, underscoring the opportunity to engage students in critical discussions on topics including the idea of notability, particularly when editing content about underrepresented people or subjects. 

Catch up on our Speaker Series on YouTube, including “Who is preserving LGBTQ+ history?”, and explore recaps of our most recent programs on our blog:

• Wikipedia and education, globally 
• Wikipedia can shape the world, not just reflect it

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

How the new center in São Paulo is already lowering Wikipedia load times.

One second ago, people around the world accessed Wikipedia 5,500 times. 

What those people likely don’t know is that what appeared on their screens came via a data center owned and run by the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The Foundation’s global network of data centers makes the loading of Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia content fast, secure, and private, no matter where on Earth you are located.

The Foundation recently opened a new data center in São Paulo, Brazil. It is the latest to open among the Wikimedia Foundation’s seven data centers across the world and is the first center in South America. As a result of the new center, the average time it takes a reader in Brazil to load Wikipedia dropped by one-third of a second. That’s important, because for every moment it takes to load a page, someone may get frustrated and become less likely to use Wikipedia in the future.

Opening a data center is fascinatingly complex. About 12 Wikimedia Foundation staff spent over ten months surmounting legal concerns, regulatory hoops, extended equipment delays, and employees physically installing servers into the data center to make the new center possible. 

Let’s break down how the Foundation accomplished this endeavor.

Just what is a data center? Why are there “servers” in it? 

You may have seen one of the many Hollywood movies where a main character needs to break into a room with a bunch of neatly arranged electronic towers and install a device to destroy the villain’s evil plans. Take Tron: Legacy or Mission: Impossible, for examples.

The accuracy of these fictional scenes can leave room for desire, but they get the idea across: the actors are plugging those devices into individual servers that hold a platform’s digital data, and when those servers are networked together, you have a data center. In real life, whenever you try to access a page on Wikipedia, the prompt goes to the Wikimedia Foundation data center nearest to you. In turn, that sends it to your device.

How do the Wikimedia Foundation’s data centers work? Why are they important?

The Wikimedia Foundation maintains seven data centers located in the United States, Singapore, the Netherlands, France, and now Brazil.

Most of these data centers are used to serve you “cached” versions of Wikimedia content. That means that the data centers try to keep a copy of that content on file after a person opens it for the first time. This practice allows us to quickly respond to whatever page you’d like to load and send it to you with a minimum of lag.

Still, it is impossible to overcome the physical limitations of distance. Prior to opening a data center in Brazil, someone living in Rio de Janeiro took twice as long to load a Wikipedia article as someone in New York City because they were that much farther from the nearest data center.

As part of our commitment towards knowledge equity, the Wikimedia Foundation has been steadily opening servers outside the United States since 2012. Each new location lowers the average loading time of all the regions it is connected to.

What goes into building a new data center? 

So much. Let’s break it down. 

Alright, let’s start with the legal matters. 

First up, the Foundation has to select a location for a new data center. This process involves months of work by the legal team to vet the laws and regulations governing each candidate location. Wikimedia websites collect only a vanishingly small amount of personal data from people who visit Wikimedia sites, and so any location that the Foundation selects has to pass our high privacy standards. They also need to determine the answers to more mundane questions, like tax liabilities.

Not coincidentally, this is very similar to the reason why the Foundation operates its own data centers, even as much of the tech industry has moved to cloud computing. For Wikimedia, it’s a simple choice: we believe in user privacy, and we believe that you should be able to read anything on our sites without fearing that a company, government, or anyone else is snooping on what you are interested in. 

In addition to all that, the data center in São Paulo presented the Foundation with new challenges because we had to find vendors that would work with us despite not being listed on Brazil’s National Registry of Legal Entities (CNPJ for short). This impacted our equipment purchases, our delivery plans, and even our acquisition of IP addresses. 

What else goes into selecting a location?

Wikimedia Foundation data centers need to be situated in a city where a number of submarine communications cables come ashore. These fiber optic cables run along sea floors all around the world and are the backbone of the internet. 

How do you build a data center? 

With a hardworking team of Wikimedia Foundation staff and a dream! 

Each data center requires a significant amount of physical hardware that needs to be purchased and sent to the desired location. This includes: 

• Physical hardware like servers, routers, switches, cabling, and power
• The data center colocation provider
• Network circuits like peering, transport, and transit with redundancy

This work is more complicated today than the early days of Wikipedia. But the Wikimedia Foundation’s continued focus on improving technical infrastructure has meant that the Foundation can now worry less about when and how often Wikipedia will break and go down. Instead, the Foundation can devote its resources to improving the lived experience of readers and editors around the world, such as reducing their loading times.

Unfortunately, all that equipment cannot install itself. Servers do not put themselves on racks, nor can they plug themselves into the correct ports or swap out cables that prove to be faulty. They also cannot label ports to make sure that anyone doing future maintenance on those servers understands how and why they are wired. Instead, for each data center the Foundation has opened in recent years, staff members have gone to each location to set everything up.

Having people on-site for the installation process is also useful when someone needs to figure out solutions for when—not if—things go wrong.

For example, to set up the São Paulo data center, the Foundation shipped down four pallets full of equipment for staff members to install over the course of one week. The first three pallets made it through customs and to the data center on time. The other, which included all of the team’s routers, switches, and cables, did not—it was delayed by mandatory documentation and pending approvals. It only arrived on the last day of the team’s planned work, and they completed 2 to 3 days of work in the final 12 hours before their flights left for home.

Setting up a new Wikimedia data center is complex and delicate work.  Twelve staff members spent upwards of 1,600 hours over ten months to study legal issues, select a location, find vendors who would work with us, order the equipment, send it to the right destination, have some of it not arrive in time, and get everything installed anyway. And that’s just the beginning of the journey. We hope that this data center will provide fast and reliable access to Wikipedia across the region for many years to come.

This is just one of the reasons why the Wikimedia Foundation exists. It takes on daunting tasks behind the scenes so that people everywhere can contribute to and access the sum of all knowledge. 

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Research team is excited to announce the recipients of the 2023 Wikimedia Foundation Research Fund! This year’s round of funding continues our commitment to expanding and strengthening the global network of Wikimedia researchers. We aim to support projects that support the technology and policy needs of the Wikimedia projects and advance our understanding of the Wikimedia projects.  

The Selection Process

We received 76 proposals this year from countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South Americas. Similar to previous years, our selection process involved a two-stage review. In the first stage, applications went through a technical review process by established Wikimedia researchers. The Wikimedia community was invited to provide feedback to Stage I proposals on Meta-Wiki. Out of the original pool of applications, 13 were advanced to Stage II. The applicants were asked to submit more detailed descriptions of their proposed work incorporating feedback from the technical reviewers, technical chairs, the Research Fund chairs, as well as the broader Wikimedia community. The same technical reviewers who reviewed Stage I submissions also reviewed Stage II submissions, overseen by the technical chairs who provided recommendations to Research Fund chairs. The Fund chairs made the final decision on which proposals to fund, with 9 grantees ultimately awarded funding. Collectively, they will receive 270,687 USD to support their work. 

Funded Projects

Developing Wikimedia Impact Metrics as a Sociotechnical Solution for Encouraging Funder/ Academic Engagement

This research will explore how to encourage scientists to engage with Wikimedia by developing and designing Wikimedia Impact Metrics. The goal is to create metrics that are useful for both scientists and Altmetric aggregators, promoting the recognition of Wikimedia contributions in academic circles. The study will also survey Wikimedians to identify meaningful metrics, build a basic prototype, and seek community feedback, with the aim of fostering a supportive community and developing future funding opportunities.

