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

Weekly highlight

• Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new “Revert Risk” machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [1]

Updates for editors

• Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [2]
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a “Copy” button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [3]
• Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [4]
• Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
• Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech’s pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
• Five new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Komering (w:kge:) [5]
  • a Wikipedia in Mooré (m:mos:) [6]
  • a Wiktionary in Madurese (wikt:mad:) [7]
  • a Wikiquote in Gorontalo (q:gor:) [8]
  • a Wikinews in Shan (n:shn:) [9]

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

The Kannada Wikisource project, part of the larger Wikimedia ecosystem, has played a pivotal role in preserving and digitizing Kannada literary heritage. Over the past few years, significant efforts have been undertaken by a dedicated community of contributors to expand the platform, improve the quality of digitized texts, and foster collaboration. This blog post outlines key milestones in this journey, showcasing the community’s commitment to preserving not just Kannada literature but also extending efforts to regional languages like Tulu.

Relicensing and Digitization of M. Prabhakar Joshi’s Works (September 2023)

A major milestone in the Kannada Wikisource project occurred in December 2022, when the community, under the leadership of Kavitha Ganesh (User:Kavitha_G._Kana), focused on the relicensing and digitization of the works of renowned author M. Prabhakar Joshi. Through the efforts of the Karavali Wikimedians community, the event sought to release the author’s literary contributions under a free license, making them accessible to the public.

The relicensing process involved coordinating with the author’s rights holders, who graciously agreed to release his works under a Creative Commons license. These texts were then digitized and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, allowing a wider audience to access and engage with these important works of Kannada literature. This project marked a significant step in ensuring that the literary heritage of Karnataka remains accessible in digital formats, contributing to a growing body of Kannada texts available online.

(Reference: Relicensing, Digitization and Uploading Event)

Wikimedia Refresher Training (December 2023)

In December 2023, Anoop (User:~aanzx) spearheaded the Wikimedia Refresher Training (WRT) event, aimed at enhancing the proofreading capabilities of Kannada Wikisource contributors. The training session focused on equipping participants with essential skills in proofreading, which is crucial for ensuring the quality and accuracy of digitized texts on Wikisource.

The event covered best practices in proofreading, text formatting, and scanning techniques, all essential for maintaining high standards in the preservation of Kannada literature. Participants were trained to handle large volumes of digitized texts while ensuring that the content uploaded to Kannada Wikisource was accurate and free of errors. This training initiative was a major step in developing a highly skilled contributor base, empowering them to maintain the integrity and quality of Kannada texts on the platform.

(Reference: Wikimedia Refresher Training)

Internship Program (June 2024)

In June 2024, the Kannada Wikisource community launched an Internship Program that focused on involving young contributors in the digitization and proofreading efforts. The program was conducted entirely online, under the mentorship of Anoop (User:~aanzx) and guided by Prof. Vishwanatha Badikana, interns received personalized support and feedback, fostering an enriching learning environment.This program involved five students from St. Aloysius (Deemed to be University), Mangalore—Athashree Poojary (User:Athashree Poojary03), Anjali Arjunagi (User:Anjali guru arjunagi), Bhoomika KR (User:Bhoomika . K. R), Jyoti Hadapad (User:Jyoti Hadapad03), and Umashree (User:Umashree mallappa alkoppa )—who were trained and mentored in the various aspects of working with the Kannada Wikisource platform.

The interns gained practical experience in digitization, proofreading, and contributing to the growing repository of Kannada texts on Wikisource. The program aimed not only to enhance the platform with fresh contributions but also to empower young women through digital literacy and content management skills. This initiative reflects the community’s commitment to inclusivity and capacity-building, ensuring that the Kannada Wikisource project continues to grow with the involvement of diverse voices and perspectives.

(Reference: Internship Program)

August 2024 Proofreadathon

The Proofreadathon, organized in August 2024 by Anoop with the support of a Wikimedia grant, was another significant event that brought the Kannada Wikisource community together to improve the quality and accuracy of digitized texts. This event encouraged contributors to participate in a collaborative proofreading competition, working on large volumes of texts to ensure their accuracy and readiness for public access.

The Proofreadathon not only increased the quantity of proofread pages on Kannada Wikisource but also significantly improved the overall quality of the content available on the platform. This initiative highlights the community’s commitment to maintaining high standards in Kannada literature preservation and the power of collective effort in driving meaningful progress.

(Reference: Proofreadathon Report)

Request for a Tulu Wikisource

In addition to the efforts focused on Kannada language, the community led by Kavitha Ganesh took a bold step toward supporting the Tulu language, which is spoken by a significant population in coastal Karnataka. Recognizing the need for a dedicated platform for Tulu, the community initiated a formal request for the creation of a Tulu Wikisource.

This process involved incubating the Tulu language on Wikisource, where community members began contributing texts in Tulu. The request for a dedicated Tulu Wikisource has been a significant step in preserving the linguistic diversity of the region and ensuring that the Tulu language, along with Kannada, finds its place in the digital repository of free knowledge. The incubation page for Tulu Wikisource is already active, with ongoing contributions aimed at enriching the content available in Tulu.

(Reference: Tulu Wikisource CatAnalysis, Tulu Wikisource Incubation Page, Request for New Tulu Wikisource)

Conclusion

The Kannada Wikisource community has made tremendous strides in its mission to preserve and promote Kannada literature in the digital age. From the relicensing and digitization of notable works to empowering new contributors and fostering collaboration through initiatives like the Proofreadathon, the community’s efforts have significantly enriched the platform. Additionally, the community’s expansion into supporting the Tulu language highlights its commitment to preserving linguistic diversity and ensuring that regional languages continue to thrive in the digital era.

