Summary: this article shares the experience and learnings of migrating away from Kubernetes PodSecurityPolicy into Kyverno in the Wikimedia Toolforge platform.

Wikimedia Toolforge is a Platform-as-a-Service, built with Kubernetes, and maintained by the Wikimedia Cloud Services team (WMCS). It is completely free and open, and we welcome anyone to use it to build and host tools (bots, webservices, scheduled jobs, etc) in support of Wikimedia projects. 

We provide a set of platform-specific services, command line interfaces, and shortcuts to help in the task of setting up webservices, jobs, and stuff like building container images, or using databases. Using these interfaces makes the underlying Kubernetes system pretty much invisible to users. We also allow direct access to the Kubernetes API, and some advanced users do directly interact with it.

Each account has a Kubernetes namespace where they can freely deploy their workloads. We have a number of controls in place to ensure performance, stability, and fairness of the system, including quotas, RBAC permissions, and up until recently PodSecurityPolicies (PSP). At the time of this writing, we had around 3.500 Toolforge tool accounts in the system.
We early adopted PSP in 2019 as a way to make sure Pods had the correct runtime configuration. We needed Pods to stay within the safe boundaries of a set of pre-defined parameters. Back when we adopted PSP there was already the option to use 3rd party agents, like  OpenPolicyAgent Gatekeeper, but we decided not to invest in them, and went with a native, built-in mechanism instead.

In 2021 it was announced that the PSP mechanism would be deprecated, and removed in Kubernetes 1.25. Even though we had been warned years in advance, we did not prioritize the migration of PSP until we were in Kubernetes 1.24, and blocked, unable to upgrade forward without taking actions.

The WMCS team explored different alternatives for this migration, but eventually we decided to go with Kyverno as a replacement for PSP. And so with that decision it began the journey described in this blog post.

First, we needed a source code refactor for one of the key components of our Toolforge Kubernetes: maintain-kubeusers. This custom piece of software that we built in-house, contains the logic to fetch accounts from LDAP and do the necessary instrumentation on Kubernetes to accommodate each one: create namespace, RBAC, quota, a kubeconfig file, etc. With the refactor, we introduced a proper reconciliation loop, in a way that the software would have a notion of what needs to be done for each account, what would be missing, what to delete, upgrade, and so on. This would allow us to easily deploy new resources for each account, or iterate on their definitions. 

The initial version of the refactor had a number of problems, though. For one, the new version of maintain-kubeusers was doing more filesystem interaction than the previous version, resulting in a slow reconciliation loop over all the accounts. We used NFS as the underlying storage system for Toolforge, and it could be very slow because of reasons beyond this blog post. This was corrected in the next few days after the initial refactor rollout. A side note with an implementation detail: we stored a configmap on each account namespace with the state of each resource. Storing more state on this configmap was our solution to avoid additional NFS latency.

I initially estimated this refactor would take me a week to complete, but unfortunately it took me around three weeks instead. Previous to the refactor, there were several manual steps and cleanups required to be done when updating the definition of a resource. The process is now automated, more robust, performant, efficient and clean. So in my opinion it was worth it, even if it took more time than expected.

Then, we worked on the Kyverno policies themselves. Because we had a very particular PSP setting, in order to ease the transition, we tried to replicate their semantics on a 1:1 basis as much as possible. This involved things like transparent mutation of Pod resources, then validation. Additionally, we had one different PSP definition for each account, so we decided to create one different Kyverno namespaced policy resource for each account namespace — remember, we had 3.5k accounts.

We created a Kyverno policy template that we would then render and inject for each account.

For developing and testing all this, maintain-kubeusers and the Kyverno bits, we had a project called lima-kilo, which was a local Kubernetes setup replicating production Toolforge. This was used by each engineer in their laptop as a common development environment.

We had planned the migration from PSP to Kyverno policies in stages, like this:

1. update our internal template generators to make Pod security settings explicit
2. introduce Kyverno policies in Audit mode
3. see how the cluster would behave with them, and if we had any offending resources reported by the new policies, and correct them
4. modify Kyverno policies and set them in Enforce mode
5. drop PSP

In stage 1, we updated things like the toolforge-jobs-framework and tools-webservice.

In stage 2, when we deployed the 3.5k Kyverno policy resources, our production cluster died almost immediately. Surprise. All the monitoring went red, the Kubernetes apiserver became irresponsibe, and we were unable to perform any administrative actions in the Kubernetes control plane, or even the underlying virtual machines. All Toolforge users were impacted. This was a full scale outage that required the energy of the whole WMCS team to recover from. We temporarily disabled Kyverno until we could learn what had occurred.

This incident happened despite having tested before in lima-kilo and in another pre-production cluster we had, called Toolsbeta. But we had not tested that many policy resources. Clearly, this was something scale-related. After the incident, I went on and created 3.5k Kyverno policy resources on lima-kilo, and indeed I was able to reproduce the outage. We took a number of measures, corrected a few errors in our infrastructure,  reached out to the Kyverno upstream developers, asking for advice, and at the end we did the following to accommodate the setup to our needs.:

• corrected the external HAproxy kubernetes apiserver health checks, from checking just for open TCP ports, to actually checking the /healthz HTTP endpoint, which more accurately reflected the health of each k8s apiserver.
• having a more realistic development environment. In lima-kilo, we created a couple of helper scripts to create/delete 4000 policy resources, each on a different namespace.
• greatly over-provisioned memory in the Kubernetes control plane servers. This is, bigger memory in the base virtual machine hosting the control plane. Scaling the memory headroom of the apiserver would prevent it from running out of memory, and therefore crashing the whole system. We went from 8GB RAM per virtual machine to 32GB.  In our cluster, a single apiserver pod could eat 7GB of memory on a normal day, so having 8GB on the base virtual machine was clearly not enough. I also sent a patch proposal to Kyverno upstream documentation suggesting they clarify the additional memory pressure on the apiserver.
• corrected resource requests and limits of Kyverno, to more accurately describe our actual usage.
• increased the number of replicas of the Kyverno admission controller to 7, so admission requests could be handled more timely by Kyverno.

I have to admit, I was briefly tempted to drop Kyverno, and even stop pursuing using an external policy agent entirely, and write our own custom admission controller out of concerns over performance of this architecture. However, after applying all the measures listed above, the system became very stable, so we decided to move forward. The second attempt at deploying it all went through just fine. No outage this time 🙂

When we were in stage 4 we detected another bug. We had been following the Kubernetes upstream documentation for setting securityContext to the right values. In particular, we were enforcing the procMount to be set to the default value, which per the docs it was ‘DefaultProcMount’. However, that string is the name of the internal variable in the source code, whereas the actual default value is the string ‘Default’. This caused pods to be rightfully rejected by Kyverno while we figured the problem. We sent a patch upstream to fix this problem.

We finally had everything in place, reached stage 5, and we were able to disable PSP. We unloaded the PSP controller from the kubernetes apiserver, and deleted every individual PSP definition. Everything was very smooth in this last step of the migration.

This whole PSP project, including the maintain-kubeusers refactor, the outage, and all the different migration stages took roughly three months to complete.

For me there are a number of valuable reasons to learn from this project. For one, the scale is something to consider, and test, when evaluating a new architecture or software component. Not doing so can lead to service outages, or unexpectedly poor performances. This is in the first chapter of the SRE handbook, but we got a reminder the hard way 🙂

Debby Kurti is a professor of Computer Information Systems at Victor Valley College in Victorville, CA. She incorporated the Wikipedia assignment into her classroom for the first time in spring 2024.

1. This is your first time teaching with the Wikipedia assignment, and you knocked it out of the park! Why did you decide to incorporate the assignment into your course?

With nearly three decades of experience teaching Computer Information Systems and a background in linguistics, my focus has always been on exploring technology’s impact on communication, fostering creativity, facilitating knowledge sharing, and cultivating communities of practice across diverse contexts. The Wikipedia assignment seamlessly integrated into my curriculum, offering a real-world application using a resource I’m personally passionate about. After engaging with the Wiki Education team, I was convinced it was an opportunity I wanted to take advantage of. I am glad that I did!

2. How would you describe the power of Wikipedia in shaping people’s awareness and understanding of information?

When I was a kid, I had a set (or two) of encyclopedias that I would read just for fun (yes, I was THAT kid) or when I was curious about a subject. Wikipedia is a modern version of that, a first-line knowledge source that people go to when they wonder about something. It is usually the top search result when looking for information about someone. Wikipedia is more accessible than my old set of Britannicas because most people have a cell phone in their pockets and access to the internet. They can use that to find out what they need to, and want to, know. The power of Wikipedia lies in the credibility of the sources used to create the knowledgebase and in the transparency of the process where anyone can verify and validate the information presented.

3. What are your students’ top learning outcomes from this experience?

My students learned that they can be valuable contributors to the global knowledgebase and not just passive consumers of information. They learned project management skills and how to break a large project into attainable, measurable goals. Students learned what a reliable source looks like and how to make a case for notability in a professional and unbiased manner. They were equipped with knowledge and the ability to respond intelligently to the question ‘Why use Wikipedia?’. Most importantly, however, they gained the capacity to critically analyze the content they encounter, discerning its authenticity, truthfulness, and relevance.

Students also found inspiration in the chance to showcase influential figures who mirrored their own identities. Early in the semester a student shared her frustration with the lack of positive role models for her daughters. She felt disheartened by the narrow portrayals of Latinx individuals in mainstream media, often confined to stereotypes of crime or poverty. The Wikipedia project sparked her excitement as it directly addressed this issue close to her heart. As she immersed herself in her assigned biographies, her confidence grew, empowering her to reach out directly to her subjects. I believe that their responses affirmed her belief in her capacity to make a tangible impact, fostered a sense of empowerment, and provided validation in her ability to enact positive change for her community.

4. What are your biggest takeaways from teaching with Wikipedia?

This project confirmed what I already believed about Wikipedia and increased my level of respect for the resource by an order of magnitude. Because of my background in linguistics and CIS, I really enjoyed getting a “behind the scenes” look at how articles are created and the entire editorial process. I was extremely impressed with the Wiki Education team and the underlying process-oriented educational philosophy driving the organization. Honestly, in an era of standards-based, testing-focused, high-stakes learning environments, working with Wiki Education was a breath of fresh air. They put the focus squarely where I strongly believe it belongs – collaborative, open-source knowledge creation and sharing.  

5. Would you recommend the Wikipedia assignment to other post-secondary instructors? If so, why?

This is a cross-curricular project that has applications in any discipline and can be customized to any subject area. On a practical level, students will develop baseline digital literacy skills with a relevant outcome. They will learn how to find, validate, and use information to create content that informs others in a neutral and unbiased manner. Their work jumps outside the classroom walls and into the real world of readers and editors that will see what they do, add on to what they do, and maybe even edit what they do. They learn that no matter how hard they work, sometimes another editor sees something they missed and reverts their efforts pending more supporting evidence. The ability to participate in distributed work environments while collaborating with classmates and mentors is a valuable skill that will benefit students in very real ways in the world of work we find ourselves in today.

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

The four essays touch on foundational questions but also some very real problems that need to be looked at within the Wikimedia community if it comes to knowledge equity. One key aspect of this inward gaze is a deep reflection how to start this work with the communities that are silent (or silenced) at the centre – not just by them or for them.

Read the publication here

Knowledge equity is both an attractive and elusive concept. In our society, governed by meritocracy, knowledge is deemed of value, though with rates varying significantly: be it university education or street smarts. Knowledge is a non-exclusive resource; learning does not take it away from our peers or teachers. Often to the contrary, an act of learning can educate all involved.

Equity is surely a worthwhile endeavor in liberal democracy as it resonates with capital, investment, powerful people taking decisions with profit as their objective. Material profit can be an exclusive resource, often unevenly distributed. In a liberal economy it is considered a good thing, motivating its participants towards development and growth.

But what comes out of putting the two together: something that is intangible and something that is measurable, into one asset?

“Knowledge equity is based on a transformation. It is more than accepting others to the table – it is deciding that the table itself needs to be changed to accommodate all the people that should be sitting at it”

Wikimedia Movement, a nebula of volunteers, organisations, cultures, and languages that support and maintain Wikipedia, put knowledge equity on its banner. It is one of the values underpinning its 2030 Movement Strategy. Wikipedia defines knowledge equity as a concept referring to social change concerning both expanding what is valued as knowledge and seeking to include communities that may have been excluded from knowledge production and sharing through imbalanced structures of power and privilege. So, in fact knowledge equity is based on a transformation. It is more than simply accepting others to the table – it is deciding that the table itself needs to be changed to accommodate all the people that should be sitting at it. Maybe the people who didn’t mind the table as it always was, will now have less room. But thanks to the change, everyone will not only fit but also be comfortable participating. There will be no business as usual.

Flipping a table like that is not a change that many boardrooms with people in power would approve of. Not coincidentally do we engage with this metaphor: both knowledge and access are power. If we achieve equity in the boardroom for just one meeting but the next day all chairs are occupied as usual, we have failed. If we only half-open our Wikimedia projects, performatively include diversity in our documents, put beautiful values in our preambles, but do not dare to imagine what this power sharing should look like today and every day, we have failed. We have failed not only those who are silent at the table or very far away from it. We fail on the path to our vision of a world where every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

“Knowledge equity is, like any worthwhile value, a path to walk on, not merely a destination”

So how do we get to that task? Bringing more knowledge equity has conceptual, strategic, practical, and regulatory aspects, and more. Strategizing, conceptualising, planning, and finally doing – have no end: knowledge equity is, like any worthwhile value, a path to walk on, not merely a destination. This collection of four essays is a sample of this approach as seen by the four authors.

The essays touch on the foundational concepts of Wikipedia, such as objectivity of the editors and neutrality of the content. But neutrality and objectivity source from connectedness and joint human experience, argues Marie-Luise Guhl. Marie is rereading female philosophers and demonstrating that Hannah Arendt was, in fact, a Wikipedian at heart. Nikki Zeuner investigates the effort of collective work and refracts it through the geographical, economic, and racial lenses to point out when and how a fun spare-time activity of adding to the sum of human knowledge becomes free labour. Naphsica Papanicolaou tells a story of her volunteering in a refugee camp in Greece and reflects on the role that the Wikimedia Movement can play – in both on-the-ground activities supporting refugees in their journey from despair to a new life, and as an agent of systemic change in policies that is necessary to alleviate the migrant crises. Systemic change is also at the core of my proposal to the readers. In exploring European policymaking of the internet that so often prompts regulatory changes in other parts of the globe, I propose ways in which we can influence European policies to be less colour-blind and more responsive to the intersectional nature of problems that they are trying to solve.

This collection’s all-over-the-placeness in terms of topics and levels of reflection is, to us, the feature of our project. It is an invitation for our colleagues, friends, and allies to “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can” in imagining a more equitable world, enriched by various protocols and facets of knowledge. We are offering snapshots on what transforming the Wikimedia ecosystem into an equitable space could entail. Our hope is that these thoughts and proposals will be taken on and critiqued, nuanced, made better, and supplemented. This attempt should not be misinterpreted, though, as a self-serving exercise by four white women from Europe – we never intended for that. We simply start where we are, and use our platform, access, and resources to be of service to those who need to take a seat at the table.

Read “Paths to Knowledge Equity” here

Here is a report by Kumiko, a member of “edit Tango“.

(漱石の猫, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, ウィキメディア・コモンズ経由で)

30 June 2024. A rainy Sunday. The monthly meeting of “edit Tango” is in progress. The venue is Hikari Museum of Art in Kyotango City. We work on our own topics, discuss and help each other.

Sachiko, a member of Hikari Museum of Art, is working on a new article about a local picture book author Roto Tsuda. Canta is working on a new article Toteiran and more.

Tomorrow, 1 July, is the official opening day of the beaches in summer season. Light purple Toteiran wil be blooming very soon along the beaches.

（KENPEI, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, ウィキメディア・コモンズ経由で）

June 22, 2024, I (User:Asturio Cantabrio) participated in “Iseki de Wikipedia in Kusooki Remains” held in Fukui, Japan.