System Design for Increasing Adoption of AI-Assisted Image Tagging in Wikimedia Commons

The purpose of this project is to investigate system designs to increase the adoption of AI-assisted image tagging in Wikimedia Commons. Objectives include investigating cognitive distinctions, identifying areas of agreement on AI-generated tags, exploring design strategies for contributor adoption, and highlighting features for an engaging AI-assisted tagging experience. Anticipated outcomes include improved contributor acceptance and experience with AI-assisted image tagging, along with enhanced metadata quality, ultimately benefiting the accessibility, searchability, usability, and multilingual support of Commons.

Investigating Neurodivergent Wikimedian Experiences

This project will focus on exploring discussions about being neurodivergent and participating in Wikimedia projects. The researchers will conduct a content analysis of existing public discussions about neurodiverse Wikimedians to investigate present discourse and define a research area. Following this, they will create a set of research design recommendations for future research on neurodivergent Wikimedians given that studying demographic groups requires careful planning and risk considerations. The potential impact of this work is to increase understanding of how to support Wikimedian wellbeing, including through understanding the challenges faced by neurodivergent Wikimedians.

Bridging the Gap Between Wikipedians and Scientists with Terminology-Aware Translation: A Case Study in Turkish

This project addresses the gap between the escalating volume of English-to-Turkish Wikipedia translations and the insufficient number of contributors, particularly in technical domains. Leveraging expertise from academics’ collaborative terminology dictionary effort, the researchers propose a pipeline system to enhance translation quality. The focus is on bridging academic and Wikipedia communities, creating datasets, and developing NLP models for terminology identification and linking, and terminology-aware translation. The aim is to foster sustained contributions and improve the overall quality of Turkish Wikipedia articles.

Addressing Wikipedia’s Gender Gaps Through Paid Media 

The 2030 Wikimedia Strategy aims to address gender gaps and make Wikipedia more inclusive. To attract skilled women to join the Wikipedia community, a survey will be designed and distributed via targeted paid social media distribution to determine the willingness of female participants to contribute or edit Wikipedia articles. The performance of the campaigns will be analyzed to develop a blueprint of strategies for reaching potential female editors on different social media platforms.

Cover Women

In this research project, the main page of Wikipedia will be analyzed across the seven longest-standing Wikipedia editions: English, German, Catalan, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. This study will delve into the possible gender and intersectional bias in the page’s daily content, newsroom guidelines (principles and standards 1 that govern the dissemination of information), and in the insights from the volunteer community who decide which information gets disseminated to the public on the main page. The researchers hope to actively contribute to editing communities by addressing the daily challenges and needs in crafting front-page content.

Wikimedia versus traditional biographical encyclopedias. Overlaps, gaps, quality and future possibilities

This research project aims to enhance collaboration between traditional biographical dictionaries and online platforms like Wikipedia and Wikidata. By comparing entries from the Czech Wikipedia and the Biographical Dictionary of the Czech Lands (BDCL), the project looks to identify gaps and needs in biographical documentation. The researchers’ goal is to propose solutions that will improve cooperation, ensure comprehensive and accurate biographical information, and ultimately enrich the content of both Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Development of a training program for teachers to use Wikipedia as a resource for collaborative learning and the development of skills for digital citizenship

In this project, the researchers will design and pilot a training model for school teachers using the Wikimedia projects as a learning environment to foster digital citizenship and 21st century skills. The designing process will be conducted by an exploration of the teacher’s perceptions and needs regarding the use of Wikimedia for digital literacy and citizenship. To achieve this goal, a case study will be carried out with teachers from three different types of school centers in Chile (public, private, and subsidized). The research methods will include in-depth interviews, surveys, and focus groups. After designing the initial training model, it will be implemented in a pilot with teachers from the three participating schools. To evaluate the implementation, class observations and interviews with teachers and students will be carried out. The training model and all of the resources developed in the context of this research will be disseminated within the Wikimedia and Education Community through different collective instances.

Wikidata for the People of Africa

This project aims to use natural language generation (NLG) to expand Wikidata entries with high-quality labels and descriptions in Bantu languages, starting with isiZulu and focusing on the geopolitical domain. By leveraging the Grammatical Framework (GF) to differentiate between abstract and concrete syntax, the project intends to streamline the process for other Bantu languages. The goal is to address the lack of Bantu language representation on Wikidata, enabling speakers to contribute and access data in their native languages, thus enhancing the multilingual support of Wikimedia projects.

Looking Forward to the Future of Wikimedia Research

These funded projects aim to support researchers who might otherwise not have ready access to funding and who are located in emerging communities. We prioritized research proposals that are in collaboration with Wikimedia volunteer developers or affiliates and attempt to serve a specific purpose, with the aim of creating real impact for these communities, and the movement at large. We encourage the Wikimedia community and our broader network to support these projects in any way possible. Here are some ways you can get involved:

• Engage with the Researchers: Follow the progress of these projects and contribute your insights through Meta-Wiki discussions or other Wikimedia platforms.
• Share Knowledge and Resources: If you have expertise or resources relevant to these projects, consider reaching out to collaborate and share knowledge.
• Promote the Projects in Your Community: Help raise awareness of these initiatives within your local Wikimedia community or through social media to expand their reach and impact.

If you’re interested in applying for future research funds, keep an eye out for our next call for proposals. Stay updated by subscribing to the wiki-research-l mailing list for news on upcoming opportunities, events, and research-related announcements. We look forward to seeing how these projects unfold and the positive impact they will have on the Wikimedia community.

Happy new (nonprofit fiscal) year! 🥳 July 1 marked the start of the FY24-25 annual plan for Wikimedia Foundation. Together with colleagues, I've been working the last couple of months on lining up some interesting projects for improving anti-abuse capabilities on the wikis under the WE4.

Women for Sustainability Africa participated in this year’s WikiForHumanRights campaign, collaborating with the University of Ghana’s Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies. The goal was to address the lack of information about climate change topics related to Ghana and Africa on the web through Wikipedia and its sister projects. One of the reasons we found this collaboration intriguing was because the students at the department are passionate about climate change and are already taking various courses on the topic. As young people are ardent about this area, we found the need to build their capacity on new ways they can address climate change and that was through Wikipedia; empowering them to contribute to knowledge for a sustainable Future.

We also collaborated with Climate and Development Knowledge Network CDKN Ghana, who led a session and supported us with a wealth of resources from the CDKN Knowledge repository on Ghana Regional Climate Change risk inventory to use in our Wikipedia documentation efforts.

We also collaborated with experienced Wikimedia groups in Ghana thus the Tamale and Wale Wale Wiki Hub who coordinated the campaign activities in the northern part of Ghana as well as an experienced Wikimedia Photographer – Francis Quasie whose key role had to do with curating photography and videography related content to Wikimedia Commons.

How it started

We connected with Dr. Agyeman Boafo, a lecturer at the University of Ghana’s C3SS Department, during the Plant and Green Entrepreneur Exhibition fair at the center. During our discussion, the topic of Wikipedia came up as he had seen us showcase a wikimedia event on our social media handles. We then scheduled a partnership meeting to discuss further and explore potential collaborations between Women for Sustainability Africa and the department. Among all the topics discussed, Wikipedia stood out as an area Dr. Boafo was particularly enthused about. As a department, their interest areas was how they can address climate change topics on wikimedia with their students. We identified the WikiForHumanRights campaign as an ideal initiative to join, especially since this year’s theme, #KnowledgeForSustainableFuture, aligns perfectly with our collective goals.