These milestones reflect the dedication of community efforts have laid a strong foundation for the future of Kannada and Tulu Wikisource. As the platform continues to grow, it stands as a testament to the power of collaboration, open access, and the preservation of cultural heritage in the digital world.

When I found out that I had won a scholarship to attend Wikimania 2024 I was more than happy. After applying for several years without success, I finally had the opportunity to be part of the largest activity of the Wikimedia movement in the world.

My journey as a Wikipedia editor began in 2015, almost a decade ago, but until now I had not had the chance to live with such a large number of free knowledge enthusiasts. Hundreds of people attend Wikimania every year, either on scholarship or by their own means. They come from all over the world, and in the halls of the venue you can hear languages you’ve never heard, see typical clothes you’ve never seen before, and talk to people you wouldn’t otherwise connect with.

No one prepares you for the enormity of this event. But in truth, the Wikimedia movement is immense. There are Wikipedias in over 300 languages, and then there are Wikipedia’s sister projects, where thousands of volunteers work every day. Being in Wikimania shows you that what you do as a volunteer is just a grain of sand in the immensity of the ocean. Dozens of talks happen simultaneously, in the hallways volunteers talk about their ideas for new projects, in the rooms people from all over the world gather to listen to the experiences of volunteers with very diverse backgrounds and stories.

I was the only representative from Bolivia. I spent a lot of time with colleagues from Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina and Mexico. I was also able to meet people from different countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. I even had the opportunity to be part of the Wiki Orchestra and perform a couple of Polish pieces for all the attendees.

It is impressive to see how so many people can unite under the same goal:

“To create a world in which every person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”

Poland welcomed us with much affection. Katowice (pronounced Katovitse) is an important Polish city that used to be a mining center. In fact, the building where the event was held is built on a former mine. Next year the meeting will be in Nairobi, Kenya, which we were told is known as the Silicon Valley of the Savannah. I hope with all my heart to be part of this meeting again and continue sharing with other Wikimedians all the passion I feel for what I do and for what we do from Wikimedistas de Bolivia.

*This story was originally uploaded in August 2024 to the Wikimedistas de Bolivia blog.

26/09/2024-02/10/2024

Mapping

• Kai Michael Poppe has submitted an automated edit proposal to fix the fixme=name inconsistencies of OSM objects.

Community

• Alan Grant discussed various factors that complicate point of interest (POI) mapping, including the instability of POIs due to the accelerated turnover of retail outlets and the overly specific characteristics of each POI, which are difficult to represent with OSM tags.
• Pieter Vander Vennet explained the rationale for why anonymous contributions to OpenStreetMap via MapComplete are forbidden.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Christoph Hormann shared his thoughts after reviewing the manifestos of this year’s OSMF board candidates and has created his own for his fictional candidate.

Events

• [1] Geomob shared a summary thread of the recent Geomob London event held at the UCL, the birthplace of OpenStreetMap, in celebration of 20 years of OpenStreetMap.
• Katja Haferkorn announced ► that the upcoming FOSSGIS conference ► is scheduled for 26 to 29 March 2025, in the Schloss Münster, Germany. The event is being organised in collaboration with FOSSGIS e.V. and the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster. Those interested in contributing to the programme can submit proposals through the call for participation, which began on 5 October and will remain open until Tuesday 5 November.
• FOSSGIS reported ► that the Dresden, Germany, OpenStreetMap community set up an OSM booth at the annual Chaos Computer Club Dresden (C3D2) conference on Saturday, offering a space for discussions and inquiries about OpenStreetMap. The booth featured OSM banners and flags, a large screen displaying live mapping activity in OSM via the ‘Show me the way’ tool, and a 300-piece puzzle showcasing various OSM map styles.

Maps

• Jochen Topf has introduced OSM XRAY, a vector tiles service that includes all OSM data, intended to be used primarily for debugging purposes.
• Michael Altfield has written a guide on how to generate vector-based topographic maps to print as large paper wall maps, using Inkscape and OpenStreetMap data.
• Zsolt Ero has built OpenFreeMap, a free and open-source OSM hosting solution with customisable styles. The service is available for free on its public instance, or you can choose to self-host it.

OSM in action

• Marcus Jaschen discovered an advertising banner featuring an embedded interactive OpenStreetMap map.
• OpenBeta is a platform where members can collaboratively create open-source, open-licensed climbing data. Their home page features an OpenStreetMap-based display showcasing the latest contributions from users.
• Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration has developed an OpenStreetMap-based interactive map to monitor the movement of Typhoon Krathon, a powerful typhoon originating in the west Pacific Ocean and currently moving along the coast of Taiwan as at early October 2024.
• The State Chancellery of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern created a uMap interactive map to assist visitors attending the citizens’ festival for the Day of German Unity 2024, which was held 2 to 4 October, in the city of Schwerin.

Open Data

• The call for proposals for the EU Open Data Days 2025 is open until Tuesday 22 October. This event seeks to showcase the potential of open data and gather data providers, enthusiasts, and users from across Europe and beyond.

Licenses

• Jean-Christophe Becquet, a board member of the French Federation of OSM Professionals, has endorsed ► the publication of the practical guide ‘Everything You Need to Know About the ODbL Licence’ (we reported earlier), describing it as an impressive educational initiative that clarifies the rights and responsibilities associated with this open licence.