In addition to disseminating local information, this group also places importance on utilizing library materials. The organizers of this event are the Fukui Prefectural Library and the Fukui Prefectural Buried Cultural Property Research Center.

Schedule

The morning session was held at the Monju Community Center. After listening to a lecture on the Kusooki Remains from a curator at the Buried Cultural Properties Research Center, the participants walked around the remains while listening to the curator’s explanation.

In the afternoon, the participants moved to the Fukui Prefectural Library, where I (Asturio Cantabrio) gave a lecture on Wikipedia, after which we edited the Wikipedia article “Kusooki Remains” using excavation reports and other materials. The instructors on Wikipedia were myself and Soseki-no-Neko, both members of edit Tango.

Lecture on the Kusooki Remains

The Kusooki Remains has been excavated many times. The first excavation was conducted in the mid-1950s, followed by another in 1973 and the following year, and the most recent excavation was conducted in 2016 and the following year.

It was interesting to see how multiple excavations filled in gaps in time and allowed the flow of the ruins to become clear.

Wikipedia Town takes place somewhere in Japan almost every week.

While many events have been held with the theme of ancient tombs, the only event with the theme of older remains is thought to be the “2nd Wikipedia Town Morimachi Washinoki Remains Archive,” held in Mori town, Hokkaido in 2015.

Whether it’s an ancient tomb or a remains, a certain level of archaeological knowledge is required to write a comprehensive article. If the knowledge gap between participants is large, it becomes difficult for participants to collaborate. While ancient tombs often have huge structures, remains are not always visible even when we visit the site, which is probably why they have not been the subject of Wikipedia Town until now.

At this event, we listened to a lecture by a curator who actually carried out the excavation survey. Furthermore, walking around the site while listening to the curator’s explanations has also helped us edit Wikipedia.

Lecture on Wikipedia

In the afternoon, each participant went to the Fukui Prefectural Library and edited Wikipedia entries in the multipurpose hall.
First, I (Asturio Cantabrio) explained the features of Wikipedia and the significance of Wikipedia Town, and then the participants were divided into four groups to edit. PowerPoint slides used this time have been uploaded to SlideShare under the name “2024-06-22 Iseki de Wikipedia in Kusooki Remains“.

Literature research and Wikipedia editing

The Fukui Prefectural Library prepared the documents to be used in the Wikipedia edit in advance. The core documents were the research reports from the several excavation surveys, and the data sections of the “History of Fukui Prefecture” and “History of Fukui City.”

The participants divided into four groups to edit: “Geographical and Historical Environment,” “Remains and Artifacts,” “Excavation Survey,” and “Changes in the Site.” As a Wikipedia instructor, I (Asturio Cantabrio) was placed in the difficult “Remains and Artifacts” group, and Soseki-no-Neko was assigned to patrol the four groups and provide editing support.

Three hours later, “Kusooki Remains” article was completed, and it was hard to believe it was created from scratch. As a result of a vote to select the highest quality article from among the newly created articles, “Kusooki Remains” was posted on the Japanese Wikipedia main page from 11:00 PM on Tuesday, June 25th to 11:00 PM on Wednesday, June 26th.

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

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

________

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

Wikimedia Chile hosts first Global Wiki Advocacy Meet-Up to share information and strategies across the Wikimedia movement
[Read Wikimedia Chile’s blog post about the event and learn more on the event’s Meta-Wiki webpage]

From May 2–4, Wikimedia Chile hosted the first Global Wiki Advocacy Meet-Up, a gathering of Wikimedia affiliates who work on public policy, Global Advocacy team members, and digital rights activists dedicated to the defense and protection of open knowledge in the public sphere. The event was held in the framework of the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference in Santiago de Chile.

At the event, representatives from more than 20 countries met for three days to exchange public policy advocacy-related experiences and challenges, identify global trends and define priority issues, and to strengthen a network involved in these matters, with a particular emphasis on inclusion of the Global South.

As a part of the meet-up, Wikimedia Chile organized two side events. The first was a workshop aimed at journalists and communicators from Chile about Wikimedia tools and disinformation and was led by Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead). The second was a discussion on digital and media literacy attended by academics, journalists, and industry representatives.

This Wikimedia affiliate-hosted meet-up marks an exciting step toward greater collaboration around advocacy and public policy in the Wikimedia movement.

Read more about the outcomes in Wikimedia Chile’s blog post and about the event in general on its Meta-Wiki webpage. 

Participating in the 2024 General Assembly of Wikimedia Europe
[Read more about the General Assembly and Wikimedia Europe]

On 24–25 May, members of Wikimedia affiliates from across Europe met at the 2024 General Assembly of Wikimedia Europe (WMEU) to look back on what has been accomplished in the year since WMEU’s creation, to collaboratively decide and vote on the group’s future plans, and to connect with colleagues, new and old. Meeting right before the election of a new European Parliament, the time is ripe for WMEU to support European affiliates in advocating laws and policies that protect and advance the Wikimedia model.

Ziski Putz (Senior Movement Advocacy Manager) ran a workshop in which participants identified the most important public policy advocacy skills for Wikimedians, and generated ideas for how those skills could be shared across the Wikimedia movement so as to equip more community members to engage in advocacy and public policy in their countries and regions.

Discussing the Global Digital Compact with the United Nations at re:publica
[Watch the panel discussion and read about our open letter on the Global Digital Compact]

Throughout 27–29 May, re:publica brought together internet experts and enthusiasts to speak about and collaborate around the most pressing online issues today in Berlin, Germany. The conference theme this year was “Who cares?” and emphasized the perspective of stakeholders who are often ignored or forgotten in debates about internet progress and public policy.

Rebecca MacKinnon (Vice President of Global Advocacy) participated in a panel titled “Who cares about international digital policy?” with Renata Dwan, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, and Jens Matthias Lorentz, Head of Digital Politics and AI at the German Federal Foreign Office, which was moderated by internet governance scholar Jeanette Hoffmann. The panel discussion focused on the Global Digital Compact, a set of principles and commitments for internet governance worldwide that UN Member States are discussing and planning to approve later this year at the UN-hosted Summit of the Future.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia affiliates have been advocating commitments that protect free and open knowledge to be included in the Compact for some time now. Most recently, we co-authored an open letter that calls upon UN Member States to make sure the Compact embraces a positive vision for the internet’s future: one that supports and empowers diverse communities everywhere to build and operate free and open knowledge projects.

On the panel, Rebecca explained and reiterated our feedback on early drafts of the Compact, and emphasized the importance of including the voices of nonprofit, community-led platforms like the Wikimedia projects and others within the set of principles.

Watch Rebecca’s panel discussion, read about our open letter on the Global Digital Compact, and sign it if you are committed to preserving free, reliable, and open knowledge online.

Participating in the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference
[Read the conference outcomes and reflections]

During 9–10 May, the 2024 Civil Society Conference brought together senior UN system officials, prominent international civil society organizations, youth changemakers, academia, public opinion makers, and international media to discuss issues of global concern in Nairobi, Kenya.

The conference this year was an important venue for other discussions taking place before September’s Summit of the Future, which will result in several agreements, including a finalized Global Digital Compact. Arik Karani (Lead Communication Specialist, Community Resilience and Sustainability) attended the event to share the Foundation’s perspective as a member of civil society on these matters as well as to continue our advocacy around the Global Digital Compact.

For more information about the UN Civil Society Conference, read the conference outcomes and reflections.

Participating in Creative Commons’ Open Culture Strategic Workshop 
[Read more about the Open Culture Strategic Workshop and TAROC] 

On 22–23 May, Creative Commons organized a strategic workshop in Lisbon, Portugal to advance its Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC) initiative, which intends to support UNESCO in developing a positive, affirmative, and influential international normative instrument—in other words, a “recommendation”—enshrining the values, objectives, and mechanisms needed for open culture to flourish.

At this event, Amalia Toledo (Lead Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) joined roughly 50 other participants to create a roadmap toward the recommendation in question, which included mapping stakeholders and identifying opportunities to engage them.

You can learn more about the TAROC initiative here and read a recap of the event by Creative Commons here.

Speaking on AI governance with the Ministry of Digital in Malaysia at ESEAP 2024
[Read more about ESEAP 2024]

From 10–12 May, the East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (ESEAP) Conference 2024 gathered Wikimedia communities from across the region to discuss topics related to “Collaboration beyond the horizon” in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. This year’s conference was hosted by the Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia and Wikimedia East, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific (ESEAP) Regional Cooperation hub.

Rachel Arinii Judhistari (Lead Public Policy Specialist for Asia), spoke at two advocacy-related events. In a session titled “Imagining AI Governance in ESEAP: Malaysia Government Plan and Wikimedia Engagement,” Rachel joined Mandeep Singh, Advisor to the Minister of Digital in Malaysia, to speak about platform and AI governance in South Asia, and how Wikimedians can contribute to the ministry’s governance development processes. In another session, she joined a roundtable to share learnings from our first Global Wiki Advocacy Meet-up and to discuss the policy landscape in the ESEAP region.

For more details, read the ESEAP 2024 webpage.

Attending the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+20 and AI for Good Global Summit
[Read more about WSIS+20 outcomes and the AI for Good Global Summit]

Throughout 27–31 May, several UN agencies gathered stakeholders from across the globe at WSIS+20 to discuss the progress, challenges, and opportunities that have emerged in the twenty years since the original Summit, which set a framework for global digital cooperation in 2003. The framework laid out a vision to build people-centric, inclusive, and development-oriented information and knowledge societies. The event, which was held in Geneva, Switzerland, precedes the UN General Assembly’s twenty year review of WSIS.

Representing the Wikimedia Foundation, Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy & Advocacy Lead) attended several sessions focused on free expression, journalism, and multistakeholder participation in processes like the Global Digital Compact and forums like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). You can learn more about the outcomes of the event in this WSIS+20 summary.

While in Geneva, Ricky also attended the AI for Good Global Summit. This event was organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) along with 40 other UN agencies. The intention was to explore and promote uses of AI that advance Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and global development priorities like health, climate, gender, inclusive prosperity, and sustainable infrastructure.

For more information, watch recordings of the event and summaries of its outcomes on the AI for Good Global Summit website.

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

Shaping a positive and inclusive vision for the online information ecosystem at World Press Freedom Day panel
[Watch the event on YouTube]

As a part of a Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) event during UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day activities, Amalia Toledo (Lead Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean), joined a panel to discuss “Shaping a Positive and Inclusive Vision for the Online Information Ecosystem.” The panel was hosted by Derechos Digitales and featured opening remarks from Carmen Gonsalves, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Netherlands to Chile.

Amalia, along with participants from Access Now and Free Press for Eastern Europe, discussed regional trends, opportunities, and challenges with respect to information integrity and state-sponsored censorship, particularly during electoral periods. The outcomes from this event will be used to further inform the work of the FOC and its task forces on Trustworthy Information Online and on Internet Shutdowns.

You can watch the event on YouTube here.

Protecting Wikimedia’s people
(Work related to privacy and countering surveillance)

Section 702 of FISA’s unfortunate reauthorization
[Read our blog post about the renewal and expansion of Section 702]

Recently, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—a key part of the US laws that allow surveillance activities—was up for renewal. We have long been concerned with the US government’s mass surveillance of people’s online activities and how that violates their right to privacy. You may remember that we sued the National Security Agency (NSA) over their unconstitutional data collection practices.

As part of a coalition of like-minded individuals and organizations, we have advocated that US lawmakers modify and reduce the scope of Section 702 so that:

• Fewer people would be subject to the US’s secret spying,
• Intelligence agencies would have to provide notice of their surveillance to protect due process and increase accountability,
• It would be easier to bring legal challenges against unreasonable surveillance.

Unfortunately, instead of being reformed, the provision’s scope was actually expanded. It will come up for reauthorization again in 2026, and we will continue to advocate reforms. We ask those of you who live in the US to contact your representatives in Congress and ask them to reform FISA Section 702 to protect people’s privacy, and everyone else to oppose mass government surveillance where and whenever possible.

To learn more about the renewal and expansion of Section 702, read our blog post.

Announcements from our team

Join us at Wikimania 2024 in Katowice, Poland!
[View the program and register for Wikimania 2024; learn about the “Common(s) Cause” side event and fill out the interest form]

Wikimania 2024 is fast approaching! The 19th edition of Wikimania will be held in Katowice, Poland on 7–10 August. A partnership between Wikimedians of the Central and Eastern Europe region and the Wikimedia Foundation, the conference will host free knowledge leaders from around the world to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, build networks, and exchange ideas.

There will be plenty to do for those interested in public policy advocacy at Wikimania 2024. In the main program, the Global Advocacy team will be hosting three sessions, which are focused on: information integrity during elections, child rights, and stories of public policy work in the movement. On 6 August, the day before Wikimania kicks off, Wikimedia Europe and a group of open movement organizations that include Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, and the Open Future Foundation will host a day-long side event called “Common(s) Cause: Towards a shared advocacy strategy for the Knowledge Commons.” This event will bring parties interested in advocacy together to make connections and discuss how to improve collaboration around three topics: 1) legal and policy issues, 2) communication and global campaigns, and 3) community activation and sustainability. If you are interested in this event, please fill out the interest form.

Whether it is online or in-person, we’ll be excited to see you at Wikimania! Be quick and register now!

New Wiki Minute video explains why Wikipedia is different from social media platforms
[Watch the one-minute video and others in the series]

A new Wiki Minute video explains what makes Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects so different from social media platforms, from the fact that anyone can contribute to the content, to its community self-governance, and strong privacy protections. The Wiki Minute series features short, shareable videos that explain different aspects of how the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation work together to steward our free knowledge projects like Wikipedia.

This video makes clear how Wikipedia’s unique model sets it aside from social media platforms. The creation and curation of content on the platform is community-led, enjoying strong user privacy protections, keeping the site ad-free, and never selling user data. Most importantly, the video highlights that everyone can contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. As more regulations seek to target the potential social harms of large social media platforms, this video provides a (very!) brief answer as to why regulators should continue to consider the nonprofit, public interest Wikimedia model when drafting new laws—as well as an explanation about why the Wikimedia Foundation so staunchly protects the Wikimedia community’s ability to self-govern through in its public policy advocacy efforts.

Other videos in the series have explained concepts like who is in charge of content on Wikipedia, how Wikipedia protects the privacy of readers and volunteers, and how misinformation is addressed on Wikipedia. The videos are available in six different languages.

Watch this Wiki Minute video and others on YouTube, and please share them with those who might be interested.

________

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

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

Recent changes

• Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update. [1]
• Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis. [2]
• If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers. [3][4]
• Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months. [5]
• Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Mandailing (w:btm:) [6]

Problems

• Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor’s citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team. [7]

Future changes

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 2 weeks. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

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

As a Wikimedian, I understand the importance and impact of volunteerism. I know that the output of voluntarism is incredibly impressive and manifests in different aspects of societal life including community engagements to address social issues, the needs of marginalized people etc. Voluntarism also provides numerous opportunities for personal growth and development and could have a global impact like the Wikimedia Foundation. I am a language teacher and the head of studies Igbo Language and Culture at the Federal Government Boys College Abuja (FGBC), Nigeria. I championed the introduction of Wikipedia in several secondary schools and other educational institutions in Nigeria through different programs and projects. 

However, my capacity to volunteer was further tested when my school FGBC needed to establish and expand the library. New hands were needed. The school does not have enough trained librarians. The school asked for teachers who would wish to support in the library in addition to doing their assigned schedule of work. Again I volunteered. A short training was provided with the theme “Organization of School Library in the Digital Age: Strategies and Technologies”.

Making the transition from a language teacher to a librarian came with challenges but was interesting. Things like cataloging, information retrieval, accessioning, classification, Numbering, documentation, acquisition, and shelving. referencing and circulation were some of the new skills I acquired and had to apply on a day-to-day basis.  The transition was not just about acquiring new skills; it was a journey of self-discovery, personal growth, and transformation. It also enables me to connect with different students not just those in my classroom but helping them to seek and access relevant information including open educational resources..