First Info session

In preparation for the WikiForHumanRights campaign, we hosted our first information session for students at the department. Nearly 40 attendees, including post-graduate students and lecturers, participated in this interactive and engaging session, with many asking questions. During the session, over 30 students successfully created their Wikipedia accounts. To facilitate further engagement and preparation for the upcoming two-day workshop, we also enrolled students in the department’s dedicated Wikipedia WhatsApp group.

Workshop Launch

As we launched the two-day workshop, we created an event registration page with resources to support students. The workshop was open to students from the department as well as Geography students taking climate change courses at the department. A total of 157 people registered for the workshop indicating the high interest of participation in the campaign. Of these, 80% stated that they had never contributed to a Wikimedia project, and about 90% mentioned that they did not belong to any Wikimedia affiliate. Regarding gender, 44% identified as women and 49% as men. Most participants (66.2%) were under 25 years old, while 24.2% were between 25 and 44 years old. In terms of profession, 63.7% identified as students, 6.4% as educators, and 7% as researchers. Prior to the workshop, participants were enrolled on the Wikipedia WhatsApp group for further engagement and support. 

Day 1

The first day of the workshop was attended by 50 participants,including a few external guests and lecturers. The session introduced students to the fundamentals of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. They practiced basic editing, starting with their user accounts. Five experienced Wikipedians led and supported the session, contributing to various sections. The session was highly interactive, with participants asking numerous questions and actively contributing to the discussions.

Day 2

On day two, the workshop focused on advanced editing techniques. Dr. Prince Ansah from CDKN joined as a resource person, engaging students in insightful exercises and emphasizing the role of Wikipedia in bridging the knowledge gap between expert research and public information. The CDKN repository was shared with students, allowing them to identify and document climate change incidents in Ghana that were missing on Wikipedia. Additionally, we were honored to have the founder of Global Climate Change Resolution present on heat waves, highlighting incidents we could document.

• Participants then engaged in a three-hour edit-a-thon, working collaboratively in groups based on various thematic areas:
• Climate Change and Health
• Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
• Water and Sanitation
• Heatwaves
• Regional Impact of Climate Change

Participants were asked to choose one or two articles to work on and to identify the knowledge gaps in the articles they selected. Many of the articles were missing significant information, which the students were eager to update. Participants felt fulfilled as they were able to make substantial improvements to existing Wikipedia articles. Most of the articles they contributed to already existed.

Who are we?

Women for sustainability Africa is a non-profit organization dedicated towards women empowerment and environmental sustainability. We achieve this through capacity building and advocacy. Over the past years we have trained 1000+ women and girls though our digital skills and advocacy programs. We have organized several wikimedia activities around women/gender and sustianbility this includes; Wikiforhumanrights campaign, Arts+Feminism, Wiki Women in Red, Mentor, Wikipedia Train the Trainers projects Follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok. Youtube. This initiative was birth by CoachAni a wikipedia passionate about women empowerment and sustainability.

Our esteemed team and trainers and partners played a crucial role in the success of the event:

• Anita Ofori: The main coordinator and lead for the campaign, whose leadership and organizational skills were instrumental in facilitating partnerships, coordinating the entire event and coordinating training.
• Dr. Yaw Agyeman– Lead partnership
• Ruby D-Brown: Led the session on the introduction to Wikipedia, providing participants with a solid foundation and also facilitating the edit-a-thon session.
• Jwale: Guided participants through the practical aspects of editing Wikipedia, ensuring they gained hands-on experience.
• Queen Murjanatu: Introduced participants to Wikimedia Commons, helping them understand the importance and process of uploading images.
• Phimilon: Provided unwavering support to participants throughout the training sessions.
• Kojo Owusu 2020: Supported in coordinating logistics and communication for the event as well as supported participants throughout the training.
• Prince Ansah– From CDKN Ghana
• Nii Djan– Global Climate Change Resolution
• Barrister– Student Cordinator
• Naana Afia– Student Cordinator

We are incredibly proud of the enthusiasm and commitment shown by all participants and trainers. Stay tuned for part 2 of this article!In part two of this article, we will highlight the outcome and impact of the campaign.

#wikiforhumanrights #Knowledgeforasustainablefuture

AfroLiterature: Quotes from African Literatures is a project focused on capturing and sharing Africa’s rich tradition of storytelling and oral wisdom. Our mission is to amplify quotes from African literature and document these quotes on Wikiquote, a sister project of Wikipedia.

The campaign kicked off with an online session on July 8, 2024, with over 30 participants in attendance. This session also served as the opening for the online writing contest.

The physical events were held on July 19 and 20 at Bukatee, Ilorin, Kwara State. Participants were introduced to Wikimedia projects, the campaign goals, and were trained on how to contribute to Wikiquote. The second day featured a hands-on edit-a-thon, complemented by engaging games related to Wikimedia projects to provide a fun break after the two-hour editing session.

So far, the campaign has resulted in the creation and improvement of 300 pages, and we are looking forward to more contributions.

As we continue this journey, we aim to enrich the representation of African literature on Wikiquote. By doing so, we hope to ensure that the wisdom and creativity of African writers are preserved and accessible to everyone.

• AfroLiterature:Quotes From African Literatures Meta-wiki page
• Campaign outreach dashboard

The Latin American and Caribbean Representation to the UNESCO Alliance for Media and Information Literacy in collaboration with the Education and Human Rights Program of Wikimedia Argentina invites you to participate in this regional survey.

The Latin American and Caribbean Representation to the Alliance for Media and Information Literacy promoted by UNESCO and the Education and Human Rights Program of Wikimedia Argentina will carry out, jointly, a regional survey to address the issue of AI from various perspectives at the pedagogical and social level.

This survey will provide tools and learnings that will be useful for teachers to have more resources when implementing generative AI in the classroom.

The survey will be disseminated regionally in July and August. Teachers will be able to share their perspectives on AI in the classroom from their own experiences. In summary, the survey is a starting point that will allow us to delve deeper into the needs, concerns and interests that teachers have when working with generative AI in their contexts.

Access the survey here.

Media and Information Literacy

The Alliance for Media and Information Literacy (MIL), promoted by UNESCO, is an innovative effort of international cooperation, made up of individuals and organizations from all continents. It is coordinated by an International Steering Committee composed of one representative from each of the 5 Regional Chapters, established according to UNESCO’s regional configuration (Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Arab States, Asia Pacific, Europe and North America).

The Latin American and Caribbean Representation articulates concrete actions to promote the development and regional impact of MIL. Exchanges information among actors, organizations and associations in the region to identify trends, events and concerns affecting Latin America and the Caribbean in relation to MIL. Deepens strategies to ensure that MIL is treated as an interdisciplinary concept, providing a platform for dialogue for MIL-related networks and associations around the world.

The 20th Arabic Wikipedia Day on July 13, 2024, marks a special year for celebrating the founding of Arabic Wikipedia, a place that has profoundly impacted our family and introduced us to a vast community of special people.

As every year, my mother Luma Salman, brother Mohammed Harith Khalil, and I participate in celebrating this day. this year was exceptional because our knowledge and experience with Wikipedia have significantly grown over the past year, enhancing our ability to celebrate this day meaningfully.

Locally, I was thrilled to organize the first Wikimedia Iraq event to celebrate the 20th Arabic Wikipedia Day. We hosted an event in Baghdad – Iraq to introduce Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects to interested individuals. This was done through Wikimedia Iraq UG and the group members, Mahmoud Al-Rawi, Mohammed Qais, and Luma Salman, who shared their valuable experiences with attendees keen on volunteering with Wikimedia.

“For the first time, I realized there is a large community of volunteers behind Wikipedia’s content. I’m very excited to be part of this community,” Doha Amir, Attendee.