Software

• Emil (coolultra1) has added more aerial imagery of Saarland and Baden-Württemberg (both in Germany) to the OSM Editor Layer Index.

Releases

• Amanda McCann has significantly refactored her WaterwayMapOrg code to make use of the name=* tag for connecting river basins.
• TrickyFoxy has released version 0.5 of better-osm-org, which includes several new features such as the visualisation of changesets, likes/dislikes, more hotkeys, and the ability to view older versions of map objects.

Did you know …

• … that Stephan Bösch-Plepelits used PTMap to illustrate their proposed new public transportation route for Vienna, Austria? PTMap is a tool for visualising OSM public transportation route data.

OSM in the media

• c’t, a German computer magazine, interviewed Tobias Zwick about StreetComplete for their ‘Open Source Spotlight’ newsletter.

Other “geo” things

• Marguerite Catton, of France Culture, interviewed Sébastien Soriano, Director General of the French National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information (IGN), about IGN Maps ►, a smartphone application developed by the IGN that provides access to multiple map layers and geolocation services.
• Switzerland and Italy have redefined a section of their border that crosses an Alpine peak due to the shifting glaciers altering the historically established boundary.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen Nr. 22		2024-10-03 – 2024-10-06
Montrouge	Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris		2024-10-03
Pontarlier	Cartographie collaborative pour tous		2024-10-05
Chanakya Puri Tehsil	OSM India casual online mapathon		2024-10-06
London	London pub meet-up		2024-10-07
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #69		2024-10-07
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-10-08
Ifẹ̀	State of the Map Nigeria 2024		2024-10-09 – 2024-10-11
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-10-10
Bochum	Bochumer OSM Treffen		2024-10-10
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-10-11
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-10-13
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mid-Month Mapathon [eng]		2024-10-15
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-10-15
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-10-16
Bonn	181. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-10-15
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-10-17
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-10-16
	Atelier Pifomètre/Bano		2024-10-16
Bruxelles – Brussel	Velopark mapathon @ Fietsberaad offices		2024-10-17
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-10-18
Karlsruhe	Karlsruhe Hack Weekend October 2024		2024-10-19 – 2024-10-20
Pamplona/Iruña	GeoCamp ES		2024-10-19
Cabecera Municipal Duitama	Estado del Mapa – Duitama 2024		2024-10-19
Nonnweiler	Craftmapping Höckerlinie Otzenhausen		2024-10-19

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

The Wikimedia Foundation filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico, advocating that internet intermediary platforms should be protected from liability for user-generated content (UGC). This brief supports Google in the Ulrich Richter Morales and Claudia Ramírez Tavera v. Google, Inc. and Google México case, because of the implications for online platforms hosts operating in Mexico. For the Foundation and Wikimedia project, it could imply a threat to our community-led content creation and moderation model, as well as harm to the freedom of expression of readers and volunteer editors.

The Wikimedia Foundation recently submitted an amicus or “friend-of-the-court” brief in the Ulrich Richter Morales and Claudia Ramírez Tavera vs. Google Inc. and Google México case before Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. We are arguing for a continued use of the protections provided by the internet intermediary liability legal framework in Mexico, which allows online platforms to host user-generated content (UGC). These legal protections are also crucial to the Wikimedia projects because they allow the platform host to rely on effective community-led governance and moderation, rather than act as gatekeepers for editorial decisions of hundreds of thousands of people.

In this case, Ulrich Richter Morales, a lawyer and former secretary and advisor to the Citizen Participation Council of the Attorney General’s Office (in Spanish, Procuraduría General de la República) in Mexico, and his wife, Claudia Ramírez, sued Google, Inc. and Google México in 2015 for not removing an allegedly defamatory blog post on the Blogger platform, which is owned by Google. Subsequently, Richter sent an out-of-court notice to Google requesting the removal of the blog post from its platform, but Google refused to take it down. 

In our amicus brief, we pointed out that the liability protections for internet intermediaries are essential for the collaborative and neutral nature of platforms like Wikipedia: without such protections, platform hosts are likely to centralize decisions related to content creation and moderation in order to mitigate legal risks. Mexico adopted this legal framework under a trade agreement with Canada and the US—i.e., the 1998 Agreement between the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada (USMCA).

We also noted that holding platform hosts or intermediaries unnecessarily liable for UGC could harm the open nature of platforms like Wikipedia as well as the freedom of expression of its readers and volunteer editors. The Foundation believes that holding Google liable in this case could empower individuals who have vast resources to demand the removal of UGC without needing legal orders to do so. For these reasons, we urged the Supreme Court of Mexico to consider these likely consequences and maintain the protections necessary for an open and free online information ecosystem that can serve the public interest.

If you are interested in the lawsuit and want to learn more, read our amicus brief, available in English and in Spanish. 

We would like to thank the Wikimedia Foundation’s staff Amalia Toledo, Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Ojadamola Takuro, former Legal Fellow.

As the organization’s designer, I was very excited that this year the Wikimedia CEE Meeting was held in Istanbul, my home city. I would like to briefly share with you my experiences as both a member of the organizing team and a participant of this event.

Eyes on Istanbul!

In 2023, I was a designer in the organization team of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia. At that time, I was very excited when I was given the task of creating the visible face of such a big organization. But I was much more excited when I heard on stage that Istanbul was the host city for the 2024 meeting.