One of the skills that helped me in my new role as a librarian is digital and information literacy skills and experiences I acquired because of the Wikimedia Foundation – having participated in several trainings and organized several projects. Wikimedians are well-trained and well-versed in digital curation, metadata management, a strong commitment to open access, online research tools, and, the principles of free knowledge. all of which are increasingly important in modern librarianship. My linguistic background and Wikimedia mentorship provided a unique perspective that enriched my approach to librarianship. Just as language is a tool for effective communication, so too is the library a gateway to open knowledge and connection. 

One of the first tasks we handled was organizing the library. The principal had earlier solicited for books to equip the library from the Federal Ministry of Education,  The ministry obliged and gave the school over 30,000 curriculum-related books. Since I volunteered to help set up the library, I and one of the selected teachers, sourced funds and renovated the library under the project I initiated called the “He Bay Friendly Space”, so the Library will be very friendly for students to make use of. I also designed a time classification of the subjects in the Library for easy access to the students.

After shelving over 7,033  books, we observed that the books were still many. With the permission of the school principal who suggested that the books be donated. We reached out to a group of schools, and teachers some of whom had earlier participated in the Reading Wikipedia in the classroom program. Over  11,000 books were donated to different schools. 

In appreciation, I was given a Letter of recommendation by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education and an Award of gratitude by The School Alumni Association.

I am looking forward to enjoying my new role as a Library support staff.

June was busy and fun! Just check all the things that happened.

Vodcast

WikiAfrica Hour had the theme: #36: Does the Wikimedia movement contribute to the SDGs? and I was a guest representing the user group. It went well in my opinion and I think it might be an inspiring episode for people who see it.

User group meeting

We had a good and productive meeting, and another member of the user group organized it. That was a lovely feeling. Minutes are published.

Affiliate health

The Affiliations Committee published new criteria for judging the health of the affiliates, and based on that I made a table to see how well Wikimedians for Sustainable Development meet them. The table makes it clear that we have some room for improvement, and makes it very actionable what we need to do.

Goals and strategy

One very concrete thing we are missing are measurable goals. So I started a page for us to collect them. When doing that, I thought it would be necessary to connect them to the movement strategy, and set up a strategy page for the user group to do that connection. Of course, both of these are just empty placeholders for now, but at least we have some concrete things for the agenda for our upcoming meetings.

Voting on the Movement Charter

The user group may vote on the adoption of the Movement Charter, so I started a page for our vote and got nominated as the person to submit it on the behalf of the user group.

Newsletter

I sent another monthly newsletter, and this one was full of stuff, both from the user group and from around the movement.

This is the first half of my sixth monthly report of my New Year’s resolutions.

For the third year in a row, the Wikimedia Foundation sponsored the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF). The milestone was marked not only by our largest ever presence at this Africa-focused conference, but also by it being the first time that the Foundation granted four Wikimedians scholarships to attend the event. Over 20 Wikimedians were present and participated at DRIF24, including local Wikimedians, scholarship recipients, and Foundation staff.

DRIF is an annual conference hosted by Paradigm Initiative. It is a space where digital policies in Africa are debated and shaped, and partnerships for action are formed. This year it was hosted in Accra, Ghana, and focused on fostering rights and inclusion in the digital age. The topic aligns closely both with our movement’s 2030 agenda and regional affiliates’ work to promote the inclusion of youth, women, and Indigenous languages online. Wikimedians participated in discussions on important topics, building on similar discussions at last year’s DRIF23 in Kenya. In conversation with partners like Women of Uganda Network, UNICEF Ghana, the Mozilla Foundation, and Article 19, Wikimedians shared learnings about preventing electoral disinformation, promoting access to education in offline environments with initiatives like the Kiwix4Schools project, and supporting the inclusion of women in online spaces. You can read more about Wikimedians’ sessions at DRIF24 in our previous blog post.

We spoke with the people who represented the Wikimedia community at DRIF: the booth organizers, speakers, and scholarship recipients. This blog post covers their experiences at the event, what they’re taking away from it, and why they think that supporting and presenting at regional conferences like DRIF is important. 

*          *          *

DRIF in retrospective: Questions and Answers with Wikimedians

1. What was your overall experience of DRIF?

Douglas Ssebaggala (Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda): “DRIF24 was an eye-opener to the vast opportunities and avenues for the Wikimedia Movement to collaborate and share knowledge with other organizations that have a similar vision. The conference also highlighted the key role that the Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Advocacy team needs to continue to play to ensure that such collaborations can happen now, and in the future.”

Justice Okai-Allotey (Wikimedia Ghana User Group): “As a newcomer to the conference, what stood out to me most was the closed-door discussion hosted by the Freedom Online Coalition: it was insightful in many ways and challenged us as Africans to be vigilant about our freedoms online, and the importance of being involved in conversations about these topics. I walked away with a sense of how important that proactive engagement is to streamline the safety of internet users. I look forward to further conversations about the Global Digital Compact and how we can prevent actions that seek to take away our internet freedoms.”

Nkem Osuigwe (Wikimedia User Group Nigeria): “DRIF24 provided the opportunity to learn how to expand digital inclusion in Africa so that no one is left behind. This is of great significance for the continent where many—because of gender or educational status—can be excluded from the digital economy, either intentionally or unintentionally. Attending the conference as a first-timer exposed me to the topic of gaps in digital literacy learning, and also to the possible role of African libraries as mass educators of digital rights that can pave the way to digital inclusion in the continent.”

Jael Serwaa Boateng (Open Foundation West Africa), Adjovi Essenam Fumey (Wikimedia Community User Group Sénégal), and Eugene Masiku (Open Foundation West Africa) shared that participating in DRIF was a chance to establish meaningful connections with other individuals from diverse backgrounds and a diversity of organizations in relation to discussions about the digital space, to learn more about the initiatives of other organizations in the open movement, and to connect with Wikimedians from across the continent. Eugene explained that for him, “the cherry on top was the social hour for Wikimedians that was hosted at the Open Foundation West Africa’s office. It was wonderful to connect with the Wikimedia community members who were in attendance.”

2. In what way do you think other DRIF attendees benefited from Wikimedians’ participation? What do you think they learned from you?

Ceslause Ogbonnaya (Igbo Wikimedians User Group): “It always makes me smile when I meet people who call us “ghost workers” because they don’t see the work that we do to add content to Wikipedia, but read our edits on Wikipedia. I enjoy letting them know that we are regular people, just like them, who chose to make a change by documenting free and open knowledge using the Wikimedia projects. In fact, I met someone who thought ‘only white people’’ edit Wikipedia. I was glad to correct that impression, and didn’t waste time introducing her to members from the Wikimedia community in Ghana once I learned that she was based in Accra.”

Jael: “Wikimedians’ participation ensured that other conference attendees learned about the role of open knowledge and free information in promoting digital rights and inclusion. We raised awareness about the Wikimedia movement’s commitment to democratizing access to knowledge and the various ways in which Wikimedia projects contribute to preserving cultural heritage and promoting education. Our emphasis on community-driven content creation and the importance of accurate, freely accessible information resonated with many participants.”

Douglas: “DRIF24 attendees learned about the importance of Wikimedians’ work and activities, especially how important the open source infrastructure and freely licensed content from the Wikimedia ecosystem and specific projects like Wikipedia are for the development of other digital tools like ChatGPT. Our participation was important to remind African thought leaders that Wikimedia projects are an essential source of reference for knowledge and content generation.”

Eugene: “During my interactions with other participants, I encountered a lot of misconceptions about Wikimedia projects, especially about Wikipedia. I was able to educate many individuals and clarify how Wikipedia as well as offline tools like Kiwix work. The booth also functioned as a central resource hub for anyone seeking information about the projects and the broader Wikimedia community.”

Essenam: “DRIF offered an opportunity to the Wikimedians who were present to raise awareness of Wikimedia projects. Each interaction was an opportunity to explain what we do, invite participants to contribute to the projects, and make it easier for them to find user groups in their country. Wikipedia and the other projects were presented as platforms on which anyone can safely contribute.”

3. What key lessons and insights will you be sharing back with your community?

Many Wikimedians recognized and highlighted the same key lessons. Here is what they emphasized: 

• Every Wikimedian and local user group or community plays an important role as members of civil society in shaping the direction of digital policy and advocating digital rights and inclusion. 
• Public policy advocacy should be an integral part of what Wikimedians do, irrespective of the focus of a given user group.
• Meeting other actors in the digital rights space—both those operating in specific west African countries and those operating across the region—is valuable. These contacts can become important partners for Wikimedians, supporting local events, becoming important contributors to Wikimedia projects, and joining as allies in shared public policy initiatives.

Essenam: “I am inspired to follow the standard that DRIF set when it came to the inclusion of people with disabilities.”

Jael: “I will be sharing the importance of advocating digital rights and the need to protect freedom of expression and access to information online (Wikimedians in Ghana could even come together to advocate freedom of panorama), and the value of cross-sector collaboration in addressing digital rights issues.”

Nkem: “Attending DRIF2024 helped me recognise the importance of getting the library staff in these areas equipped to lead their community members into an understanding of digital rights and security. The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) would take this forward and would create awareness about digital rights and inclusion in Africa’s library sector as well as equip information professionals within the sector on how to be advocates of digital rights and inclusion within their user communities.”

Justice: “Taking your digital security seriously was one of my highlights from DRIF24, especially in the context of approaching elections in Ghana and concerns about disinformation and other efforts at interference. We are also planning a newsletter for our community to share some of our learnings from the conference.”

4. If you could participate again next year, what would you present?

Essenam: “I’ll be highlighting the support and inclusion of minorities, while also proposing an edit-a-thon to allow interested participants to discover editing on Wikipedia and the other projects.”

Eugene: “I would speak about how Wikimedians contribute to the documentation and dissemination of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage.”

Ceslause: “I would love to present how African indigenous languages are being preserved in Wikimedia projects through the Africa Knowledge Initiative.”

Douglas: “I would have a group of Wikimedians present how we used insights from DRIF24 and the recent Global Advocacy meet-up in Chile to drive change. Ideally we would have a public policy advocacy milestone that we try to achieve by this point.”

Nkem: “There should be presentations from Wikimedians who work in the library sector to cover the intersections between digital access, digital literacy skills, social justice issues, and helping others add their voices and stories to Wikimedia projects. There is also a need to explore how the integration of open knowledge principles can drive digital inclusion and visibility for African knowledge.”

Justice: “I would provide an update on our freedom of panorama advocacy work in Ghana, and also speak about our collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation and other affiliates around the Global Digital Compact.”

*          *          *

The Foundation’s support of regional conferences like DRIF24 helps promote the larger ecosystem of digital rights activists and civil society organizations who advocate policy frameworks and regulations that support human rights on the internet.

At the same time, this convening creates a space for Wikimedians across the region to meet each other and expand their networks with key public policy partners in their respective countries. Open Foundation West Africa contributed to this by generously hosting a reception for all the attending Wikimedians to gather and connect.We look forward to continuing to help Wikimedians showcase their expertise and engage in important regional discussions to shape digital rights and access to free knowledge around the world!

The ESEAP Conference 2024 was held in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in May 2024, and three Wikimedians from Japan attended a regional conference for the first time. We got them together post-conference to share their experiences, learnings and reflections from their time at the ESEAP Conference.

What motivated you to attend the ESEAP Conference?

Wadakuramon, you started editing in March 2016 and published you book, “A 70-year-old Wikipedian talks about the charm of libraries” in 2023. Did you know about the ESEAP conference?

Wadakuramon: I didn’t know anything about the ESEAP Conference, I submitted my application for Poland (Wikimania 2024) in December, but in January, the day before the grant deadline, I was told about it and after thinking about it overnight, I decided to apply anyway, even though I had no experience, as I had also applied for Wikimania.

VZP10224, you are a long-time jawp administrator and attended the conference on behalf of the Wikimedians of Japan User Group, which he founded in 2023. Why did you join the ESEAP conference?

VZP10224: When the Universal Code of Conduct draft was being finalized, a staff member at the Foundation at the time spoke to the Japanese administrators, and I was shocked to learn that “a democratic process was in place to finalize things. I applied for the Wikimania Singapore scholarship last year as an individual but was not successful as I could not prepare well. I then joined the user group which later started, and when I mentioned about not being able to apply for the Wikimania Poland scholarship in time, the user group members told me about the ESEAP Conference, and so I applied for it.

Eugene Ormandy, as many Diff readers know, you are the founder of the Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda Uni Tokyo and Toumon Wikipedian Club, and was the first Japanese recipient of the Wikimedian of the Year (New Comer of the Year) at Wikimania 2023. Surprisingly, this was your first time attending the ESEAP conference!

Eugene Ormandy: I was originally not interested in the democratic process of the movement. In 2023, I participated in Wikimania in Singapore, but it was not because I actively volunteered to go, but only because the Wikimedia Foundation said, “You have been chosen as Wikimedian of the Year, and we will pay for your travel expenses”. However, as I learned many things at Wikimania, and started projects such as the Wikimedia Japan-Malaysia Friendship and the Wikimedia Japan-Turkey Friendship with the Wikimedians I met there, I became somewhat interested in international movements. Then, a friend of mine, who is an organizer of the ESEAP conference and a participant in the Japan-Malaysia Friendship project mentioned, “Why not come to the ESEAP conference if your schedule works!” and so I applied for a scholarship.

Wadakuramon: I was always very interested in Turkey, but I knew almost nothing about Malaysia. But when I joined the friendship projects that Eugene started and participated in the events such as the editathons, I built a good base of knowledge, and I became more and more interested in Malaysia leading up to the conference.

Eugene Ormandy: I’m very happy to hear that! 

What was your impression of the conference and what new ideas do you have for post-conference?

VZP10224: I thought it was going to be a technical conference, but I was surprised by all the meta discussions. I was impressed that the major policies of the ESEAP region were discussed in such a forum, and that these policies were then adopted as policies. Even as an administrator who has been working with various policies for many years, my impression of the Meta page was “There is so much information all jumbled together that it is hard to know what is written where.” And just the other day, I spoke with users who are actively engaged in outreach activities in Japan, but they also did not know much about global trends, so I believe the situation is similar for most Japanese wiki users. Therefore, I feel the strong importance of more widely sharing the way the Foundation works and how the policy process is balanced and compliant, and that Wikimedia’s policies are not decided by the top people at the foundation, and that each individual user can participate in the decision-making process. 

Eugene Ormandy: I agree with you that users should participate in governance, but I think there are probably many people who are puzzled by the idea of participating in governance, thinking that it is a hassle, somewhat tedious, or simply not really sure what it is. I used to feel the same way, and 40% of me still do. I became more interested in governance than I used to be because I was “pushed” in a sense to go to Wikimania after being selected as the “Wikimedian of the Year”. I felt that I had been invested by the Foundation, and so in order to make myself a good return on that investment, I spent the past year setting up international exchange projects and studying about governance. The ideal situation would be for volunteers to voluntarily get involved in the movement, and it is important to build this momentum. On the other hand, I think it would also be good to have some investment in “taking chances on those who have not raised their hands but have the potential to become the bearers.” 

Wadakuramon: Eugene’s word “investment” reminded me that the Wikimedia Foundation is nurturing people in this way, and that I am being nurtured by them, more than by the report writing (in addition to the conference itself). I read a lot about the Wikimedia Movement, not only to write the report, but because you can’t write a grant application without knowing about it. I feel that I am changing more and more in this way, and that I am living a completely different life than I did before last year.

VZP10224: My focus is how to bring the Japanese users who are only domestically focused, to the worldwide movement. At the Open Source Conference I attended after the ESEAP Conference, many engineers gathered and were interested in Wikidata, so I would like to use it as the gateway to introducing other Wikimedia projects. As an engineer myself, I would like to initially leverage the space of Open Source Conferences, but I would also like to think of ways to explain about the Wikimedia projects and the movement at various venues in Japan.