“I’m a content writer and have attempted to write articles before, but they were deleted because I didn’t understand the process correctly. Learning about the Wikimedia community in Iraq will help me improve my understanding of writing articles for the encyclopedia” Hawraa Al-Safi, Attendee

As for my mother “Luma”, besides participating in the event in Iraq, she was part of the organizing team for Arabic Wikipedia Day alongside some Arab colleagues.

“I am very happy with the support I receive from the Arab community. Three years ago, I didn’t know how to use a computer, but today, with the community’s trust in me despite my basic skills, I contribute and use different tools on the computer to help organize this special day. I learned new things, especially from my organizing colleagues Donia El-Domiaty and Mohammad Hijjawi. I believe in the skills of youth and learn a lot from them” Luma Salman, Editor

As for my younger brother, despite his school commitments, he insisted on contributing to this day by designing the logo for the 20th Arabic Wikipedia Day, which the Arab community adopted for this Day.

By the end of the day, we gathered in the same room at our home to enrich Arabic articles and share free knowledge with the world.

As a family, Wikimedia has become a part of our daily lives at home, and we are incredibly grateful for the presence of wonderful and distinguished colleagues in the Arab community with whom we can volunteer remotely and learn from their expertise to expand our contributions to Wikimedia projects.

Looking forward to the next year to celebrate the 21st anniversary!

For more than a year, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Committee Support Team has worked to develop essential staff support for movement committees and groups to help sustain movement governance and health. Since we are supporting safety and equity goals that were recently iterated upon in the new annual plan, it’s time for some reflection.

Committee appointment process

The Committee Support Team provided administrative support to the committees as they sought new members in the latter half of 2023. Leading up to the appointment process, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Committee Support team and Community Resilience and Sustainability Communication team thought it would be a great idea to highlight some of the committee work happening in the movement, especially as the appointment round and applications opened for various committees. Read about the Ombuds Commission, the Affiliations Committee, the Case Review Committee and the work of the Arbitration Committees. These written pieces were created in collaboration with long-time Wikimedians and community leaders and published on Diff to reach a larger audience. While Arbitration Committees are independent, the team will be looking for new committee members again this year for several committees it supports, and you can follow the process at Committee appointments.

Onboarding committees

Just like any volunteer role, committee work can certainly be demanding at times. The Committee Support Team considered what might be helpful for committee members to know as they go about their work. We designed and tested an onboarding plan with the Elections Committee, who all gave great input about the process. We are now moving forward with developing onboarding materials for committees we currently support as well as materials that can be used or adapted more generally by any community committees.

Committee feedback

Feedback is a gift, and it helps us grow. We have received input from various committee members as we grow and evolve our support processes. Some of this feedback has led to our current work listed in this Diff post! Thank you to everyone who has taken time to provide feedback to make our support of movement committees and groups even, well, more supportive.

Use of a ticketing system for support

Our responsiveness to the needs of committees is important. Over the past few months, we started using a ticketing system similar to what the Trust and Safety team uses to manage communication with committee members. This system allows us to assign the request to a staff member and easily hand it over to another staff member as needed. This process will remove the need for forwarding emails and reduce the time it takes to respond to committee requests. as soon as possible. As the Affiliations Committee handles a large number of requests from the community, we thought they would provide the best test scenario so we could smooth out the workflow. Community members and committees are encouraged to use the new cst @ wikimedia.org email address to have their requests addressed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Affiliate Strategy

Something many of you may have heard about recently is the updated Wikimedia Foundation affiliates strategy. Most recently, the feedback the community provided earlier this year was reviewed by AffCom members, the Board of Trustees and staff. They worked together to create documentation for the affiliate health criteria and reporting structures to better indicate the state of the affiliate at the time of reporting. The Committee Support Team is working closely with AffCom members to organize and carefully document the updates to the processes for affiliates and user groups.
Look forward to hearing more from the Committee Support Team in just a few months as we begin the call new members to apply to the various committees we support. If you have any questions about joining the committees, please contact the committees or the Committee Support Team at cst @ wikimedia.org.

I sometimes see a bad mistake in a Hebrew translation of a message in MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikipedia. I check who made it, and see that it’s myself, a few years ago.

I post something like this on social networks every few weeks, but this time it’s special.

Here’s the timeline of a silly bug that took way, way too long to fix, and it’s 100% my fault:

• March 21, 2017, morning: I translate the message mobile-frontend-joined-years, which says “Joined X years go” next to the username on the mobile site. The message takes two parameters: $1 and $2. $1 is the gender of the user, so that it will be possible to write the verb “joined” in the correct grammatical gender. It’s irrelevant for English, but relevant for many languages. $2 is the number of years, so that it will be possible to write “year” or “years” correctly in “1 year”, “2 years”, “4 years”, etc. With Hebrew, the plural forms of years are a tad more complicated than in English: for the specific case of two years, a different plural ending is used: “3 shaním”, “7 shaním”, etc., but when it’s two, the word is “shnatáyim” (and the number is not written at all, because the ending already means that it’s 2). The way to do it in translations is to use the {{PLURAL}} syntax. In English, it looks like {{PLURAL:$2|$2 year|$2 years}}. In Hebrew (in transliteration into Latin letters), it would have to look like this: {{PLURAL:$2|shaná|shnatáyim|$2 shaná|$2 shaním}} (the first form is for 1 year, the second is for 2 years, the third is for some special cases where the singular ending is used even though the number is not 1, and the last form is for all other numbers).
• March 21, 2017, midday: A few hours later, I notice that I made a mistake and used $1 everywhere instead of using $1 for gender and $2 for plural. The likely reason I noticed it at that time is that I checked what things have to be translated. Since I’ve tried to keep the translation into Hebrew at 100% most of the time since 2010, there are usually few of those. Even though I had translated it already a few hours earlier, this thing showed up because our translation auto-validation system noticed that the $2 parameter is missing from the translation, and messages with mistakes are shown together with messages that are not yet translated. And here’s where I made another mistake: I fixed the appearance of $1 to $2 within the “PLURAL” values, but I left it as $1 in the beginning. As a result, the algorithm was trying to determine the plural form based on the gender, which obviously cannot work.
• And because now both $1 and $2 were used in the translation, our translation auto-validation system stopped noticing it as a mistake. I’m not blaming the system or the people who developed it. Auto-validation systems are built for catching the most obvious bugs. In theory, it can be improved to catch this bug, but it would require some work, and it’s probably not the most important thing to fix.
• August 28, 2017: It came to my attention that “Joined 2 years ago” appears in Hebrew as “2 shaním” and not as “shnatáyim”. I checked the translation, but didn’t notice that it says “$2” instead of “$1”. Instead, I reported a bug. Two developers tried to look at it and help, but didn’t come to any conclusions.
• July 23, 2020: A developer of the mobile web interface, who was probably going through old and forgotten bug reports, wondered whether this is still a bug. I said that it is.
• July 24, 2020: The same developer noticed that the translation says PLURAL:$1 instead of PLURAL:$2 and wrote a comment in the bug report. I didn’t notice it, even though I reported the bug. I guess I can use “the summer of 2020 was all weird COVID days!!” as an excuse.
• July 25, 2024: An anonymous Hebrew Wikipedia user noticed that issue again. I started investigating it, came upon my own old bug report, and finally noticed the correctly-identified problem in the translation.
• Immediately after that, I fixed the translation.

Over those seven years, I had several opportunities to fix this bug, and I didn’t do it. Now, I finally did.