Then Başak and Zafer from WMTR took the stage to give a presentation about Istanbul. The presentation read “Let’s Break the Record”. Yes, I can say that we broke the record at the 2024 meeting! With more than 190 participants, CEE Meeting 2024 Istanbul welcomed the most participants of any CEE meeting since 2012.¹

We need a new face, a new excitement

At the closing session of the meeting in Tbilisi, when it was announced that next year’s meeting would be in Istanbul, the logo I had designed for the candidacy process was projected on the screen. It was a logo in which I used Wikimedia’s classic color palette, called the “The Legacy Palette”, and squares of different sizes came together to form the Maiden’s Tower. The fact that each square in the logo was of different colors and sizes, and that something came out when they came together, reflected the culture of togetherness.

But for the conference in Istanbul we had to come up with something different. So, instead of the Legacy color palette, I created a neon color palette where the main colors are navy blue, pink and purple. This palette reflected the energy of Istanbul and the power of free knowledge. I kept the stylized Istanbul lettering in the form of the candidacy logo, but replaced the Maiden’s Tower with a bridge. I created this bridge out of disparate lines, which gives the logo a natural and flexible feel and is in line with the slogan of our conference, “A Bridge to Knowledge”.

Our theme is clear, let’s get to work

The 2024 organizing team unanimously agreed that our new theme would be “A Bridge to Knowledge” and now it was time to slowly put it into practice.

The main design language of the conference consisted of random lines wrapping real Istanbul photographs. These lines encircling the elements related to Istanbul represent continuity, excitement and conveying knowledge. In other words, the power of free knowledge surrounds the whole of Istanbul. The photographs, usually with a black and white filter on a pink to purple background, created a harmonious contrast. But occasionally I also used elements in color.

Also, as the conference approached, I created a series of images to give attendees a sense of Istanbul, which I shared in the Telegram group of the conference, accompanied by brief information and links to Wikipedia articles.

Support for the theme again from Istanbul itself

As we move forward to the day of the conference, we now have not only digital but also physical conference materials. I designed a lot of things like the souvenirs and venue decorations to tie in with the main theme, but we also needed auxiliary elements that would tell the participants about Istanbul and give them a sense of fun.

For this, I designed a set of 32 icons with some elements from Turkish and Istanbul culture. During the conference, the most popular icon was of course the cat icon. Because Istanbul is a cat city 🙂

There is also one more point that I should not leave out. I think that this conference is different from all other conferences. Because Piyanist, Yasakrami and Sercan Peşan have composed music specifically for this conference. The Piyanist describes the composition process as follows:

When I was first approached to compose music for the conference, I was excited. Because I had composed soundtracks for different short films and documentaries before, but since this proposal was related to Wikipedia, which is my own area of interest, I would be composing on our behalf. It was a very valuable and honorable offer for me. It felt very nice to hear this music in the background during the breaks during the conference.

– Piyanist, September 30, 2024

I was also informed by Piyanist that this music includes piano, harp and string orchestra from western music, and kanun, ney and santur from eastern music. Frankly, I think this music is quite beautiful for a conference that takes place in a place like Istanbul, which connects two continents and cultures. You can listen to the composed music from this link.

Making a conference in a living history

I was also excited to organize such a big conference, where we hosted people from many countries and communities, at the Müze Gazhane, which is a living history. For this reason, I have always designed in a way that respects the history of the space, but in a way that reflects the energy of Istanbul and free knowledge. In a way, I mixed the energy of history and the energy of today.

We have a team of volunteers at our side who add strength to our strength!

Of course, we did not complete the conference process alone. Volunteers who contribute to Wikimedia projects in their daily lives, who may never have seen each other before, who only know each other’s usernames, have put their hands on the line for Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 Istanbul and helped both the organizing team and the participants as conference volunteers.

We would like to thank our conference volunteer friends who helped us before, during and after the conference and who wanted to be a part of this story!

Let’s immortalize this moment with interviews

Together with İsna, the founder of Üsküdar University Wiki Student Club, we interviewed many participants during the conference. When we asked them the first thing that came to their mind about Istanbul, of course, most of them said cats 🙂

When we asked them what they had learned at this conference, the response was very positive. This caused me to be happy from time to time with the gimbal in my hand during the recording. I hope we left a good memory for the participants with these interviews.

Result

As a result, based on the opinions of the participants, I think I realized a successful design process. In such events, I usually try to incorporate elements from the culture of the location of the event into the theme. Because this is actually a way of promoting cultures with “free knowledge” and supporting free knowledge with graphic design.

As Wikimedia Community User Group Turkey, I believe that we have successfully completed Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 Istanbul and that our participants have learned a lot from Istanbul, “A Bridge to Knowledge”. I would like to thank our volunteers who took part in this conference, all our participants who added color to our conference with their presentations and participation, and the cats of Istanbul who motivated and made us happy with their presence.

Footnotes

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting#Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting ↩︎

The entire Igbo Wikimedia community still remain in shock as we mourn the passing of one of our own.

Wilson Kelechi Oluoha joined the Wikimedia movement as an Igbo Wikimedian after he was invited to attend a Wiki Edit-a-thon by one of the co-founders of Igbo Wikimedians User Group (Tochi Precious Friday) at a youth entrepreneurship Program sponsored by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018. He had so much passion for the movement. At that time, his only worry was that he may not be having so much time to devote to editing. While he advanced as a Wikimedian, he discovered that articles about Africa were always nominated for deletion on English Wikipedia. He often advocated within the community that we should take steps in doing things better and getting the articles to stay.