Wadakuramon: Speaking of Wikidata, I read in a Diff post that a person from Uzbekistan attended a Wikidata workshop in Turkey, and I thought “I have never heard of this in Japan, why isn’t there anything like this in Japan?” There are many things that can be learned by reading Diff, and as an individual user, I would like to write Diff and translate stories to be shared “from Japan to overseas”, and “from overseas to Japan”. I don’t belong to any group, but I just recently created a Diff Japanese version club on Facebook, and although it has only been around for a short time, I feel like I have found “a space I can call my own” where I can freely talk about what I am doing. For other plans, though the concrete plan is yet to be determined, the Library Fair is on my mind. 

Eugene Ormandy: Similar to Wikimania, my impression of the ESEAP conference was a “casual conference”. Personally, I enjoyed meeting new people as well as renewing old friendships with users I met at Wikimania the previous year. I also created a telegram group on Diff and East Asia with users I have become friends with, and I hope to do something new with these networks. Although I was very satisfied with the ESEAP conference, I felt that there were some points that could be improved in the future. Specifically, I would have liked to see more analysis of how ESEAP is connected to other regions and more introductions of practices.

Wadakuramon: What also surprised me was the great energy of Islamic culture. As well as the tradition that everyone can have fun without drinking alcohol, I was astonished by a group of about 10 people called Medan. I translated their Diff post after I returned from the conference, and they are very active. Also, there was a Wiki-Nusantara gathering that has continued from last year. Nusantara is the new capital of Indonesia, and I felt young energy when I learned that Wikimedians had been gathering to talk about it for some time. I thought it would be nice to have something like that in Japan.

Eugene Ormandy: I don’t think there are that many cases of 10 (active) Wikipedians getting together to do something in Japan. Reflecting on my own cases, when we do get together, it is usually 4 or 5 users, and even when we have an editathon, it is only 10 people.

VZP10224: I started with Wikipedia and have also seen and heard about community activities for other open source software, but I honestly feel that in Japan there is generally less awareness of the need for users to work together offline, and that there is a tendency to have negative feelings toward such activities. How did we celebrate Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary …?

Wadakuramon: It was online.

VZP10224: I think the year after next will be the 25th anniversary. It’s still ahead in time, but it would be great if we can celebrate it in some form, whether it’s an editathon or a local conference.

You gave the following presentations on the second day pf the conference in the “Community Spotlight: Japan” session. How was it and any challenges in presenting in English? 

• VZP10224: The report of questionnaire of Japanese Wikimedians 2023
• Wadakuramon: A 70-year-old Wikipedian talks about the charm of libraries
• Eugene Ormandy: Experiences of Wikimedian of the Year 2023 winners

Wadakuramon: There was technical trouble, but during the Q&A session, there were many substantive questions about the situation in Japan presented by VZP10224, and overall, everyone listened and asked questions.

Eugene Ormandy: The comments and questions regarding VZP10224’s presentation could mainly be grouped into two. The first was on the rarity of the survey.There have not been many such community-led, quantitative surveys of Wikimedians, so everyone was impressed. In particular, those in the Oceania region were surprised that such a detailed survey was conducted. The second was “Why don’t Japanese users participate in the global Wikimedia movement?” To this question, VZP10224 responded that “Japanese users highly value anonymity.”

VZP10224: It was nice to hear someone in Wadakuramon’s session say, “I will buy the book, I looked for it on Amazon”

Eugene Ormandy: Wadakuramon’s analysis of Wikipedia as a tool for lifelong education was unique, with nothing similar to be seen at the ESEAP conference and with its catchy title, I think it caught everyone’s interest. Also, after listening to Wadakuramon who long worked as a librarian, I heard comments like “Librarians can indeed make good Wikimedians!” There were several GLAM enthusiasts among the conference participants, so I think there were many aspects with which they could resonate. 

Wadakuramon: I was glad to see that some people wrote about my book in their participant reports. I met people who said they wanted to read the book, so even though it was something I had not expected to get into, I started to translate the book into English little by little, and posted the first chapter on Diff.

Eugene Ormandy: I introduced my activities in an a la carte style, so those who had some knowledge of the Wikimedia movement and my activities would have understood, but some people may have found it difficult to understand.

Wadakuramon: As for presenting in English, I had a little bit of experience at my previous job, but I thought I should practice because I was not good at it. Two weeks before the event, I practiced with my son, and he advised me that my English was fine, but remember to speak slowly and to introduce myself and my family at the beginning.

VZP10224: I think it’s important to share who you are before you start talking about the content. Although I couldn’t prepare much in advance this time, I was very grateful that everyone listened to me regardless, and this experience gave me new confidence. Next time I would like to follow Wadakuramon’s example and try to speak more smoothly in English.

Eugene Ormandy: I feel that presenting in English is a matter of “getting used to” 

Finally, what would you like to say to users who have not yet attended a Wikimedia Conference?

Enhance the security of your wiki with Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

We take security seriously at ProWiki. That's why we're excited to announce the release of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for your wiki. 2FA adds an extra layer of security to your account by requiring a second form of verification in addition to your password. This feature helps protect your account from unauthorized access, even if your password is compromised.

2FA is available for all users on ProWiki. To enable 2FA, go to your user preferences and click the "Manage" button next to "Two-Factor Authentication". You can then set up 2FA with an authenticator app like Google Authenticator or Authy by scanning the QR code or entering the secret key.

Administrators can mandate 2FA for users with elevated permissions or for all users via the MediaWiki admin panel.

20/06/2024-26/06/2024

Mapping

• Derick Rethans (@derickr@phpc.social) published the ‘Überterracer’ (uberterrace), a JOSM plugin, which allows you to draw a rectangle, and then quickly convert it to a row of terraced houses and at the same time add numbers to the generated buildings. He wrote about it back in 2015 in his blog and the code is available under the GNU General Public License.
• Trufi Association challenges you to find a 14-year-old with a bigger OpenStreetMap public transport footprint than Esneider Castro, their Volunteer of the Month.
• Hungerburg is asking for comments to deprecate the use of waterway=pressurised for anything that is not artificially built for hydropower uses.
• The proposal to introduce the prefix ordering: for order-only telephone numbers or SMS-only telephone numbers and its associated tags to improve the specificity of contact information will be open for voting from 8 July to 22 July.
• The vote to mark cycleway=opposite tags as deprecated has been concluded with 67 votes in favour, 0 against, and 0 abstentions.

Community

• Ashim Paudel shared his experiences as an Open Mapping Guru Validation member. He lists his newly gained insights from the programme and highlights the collaborative OSM community.
• Teachers at the GAL School in Cusco, Peru, are using open mapping tools to document and preserve the Andean tradition like ‘linderaje’ by merging technology with ancestral practices to enhance education and community identity through the Open Mapping for All programme.
• Teckids e.V., a non-profit organisation that aims to improve children’s digital literacy, does not recommend the use of OpenStreetMap for its community. As there is a terms of use clause that prohibits the use of OpenStreetMap services for children under 13 years old. They are currently planning to approach the OpenStreetMap Foundation in a coordinated effort to bring about change.
• Tobias Jordans reported that the talks from the OpenStreetMap State of the Map US 2024 are now on YouTube.
• Softgrow reported that they discovered a 9 year old way in OSM called ‘Scammell Lane’, but found no evidence for its name at the location. So they contacted the local council, City of Charles Sturt, and asked to erect signs – which they have.
• Valerie Norton blogged thoughts about proposing toilets:disposal=vault and explains its difference to toilets:disposal=pitlatrine.
• Volker Krause announced that the KDE Akademy 2024 will take place in a venue that has available OSM indoor mapping, thereby expanding the capabilities of the KDE conference companion app: Kongress.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• The OpenStreetMap Foundation announced how to become a candidate for the 2024 election, with self-nominations opening on 28 July and closing on 13 August. Candidates must have been members of the OSM Foundation for at least 180 days prior to the election and have to meet other eligibility requirements. The election will fill four board seats in October.

Events

• The OpenStreetMap Poland Association is pleased to invite all members of the OSM community to the State of the Map Europe 2024 conference, to be held in Łódź, Poland, from 18–21 July 2024. In addition to many interesting presentations and talks, it will be an opportunity to meet, discuss, and exchange experiences.
• OpenStreetMap foundation board member Sarah Hoffmann recently joined the 3rd annual UNMaps conference in Valencia, Spain, to present the OpenStreetMap project and participate in a panel discussion about crowd-sourced geodata.

Education

• IVIDES.org has signed a cooperation agreement with the Universidade Católica de Moçambique. As an initial activity, the institute held a workshop on collaborative mapping with OpenStreetMap for a group of young students who are taking the Master’s course in Geographic Information Systems. Raquel Dezidério Souto recorded this moment in her diary . The files are available in Portuguese.

OSM research

• Gustavo22soares, a member of a study group at the University of Brasília (UnB), is conducting a survey on the usability of OSM.org. There are two options for the questionnaire: MS Forms or Cryptpad. If you have any questions, you can refer to the post on the forum.

OSM in action

• [1] City Bus Manager has announced its full release on Steam, showcasing features where players build and manage their bus company using real world map data from OpenStreetMap, creating routes, and managing all aspects of their bus empire.
• Jakob Miksch reported on Mastodon that he is travelling to FOSS4G Europe and noticed the use of FOSS4G based software on the bus, specifically a Leaflet map using OpenStreetMap data.
• Sargassum Monitoring is a citizen science initiative that began in Mexico and monitors the occurrence of Sargassum sp. (species of brown algae) around the world and displays the photographs on an interactive map with uMap.

Software

• The new Mapillary iOS app, called ‘Mapillary 2.0’, features a complete redesign for improved usability, including a new home page, action cards for upload status, faster uploads and map filtering using OpenStreetMap data, making it easier for users to capture, and manage street-level imagery.
• Ilya Zverev announced that Level0 is now HTTPS-enabled with OAuth2 support and it’s running on a new fast server, thanks to the support of OpenCage. Other services, such as the image offset database, will also be migrated.
• NorthCrab’s #12 describes the near completion of new search functionality, the addition of four new contributors, and improvements like GPS trace visualisations and fixing the white grid lines bug.
• Development Seed celebrates a decade of OSMCha, highlighting its role in ensuring the quality of OpenStreetMap edits. The tool has evolved to integrate more tightly with mapping and validation processes, using AI/ML to improve detection of map vandalism and errors. Future plans include improving user interfaces, increasing community engagement, and expanding automated validation capabilities to maintain the high data standards of OpenStreetMap.

Programming

• Mohit Sindhwani explains how to use CSS filters to style OpenLayers maps, demonstrating techniques for creating different map views. These filters, including greyscale, brightness, and hue-rotate, can be applied to OpenStreetMap data to enhance visual presentations without requiring advanced design skills.
• Urban building and POI data from the Overture Maps Foundation can be downloaded using the overturemaps-py tool.

Releases

• OsmAPP has released version 1.4.0 which adds iD Tagging scheme for displaying
  properties, search by overpass, 3D terrain view, overlays support and more.
• Organic Maps has released a major June update that includes new OpenStreetMap data, street name announcements, iCloud syncing for iOS and GPX export for bookmarks and tracks, as well as various fixes and improvements across all platforms.
• TrickyFoxy has updated the “better-osm-org” user script, including features like QuickLook for changesets, hotkeys for navigation, filtering changesets, mass actions, and highlighting moderators and banned users.

Did you know …

• … that the Civis is a platform that records citizen science projects, based on eu-citizen.science, and that makes them available on an interactive map with OpenStreetMap?

Other “geo” things

• The popular speed camera app Blitzer.de has received a major update, adding a navigation feature provided by NUNAV that focuses on avoiding traffic jams using real-time data and OpenStreetMap, making it a potential alternative to Google Maps.
• PeopleForBikes’ 2024 City Ratings report highlights improvements in bicycle infrastructure in over 2,300 US cities, with improved OpenStreetMap data contributing significantly to better network connectivity and safety.
• OpenCage announces the start of a two-part series on Caribbean #geoweirdness, sharing unique and interesting geographical facts about the region.
• PLACE, a nonprofit organization founded by Peter Rabley, collects and publishes high-resolution aerial and street imagery to create detailed maps, particularly for developing countries.
• The E400 VTOL drone combines vertical take-off and fixed-wing performance with military-grade durability and a hefty price tag, making it a high-flying surveyor’s dream and a budget-conscious OpenStreetMap mapper’s nightmare.
• The interactive New York Times article of 3 June 2024 details the widespread destruction in Ukraine caused by the ongoing conflict, showing before-and-after satellite images, personal stories of affected residents and an analysis of the humanitarian impact.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2024-06-27
Lübeck	143. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-06-27
	OSM Nederland bijeenkomst (online)		2024-06-27
Lyon	SotM-FR 2024 – Lyon		2024-06-28 – 2024-06-30
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-06-28
The Municipal District of Portlaoise	Portlaoise Mapping Initiative		2024-06-29
中央区	マッピングパーティ in 北海道神宮		2024-06-30
Tartu linn	FOSS4G Europe 2024		2024-06-30 – 2024-07-07
Richmond	MapRVA Meetup		2024-07-02
	MapRoulette Community Meeting		2024-07-02
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon		2024-07-02
Berlin	OSM-Verkehrswende #60	✓	2024-07-02
Potsdam	Radnetz Brandenburg Mapping Abend #7	✓	2024-07-03
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2024-07-03
Dresden	Dresden – OSM Stammtisch		2024-07-04
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-07-05
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #66		2024-07-08
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-07-10
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-07-09
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-07-11
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-07-11
Bochum	Bochumer OSM Treffen		2024-07-10
Amsterdam	Maptime Amsterdam: Summertime Meetup		2024-07-11
Wildau	193. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2024-07-11
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-07-14
England	OSM UK Online Chat		2024-07-15

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 MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, TheFive, barefootstache, derFred, freyfogle, mcliquid, rtnf, tordans.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

^{[This is the third and the last one of the series of three diff blogs about NDEC Wikimedia Bootcamp 2024]}

One of our goals for the bootcamp is to create a safe space where all participants can freely express their thoughts and ideas. The depth of the questions and opinions from the participants assured us that we are on the right track! 

Here are a few of the many questions and opinions we received from the bootcamp’s participants and volunteers.

Questions

1. Why would someone work for Wikimedia? What can Wikipedia and its sister projects offer its contributors?

2. If the Wikimedia Foundation runs Wikimedia projects, how can we be the owner?

^{(Context: The 17th slide from the first workshop’s deck states that humankind is the owner of Wikipedia. While explaining the 19th slide from the same deck, the instructor mentioned that the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is the organization that hosts Wikipedia and its sister projects.)}

The copyright of the content on Wikimedia projects is held by the respective authors. Since anyone can contribute to Wikimedia following its policies, humankind is essentially the owner of Wikimedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is just the host. The more appropriate verb is “host” rather than “run”.

Think of the street in front of your home. The people of the country are the owners. But we need someone to take care of it – that someone is the government. The government is not the owner but the caretaker of public property. Similarly, humankind owns Wikimedia, and the Wikimedia Foundation is just the host.

3. As you compared the Wikimedia Foundation with a government, can we change the Wikimedia Foundation and choose anyone else as a host, like the government changes?

Interesting question indeed. The comparison of the Wikimedia Foundation to governments might become incompatible when you dive deeper into legal and other aspects. We used it just to provide a high-level idea of how things are.

While it’s theoretically possible to change the host, it would be a very long and complex process as the infrastructure isn’t set up with this in mind. The Wikimedia Foundation has supported the Wikimedia movement from the very beginning and also holds the Wikimedia trademarks. So, while it’s possible, it would be a very long shot to achieve this. 

4. Can’t Wikipedia take money from the big corporations in exchange for making their articles? 

^{(Context: While explaining the eighth slide from the deck of the first workshop, the instructor told them that Wikipedia or WMF doesn’t earn money. And in the 21st slide, the instructor says that donation is the only way we can get money for the movement)}

The answer is, No. Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation is a non profit. Wikipedia is valuable, because it doesn’t take money for content. If it did, corporations won’t agree to give money! A lot to think here!