And you know, this is horribly embarrassing, but I am really happy that this Hebrew Wikipedia user reported this bug today. And I wonder why doesn’t this happen much more often and in many more languages. There are definitely more bugs like this—some of them are in Hebrew, and I just haven’t noticed them yet, and many of them are in other languages. For example, when I was fixing this bug in Hebrew, I noticed that the translation of the same message into Belarusian had the same problem, and fixed it. Every now and then, I sporadically notice bugs of this kind in all kinds of languages, and I fix them when it doesn’t require actually knowing the language. Why doesn’t it bother people more often that some things are incompletely or incorrectly translated?

Over the last months, the Release-Engineering-Team of the Wikimedia Foundation put efforts into making improvements and fixing issues in Wikimedia Phabricator, our main software planning software. Here is an incomplete list of achievements:

• Reduced visual complexity by removing or hiding unused functionality, such as the Differential code review tool and other tools, and the contact numbers panel in personal settings.
• Made message improvements and user interface tweaks, such as explicitly linking from the Global Search to the Advanced Search to raise awareness of its existence, and disallowing creating projects with an empty description.
• Phabricator reuses your confirmed MediaWiki email address during registration of a new Phabricator account - no more manually entering your email address.
• If you have multi-factor authentication (2FA) enabled for your account, re-authenticating skips the additional OAuth access dialog on mediawiki.org.
• When resolving a task and explicitly not setting a task assignee, no disruptive "Action with no effect" warning is displayed.
• Pppery contributed many fixes to our neglected internationalization and translation setup (thank you!). This also made Slovenian and Sicilian translations available in the language user settings.
• Fixed inaccurate data in project reports and fixed anonymous access to burndown charts.
• Transparent embedded image files have a checkered background.
• Each Phame blog links to its atom feed.
• Fixed various crashes and exceptions.
• Improvements to fight vandalism and made the corresponding checks more performant.
• API user queries include the MediaWiki username if you have sufficient permissions.
• Corrected some bad and missing data in our database (thanks to Valerio for the Bugzilla data!).
• Deployed the latest stable Phorge version from upstream - see the full upstream changelog.
• Reduced the number of custom lines of code in our Wikimedia downstream installation by contributing some of our changes to the upstream Phorge codebase and by removing obsolete or uncommon custom code in our installation ("technical debt").
• Fixed PHP8 compatibility issues in upstream and in custom downstream code.
• Developers and testers of our installation can use the "lipsum" script again to create projects.
• In the meantime, the WMF SRE team also upgraded the host machines from Debian Buster to Debian Bullseye.

We hope you enjoy your Wikimedia Phabricator experience!

As usual, your thoughts and questions are welcome on the Phabricator talk page.

The Core Organizing Team (COT) for 2025 is delighted to announce that the 20th Wikimania will be hosted in Nairobi, Kenya.

Nairobi offers a thrilling fusion of modernity and tradition. There are opportunities for thrilling safaris, with Nairobi National Park, located within the city, providing a unique urban safari experience. The city’s rich cultural tapestry unfolds in its museums and historical landmarks, such as the Nairobi National Museum and the Karen Blixen Museum. Culinary delights abound, from bustling markets to gourmet eateries to savoury street food, not forgetting the outstanding Kenyan hospitality and the popular Nairobi nightlife.

In September 2023 the Wikimania Steering Committee announced a new regional model of collaboration and shared that the location for Wikimania 2025 will be in East Africa, followed by Paris in 2026.

The 2025 Core Organizing Team comprises members from the East African region, anchored in the East African Regional and Thematic Hub (EARTHub), who will work together to make the first Wikimania in East Africa an unforgettable experience. An official handover from the 2024 COT will take place during Wikimania in Katowice, Poland. 

Travel to Nairobi made easy

Nairobi promises an unforgettable journey where adventure, culture, and nature converge.

Nairobi is a major transport hub for both regional and international routes. Kenya’s visa policies were recently updated, making it a visa-free country for those wishing to enter as tourists. Attendees will only need to fill out an Electronic Travel Authorization form 72 hours before starting the journey to Nairobi. Wikimania 2025 will be a hybrid conference, providing virtual and in-person participation. The COT is also hard at work connecting with government bodies, partners, and national institutions to ensure that all Wikimedians, including the LGBTQI+ community, have a safe and unforgettable experience in Nairobi. 

Wikimania is the premier event for our movement to collaborate, discuss, and build ideas. It is a place where everyone belongs, where everyone, either virtually or in person, can celebrate free knowledge and the volunteers who help make Wikimedia projects happen. This edition marks a significant milestone as we celebrate 20 years of Wikimania.

As we move forward to August 2025, we say ‘‘karibuni to the Magical Kenya’’.

In 2021, a trade association called NetChoice sued the US states of Florida and Texas, asking courts to block laws aimed at social media from taking effect. Those laws could impact Wikipedia as well, by creating liability for the removal of false or inaccurate material expressing a political viewpoint. The cases rose through the US court system and were heard by the US Supreme Court in February 2024. In July 2024, the Court issued its decision: the Court makes no immediate change to the law, and its opinion contains some good language about content moderation that may be useful for the Foundation in future legal arguments. However, as the cases are instructed to return to the lower courts, the long-term implications of the decision remain to be seen.

In 2021, the states of Texas and Florida in the United States (US) enacted laws designed to restrict social media platforms’ ability to enforce their own content policies. This was a response to high-profile content moderation decisions, which the states alleged constituted “censorship” by large social media platforms of some users’ viewpoints. NetChoice, a trade association representing large social media platforms and other tech companies, immediately sued to block these laws from taking effect by means of two lawsuits: NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton (.pdf file) in Texas, and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC (.pdf file) in Florida.

NetChoice claimed these state laws would violate the First Amendment rights of its member companies by forcing them to host speech with which they disagree. Two years and several appeals later, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear these challenges. Rather than answer the constitutional questions, the Court decided this month, July 2024, that the lower courts had not done their jobs correctly. It sent the cases back with instructions to try again—essentially pressing the “reset” button on an expensive multiyear legal process.

Background: What the cases are about and why we filed a “friend-of-the-court” or amicus brief

The apparent question at the core of these cases was whether laws that force private companies to host speech violate the constitutional rights of those companies. Both the Texas and Florida laws were written in a way that made it unclear whether their enforcement would apply to platforms like Wikipedia—for instance, by demanding the removal of inaccurate or unverifiable information about a political candidate. The enforcement of either law against a Wikipedia volunteer or the Wikimedia Foundation could disrupt Wikimedia communities’ decision-making processes and damage the quality and reliability of the content on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

The Foundation filed an amicus brief (.pdf file) to help the Supreme Court understand our concerns: laws that restrict community-led content moderation would infringe the First Amendment rights of Wikipedia volunteers and could damage the quality and reliability of Wikipedia by forcing them to include non-encyclopedic content.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court has reframed the central question of the cases to be about the appropriate judicial analysis when the constitutionality of a law is challenged “on its face” rather than “as applied” to a specific actor—that is to say, it is about challenging a law by arguing that it is always unconstitutional in contrast to arguing that a specific application of it is unconstitutional. Below we explain what that means.

What the Court’s opinion says and its meaning

The Court’s opinion was lengthy, including a majority decision plus four concurrences—opinions mostly agreeing with the majority decision. A few major themes emerged throughout the opinion: the importance of an “on its face” or facial versus “as-applied” challenge; the difficulties of challenging broadly-written laws; and a recognition that internet regulation will affect different websites and applications to different extents.