Wilson liked Photography. He initially tried editing on English Wikipedia, but he however found a passion for Wikimedia Commons since it aligned with his photography hobby. He always expressed his desire to showcase quality photos through his photography skills. His desire to pass knowledge spurred his idea about creating the IG WikiCommons Hub.As time went by, he noticed that the contributions coming from Africa were mostly from mobile phones. So, when Wiki In Africa announced the vacancy for Wiki Loves Africa (WLA) Community facilitator, it was a good opportunity for him to propel the changes he wanted to see. In 2023 he became WLA Community facilitator and has so far pioneered mobile phone photography and editing training for Wiki Loves Africa participants.Wilson often saw the need to help grow capacity in Igbo Wikimedia User Group beyond Wikipedia, Wikicommons and Wikidata. His global contributions across all Wiki projects was 11,199 (Eleven thousand one hundred and ninety nine).

According to one of his mentees, Wilson had some principles with which he advised them to grow on Igbo Wikimedia and the Wiki movement. Some of these principles include:

• “If you want to grow in the movement find something that is lacking in the community and start it, also research about what other people have done before, copy the idea, build on it, improve the idea and come out with something better”.
• “You don’t need to know how to do it before you start, learn it in the process, don’t reject opportunities.”
• “If you can’t do it well don’t touch it at all. It is better not to do it than to start it and not finish or not be excellent at it.”
• “For you to grow put God first, pray and ask God for direction and also be curious about everything.”
• “Whatever opportunity you get to present anything even though it’s a closing remark do it as though you are talking to kings, you don’t have to be casual about it because you don’t know who is watching.”

Wilson also had some favourite quotes and sayings with which he is known by community members. Some of these quotes are his, while others he learnt from his own mentors or from books he read. Thus, according to some community members, Wilson will always say:

“The Wikimedia space is a large space that can contain everybody.”

“You cannot bind Pharaoh.”

“You should always live ready.”

“Make sense on time, you don’t have the stage forever.”

“Think crazy, don’t be normal.”

“Don’t be okay, want more.”

“You can’t help a man look for what he is not looking for.”

Indeed, it was a tragic and untimely loss for our community. Igbo Wikimedians has therefore set aside Monday, 14th October 2024 to mourn his passing. On that day, all Igbo Wikimedia community activities will be shut down in honour of our beloved brother Wilson Kelechi Oluoha.

Wilson, Igbo Wikimedians User Group will miss you… Wikimedia Foundation will miss you… The world will miss you! May God almighty console your dear family and grant your gentle soul eternal rest.

Last year Ukraine’s Wiki Loves Monuments organising team inaugurated a special category “German Heritage” in partnership with the Council of Germans of Ukraine (CGU). As this year’s contest just started, and the special category is on for the second time during October, let’s look at 2023 results and best photos.

“Ukrainian Germans (Ukrainedeutsche) have been living on the territory of modern Ukraine since the Middle Ages, with a significant uptick in moving here after 1763 – Germans received special privileges, like not paying taxes, and were able to settle, build their own villages and towns, especially in the south and east of Ukraine. World War II led to them being either deported as ‘traitors’ to Siberia or leaving for Germany to avoid deportation, so there were almost no ethnic Germans left here for a while. Some of the churches, factories, mills, and buildings they left were destroyed, rebuilt or repurposed, but some of them survived, and we would like to collect pictures and videos of what is left to illustrate Wikipedia.

This work is especially important now, since a lot of those settlements are now in the occupied territories of Ukraine or getting destroyed in the course of the war Russia is wedging against Ukraine. The support of the Council of Germans of Ukraine allowed us to have this special category organised in 2023, and now also in 2024” – commented Atoly, a Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine organising team member. “We have created and continue to maintain a list of cultural heritage monuments, which can be found here: german.wlm.photo. There are around 300 objects there already, and we continue working on expanding them. Both sites that have official protection status and sites that are not officially protected are included there, just like we do for other special categories in our contest“.

Volodymyr Leisle, the President of the Council of Germans in Ukraine, commented: “Documentation and popularisation of the German cultural heritage of Ukraine is very important for us. Settlements such as Bakhmut, New York [town in eastern Ukraine], Tokmak, settlements near the Molochna River, Berdyansk, Mariupol and other cities of eastern and southern Ukraine have deep historical and cultural ties with German colonists. I would like to believe that our joint work will help preserve and present archival photos of German heritage in digital format, especially the ones which have already been destroyed due to Russian military aggression…

We plan to organise a writing campaign in Wikipedia dedicated to historical and cultural heritage of ethnic Germans in Ukraine, in order to use the photos collected”.

Overall there are 226 sites in the list of special category “German Heritage”, 150 of which are not protected by the state. During the inaugural 2023 contest 27 participants uploaded almost 700 photos of 137 sites, out of which 104 do not have official protection status. These objects represent 12 out of 27 regions of Ukraine.

Council of Germans of Ukraine helped to assemble a jury of the special category, listed below (alphabetically):

●  Dr. Alfred Eisfeld is an expert in the history and culture of Germans in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and the CEE countries and an author of many scientific works.

●   Volodymyr Leisle is a Ukrainian activist of German origin. He has headed the Council of Germans of Ukraine since 2009, being in charge of German government support and right and interests protection of the German minorities program in Ukraine.

●   Dr. Dmytro Myeshkov is a history scholar in Nordost-Institut at University of Hamburg.