Expressions

1. I had been working at the Notre Dame English Club’s specialized Wikimedia team for quite some time. When we first heard about the bootcamp, we were quite enthusiastic because we hadn’t had the opportunity to attend one ourselves, at least our one wasn’t so grand as the legacy. So we put our all into organizing skills in this bootcamp to ensure something for our juniors that we couldn’t experience. We all learned something new and gained an incredible amount of knowledge. This knowledge can be used to exclude all types of blunders while planning another bootcamp. We hope to organise another bootcamp next year with more participants, more smiles, more memories, and, most importantly, spreading the love for the open knowledge movement. – Ahnaf Tahmid Manan, Director of Communications, NDEC WERT (Ahnaf was a safety and hospitality volunteer during the 2024 edition of the bootcamp and later took the responsibility of the Director of Communications of the team)
2. When I learned about WERT’s 2022 bootcamp, I got excited. However, for several challenges, our batch’s bootcamp didn’t see light, we learnt the same thing in a different way and the program was also very confidential. Then, we promised to arrange the bootcamp for our next batch at any cost. This year, we planned to conduct the first session offline to make it more interactive. We encounter challenges, including financial, technical and strategic ones. We solved each of them and made this bootcamp the most successful one. It’s not the end; just the beginning of an epic where we will dive into the depths of Wikimedia. – Tausif Fuad, Director of Legal and Advocacy, NDEC WERT (Tausif was a safety and hospitality volunteer during the 2024 edition of the bootcamp and later took the responsibility of the Director of Legal and Advocacy of the team)
3. NDEC Wikimedia Bootcamp 2024 was a great experience for me. The first workshop opened a new world to me, a world of open knowledge, particularly Wikipedia. I found myself mesmerized when I got to know all the initiatives of the Wiki world. I soon found out how vast the Wiki world is. Thanks to NDEC WERT, I dived into the basics of editing a Wikipedia page in the following two workshops.
   The experience I gathered from the bootcamp is invaluable for me, as it was my first step into the world of Wikipedia and I wish to continue contributing to the movement. – A.R Tawfique Hasan, participant
4. Unlike most of the attendees of the Wikimedia Bootcamp arranged by NDEC WERT, I was not a newbie to Wikipedia. Rather, I was oblivious to the vastness of the Wikimedia movement, which was unlocked during the bootcamp. And it was really fun to attend the sessions with friends and meet our youthful facilitator. The edit challenge was also something special. In short, the bootcamp widened my views about Wikimedia projects and its spirit of open knowledge—by and for everyone. – Symoum Syfullah Priyo, participant
5. Cheers to the NDEC  Wikipedia Editorial and Research team for the outstanding “NDEC Wikimedia Bootcamp 2024.” Following the successes of previous bootcamps, this year’s event was equally impressive and informative. Our facilitator was exceptionally cooperative and insightful, guiding attendees through each step and addressing all concerns. While the sessions were highly informative, they occasionally felt lengthy and repetitive. Nevertheless, we gained valuable knowledge about Wikimedia and open knowledge. This bootcamp was immensely helpful, and we hope such initiatives continue to spread, raising awareness and participation in this field. – Sorbendu Deb Krish, participant
6. Wikimedia is an open source of knowledge that we can access free of cost. When I first heard about Wikimedia movement I didn’t even have a clue about it. A brief session with our mentor, one of the best Wikimedia trainers in the region, made me realize how lucky I am to get the chance to participate in the Wikimedia movement. The following day I registered and waited for a few days for the bootcamp. The first workshop was about knowing the basics of Wikimedia.  It cleared all of my questions. The second and third workshops were all about editing articles, categorizing images, errors, word mistakes, and many more. Overall, it was an amazing experience to participate in the movement. I would suggest everyone to participate in it. – Hridoy Chisim, participant
7. The experiences procured through this bootcamp have surpassed my expectations. It has endeared me with the opportunity to dive into the deeper domain of Wikimedia. The things that compel me most are that the organizers were very eager to help us out at any stake. And it was fun to work with them. It would be best provided that the online grooming sessions were taken offline through a multimedia projector to make the bootcamp more accessible to all. At the bottom, I eagerly want to pursue with the team to learn more about the free encyclopedia and hope this tiny starting will one day bring about a remarkable Wikimedia revolution throughout the country. – Md. Naim Molla, participant

This third diff was all about people—the individuals who keep the Wikimedia movement alive. We hope these amazing people will lead the team and the movement toward the ultimate goal: ensuring free knowledge for everyone.

_{About the author: Towhidul Islam is the former Director of Communications (2023-2024) of NDEC Wikipedia Editorial and Research Team and led the communication work during the NDEC Wikimedia Bootcamp 2024.}

This is the sixth and final blog post on the #LD42023 blog series on Diff. In this series, Silvia Gutiérrez and Giovanna Fontenelle (from the Culture and Heritage team at the Wikimedia Foundation) have put together the results of the collaborative session that sought to build a direct bridge between the Library-Wikidata community and WMF during the 2023 LD4 Conference on Linked Data. 

To start reading from the beginning, this is the link for the first publication. Every post describes at length the five Jamboard frames used in this workshop. This last one will address the fifth frame, which is part of the “future” section of the workshop. 

The goal of this last frame was to support the participants in gaining a deeper understanding of their collective aspirations and chart a course for the path ahead, especially after working on the previous frames: 

– What brought you to be a librarian who uses Wikidata?
– What GLAMs working with linked data on the Wikimedia projects do you know about?
– What tools or aspects of Wikidata are particularly useful for your work?
– What tools or aspects of Wikidata are particularly challenging or difficult for your work? 

Collaborative groups were formed to tackle three core ideas: Identifying what has worked well; pinpointing challenges; and formulating solutions using “I statements”, which are expressions of individual desires to help shape the community’s future. The example we used was “I would like to create a game to add structured data to Commons” – and some of the answers were even bolder than that! We also asked other participants, in this frame, to add emojis of “raised hands” (🙌) and hearts (❤️) to the ones they agreed and liked.

Analyzing the results of the statements, we can divide them into four categories: 1) ideas for others to accomplish; 2) Engaging with the community more; 3) actively creating a result; and 4) important remarks to take into account.”

1) Under the category we named “ideas for others to accomplish”, the suggestion was: “I would like someone else to create a carpentries style Wikidata for Libraries curriculum. (1 🙌).” This was interesting because they were talking about the Library Carpentry course, which is very well-known among librarians. In the meantime, someone else mentioned that, even though they hadn’t worked through it themselves, they knew the Library Carpentries had a Wikidata course in “conceptual” status. 

Another interesting aspect of that comment is how the Library Carpentry also has an OpenRefine course, which is a tool well-known by librarians and Wikimedians contributing to GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), that we mentioned in several of our posts in this series, and that is used to upload data to Wikidata. Recently, OpenRefine also developed a Wikimedia Commons extension, allowing users to upload files and add structured data to Wikimedia Commons’ images using the tool. As part of the development for this extension, OpenRefine has also conducted two courses: the WikiLearn course “OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons: the basics” (already available for anyone with a Wikimedia account) and a Train-the-Trainer course, in which the first task was to accomplish, precisely, the LC’s OpenRefine course.

2) In the “Engaging with the community more” category, we noticed that Librarians are really keen to find ways to connect, engage, and support each other in their exploration of Wikimedia and Libraries. There’s a strong desire to be part of a network of support and to use the space to gain and distribute more knowledge collaboratively. This was really clear by this comment: “I will explore the Wikiproject pages and be more proactive in the community around the items related to my projects—to be more confident ‘imposing’ my data model but also to make sure the model is a useful development of current work. (3 🙌)“. If you’re also interested in exploring WikiProjects here are some that might be relevant for you as a librarian:

• Books, which was formed to organize and promote quality coverage of non-fiction books on Wikipedia.
• Authority control, which aims to improve the quantity and quality of external identifiers present on Wikidata.
• PCC Wikidata Pilot, this project is overseen by the PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO, and its aim is to explore and assess the feasibility of utilizing Wikidata as a platform for identity management within the library and cultural heritage communities. 
• Archival Description, this project has three main objectives: to create the world’s most comprehensive high-quality database of archival and heritage collections, to represent archival structures within Wikidata, and to ensure the interlinking between archival finding aids and Wikidata. 
• Last but not least, LD4 (previously the Linked Data for Production project) goes beyond a WikiProject; it is now a community that meets regularly and discusses “linked data efforts in libraries”.

3) Connected to this idea of taking part in the community and creating a result, we came up with the “Actively creating a result” category with responses that show how librarians want to engage with others and create results not only for themselves, but to also fortify this community: “I can create small discrete datasets for my practice, and the practice of others (1 🙌)” and “I would like to create summer camps to learn Wikidata together (1 🙌).

4) Finally, we have the final category with the “important remarks to take into account”, which are talking about some specific problems and challenges of the space that need to be addressed soon:

• “I volunteer for SUCHO, and in our use of Wikidata for building datasets that allow us to do emergency web-archiving and to build emergency relationships with cultural heritage institutions in Ukraine, we encounter a lot of inconsistency in the use of “instance of” when it comes to institution types (“art museum” vs. “art gallery”, etc), the structure of administrative divisions, and in the English-language label for places or institutions that might use a Russian name or transliteration even for institutions that have Ukrainian names. (Just to name a few)”
• “Strongly agree on the learning curve to using these tools effectively. It’s hard to carve out the time to immerse yourself enough to feel comfortable (at least in my experience)”

Analyzing these comments, we noticed that the mission of Librarians is pretty evident in the way they show up and involve themselves with the Wikimedia/Wikidata communities. For Librarians, the idea of “knowledge as a service” is a prime directive and they really demonstrated this in this session, by not only looking for this space to gather more knowledge themselves and get better at their work activities, but also to help others and to create a better and safe space for learning via the usage and sharing of data. 

This is the end of our series! Do you want to read it from the beginning? Here’s the list of links to the previous posts:

1. #LD42023 I: The Future of Wikidata + Libraries (A Workshop)
2. #LD42023 II: Getting to Know Each Other, Librarians in the Wikidata World
3. #LD42023 III: The Examples, Libraries Using Wikidata
4. #LD42023 IV: Wikidata Tools everyone is talking about
5. #LD42023 V: Main Challenges of Wikidata for Librarians
6. #LD42023 VI: Imagining a Wikidata Future for Librarians, Together (this post!)👈

For the second consecutive year, the ‘Club Wikipedia’ improves the contents on science and innovation in Spanish Wikipedia, thanks to its organisers: the Fundación para el conocimiento madri+d and Wikimedia Spain, together with different universities in Madrid. During the last academic year 2023-2024, the Club Wikipedia was continued by the universities Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) and Complutense de Madrid (UCM) (specifically its Faculty of Veterinary Medicine).

The collaboration between the Fundación para el conocimiento madri+d and Wikimedia Spain is reflected in the execution of different activities and academic training throughout the academic year, aimed at creating and improving scientific content on Spanish Wikipedia, based on the model developed during the 2022-23 academic year.

Club Wikipedia Results: Science and Innovation

URJC

Under the tutelage of Professor José María García de Madariaga, the URJC developed a in-person workshop with its PhD students at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. The programme offered students a tour in four two-hour sessions of the keys that condition the processes of scientific communication in the digital era, and an exploration of some of the challenges that must be faced by any science professional who wants to communicate and disseminate science. The workshop was attended by a total of 17 students, eleven male and six female.

It should be noted that this activity is part of the annual programme of the UCC+I and has the collaboration of the Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) – Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

At the beginning of 2024, this university developed the course “Wikipedia in the classroom: Tools for teaching innovation”, aimed at teachers, in which 24 people participated (13 men and 11 women). The course was designed by Florencia Claes, professor and president of Wikimedia Spain, who also taught it, together with professor José María García de Madariaga. It lasted 10 hours divided into four synchronous meetings and an individual tutorial for each participant. The course offered training on Wikipedia and its free knowledge ecosystem from an educational perspective, with the aim of raising awareness of the possibilities that this tool for the collective construction of knowledge and memory offers for use as a resource for teaching innovation in projects with students.

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the UCM

On the other hand, the UCM Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, through its Scientific Dissemination and Transfer Unit (UdcVet), implemented in its Doctoral School (EDUCM) the course “Learning to disseminate and transfer scientific knowledge through Wikipedia”. The course lasted 10 hours, was taught online and involved a total of 16 students, 8 women and 8 men.

It was coordinated by the Faculty’s Vice-Dean for Research, Transfer and Library, María Arias, and was tutored by Eva Ramos and Rosa María García, together with Ana Casado from the UCM’s Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+I) and Florencia Claes; in addition to the support given by Rubén Ojeda, project manager at Wikimedia Spain.

The aim of this training activity was to raise the visibility of science in Spanish and increase the quality of the information available, as well as to improve users’ confidence in Wikipedia by publishing scientific terms that have been created by experts in the field.

How did the Club Wikipedia begin?

The collaboration between Wikimedia Spain and the Fundación para el conocimiento madri+d was born in 2021 with the educational project Madridmasd, based on the creation and design proposed by Florencia Claes.

Its main objective was to reverse the lack of content on science and innovation in Spanish on Wikipedia. This collaboration was carried out through the figure of the Itinerant Wikipedian, represented at the time by professors Elios Mendieta Rodríguez and Rafael Ruiz.

After the good results achieved during this first period, in spring 2022 the creation of Club Wikipedia was proposed for the academic year 2022-23, and thus, to continue the collaboration between both entities with the aim of further promoting the creation of scientific content on Spanish Wikipedia with the involvement of universities.

Club Wikipedia at universities

Accordingly, the development of Wikipedia Clubs was proposed in each university, led by one or more people from the same institution, previously trained by Wikimedia Spain. The aim was to involve students and teachers in an active and interdisciplinary way, leaving the classroom and opening it up to the rest of the university.

Thus began the development of each club. A total of four clubs were formed: one at the URJC, one at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) and two at the UCM (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the Faculty of Chemical Sciences).

At the UAM it was developed under the tutelage of Professor Concepción Torres Navas, supported by other people from the scientific culture unit, such as Rosa Alvarado and Iván Narváez. At the URJC, the tutoring was in charge of Professor José María García de Madariaga; while at the Faculty of Chemistry of the UCM, it was coordinated by Ángel Gutiérrez Alonso and Raquel Cortés Gil; and at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, it was coordinated by María Arias Álvarez, Rosa Mª García García and Eva Ramos Alonso.

Today we present our chat with the Trier Center for Digital Humanities, University of Trier, about their MiMoText project: an innovative initiative in the study of literary history. Focusing on the French Enlightenment novel, MiMoText (“mining and modeling text“) leverages advanced text-mining techniques to extract and model information from an array of sources, including 18th-century texts and contemporary research literature. MiMoText then uses Wikibase to integrate this varied data into a cohesive, multilingual knowledge base that’s linked to external resources such as Wikidata. In this interview, the team members share with us how MiMoText puts Wikibase to use enhancing data accessibility and interoperability (including performing federated queries across multiple databases) and discuss broader implications for the digital humanities.

Please provide us an overview of the MiMoText project and its objectives.

MiMoText is a research project in computational literary studies involving new ways to model and analyze literary history — specifically the French Enlightenment novel. It’s based on the idea of extracting relevant statements from a wide range of sources (such as bibliographic resources, primary texts from the 18th century, and current research literature) in order to build a shared knowledge network for literary history.

“MiMoText” is short for “mining and modeling text”; we use information-extraction and text-mining methods on our data to extract a large quantity of statements about authors and literary works. By modeling the data in the Linked Open Data paradigm, we link this heterogeneous information to form a common knowledge base, interconnected both internally and with external knowledge resources, particularly Wikidata.

Overview of the project structure with four research areas:
mining, modeling, legal aspects and infrastructure

How did you decide to use Wikibase for the MiMoTextBase? 