The way you challenge laws matters

As explained above, in these two cases NetChoice brought forward what the Supreme Court describes as “facial” challenges, asking courts to block the laws before they took effect and claiming that the laws would be unconstitutional if enforced against any of NetChoice’s members. State legislatures and the district courts understood that these laws were designed to punish the three largest social media platforms in 2020 (that is to say, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) for actions taken to limit the former US president’s use of his accounts on those platforms. The District Courts in Texas and Florida and, on appeal, the federal Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, all treated these challenges accordingly. In legal terms, they approached the constitutional questions “as-applied” to Facebook et al.

The Supreme Court rejected this approach. In the Court’s opinion, the lower courts failed to correctly treat these as facial challenges, which require the lower courts to first determine the scope of all possible applications of the laws: could they apply to online platforms like Etsy, Uber, Venmo, and/or Gmail? The lower courts should have then determined whether a substantial portion of those possible applications would have been unconstitutional. Or, as US Supreme Court Justice Kagan instructs: “[A] court must determine a law’s full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other.”

Only time will tell how the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts will respond to the ruling, but these cases could have long-term implications for free expression, future legislative proposals, and future constitutional challenges to enacted laws.

Challenging broadly written laws may be more difficult

One of the potential impacts of the Court’s ruling in the NetChoice cases is that it could be more difficult to successfully challenge laws that are broadly written, such as laws that could apply to many different kinds of services and/or actions. The Texas and Florida state laws at issue here both used very broad definitions of “social media,” and restricted a wide range of content moderation methods used in different ways by different platforms. We argued in our amicus brief that the laws are written so broadly that they could potentially be applied to volunteer-run projects like Wikipedia. Even the lawyers responsible for defending the laws before the Court were unable to say to whom the laws apply or what the laws would require a platform to do. This became a stumbling block for the case. When a law is written broadly, determining that “full set of applications”—and evaluating them as Justice Kagan described—becomes more difficult and may become practically impossible.

The Court’s Justices expressed concerns about striking down laws that could have some constitutional applications, but the discussion in both cases had only addressed how the laws might impact a few social media platforms. Moving forward, US state or national legislatures could take advantage of this ruling by drafting laws broadly enough so that no individual parties could successfully challenge the entire law. Additionally, courts may be less willing to hear “facial” challenges, limiting their consideration to laws “as-applied” to individual parties. Litigation costs to challenge poorly written laws will increase, and more plaintiffs will be needed to take down unconstitutional laws. Over time, this could mean that more constitutionally questionable laws remain in effect longer. This would not be an ideal outcome because legal uncertainty can have chilling effects on freedom of expression.

The Court understands that there’s more to the internet than Facebook and YouTube

One positive element of the Court’s decision is an acknowledgment that “the internet” is made of more than just a handful of large social media platforms, and also that attempts to regulate technology giants may sweep in many other kinds of apps and/or websites as well. To quote Justice Kagan: “The online world is variegated and complex, encompassing an ever-growing number of apps, services, functionalities, and methods for communication and connection.” One of the concurring opinions even included citations of our amicus brief (.pdf file; see pages 68 and 85), a specific acknowledgement by the Court that Wikipedia is among the websites that could suffer unexpected consequences from laws like the ones at issue in this case.

What it means for the Wikimedia Foundation and projects

The Court’s decision in the NetChoice cases is good enough for now: there is no immediate change to the law, and it contains some good quotes about content moderation that may be useful for the Foundation in future legal arguments. However, the long-term implications of the decision remain to be seen.

No change for now

The Court’s ruling sends the cases back to the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts, and the Texas and Florida laws are still on hold, for now. However, the preliminary injunctions blocking these laws from taking effect may not last forever. We will be sure to monitor the status of these state laws and provide updates as the lower courts take action, especially if either state’s laws are allowed to go into effect.

Good language on content moderation could help the Wikimedia projects in the future

The majority opinion for the NetChoice cases had one clear mandate: The lower courts must redo their approach to analyzing the legal challenges brought by NetChoice. However, five Justices agreed to offer additional guidance on how lower courts should address the First Amendment questions at the heart of these cases. In general, these Justices (i.e., Kagan, Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) supported the idea that the First Amendment protects acts involving “editorial discretion,” including all of the ways Wikipedia volunteer editors contribute to and maintain Wikipedia’s encyclopedic content.

The majority opinion clearly opposed the notion that US state or federal governments can force private companies to host speech from any political viewpoint, acknowledging that online platforms can and do curate the content on their websites as they see fit. Overall, the majority opinion indicated that the Texas and Florida laws would likely run afoul of the US Constitution in those contexts.

Some uncertainty about long-term implications for state laws

While it is reassuring that a majority of the Court views content moderation as a kind of protected speech, it is not clear how the lower courts will implement the Court’s instructions to try again. There is at least a chance that the lower courts will let the Texas and/or Florida laws take effect so that new legal challenges can be brought against an actual application of the law. As the Court noted, no one really knows who might be subject to either of these laws, so how they’ll be enforced and which platforms could see legal action remain open questions.

There is also some chance that the lower courts reconsider these cases as “as applied” constitutional challenges based on the facts they already have. This approach could produce legal confusion if, for example, the Texas law is found to be unconstitutional as applied to Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) newsfeeds, but courts do not determine whether the statutes might be lawfully applied to any other website or application and leave the statutes in place.

There are certainly other possible routes for these cases to take as well, many of which could leave an unknown number of websites and applications on uncertain legal footing.

What comes next

The lower courts must either follow instructions from the Supreme Court or send cases back to district courts. The reason is that in the US legal system, appellate courts like the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts, as well as the Supreme Court, can typically only consider the facts established in the record by the trial courts of first impression. This means that when judges hear cases on appeal, they are limited to the scope of information presented to the courts where the cases were initially heard. Generally, appellate courts may not gather new facts or evidence: they can only say whether or not the previous court applied the law correctly based on the record. 

For the NetChoice cases, this means that the circuit courts likely will not add to the record of facts and arguments that came from the district courts. This also means the circuit courts are unlikely to consider whether the Texas law could be applied to Wikipedia and, if that were so, whether that application would be constitutional. In practice, the circuit courts may have little choice but to send the cases back to the district courts with the Supreme Court’s instructions on how to address facial challenges.

Conclusion

This is the second year in a row that the US Supreme Court has ruled on a case of major significance to the Wikimedia projects, and it seems unlikely that it will be the last. Lawmakers are rightfully concerned about a variety of potential harms online, although many legislative proposals to address those harms come at the expense of freedom of expression online.

The Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to defending the rights of Wikimedia volunteer editors and readers to share and receive knowledge online, and we will continue to challenge laws that threaten those rights. As the NetChoice cases make their way back through lower courts, or possibly return to the Supreme Court someday, we will continue to track them.

We hope to create a legal environment in which no judge can limit freedom of expression online without first considering the impact of their actions on the Wikimedia projects.

Did you know that Africa, home to a billion-plus people, contributes a mere 8% to global waste? Yet, the continent bears the brunt of climate change’s wrath. To change this narrative, Walewale Wiki Hub and Tamale Wiki Hub (led by Christian Yakubu and Abdul Rahim Ziblim) join the #WikiforhumanRights 2024 campaign on the theme #KnowledgeforSustainableFuture. As part of the campaign, we hosted a launch event on the 15th of June 2024 to introduce our communities to the campaign and outline activities. A recording can be found here (Google Drive link)

Ruby Damenshie-Brown, the WikiforHumanRights African coordinator, highlighted a glaring issue: Wikipedia’s underrepresentation of Africa. Our continent’s stories, especially those about our environment, are often overlooked. This knowledge gap is a missed opportunity to raise awareness and inspire action.