●   Christel Steigenberger is a Wikimedia Commons administrator and editor of Wikipedia in German.

●   Edwin Warkentin is the head of the cultural department of the Cultural History of Russian Germans Museum in Detmold in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Below you will find 21 photos chosen by the jury. They show sites from six Ukrainian regions: Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kherson, Odesa Oblasts, and Kyiv. The contest winners are divided into 5 categories: “Residential monuments”, “Industrial monuments”, “Religious monuments”, “Other monuments”, and “Monuments destroyed by war”. 

Residential monuments

First place

The first place in the “Residential monuments” category was given to a photo of the house of Peter D. Shultz in Dolynske village (Kronstal and Neu-Osterwick), Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The house is not officially listed as a monument. The photo was taken by Oleksandr Malyon.

Rudi Frizen’s book “Mennonite Architecture. From the past to the future” mentions that the house was built between 1912 and 1914 by Peter Shultz, Dietrich Shultz’s son who was the founder of the “D.B. Shultz & Erben” factory. He was managing the factory then.

According to the book the building: “was heated with hot water, there was water supply and toilets. A factory steam engine produced electricity for the lightning. There was a kitchen, laundry room and servants’ quarters on the ground floor. The large veranda leads to the yard. There was a large balcony that was facing the street on the first floor. The house is built with locally produced brick and lavishly decorated above the windows with pointed and flat arches. The attic above the first floor is semicircular in the centre just like on the town administration building in Khortytsia. There is a small house decorated with brick ornaments behind the building, where carts were kept. The original tiled roof was replaced with a slate one.”

The house was used to host a village council in the 1940s, then it became a kolkhoz’s property. By 1996 the building was in poor condition because of a fire.

The photo was taken on 16 October 2021.

Second place

The second place in the “Residential monument” category belongs to a series of photos of an old German house in Raiske village (Steinbach or Jakob Zawadzky’s khutir), Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The photos were taken by Kostiantyn Antonets on 30 March 2019.

The building is located on the West of the village. It is not protected as a monument officially. Kostiantyn explained his motivation for participating in this special category: “This [German heritage] is an intrinsic part of our history”.

Third place

The third place was awarded to a photo of the mansion (the house of architect Dietrich Thyssen) at Fabra Street 16 in Dnipro. It was taken by Yuri Petruniak on 1 October 2020. The mansion is a monument of local significance. It belongs to the Art Nouveau style. It was designed by D.K. Thyssen in 1905. It hosted doctor O. H. Herbilskyi’s private clinic in 1912-1919. A four-storey revenue house was built nearby around 1914 (at Fabra Street 14).

Industrial monuments

First place 

The first place in this category goes to a photo of a brewery at Himnazychna Street 36 in Kherson. It is an architectural monument of local significance. The photo was taken by Oleksandr Malyon.

The Laer brewery was built in the second half of the 19th century and provided with German equipment. The factory’s affairs started getting worse after 1921. Nowadays it is located on private land and is not functioning. The photo was taken on 24 April 2021.

Second place

The second place belongs to a photo with a view of the Shultz factory in Dolynske village (Kronstal and Neu-Osterwick), Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It was taken by Oleksandr Malyon on 16 October 2021.

The book “Mennonite Architecture. From the past to the future” mentions that the factory was built between 1880-1885. It manufactured various agricultural equipment, including winnowing machines. Since 1893 the factory has been known as “D.B. Shultz & Erben” factory, because the co-owner Peter Kopp’s sons started working with him after Dietrich married his widow. The office building was added, and when Dietrich died, his son Peter D. Shultz took over the business in 1908. Around 1910 a first floor was added to the south wing. It was around that time when a tower was built at the transition between the wings. Jakob D. Shultz, Peter’s younger brother, became its owner in 1914. The factory was later nationalised.

The factory was described as: “(…) built of dark brick with beautiful masonry and large semicircular windows decorated with arched ornaments. The two-storey wing’s windows are in an irregularly shaped arch, the colour of the bricks and the details of the ornament are in perfect harmony. The building is made of the same bricks as other buildings in the village.It can be an evidence that locally produced bricks were used. The tower at the transition between the wings was damaged during the Civil War, but it was rebuilt later. The roof ridge, which used to go from north to south, was redirected to an east-west. The attic of the office building was destroyed, and the metal roof was replaced with an asbestos-cement one”.

Since 1996, a part of the factory building has been used for seed cleaning. The building is not officially protected by the state.

Third place

Two works from Zaporizhzhia Oblast share the third place. They show Duban’s mill in Tokmak and Gerhard Walla’s glass factory in Polohy.

Photo of the Duban (Jakob Vall’s) mill in Tokmak was taken by Serhii Onkov on 17 July 2021. The building is located on the territory of a cannery and is not protected by the state, even though it is an architectural monument of the German Mennonites. More photos of the city’s sights can be found on the participant’s blog here. Tokmak itself is temporarily occupied by Russian troops. Serhii wrote that he took part in the special category because he had “several photos of German heritage, but the images of them are not on the official lists”.

The photo that shows Gerhard Walla’s glass factory in Polohy city in Zaporizhzhia Oblast was taken by Kostiantyn Antonets on 20 April 2019. The factory can be also found as Sandomyrskyi brothers’ glass factory and Jakob Walla’s glass factory. The building is not protected. The city has been occupied by Russian troops since 6 March 2022. 