At the start of the project, we compared several tools for creating knowledge graphs, using open science principles in creating both the data provision and the infrastructure for the project. 

• First of all, we felt it was important to use free, open-source software that is user-friendly and has a committed community.
• We also found the ability to handle multilingual data persuasive; we wanted to integrate data from French novels as well as German scholarly literature and to make the data available in English. 
• Wikidata’s flexible data model seemed very useful for us in our attempt to reference complementary information gained from different source types and also to represent contradictory statements at the same time. We found quite convincing the complex but differentiated system provided for referencing and qualifying statements: “claims”. 
• Furthermore, the structure of the knowledge network in the Linked Open Data paradigm is closely linked to the query options. The SPARQL endpoint (the interface to the Wikibase Query Service) is very useful and offers some great possibilities such as the ability to store example queries, various query templates, etc. 
• Above all, however, we were excited about the built-in data visualization possibilities. The project would not have had the resources to develop such analysis and exploration options. 

We see the MiMoTextBase as part of the Wikibase ecosystem, which is constantly growing.  There were two very pleasing developments that we couldn’t have fully anticipated at the beginning of the project. In addition to the ability to link Wikibase instances, another important dimension is the current development of the tool suite: for example, we used OpenRefine for reconciliation, mapping text strings from our sources (e.g., places in novels) to Wikidata items.

A view of the MiMoTextBase within the Wikimedia Linked Open Data web.
Credit original visualization: Manuel Merz.

How does Wikibase enhance the interoperability of data in MiMoTextBase? What’s the role and significance of Wikibase features around multilingual labeling in your knowledge base? 

As outlined before, various methods in MiMoText combine and generate different statements from completely different types of sources. In total, the MiMoTextBase contains around 330,000 statements and is the place where everything gets integrated while remaining fully retraceable. All statements are referenced and linked to sources, specific data sets and methods. If you’re interested in how we generated statements about the themes, locations and styles of 18th century novels based on topic modeling, named entity recognition and stylometry (methods frequently used in the field of digital humanities), you can delve into the associated GitHub repositories.

Multilingual vocabularies were very important for the project’s aforementioned multilingual dimension, particularly for linking sources from different languages. These vocabularies are also part of our MiMoTextBase; if you find that interesting, you can access further information in the associated repository.

In MiMoTextBase you’ve enabled federated queries between your knowledge base and Wikidata. Could you explain what these are, and how you’re facilitating these queries?

We began with federation starting from our MiMoTextBase in the direction of Wikidata. The fundamental advantage of federation is that you don’t have to store data redundantly in several places but can make queries across several databases. These are called federated queries. To enable them, we matched the identifiers of our MiMoTextBase with Wikidata’s corresponding identifiers, such as “people” or “places”. In this way, by matching their names you can query authors’ birth dates, which we don’t store locally in the MiMoTextBase but which are available in Wikidata.

Federation between MiMoTextBase and Wikidata

We also matched the spatial identifiers, which means we can survey the locations of the novels, opening up the possibility of querying geocoordinates from Wikidata (example query). Furthermore, we can combine very different individual queries. For example, we can query which locations in novels are frequently linked to certain topics, such as travel.

An example of a federated query:
narrative locations of French novels 1751–1800 by theme

In addition to allowing MiMoText users to employ information from the huge Wikidata knowledge graph using federated queries, we’ve also recently enabled querying in the other direction. We imported into Wikidata a portion of our data that’s relevant to the public and linked it to our MiMoTextBase by means of the MiMoText ID, an external identifier that we proposed to Wikidata. Users seeking detailed information about Enlightenment novels can query it via the Wikidata Query Service as demonstrated in this example query. For deeper insight into the process as well as some more federated queries, take a look at our documentation. The following visualization gives a rough idea of the links between the two knowledge graphs.

Overview of links between MiMoTextBase and Wikidata

Could you describe the process of setting up your own SPARQL endpoint and its significance for your project?

The SPARQL endpoint is crucial. On the one hand, there is a SPARQL endpoint API suitable for advanced users who want to further process the data or the query results. On the other hand, we have the Wikibase Query Service interface which, as previously mentioned, offers numerous options and formats for exporting, analyzing and visualizing queries and their results. We find these options very useful, even for less experienced users, in exploring the data and recognizing patterns that confirm or contradict certain assumptions; the options also open up completely new perspectives. It’s vital to allocate enough time and human resources for the setup and operation of a Wikibase instance. For projects that have few resources available, a workable alternative might be the Wikibase cloud service. 

Were there challenges you encountered while working with Wikibase in the MiMoText project, and how did you address them?

We encountered a couple of challenges working with Wikibase. The various programming languages, frameworks and technical platforms and systems used in the Wikibase ecosystem entailed extra effort in customizing Wikibase with its various extensions. The documentation of the extensions and configuration options could have been more detailed in some cases. It does help that there is a lively community.

Two points may also be interesting for other projects. From today’s perspective, we would recommend installation using the Docker containers [known as Wikibase Suite]. Although some options are lacking, there is a great deal of simplification and a lot of built-in extensions. In addition, we spent a relatively large amount of time adapting our customized PyWikiBot;  from today’s perspective, we can say that QuickStatements, which we recommend, would have been sufficient for the vast majority of our import scenarios.

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

The project ran from 2019 to 2023 at the Trier Center for Digital Humanities (TCDH), located at the University of Trier. We are one of the oldest digital humanities centers in Germany and can guarantee the sustainable availability of the MiMoTextBase in the coming years. We also regard sharing a relevant selection of our data in Wikidata as an important step towards sustainability. Furthermore, although the MiMoTextBase was the first, it will certainly not be the last Wikibase created at the Trier Center for Digital Humanities. The MiMoText project modeled the quite specific domain of the French Enlightenment novel; now we are transferring this approach to the broader domain of the humanities. Our project LODinG (Linked Open Data in the Humanities, running from 2024 to 2028) collects, analyzes and models data in the Linked Open Data paradigm across several sub-projects on very different subject areas, such as lexicographic data on historical pandemics, wine labels, and medical-botanical knowledge from the early modern period.

In your view, what role could Wikibase play in the broader landscape of digital humanities research? How might projects in the field benefit from the Linked Open Data web?

There are several advantages to Wikibase and to the Linked Open Data web as a whole. We see a kind of bridging function in the fact that Linked Open Data can be generated and analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This bridging is particularly important for the digital humanities; we still see a lot of untapped potential in this field. Wikibase’s interface (as well as the tool suite with OpenRefine, for example, and tools such as QuickStatements) supports qualitative work with smaller data sets as well as quantitative work with larger data sets and many things in between.

Being able to work collaboratively is of course another great advantage. Wikidata’s status as the largest Wikibase instance makes it a kind of hub for linking humanities data across project boundaries. The more projects in this ecosystem that share the same infrastructure, the denser and more significant the whole knowledge graph becomes. Of course, federated queries are possible across different types of infrastructures (via RDF and SPARQL as W3C standards), but they’re made easier by a common basic data model since it is shared via Wikibase. Ideally, researchers could use data from very different projects via federation if they were linked together.

Of course, there are also many challenges. For example, the matching process is quite time-consuming, and federated queries require precise knowledge of the various databases’ data models to be queried. In order to overcome the hurdle of needing to know SPARQL, it was important for us to share our knowledge in various workshops. In addition, we created a comprehensive online tutorial that introduces the SPARQL query language with many illustrative examples from our Wikibase instance.

Thank you for your time and for the fascinating insights into your Wikibase project!

In this interview we heard from:

• Maria Hinzmann, MiMoText team coordinator (research area: modeling), Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Matthias Bremm, MiMoText team member (research area: infrastructure), Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Tinghui Duan, MiMoText team member (research area: mining, scholarly literature), Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Anne Klee, MiMoText team member (various research areas), Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Johanna Konstanciak, MiMoText team member (various research areas), Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Julia Röttgermann, MiMoText team member (research areas: mining, novels), Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Christof Schöch, MiMoText project lead and co-director of Trier Center for Digital Humanities
• Joëlle Weis, head of the research area Digital Literary and Cultural Studies, Trier Center for Digital Humanities

—I suppose you are an entomologist?—I said with a note of interrogation.

—Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name! A society may call itself an Entomological Society, but the man who arrogates such a broad title as that to himself, in the present state of science, is a pretender, sir, a dilettante, an impostor! No man can be truly called an entomologist, sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.

The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872) by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 

A collection of biographies with surprising gaps (ex. A.D. Imms)

The history of Indian interest in insects has been approached by many writers and there are several bits and pieces available in journals and various insights distributed across books. There are numerous ways of looking at how people viewed insects over time. One of these (cover picture on right) is a collection of biographies, some of which are uncited verbatim accounts from obituaries (and not even within quotation marks). This collation is by B.R. Subba Rao who also provides a few historical threads to tie together the biographies. Keeping Indian expectations in view, both Subba Rao and the agricultural entomologist M.A. Husain play to the crowd in their early histories. Husain wrote in pre-Independence times where there was a need for Indians to assert themselves before their colonial masters. They begin with mentions of insects in ancient Indian texts and as can be expected there are mentions of honey, shellac, bees, ants, and a few nuisance insects. Husain takes the fact that the term Satpada षट्पद or six-legs existed in the 1st century Amarakosa to make the claim that Indians were far ahead of time because Latreille's Hexapoda, the supposed analogy, was proposed only in 1825. Such one-upmanship (or quests for past superiority in the face of current backwardness?) misses the fact that science is not just about terms but  also about structures and one can only assume that these authors failed to find the development of such structures in the ancient texts that they examined. Cedric Dover, with his part-Indian and British ancestry, interestingly, also notes the Sanskrit literature but declares that he is not competent enough to examine the subject carefully. The identification of species in old texts also leave one wondering about the accuracy of translations. For instance K.N. Dave translates a verse from the Atharva-veda and suggests an early date for knowledge on shellac. Dave's work has been re-examined by an entomologist, Mahdihassan. Another organism known in ancient texts as the indragopa (Indra's cowherd) supposedly appears after the rains. Some Sanskrit scholars have, remarkably enough, identified it, with a confidence that no coccidologist ever had, as the cochineal insect (the species Dactylopius coccus is South American!), while others identify it as a lac insect, a firefly(!) or as Trombidium (red velvet mites) - the last for matching blood red colour mentioned in a text attributed to Susrutha. To be fair, ambiguities in translation are not limited to those dealing with Indian writing. Dikairon (Δικαιρον), supposedly a highly-valued and potent poison from India was mentioned in the work Indika by Ctesias 398 - 397 BC. One writer said it was the droppings of a bird. Valentine Ball thought it was derived from a scarab beetle. Jeffrey Lockwood claimed that it came from the rove beetles Paederus sp. And finally a Spanish scholar states that all this was a gross misunderstanding and that Dikairon was not a poison, and - believe it or not - was a masticated mix of betel leaves, arecanut, and lime! 

 

One gets a far more reliable idea of ancient knowledge and traditions from practitioners, forest dwellers, the traditional honey-harvesting tribes, and similar people that have been gathering materials such as shellac and beeswax. Unfortunately, many of these traditions and their practitioners are threatened by modern laws, economics, and cultural prejudice. These practitioners are being driven out of the forests where they live, and their knowledge was hardly ever captured in writing. The writers of the ancient Sanskrit texts were probably associated with temple-towns and other semi-urban clusters and it seems like the knowledge of forest dwellers was never considered merit-worthy by the book writing class of that period.

A more meaningful overview of entomology may be gained by reading and synthesizing a large number of historical bits, and there are a growing number of such pieces. A 1973 book published by the Annual Reviews Inc. should be of some interest. I have appended a selection of sources that are useful in piecing together a historic view of entomology in India. It helps however to have a broad skeleton on which to attach these bits and minutiae. Here, there are truly verbose and terminology-filled systems developed by historians of science (for example, see ANT). I prefer an approach that is free of a jargon overload or the need to cite French intellectuals. The growth of entomology can be examined along three lines - cataloguing - the collection of artefacts and the assignment of names, communication and vocabulary-building - social actions involving the formation of groups of interested people who work together building common structure with the aid of fixing records in journals often managed beyond individual lifetimes by scholarly societies, and pattern-finding a stage when hypotheses are made, and predictions tested. I like to think that anyone learning entomology also goes through these activities, often in this sequence. Professionalization makes it easier for people to get to the later stages. This process is aided by having comprehensive texts, keys, identification guides and manuals, systems of collections and curators. The skills involved in the production - ways to prepare specimens, observe, illustrate, or describe are often not captured by the books themselves and that is where institutions play (or ought to play) an important role.

Cataloguing

The cataloguing phase of knowledge gathering, especially of the (larger and more conspicuous) insect species of India grew rapidly thanks to the craze for natural history cabinets of the wealthy (made socially meritorious by the idea that appreciating the works of the Creator was as good as attending church)  in Britain and Europe and their ability to tap into networks of collectors working within the colonial enterprise. The cataloguing phase can be divided into the non-scientific cabinet-of-curiosity style especially followed before Darwin and the more scientific forms. The idea that insects could be preserved by drying and kept for reference by pinning, [See Barnard 2018] the system of binomial names, the idea of designating type specimens that could be inspected by anyone describing new species, the system of priority in assigning names were some of the innovations and cultural rules created to aid cataloguing. These rules were enforced by scholarly societies, their members (which would later lead to such things as codes of nomenclature suggested by rule makers like Strickland, now dealt with by committees that oversee the  ICZN Code) and their journals. It would be wrong to assume that the cataloguing phase is purely historic and no longer needed. It is a phase that is constantly involved in the creation of new knowledge. Labels, catalogues, and referencing whether in science or librarianship are essential for all subsequent work to be discovered and are essential to science based on building on the work of others, climbing the shoulders of giants to see further. Cataloguing was probably what the physicists derided as "stamp-collecting".

Communication and vocabulary building

The other phase involves social activities, the creation of specialist language, groups, and "culture". The methods and tools adopted by specialists also helps in producing associations and the identification of boundaries that could spawn new associations. The formation of groups of people based on interests is something that ethnographers and sociologists have examined in the context of science. Textbooks, taxonomic monographs, and major syntheses also help in building community - they make it possible for new entrants to rapidly move on to joining the earlier formed groups of experts. Whereas some of the early learned societies were spawned by people with wealth and leisure, some of the later societies have had other economic forces in their support.

Like species, interest groups too specialize and split to cover more specific niches, such as those that deal with applied areas such as agriculture, medicine, veterinary science and forensics. There can also be interest in behaviour, and evolution which, though having applications, are often do not find economic support.

Pattern finding

Eleanor Ormerod, an unexpected influence in the rise of economic entomology in India

The pattern finding phase when reached allows a field to become professional - with paid services offered by practitioners. It is the phase in which science flexes its muscle, specialists gain social status, and are able to make livelihoods out of their interest. Lefroy (1904) cites economic entomology in India as beginning with E.C. Cotes [Cotes' career in entomology was cut short by his marriage to the famous Canadian journalist Sara Duncan in 1889 and he shifted to writing] in the Indian Museum in 1888. But he surprisingly does not mention any earlier attempts, and one finds that Edward Balfour, that encyclopaedic-surgeon of Madras collated a list of insect pests in 1887 and drew inspiration from Eleanor Ormerod who hints at the idea of getting government support, noting that it would cost very little given that she herself worked with no remuneration to provide a service for agriculture in England. Her letters were also forwarded to the Secretary of State for India and it is quite possible that Cotes' appointment was a direct result.

As can be imagined, economics, society, and the way science is supported - royal patronage, family, state, "free markets", crowd-sourcing, or mixes of these - impact the way an individual or a field progresses. Entomology was among the first fields of zoology that managed to gain economic value with the possibility of paid employment. David Lack, who later became an influential ornithologist, was wisely guided by his father to pursue entomology as it was the only field of zoology with jobs. Lack however found his apprenticeship (in Germany, 1929!) involving pinning specimens "extremely boring".