Let’s flood Wikipedia with African climate stories! By translating and creating articles, uploading images, videos, and audio on Wikimedia Commons, we can vividly showcase the impact of climate change on our communities. ‘’Remember, every piece of content on Wikipedia has the potential to reach a global audience of millions in over 300 languages!’’-Ruby Dameshie-Brown

Wikimedian Stephen Dakyi emphasized the importance of contributing to our local Wikipedia platforms. By sharing information in our native languages, we can empower communities to understand and address climate challenges. He also took participants through practical editing and how to use the translation tool on Wikipedia to translate content in our indigenous language.

It’s time to rewrite Africa’s climate story. Let’s use Wikipedia to amplify our voices, inspire change, and build a sustainable future.

#ClimateAction #Wikipedia #Africa #EnvironmentalAwareness #WikiForHumanRight2024 #KnowledgeforSustainableFuture

The demise of goo.gl is a good opportunity to write about how we built a less terrible URL shortener for Wikimedia projects: w.wiki. (I actually started writing this blog post in 2016 and never got back to it, oops.)

URL shorteners are generally a bad idea for a few main reasons:

1. They obfuscate the actual link destination, making it harder to figure out where a link will take you.
2. If they disappear or are shut down, the link is broken, even if the destination is fully functional.
3. They often collect extra tracking/analytics information.

But there are also legitimate reasons to want to shorten a URL, including use in printed media where it's easier for people to type a shorter URL. Or circumstances where there are restrictive character limits like tweets and IRC topics. The latter often affects non-ASCII languages even more when limits are measured in bytes instead of Unicode characters.

At the end of the day, there was still considerable demand for a URL shortener, so we figured we could provide one that was well, less terrible. Following a RfC, we adopted Tim's proposal, and a plan to avoid the aforementioned flaws:

1. Limit shortening to Wikimedia-controlled domains, so you have a general sense of where you'd end up. (Other generic URL shorteners are banned on Wikimedia sites because they bypass our domain-based spam blocking.)
2. Proactively provide dumps as a guarantee that if the service ever disappeared, people could still map URLs to their targets. You can find them on dumps.wikimedia.org and they're mirrored to the Internet Archive.
3. Intentionally avoid any extra tracking and metrics collection. It is still included in Wikimedia's general webrequest logs, but there is no dedicated, extra tracking for short URLs besides what every request gets.

Anyone can create short URLs for any approved domain, subject to some rate limits and anti-abuse mechanisms via a special page or the API.

All of this is open source and usable by any MediaWiki wiki by installing the UrlShortener extension. (Since this launched, additional functionality was added to use multiple character sets and generate QR codes.)

The dumps are nice for other purposes too, I use them to provide basic statistics on how many URLs have been shortened.

I still tend to have a mildly negative opinion about people using our URL shortner, but hey, it could be worse, at least they're not using goo.gl.

11/07/2024-17/07/2024

Mapping

• Mirikaaa, from the Mapbox Data Team, posted on the OSM Community forum about their project to improve the representation of Indonesia’s road network in OpenStreetMap, such as adding roads, correcting alignments and missing links, correcting names, ensuring that road classifications are consistent, and other similar issues.
• The proposal to specify ordering-only phone number, SMS-only phone numbers, and related tags is open for voting until Monday 29 July.

Mapping campaigns

• Mateusz Konieczny has developed a website to cross-reference the AllThePlaces dataset with existing OpenStreetMap data to identify missing or outdated entries and improve the accuracy of locations such as shops and services. He also highlighted the importance of verifying data before importing it to ensure reliability.
• The UN Mappers blog reported on the completion of a project to fix disconnected roads in Somalia, thanking all the volunteers who participated in the MapRoulette challenge. The article describes the methodology used, the results achieved, and the issues faced during the project.

Community

• Anne-Karoline Distel blogged about her mapping of unrecorded burial grounds.
• Brazil Singh and his team have run a workshop, at Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh, providing practical and theoretical training in OpenStreetMap and Mapillary, engaging participants in hands-on mapping activities and discussions on geospatial technologies.
• Antonin Delpeuch described the experience of contributing to Organic Maps as a novice mobile application developer trying to add a feature to display the smoking status of places. Despite initial support, challenges included setting up the development environment, navigating the codebase, and dealing with project governance and code formatting guidelines. Ultimately, after mixed feedback and potential rejection of the feature, he decided not to continue contributing due to these difficulties.
• OpenStreetMap is celebrating its 20th anniversary, marking two decades of global, community-driven mapping. The platform has grown from a small UK-based project to a major provider of open source geospatial data, with tens of thousands of contributors worldwide. This website highlights key milestones, encourages participation in local celebrations, and invites contributors to sign a digital birthday card.
• ManuelB701 blogged about the various faux pas you can commit when mapping pavements.
• Michael Reichert is on his way from Karlsruhe to the SotM EU 2024 in Łódź by bike. He has shared updates and experiences from his journey on Mastodon.
• Jiří Eischmann discussed ► the importance of contributing to OpenStreetMap, highlighting its widespread use by several major platforms such as Apple Maps, TomTom, and Strava. They highlighted the impact of users’ contributions in improving map accuracy and explained how changes to OSM benefit many applications, even if the direct use of OSM isn’t always obvious. The post aims to encourage more people to contribute by outlining the different ways to get involved, from simple edits to more advanced mapping tasks.
• The UN Mapper of the Month for July is Sami Skhab, a Tunisian cartographer with extensive experience in GIS and remote sensing.
• Christoph Hormann reflected on twenty years of OpenStreetMap, examining how the project has evolved and diverged from its original ideals of local, community-driven mapping. Chris found that while there are trends towards large-scale data addition and organisational control, the core values of local knowledge sharing and egalitarian collaboration among contributors remain strong. He also discussed the potential for future changes in OSM’s structure and the importance of maintaining respect for its founding principles.
• Valerie Norton elaborated on mapping trails with the atv tag (for small wheeled vehicles) and how she decided on the tags to use for that.

Events

• Tobias Jordans has compiled English translations for some of the recent SOTM FR talks, which are now available with English subtitles.
• At the 16th ‘mapbox/OpenStreetMap Online Meetup’, held on Friday 19 July, ‘Team Anno’, led by Tokyo gubernatorial candidate Anno Takahiro, discussed ► the use of web maps in elections, in particular their innovative ‘Election Bulletin Board Map’. Hosted by Aoyama Gakuin University’s Furuhashi Laboratory and supported by Mapbox Japan, the event aimed to explore the future role and potential of digital maps in election campaigns and geospatial technologies.

Maps

• geoObserver discussed ► the history, current state and future trends of OpenStreetMap map design. They highlighted the importance of effective cartographic design in presenting OSM data, covering aspects such as colour schemes, symbols and interactive web maps. The discussion is based on three in-depth posts from Christoph Hormann’s blog, covering digital cartography, typography and data visualisation within the OSM community.

OSM in action

• Canadian software company Parallel 42 Systems has created a web app that helps users to visit street art in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. Motor City Murals provides walking directions that allow users to move at their own pace. Using Pytheas, an open source project dedicated to these types of tours, OpenRouteService, and self-collected data, Motor City Murals provides previews of murals as well as information on the artist and surrounding area. While visitors must be within a defined bounding box to receive routing, all of the map contents are available regardless of location.
• The Lucky Map tool, on the Yakumoin website, helps users determine auspicious directions and locations based on Nine Star Ki astrology, allowing them to search for shrines, temples, and other significant sites, while providing features for registering and customising personal points of interest.