Religious monuments

First place

The series of photos taken by Faina Zelenaya on 29 November 2020 are in the first place. They depict the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Lymanske village, Odesa Oblast.

The Holy Trinity Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral of the German Kandel community, an architectural monument of local significance. It was built in 1892 from the most widespread limestone in the Northern Black Sea region instead of bricks like the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in nearby Zelts. Both Kandel and Zelts now form the Lymanske village. Odesa’s German colonists organised a rebellion against the grain requisitioning and mobilisation into the Red Army in the summer and autumn of 1919. After the troops of Denikin’s Volunteer Army came to the south of Ukraine, the Germans created a special colonist unit that significantly weakened the forces of the Red Army. After the resistance was crushed, the cathedral was closed, along with the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Zelts. It is currently in ruins.

During the Soviet period, the building was used as a granary, but later there was a severe fire inside, which completely destroyed the cathedral – the roof collapsed, and only the walls and columns remained. Nowadays it is used as a coal warehouse for a local boarding school.

Second place 

The second place in the category was awarded to the photo of the German church in the Tersianka village (Myrne Pole / Feidenfeld), Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It was taken by Kostiantyn Antonets on 24 October 2020.

The German church in Tersianka was built at the expense of the local community. The construction committee involved local pastor Friedrich Hamann, starosta Shneider, landowner Muller and others. The architect Turovets was the head of the committee. The church was officially opened on 5 June 1911 and functioned until the autumn of 1934. The last pastor was arrested and shot, and German families were moved to Kazakhstan. The building was rebuilt to host a cinema there, and the interior of the church was changed into a cinema hall with a stage, foyer, and back rooms. The building looks like a Lutheran church from the outside. Later there was a village cultural centre here. It is not protected as a monument.

Third place

The third place belongs to a photo of the Mennonite house of worship in Mykolai-Pole village (Mykolaifeld), Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It was taken by Oleksandr Malyon on 15 October 2021.

The village was founded in 1870 by German colonists. There is data that in 1886 the German colony of Mykolaifeld hosted 199 people in 33 households, there was a Mennonite prayer house, school and wheel factory. The building does not have official status as a monument.

Other monuments

First place

There are two photos in the first place in this category. The first one shows a view of the palatial ensemble (estate) in Sharivka, Kharkiv Oblast, and the second one shows the interior of this palace. The photo was taken by Oleksandr Malyon on 16 May 2021.

The palatial ensemble in Sharivka is a complex of architectural monuments of national importance. Olkhovsky landowners, the Gebenstreiter brothers from Germany, the Koenigs owned the estate (palace, park, service buildings, etc.). The ensemble of the estate was finally formed by its last owners – Leopold Koenig (“sugar king”) and his son Julius in 1881-1917. Its territory grew to 70 hectares.

In 1923 the estate passed into the possession of Sverdlov Sovkhoz. From 1925 to 2010 a specialised tuberculosis sanatorium was located on the territory of the complex, which functioned until 2008. All patients were transferred from there to a dispensary in the Zmiiv district in early 2009. Renovation was planned, but the budget was not assigned. The municipal enterprise “Znakhidka” is supposed to support the palace financially.

The park’s focal point is a two-storey castle-palace built on a high hill. The Gothic-style exterior and interiors were luxurious and partially preserved: tiled stoves, murals and intricate mouldings, dark oak panels, and a wooden grand staircase. This palace is one of the oldest monuments of palatial architecture in Ukraine.

The photo of the interior was taken by Volodymyr Bondar on 30 April 2018.

There are 26 rooms and three halls in the palace. A large living room, study and oak-lined library lounge, former billiard room (on the ground floor), grand staircase, large ballroom and some living rooms (on the first floor) are located in the central part of the palace, which is marked by two towers. It is the central part of the palace that has retained its stunning decoration. Murals, ceiling lamps, white and pink marble fireplaces, stoves decorated with painted tiles, wooden carvings preserved both on the main staircase and in the library, which was a billiard room during Baron Koenig’s time. 

Second place 

The photo of Zaborovskyi’s Gate in Kyiv received second place in this category. The photo was taken by Ihor Vynnychenko on 20 July 2012.

The gate is a part of The National Sanctuary Complex “Sophia of Kyiv”, a complex of national significant monuments of urban planning, architecture and history, as well as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Zaborovskyi’s Gate is a western main entrance to the residence of the Kyiv metropolitans from the metro station “Zoloti Vorota”. It is one of the most outstanding examples of Ukrainian Baroque. It was built in 1746 during large-scale restoration and construction works on the territory of Sophia of Kyiv, probably by the architect of North German origin Johann Gottfried Schädel. Metropolitan Raphael Zaborovsky of Kyiv commissioned it. He was an art adept and lover, after whom the monument is named. From 2007 to 2009 the building was reconstructed in its original form with special permission from UNESCO.

Third place

Oleksandr Malyon won the third place for his series of photos depicting a German school in Mykolai-Pole (Mykolaifeld) village, Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

There was an agricultural school, and later after collectivization, kolkhoz’s school. Nowadays, the building is used as a secondary school. The building is not protected as a monument.

Monuments destroyed by war

First place

The photo of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Zmiivka (Klosterdorf (Kostyrka), Schlangendorf (Zmiivka), and Mühlhausendorf) in Kherson Oblast, received the first place. The photo was taken by Serhii Onkov on 20 July 2020.

The church was damaged by Russian shelling on 5 January 2024.