Indian reflections on the history of entomology

Kunhikannan died at the rather young age of 47

A rather interesting analysis of Indian science is made by the first native Indian entomologist, with the official title of "entomologist" in the state of Mysore - K. Kunhikannan. Kunhikannan was deputed to pursue a Ph.D. at Stanford (for some unknown reason two pre-Independence Indian entomologists trained in Stanford rather than England - see postscript) through his superior Leslie Coleman. At Stanford, Kunhikannan gave a talk on Science in India. He noted in that 1923 talk :

In the field of natural sciences the Hindus did not make any progress. The classifications of animals and plants are very crude. It seems to me possible that this singular lack of interest in this branch of knowledge was due to the love of animal life. It is difficult for Westerners to realise how deep it is among Indians. The observant traveller will come across people trailing sugar as they walk along streets so that ants may have a supply, and there are priests in certain sects who veil that face while reading sacred books that they may avoid drawing in with their breath and killing any small unwary insects. [Note: Salim Ali expressed a similar view ]

He then examines science sponsored by state institutions, by universities and then by individuals. About the last he writes:

Though I deal with it last it is the first in importance. Under it has to be included all the work done by individuals who are not in Government employment or who being government servants devote their leisure hours to science. A number of missionaries come under this category. They have done considerable work mainly in the natural sciences. There are also medical men who devote their leisure hours to science. The discovery of the transmission of malaria was made not during the course of Government work. These men have not received much encouragement for research or reward for research, but they deserve the highest praise., European officials in other walks of life have made signal contributions to science. The fascinating volumes of E. H. Aitken and Douglas Dewar are the result of observations made in the field of natural history in the course of official duties. Men like these have formed themselves into an association, and a journal is published by the Bombay Natural History Association[sic], in which valuable observations are recorded from time to time. That publication has been running for over a quarter of a century, and its volumes are a mine of interesting information with regard to the natural history of India.

This then is a brief survey of the work done in India. As you will see it is very little, regard being had to the extent of the country and the size of her population. I have tried to explain why Indians' contribution is as yet so little, how education has been defective and how opportunities have been few. Men do not go after scientific research when reward is so little and facilities so few. But there are those who will say that science must be pursued for its own sake. That view is narrow and does not take into account the origin and course of scientific research. Men began to pursue science for the sake of material progress. The Arab alchemists started chemistry in the hope of discovering a method of making gold. So it has been all along and even now in the 20th century the cry is often heard that scientific research is pursued with too little regard for its immediate usefulness to man. The passion for science for its own sake has developed largely as a result of the enormous growth of each of the sciences beyond the grasp of individual minds so that a division between pure and applied science has become necessary. The charge therefore that Indians have failed to pursue science for its own sake is not justified. Science flourishes where the application of its results makes possible the advancement of the individual and the community as a whole. It requires a leisured class free from anxieties of obtaining livelihood or capable of appreciating the value of scientific work. Such a class does not exist in India. The leisured classes in India are not yet educated sufficiently to honour scientific men.

It is interesting that leisure is noted as important for scientific advance. Edward Balfour, also commented that Indians were "too close to subsistence to reflect accurately on their environment!"  (apparently in The Vydian and the Hakim, what do they know of medicine? (1875) which unfortunately is not available online)

Kunhikannan may be among the few Indian scientists who dabbled in cultural history, and political theorizing. He wrote two rather interesting books The West (1927) and A Civilization at Bay (1931, posthumously published) which defended Indian cultural norms while also suggesting areas for reform. While reading these works one has to remind oneself that he was working under Europeans and may not have been able to discuss such topics with many Indians. An anonymous writer who penned a  prefatory memoir of his life in his posthumously published book notes that he was reserved and had only a small number of people to talk to outside of his professional work. Kunhikannan came from the Thiyya community which initially preferred English rule to that of natives but changed their mind in later times. Kunhikannan's beliefs also appear to follow the same trend.

Entomologists meeting at Pusa in 1919 Third row: C.C. Ghosh (assistant entomologist), Ram Saran ("field man"), Gupta, P.V. Isaac, Y. Ramachandra Rao, Afzal Husain, Ojha, A. Haq Second row: M. Zaharuddin, C.S. Misra, D. Naoroji, Harchand Singh, G.R. Dutt (Personal Assistant to the Imperial Entomologist), E.S. David (Entomological Assistant, United Provinces), K. Kunhi Kannan, Ramrao S. Kasergode (Assistant Professor of Entomology, Poona), J.L.Khare (lecturer in entomology, Nagpur), T.N. Jhaveri (assistant entomologist, Bombay), V.G.Deshpande, R. Madhavan Pillai (Entomological Assistant, Travancore), Patel, Ahmad Mujtaba (head fieldman), P.C. Sen First row: Capt. Froilano de Mello, W Robertson-Brown (agricultural officer, NWFP), S. Higginbotham, C.M. Inglis, C.F.C. Beeson, Dr Lewis Henry Gough (entomologist in Egypt), Bainbrigge Fletcher, Bentley, Senior-White, T.V. Rama Krishna Ayyar, C.M. Hutchinson, Andrews, H.L.Dutt

Entomologists meeting at Pusa in 1923 Fifth row (standing) Mukerjee, G.D.Ojha, Bashir, Torabaz Khan, D.P. Singh Fourth row (standing) M.O.T. Iyengar (a malariologist), R.N. Singh, S. Sultan Ahmad, G.D. Misra, Sharma, Ahmad Mujtaba, Mohammad Shaffi Third row (standing) Rao Sahib Y Rama Chandra Rao, D Naoroji, G.R.Dutt, Rai Bahadur C.S. Misra, SCJ Bennett (bacteriologist, Muktesar), P.V. Isaac, T.M. Timoney, Harchand Singh, S.K.Sen Second row (seated) Mr M. Afzal Husain, Major RWG Hingston, Dr C F C Beeson, T. Bainbrigge Fletcher, P.B. Richards, J.T. Edwards, Major J.A. Sinton First row (seated) Rai Sahib PN Das (veterinary department Orissa), B B Bose, Ram Saran, R.V. Pillai, M.B. Menon, V.R. Phadke (veterinary college, Bombay)

Note: As usual, these notes are spin-offs from researching and writing Wikipedia entries. It is remarkable that even some people in high offices, such as P.V. Isaac, the last Imperial Entomologist, grandfather of noted writer Arundhati Roy, are largely unknown (except as the near-fictional Pappachi in Roy's God of Small Things)

Further reading

• Balfour, Edward (1887). The agricultural pests of India, and of eastern and southern Asia, vegetable and animal, injurious to man and his products. London: Bernard Quaritch.
• Ball, V. 1885. On the identification of the animals and plants of India which were known to early Greek authors. The Indian Antiquary. 14:274-287, 303-311, 334-341
• Barnard, Peter C. (2018). Bat-Fowlers, Pooters and Cyanide Jars: a Historical Overview of Insect Collecting and Preservation in MacGregor, A. (Ed.).  Naturalists in the Field . Brill.
• Clark, J.F.M. (2001). Bugs in the System: Insects, Agricultural Science, and Professional Aspirations in Britain, 1890-1920.  Agricultural History 75(1):83-114.
• Dave, K.N. (1950) Lac and the lac insect in the Atharva veda. Int Acad Ind Cult Nagpur, 16 pp. [Dave incidentally, is also the translator and interpreter of another problematic work on ornithological knowledge in ancient Indian literature] 
• Dover, Cedric (1922) Entomology in India. The Calcutta Review 3(2):336-349. [Dover makes a plea for greater funding for entomology: Like Magda, Queen of Sheba, whose devotion to Learning made her set out for Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Solomon, they have entered the domain of Science not with the object of any financial benefit to themselves but for their love of Knowledge. They have worked in the interests of Science alone, yet certain branches of their work has saved India millions of rupees, while other, have added large sums to her coffers. Is it not then up to the Government to improve the status of entomology in this country and to make it a more lucrative profession?  ]
  
• Essig, E.O. (1931) A history of entomology. New York: The Macmillan Company.
• Farber, P.L. (1976). The type-concept in zoology during the first half of the nineteenth century. Journal of the History of Biology 9(1):93–119.  
• Hewitt, C. Gordon (1916). A review of applied entomology in the British Empire. Annals of the Entomological Society of America. 9(1):1–33.
• Howard, L.O. (1930). A history of applied entomology (Somewhat Anecdotal). Smithsonian Institution. Publication 3065.
• Husain, Mohamad Afzal (1938). Entomology in India, past, present and future. Current Science 6(8):422-424. [This is a summary, for the full address see - Husain, M. Afzal (1939). "Entomology in India: Past, Present and Future."  Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Indian Science Congress, Calcutta, 1938. pp. 201–246]
• Lefroy, Maxwell (1904). Historical summary in Report of the Entomologist to the Government of India.
• Lienhard, S. (1978) On the meaning and use of the word indragopa. Indologica Taurinensia 6:177-188.
• Lockwood, J.A. (2012) Insects as weapons ofwar, terror, and torture. Annual Review of Entomology 57:205-227.
• Mahdihassan, S. (1986). Lac and its decolourization by orpiment as traced to Babylon. Indian Journal of History of Science 21(2):187-192.
• Melillo, E. D. (2013). Global Entomologies: Insects, Empires, and the “Synthetic Age” in World History. Past & Present, 223(1):233–270. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtt026
• Moses, S.T. (1925). Insect pests and some south Indian beliefs. Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society. 26(1):15-19.
  
• Rao, H. Srinivasa (1957) History of our knowledge of the Indian fauna through the ages. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 54:251-280.
• Rao, B.R. Subba (1983). Systematic entomology in India - past, present and future. Current Science 52(21):997-1000.
• Romero, D.B. (2007). El díkairon en la obra Indika de Ctesias de Cnido. Propuesta de identificación. Emerita 75(2):255-272.
• Roy, Rohan Deb (2017). Malarial Subjects. Cambridge University Press. [Open-Access]
• Roy, Rohan Deb (2013). Quinine, mosquitoes and empire: reassembling malaria in British India, 1890–1910, South Asian History and Culture, 4(1):65-86. doi:10.1080/19472498.2012.750457
• Service, M. W. (1978). Review Article1: A Short History of Early Medical Entomology. Journal of Medical Entomology, 14(6):603–626. doi:10.1093/jmedent/14.6.603 
• Smith, Ray F.; Mittler, T.E.; Smith, Carroll N. (1973). History of Entomology. Annual Reviews Inc. ISBN 0824321017.
• Sorensen, Conner (1988). The Rise of Government Sponsored Applied Entomology, 1840-1870. Agricultural History 62(2):98-115. 
• Sutter, P. S. (2007). Nature’s Agents or Agents of Empire? Isis, 98(4):724–754.

An index to entomologists who worked in India or described a significant number of species from India - with links to Wikipedia (where possible - the gap in coverage of entomologists in general is large)
(woefully incomplete - feel free to let me know of additional candidates)

Carl Linnaeus - Johan Christian Fabricius - Edward Donovan - John Gerard Koenig - John Obadiah Westwood - Frederick William Hope - George Alexander James Rothney - Thomas de Grey Walsingham - Henry John Elwes - Victor Motschulsky - Charles Swinhoe - John William Yerbury - Edward Yerbury Watson - Peter Cameron - Charles George Nurse - H.C. Tytler - Arthur Henry Eyre Mosse - W.H. Evans - Frederic Moore - John Henry Leech - Charles Augustus de Niceville - Thomas Nelson Annandale - R.C. Wroughton -  T.R.D. Bell - Francis Buchanan-Hamilton - James Wood-Mason - Frederic Charles Fraser  - R.W. Hingston - Auguste Forel - James Davidson - E.H. Aitken -  O.C. Ollenbach - Frank Hannyngton - Martin Ephraim Mosley - Hamilton J. Druce  - Thomas Vincent Campbell - Gilbert Edward James Nixon - Malcolm Cameron - G.F. Hampson - Martin Jacoby - W.F. Kirby - W.L. Distant -  C.T. Bingham - G.J. Arrow - Claude Morley - Malcolm Burr - Samarendra Maulik - Guy Marshall

 

Edward Percy Stebbing - T.B. Fletcher - Edward Ernest Green - E.C. Cotes - Harold Maxwell Lefroy - Frank Milburn Howlett - S.R. Christophers - Leslie C. Coleman - T.V. Ramakrishna Ayyar - Yelsetti Ramachandra Rao - Magadi Puttarudriah - Hem Singh Pruthi - Shyam Sunder Lal Pradhan - James Molesworth Gardner - Vakittur Prabhakar Rao - D.N. Raychoudhary - C.F.W. Muesebeck  - Mithan Lal Roonwal - Ennapadam Sundara Narayanan - M.S. Mani - T.N. Ananthakrishnan - Muhammad Afzal Husain

Not included by Rao -   F.H. Gravely - P.V. Isaac - M. Afzal Husain - A.D. Imms - C.F.C. Beeson

 - C. Brooke Worth - Kumar Krishna - M.O.T. Iyengar - K. Kunhikannan - Cedric Dover

PS: Thanks to Prof C.A. Viraktamath, I became aware of a new book-  Gunathilagaraj, K.; Chitra, N.; Kuttalam, S.; Ramaraju, K. (2018). Dr. T.V. Ramakrishna Ayyar: The Entomologist. Coimbatore: Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. - this suggests that TVRA went to Stanford at the suggestion of Kunhikannan.

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

26 June 2024 —In the last week, there has been media coverage regarding a decision by Wikipedia’s volunteer community on the reliability of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an encyclopedic source in specific subject areas. In an effort to correct inaccuracies in some of this coverage and promote better understanding of how Wikipedia works, the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia, has issued the following statement. 

Several media reports have incorrectly implied that the ADL is no longer considered a reliable source on Wikipedia. The ADL remains a generally reliable source on Wikipedia, outside of the topic of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Wikipedia’s volunteer-led processes seek to ensure that neutral, reliable information is available for all. The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that supports Wikipedia’s global communities: it does not write, edit, or determine what content is included on Wikipedia or how that content is maintained. As such, the Foundation was not involved in the volunteer-community decision about the ADL. This independent relationship is crucial to ensuring Wikipedia remains neutral and free from institutional bias. The Foundation has not, and does not, intervene in decisions made by the community about the classification of a source. 

On 6 April 2024, Wikipedia volunteers began open discussions about the Anti-Defamation League as a source for information on Wikipedia. Over a two month period, more than 120 Wikipedia volunteers participated across three separate discussions. Such discussions are a routine process conducted by Wikipedia’s volunteers to determine if a source is reliable under the encyclopedia’s guidelines for use generally or in a given topic area. Volunteer discussions are grounded in the wider media and research ecosystem to assess a particular source; that means fact-based reporting from secondary sources is used to evaluate reliability, rather than opinion-based debates. 

Volunteers have closed the current discussions that started in April. They have thoughtfully laid out the reason for the three decisions, and have indicated, as always, that consensus can change with new facts and information. 

As stated above, the result of these community processes was that the ADL remains a reliable source on Wikipedia, outside of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Volunteers arrived at a consensus that the ADL can generally be cited on the topic of antisemitism, with some exceptions. As of this writing, for example, the Wikipedia article on Antisemitism includes citations to the ADL. It was also decided that the ADL’s hate symbols database can be cited, with some considerations.

Consistent with their principles of transparency, Wikipedia volunteers’ thousands of words and range of perspectives are visible for anyone interested to view, and their decision clearly summarizes the considerations that went into the process. This review was conducted through Wikipedia’s ‘Requests for comment‘ process, one of several processes through which content policy decisions are made through public community discussions to reach consensus. ‘Requests for comment’ are fully transparent and open to the public to view.  They are based on the quality and logical soundness of the participants’ comments, regardless of their background or identity.

Volunteers also follow well-established guidelines that ensure sources, and their coverage of specific topic areas, are regularly evaluated and continue to meet the site’s requirements to be considered a reliable source on Wikipedia. Reliable sources are those publications that have a reputation for fact checking and accuracy, among other criteria. Hundreds of sources are listed on the list of perennial sources, and thousands more have been discussed on the reliable sources noticeboard without being listed. If consensus changes in the future, the decisions are updated to reflect those changes.