Software

• [1] Thomas Skowron blogged about OpenStreetMap Calendar, software he started developing five years ago, which weeklyOSM includes in each issue (see below). Thank you and congratulations!
• Jake Coppinger has explored how urban intersections can be optimised for safety and efficiency through data analysis and innovative design. The project presents preliminary findings on traffic patterns, accident rates, and potential improvements. It also proposes solutions such as improved signal timing and redesigned layouts to reduce congestion and accidents (we reported earlier).
• David Larlet discussed the upcoming release of uMap 3, which includes key features such as real-time collaboration and remote data importers. These enhancements aim to improve map editing and data integration, and were supported by NLnet sponsorship and community feedback. The update also brings a new user documentation website and various interface improvements.
• Mapswipe is now available in your browser. You can check out the training deck on Google Presentations.
• The OSM WordPress plugin, which is currently under temporary review, had previously allowed users to view geotagged posts, create maps, and integrate geospatial data into WordPress sites.

Programming

• Luuk van der Meer’s presentation at useR! 2024 introduced the sfnetworks package for analysing OpenStreetMap (OSM)-based road networks using R. The package integrates spatial networks and provides tools for advanced spatial analysis.
• osm4vr, written by ctrlw, allows users to explore the world in virtual reality using OpenStreetMap data. The tool supports static and dynamic loading of OSM data, including building footprints and simple 3D structures, and uses the A-Frame framework for VR experiences. It allows users to fly around VR environments and includes a search function for locating places.

Releases

• The latest July release of Organic Maps introduced two major features funded by the NGI0 Entrust Fund: improved address lookup in the US using TIGER data and improved text rendering for various scripts including Devanagari, Arabic and Thai. Other updates included new fonts, improved map interaction and fixes for Android and iOS.
• The OSM Apps Catalog now supports Wikidata and, together with the OSM wiki and taginfo, over 1000 unique apps using OSM data are documented.
• GraphHopper has introduced a user-friendly update to its mapping service, ‘Route Planning Step-by-Step’, which allows walkers and cyclists to easily create and modify routes by right-clicking or long-pressing on the map to set start and end points and add additional locations. This update improved route customisation directly on desktop and mobile devices, making the planning process more intuitive and flexible.

Did you know …

• … FieldMaps provides two types of global edge-matched subnational boundaries datasets? The ‘Humanitarian’ dataset uses OCHA Common Operational Datasets and geoBoundaries, integrated with OpenStreetMap for edge matching, for humanitarian use. The ‘Open’ dataset uses only geoBoundaries for clear licensing; it is suitable for academic or commercial use, with the US Geological Survey used for edge matching. Both datasets require attribution and open access to derived works.
• … osm-api-js is a JavaScript/TypeScript wrapper for the OpenStreetMap API? It provides features such as automatic conversion of OSM XML to JSON, OAuth 2 authentication, and compatibility with both Node.js and browser environments. This library provides various methods to interact with OSM data, including access to features, changesets, user data and more, and aims to simplify the integration of OSM functionality into applications.
• … OpenCage provides educational content on geocoding, OpenStreetMap, open data and unique geographic facts, hosts monthly geo quizzes and promotes its geocoding API and related services on its Geothreads blog?

OSM in the media

• Simon Poole highlighted the redirection of Potlatch’s Wikipedia page to the general OpenStreetMap page, removing the article’s detailed content. This change will affect users looking for specific information about Potlatch. In addition, Tim Berners-Lee’s TED Talk highlighted the importance of open data and advocated for its global adoption and innovation potential, which resonates with the open data ethos of OpenStreetMap and its tools.

Other “geo” things

• Mark Litwintschik described an AI model that extracted over 280 million building footprints from high-resolution imagery across East Asia, using 100 TB of imagery from Google Earth. He explained his setup and analysis process, highlighting the accuracy and challenges of the dataset, and includes steps for using Python and DuckDB for data handling.
• A new machine learning framework developed by IIASA researchers forecasts global rooftop growth from 2020 to 2050, supporting sustainable energy planning and urban development. Using big data from millions of building footprints and other geospatial datasets, the study predicts a significant increase in rooftop area, particularly in emerging economies, highlighting the potential for rooftop solar.
• The EU’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) programme, which has funded the development of open source software, is at risk of being terminated ► according to an internal document. This possibility has raised concerns among developers, such as those at Framasoft, who rely on NGI for support. Despite the current uncertainty, the EU may rebrand the initiative as ‘Open Europe Stack’ under a new programme, albeit with reduced funding and increased bureaucracy. The decision will be formalised in 2025.
• OpenCage’s Mastodon #geoweirdness thread continued by focusing on the Lesser Antilles, having previously covered the Greater Antilles. The series looked at the unique and interesting geographical features of these Caribbean islands.
• Paul Knightly discussed the problems with Google Maps and other driving apps, following up on a New York Times op-ed that highlighted shortcomings in these apps, such as directing drivers to unsafe or inefficient routes (we reported earlier). The conversation highlighted the need for better map data and app functionality to improve the user experience and safety.
• Esri has integrated Overture Maps data into ArcGIS. This collaboration aims to improve data accuracy and support a variety of public and private sector applications, providing users with customisable map styles and new data themes.
• Radar imaging has revealed an accessible cave conduit beneath the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) on the Moon. The discovery, detailed in Nature Astronomy and reported by Gizmodo, suggests the presence of a stable lunar lava tube that could provide shelter for future lunar explorers. The radar data suggests that this cave is structurally sound and could provide protection from cosmic radiation, temperature extremes and micrometeorite impacts, making it a promising candidate for future human habitation on the Moon.
• Insidemap described ► a collaborative cultural project to document dry-stone dwellings in the Pyrenees region using the Wikipedra database, a cross-border initiative to catalogue these structures. The project uses various methods, including aerial photography and field verification, to map and preserve these historic structures, with plans to expand the data and improve public access through platforms such as uMap.
• Explore the new QGIS website, which went live on Friday 12 July.
• Bayerischer Rundfunk ► highlighted the security risks posed by the trade in location data, showing how detailed movement profiles of individuals, including military and intelligence personnel, can be reconstructed ► using data from smartphone apps. Their investigation reveals significant vulnerabilities, particularly for sensitive locations such as military bases, and highlighted the need for stricter regulations and awareness to prevent spying through commercially available data.
• TomTom and Microsoft have partnered ► to create AI-enabled smart maps, with the aim of improving navigation and geospatial services by integrating Microsoft’s AI technologies with TomTom’s map data to provide more accurate, responsive and intelligent mapping solutions for various applications.
• Sen Kushida discussed ► the historical significance of abandoned railway lines in Japan, highlighting their unique features and the renewed importance of rail freight due to the current shortage of truck and bus drivers.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Łódź	State of the Map Europe 2024		2024-07-18 – 2024-07-21
Preet Vihar Tehsil	10th OSM Delhi Mapping Meetup		2024-07-21
München	Mapathon @ TU Munich		2024-07-22
Richmond	MapRVA – Bike Lane Surveying & Mapping Meetup		2024-07-23
Stadtgebiet Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen		2024-07-22
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-07-24
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #61	✓	2024-07-23
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2024-07-25
Wien	72. Wiener OSM-Stammtisch		2024-07-25
Lübeck	144. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-07-25
Gambir	Mapping Talks: OpenSource WebGis dengan OpenStreetMap		2024-07-26
Bengaluru	GeoMeetup Bengaluru		2024-07-27
Potsdam	Radnetz Brandenburg Mapping Abend #8	✓	2024-07-30
Ondres	Panoramax Partie – Pays Basque Sud Landes		2024-07-31
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-07-31
Brazaville	State of the Map Congo		2024-08-01 – 2024-08-03
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-08-02
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #67		2024-08-05

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

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