This entire process of content moderation by Wikipedia volunteers is open, transparent, and publicly available on an article’s history and talk pages. Anyone can join Wikipedia as a volunteer. 

For more information on how Wikipedia works, you can watch the following videos:

• How does Wikipedia work?
• Can you trust what’s on Wikipedia?
• How does Wikipedia protect readers’ privacy?
• What does the Wikimedia Foundation do?

See this FAQ to learn more about volunteer processes on reliable sources:

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.

The post Wikimedia Foundation statement on volunteer processes on reliable sources appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Sophia Janssens was shocked when she first discovered how little information the Black women in American law Wikipedia article provided to its readers. As a Black woman and future law student, she was instantly drawn to improving the article, knowing that its content barely scratched the surface of the topic.

Confident that there must be more sources about Black women lawyers in the United States, the Brown University rising sophomore set out to include new stories in the article to combat the possibility of misinformation – when an incomplete narrative leads readers to fill in the missing pieces with their own assumptions and preconceived biases. 

“Narratives about social movements in history tend to center either male leaders or white women leaders,” said Janssens, who plans to double major in Environmental Studies and International and Public Affairs. “They are framed in a way that makes it seem like Black women did not play a role.”

Janssens significantly expanded the article by adding over 2,000 words and 18 references, providing readers a more comprehensive understanding of the role of Black women in U.S. legal history.

Her enhancements included the development of two robust new sections on history of the topic in the 1940s to early 1960s and the late 1960s to 1970s, as well as new content for the article’s existing sections. Most notably, Janssens expanded the sections covering the 1870s to 1930s and scholarship on Black women in the legal profession, transforming them from brief mentions into much more informative summaries. 

“I wanted to emphasize the strength and resilience of Black women lawyers throughout history,” explained Janssens. “They faced many obstacles to gain a seat at the table, so I wanted to make sure their work was visible and that their contributions did not go unnoticed.”

While unsure of exactly what type of lawyer she’d like to be one day, Janssens underscored the strong connection between her future legal career goals and the competencies gained during her Wikipedia assignment, including the writing and digital literacy skills needed to edit the online encyclopedia.

“Writing a Wikipedia article requires you to be very judicious about what information to include,” Janssens noted. “I wanted my writing to be well-formed but also accessible to anyone who might come across the article on Wikipedia. Identifying the most important information and conveying it in a clear manner will be helpful for me in a future career in law.”

Overall, Janssens found editing Wikipedia to be user-friendly, noting the pleasure of creating citations.

“I think editing Wikipedia was quite fun!” she reflected. “The ability to easily create citations was very helpful throughout the writing process. I love how they automatically generate in the ‘References’ section at the bottom of the article!”

This spring, Janssens and her classmates added nearly 33,000 words and over 300 references to Wikipedia articles as part of historian Mack Scott’s course “This is America”, which focused on people and events often marginalized or forgotten in American history. During the weeks of the course alone, their collective work on Wikipedia was viewed 237,000 times. 

“I felt a level of pressure working on this assignment that I don’t feel with traditional assignments,” said Janssens. “I felt like I had to make it really good so that it would be perceived well by readers and other Wikipedia users.”

Janssens hopes others will also feel compelled to enhance content on Wikipedia, including the article she herself improved.

“I think it would be cool if other people contributed to the article, as well!” said Janssens. “I like that Wikipedia is collaborative in that way.”

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

Jun 24, 20:48 UTC
Resolved - This incident has been resolved.

Jun 24, 20:28 UTC
Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

Jun 24, 20:12 UTC
Investigating - We are currently investigating this issue.

Sponsored by the WITH Foundation and hosted by Wiki Education throughout the past year, five Wiki Scientists courses and one editing workshop brought the expertise and lived experiences of 46 scholars and self-advocates of healthcare and adult disabilities to Wikipedia. The professional development courses supported enhancements to 88 Wikipedia articles that have since been viewed 1.23 million times.

Motivated by her lifelong interest and focus on reproductive health and justice, course participant Paula A. Hillard, MD valued the unique learning opportunity to bring her knowledge to the public through the open-access encyclopedia.

“I loved the encouragement and support in my ventures into editing Wikipedia,” said Hillard, a pediatric and adolescent gynecology specialist at Stanford Children’s Health and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. “In the medical field in particular, many Wikipedia articles need updating. As a physician, I know that many individuals use Wikipedia as one of their online sources of medical information, so the articles must be medically accurate as well as inclusive.”

While previously unfamiliar with the WITH Foundation, Hillard immediately connected with the goals of the organization and eagerly jumped into editing.

“When I read what the [WITH] acronym stands for, ‘Working for Inclusive and Transformative Healthcare’, I was hooked, and wanted the chance to help further that mission,” explained Hillard.  

Fellow course participant Juanita Panlener discovered the learning opportunity through her organization’s ongoing collaboration with the WITH Foundation. As the manager of the National Resource Center of the Spina Bifida Association, Panlener provides information about living with Spina Bifida to family members, individuals, social professionals, and more.

“Once I realized the value of learning how to be a responsible contributor to Wikipedia, and once I realized that we could play a part in updating content about Spina Bifida and topics related to Spina Bifida, I was in!” Panlener emphasized. 

Course participants made high-quality improvements to a variety of Wikipedia articles focused on disability healthcare, including Down syndrome, Disability sport classification, De Barsy syndrome, Evidence-based medicine, Disability treatments in the United States, Curb cut effect, and Ableism.

Curious about the editing process and motivated by the chance to dedicate time to improving Wikipedia by researching a topic aligned with her interests, Arizona State University professor Kenicia Wright joined the course with limited prior knowledge of the site.

“I was surprised by the increase in experts contributing to information on Wikipedia, the sources that are added to support the information being uploaded on different topics, and the goal/number of academic scholars contributing to Wikipedia articles on certain topics,” said Wright.

Like Wright, many participants were surprised by the course content, including the exploration of Wikipedia’s robust editing policies and guidelines in place to safeguard article quality.

“Prior to the course, I was unaware of the extensive behind-the-scenes work involved in creating Wikipedia articles,” said Rachel Lawerh, Population Student Health PhD student at the University of Ottawa. “It was fascinating to see editors collaborating on various topics, guidelines, and measures that are put in place to minimize the spread of misinformation on the platform.”

For instructor Will Kent, Scholars & Scientists Program Manager at Wiki Education, the WITH courses provided the ideal space for experts to gather and share their deep subject-area knowledge acquired from lived experience.

“An important element to these courses is the connection between people’s personal motivations to edit articles in the area of disabilities,” said Kent. “It was especially rewarding for me as an instructor to work with new editors who brought both personal and professional experiences to their writing. In addition to being meaningful to the course participants, it’s important for people writing about the community they represent to be part of that community. This really shines through in their work.”

Interested in learning how to add your own expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming courses for subject-area experts.

Explore related articles:

• Edits close to home: ophthalmologist lends expertise to Down syndrome article
• 800K views and counting: professor improves healthcare content on Wikipedia

13/06/2024-19/06/2024

Mapping campaigns

• The campaign to map the flooded areas in the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) continues and mappers from all over the world are invited to collaborate on the open projects in the HOT Tasking Manager. Links to the projects and other information can be found on the campaign’s wiki page.

Community

• SeverinGeo will present > on 29 June at the SotM France 2024 > a service to download OSM data translated into French. This offers users an alternative of accessing the raw English OSM data.
• CartoCité published > an article showing in detail how to dynamically display OSM data from Overpass on uMap.

Events

• François Lacombe and Jean-Louis Zimmerman will present > a special keynote about the mapping of hydrography in OSM (‘Cartographier les cours d’eau, ça coule de source!’), on June 29 at State of the Map France 2024 > . The authors will highlight the importance of this topic, particularly in the face of global climate change.
• State of the Map Nigeria 2024, to be held at the Obafemi Awolowo University (Ile-Ife, Nigeria) from 9-11 October, announced an open call for the submission of abstracts for general track presentations and workshops until 31 July. The organisers are also seeking sponsors for the event.
• Christian Quest presented the special keynote ‘Panoramax: l’alernative libre pour photo-cartographier nos territoires’ (Panoramax: the free alternative for photo-mapping our territories) at the festival ‘Pas Sage en Seine’ (PSES 2024) and showed the Panoramax resources and the prospects for the future of the project.
• If you’re looking for a reason to go to London in September – Geomob, the geospatial event series organised by OpenCage, is celebrating OSM’s birthday with a very special event on 18 September. The evening will feature five speakers with talks focused exclusively on OSM-related topics. One of the speakers will be Prof. Muki Haklay, who was there at the very, very beginning.
  He authorised the first OSM server for Steve Coast, who was a student at UCL at the time.
• State of the Map Malawi 2024, to be held at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS) between 18-20 July, has an open call for abstracts until 24 June. The organisers are also offering three categories for sponsorship of the event.
• There is an open call until 30 June, 2024, for OSM communities interested in hosting State of the Map Africa 2025.
• At the SotM France on 28 June Yohan Boniface will present > an instance of the uMap dedicated to public bodies in France. The project received French public funding from the ‘Accélérateur d’Initiatives Citoyennes’ (Accelerator of citizens’ initiatives) and the ‘Incubateur des Territoires de l’ANCT’ (ANCT territory incubator) programs, thus it was developed in only six months.

Maps

• OSM for Cities is a platform that provides daily updated maps of Brazilian cities using OpenStreetMap data. It features various datasets categorised into areas like cycling, health, education, and more, each showing detailed information with tag coverage percentages. The platform is in early development and aims to expand its coverage and capabilities.

OSM in action

• [1] A Minecraft builder, AtmosphericBeats, used custom software integrating OpenStreetMap and USGS data to create a 1:1 scale replica of Kansas City, USA, in Minecraft within 36 hours. This innovative project accurately represents buildings, roads, and natural features, demonstrating the potential of combining OSM data with gaming platforms for detailed and realistic virtual recreations.
• Guess This City is an interactive game in which users click on a blank map to reveal hidden map tiles. Players try to identify the city shown with the fewest clicks.
• Offensive OSINT discussed the integration of OpenStreetMap into the Open Source Surveillance system, enhancing its geolocation investigation capabilities. It provides a tutorial on using OSM and the Overpass Turbo API to search for various points of interest and objects in the vicinity of specific locations. The update aims to make geolocation easier and more efficient for analysts and researchers by using detailed and up-to-date geospatial data from OSM.
• Dawn Chorus is a citizen science and art project that invites people around the world to record and share bird songs to document biodiversity, support scientific research, and raise awareness of nature. The Explore page allows users to listen to and explore a variety of bird songs recorded by participants. The interactive map and timeline features allow users to filter recordings by date, location, and species, providing a unique way to experience and study the diversity of bird song across regions and time.
• TxtDariNAROGONG utilized OpenStreetMap waterway data to visualise the history of Bekasi’s water management system, from the Tarumanegara Kingdom era (circa the 5th century AD), through the Dutch colonial administration, to the recent Indonesian Republic era.

Software

• Let’s welcome Anton Khorev as an additional maintainer for the OpenStreetMap website code, as confirmed by the recently merged pull request.
• OSR is a memory-efficient, multi-mode OpenStreetMap router designed for pedestrian, bicycle, and car navigation. It uses compact data structures and memory-mapped files to efficiently import route data, supporting large maps with relatively low memory requirements.
• Tobias Jordans posted about his efforts to modernise the OSMCha tool by migrating the frontend to a new React-based framework, improving the UI/UX with Tailwind CSS, and tackling technical debt.

Programming

• Bulgent provided > an introduction to using PyOsmium, a Python library for processing OpenStreetMap data. The post covers installation, basic usage, data extraction, geographic calculations, and GeoJSON output. He also contrasts PyOsmium with another library, Pyrosm, highlighting their respective strengths and weaknesses for different OSM data processing tasks.

Releases

• dpschep announced updates to Overpass Ultra, enhancing its customisation features, including loading queries from URLs and Gists, improved configurability for interactive map views, bundled icons for easy integration, and examples demonstrating these features, all aimed at facilitating the creation and sharing of custom Overpass-powered maps.

Did you know …

• … you can load OSM data onto a Garmin eTrex? Localized to Japanese?
• … Geomob? A series of events and a podcast aimed at geospatial enthusiasts, providing a platform to discuss geoinnovation for both fun and profit.

OSM in the media

• Grab will provide updated maps of Tengah, a newly developed town in Singapore, to assist residents, drivers, and delivery riders with navigation in the rapidly developing district. This initiative, supported by the OpenStreetMap community, leverages AI technology to improve accessibility and address the needs of service providers in the area.
• The Youth Innovation Lab presents the BIPAD Portal, a disaster management system in Nepal that integrates OpenStreetMap data to support risk communication and informed decision making.

Other “geo” things

• Matt Brown introduced two detailed maps of medieval and Tudor London produced by the Historic Towns Trust, highlighting the extensive research and archaeological information used to depict the layout of the city in the 13th and 16th centuries. The maps are available online and in fold-out paper versions.
• The Linux Foundation Europe has launched the Open Mobile Hub (OMH), a project aimed at simplifying mobile app development through an open-source framework. OMH provides SDKs and tools for seamless integration with mapping services, including OpenStreetMap. Like Overture which wants to address the fragmentation of geographic Open Data, this initiative aims to address fragmentation in mobile development and improve cross-platform user experiences by offering a unified codebase and an extensible plugin architecture.
• MapFast allows users to quickly create customised, detailed maps by uploading data without needing geometric boundaries or coordinates. It supports CSV files, automatically geocodes geographical information, and offers various customisation options like colours, text, and legends. Users can export maps in PNG or SVG formats and create maps for free with optional subscription plans for advanced features.
• The latest #geoweirdness thread from OpenCage discusses the geopolitics of football in general and specifically the EURO 2024.
• The Guardian reported the development of a quantum compass for the London Underground, a subatomic instrument that aims to provide precise location tracking where GPS signals are unavailable. This technology leverages quantum mechanics to enhance navigation and could revolutionize how underground and other GPS-denied environments are navigated, offering greater accuracy and reliability.
• Komoot released three major improvements in June. New route guidance ensures fewer interruptions. For road cyclists, the route planner now evaluates the road surfaces, guides to road bike-friendly routes, and reduces gravel sections. The new mountain bike router offers insider knowledge about the best trails.
• OpenStreetMap Japan has announced > the Governor’s Cup Open Data Hackathon 2024, where participants will develop digital services using Tokyo’s open data to solve administrative problems.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-06-21
Alto Maé “B”	UCM (Maputo, MOZ) – Oficina sobre mapeamento com OpenStreetMap!		2024-06-21
Bengaluru	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party		2024-06-22
Dover	Coffee and Mapping!		2024-06-23
Bielefeld	OSM Ostwestfalen-Lippe		2024-06-25
City of Edinburgh	Geomob Edinburgh		2024-06-25
Kaiserslautern	OSM Einführung und Schulung		2024-06-25
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-06-26
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-06-26
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2024-06-27
Lübeck	143. OSM-Stammtisch Lübeck und Umgebung		2024-06-27
Lyon	SotM-FR 2024 – Lyon		2024-06-28 – 2024-06-30
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-06-28
中央区	マッピングパーティ in 北海道神宮		2024-06-30
Tartu linn	FOSS4G Europe 2024		2024-06-30 – 2024-07-07
	MapRoulette Community Meeting		2024-07-02
	Missing Maps London Mapathon		2024-07-02
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2024-07-03
Dresden	Dresden – OSM Stammtisch		2024-07-04
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #66		2024-07-08

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, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, YoViajo, barefootstache, derFred, freyfogle, mcliquid, miurahr, rtnf.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Jun 23, 03:51 UTC
Resolved - The sites remain stable and we believe the incident to be resolved.

Jun 22, 23:18 UTC
Monitoring - Things appear stable and we are monitoring.

Jun 22, 22:42 UTC
Investigating - We are aware that users are having trouble editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis, and we are investigating.