Second place

The second place in this category goes to a photo of the House of Johann Heinrich Jantzen on Shevchenko Street in Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia region. The photo was taken by Kostiantyn Antonets on 7 January 2020.

The House of Heinrich Jantzen is a mansion of late 19th century architecture that hosts the Orikhiv Municipal Council. The two-storey brick building draws attention with its sophisticated decor, in which various architectural elements are expertly combined.

Heinrich Jantzen was one of the Mennonite Germans who moved to the southern part of Ukraine. Members of this family built a steam mill, a hospital, and a school for Mennonite children in the town, and participated in the building of trade shops and a cinema. Heinrich Jantzen was the town’s first mayor and was permanently elected to this position in Orikhiv for 25 years (from 1874 to 1899). The building is not protected as a monument.

On 21 May 2022, the house was damaged by Russian shelling. The walls of the first floor and the roof partially collapsed, the front door was destroyed, and the walls were cut by debris.

Third place

The third place was given to the emblematic monument, the Shredder’s mill “Nadiia” (“Hope” in Ukrainian) built in 1894 in Huliaipole city, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The photo was taken by Serhii Onkov on 18 July 2021.

The “Nadiia” mill was built by the design and construction firm of entrepreneur Anton Erlanher. After that it belonged to the merchant Samson Saksahanskyi, and since 1908 – to the Mennonite David Shredder, and since 1915 to the “Keimakh” Association. The building was used as a mill in the Soviet Union and before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The building has not changed much since it survived the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921 and the Second World War, but it was severely damaged by the Russian occupiers. It was damaged on 22 June 2022 by Russian shelling, and destroyed by a Russian strike on 17 February 2024 at night. The first photos of the destroyed mill were posted by historian Serhii Zvilinskyi in the facebook group “Huliaipole Antiquities”.

All the photos in the special category from 2023 can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

For reference:

The Council of Germans of Ukraine (CGU) is the main coordinating organisation representing the interests of ethnic Germans in Ukraine. More about the Council can be found on the website.

For context:

• The special category page on Wikipedia
• Wikimania 2024 poster on special categories of Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine contest

To prepare this publication, materials were used from the Wikipedia articles “Holy Trinity Cathedral in Lymanske”, “German church in the Tersianka”, “Mykolai-Pole in Zaporizhzhia Oblast”, “Park in Sharivka”, “Sharivka Palace”, “Zaborovskyi’s Gate” and “House of Heinrich Jantzen”.

In this exciting time of growth for Wiki Education, we are pleased to welcome Danielle Vazquez to our staff!

Danielle will serve as Senior Institutional Giving Officer, a new position on our team. Collaborating closely with Kathleen Crowley, Director of Donor Relations, Danielle will work with foundations, cultural and academic institutions, corporations, and other institutional sources to expand donor relationships and funding opportunities for our programs. Her role will include the management and oversight of grants, contracts, and sponsorships, including prospect research, grant submissions and required reporting, and ensuring stewardship for institutional supporters, appropriate donor recognition, and a positive experience for all of our supporters. 

Most recently, Danielle served as Director of Institutional Partnerships at the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), where she developed a portfolio of institutional grants. Before GLSEN, Danielle secured national grants and general operating support as Senior Manager of Fundraising for The New Teacher Project (TNTP), and managed corporate and foundation portfolios at Children’s Aid and the YWCA of the City of New York. 

Danielle holds a master’s degree in evolutionary biology and ecology from Smith College. She has directed a research team, co-authored a book chapter on the adaptive diversity of microbial eukaryotes, and has expertise in a variety of molecular techniques.

In her free time, Danielle likes to write, lift weights, and see how long her cat will tolerate belly rubs.

Please join us in welcoming Danielle!

The Albanian Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles, marking a significant milestone in its development. This achievement reflects the dedication and effort of passionate editors, skilled contributors, and enthusiastic volunteers within the community. This makes the Albanian language Wikipedia the 73rd Wikipedia to reach this milestone.

The journey to 100,000 articles has been characterized by the collaborative work of countless individuals who have devoted nearly 20 years to expanding and enriching the Free Encyclopedia. From historical figures and cultural topics to scientific advancements and contemporary events, the diverse array of knowledge presented in the Albanian language continues to grow, mirroring the interests of the Albanian language speakers, with populations in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and a sizable diaspora. Notably, the 100,000th article highlights the film In the Mood for Love, a celebrated Hong Kong-France production, which illustrates the project’s expanding reach.

The Albanian Wikipedia community has engaged in various initiatives aimed at improving content quality and fostering participation. Through edit-a-thons, outreach programs, and workshops, experienced editors have guided newcomers and shared best practices, creating an inclusive environment for all contributors. In addition to Wikipedia, the Albanian community has been active in expanding contributions to Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wikivoyage.

Recent campaigns have focused on underrepresented topics, leading to significant growth in areas such as women’s history, regional heritage, Roma identity, and LGBT issues. These efforts have enriched the content and deepened the understanding of these subjects within the project.

Looking Forward: Celebrations and growth

To commemorate this milestone, the community is eager to celebrate alongside the project’s 23rd anniversary. Upcoming activities will feature in-person gatherings, designed to recognize the contributions of editors and inspire further growth. This achievement underscores the commitment of a community dedicated to preserving and sharing knowledge for future generations, ensuring that information remains accessible in the Albanian language.

Welcome to the 5th edition of the #SheSaid campaign. This is the first in our series of interviews, and today we are speaking with Florence Devouard, co-founder of the #SheSaid campaign and a key figure in the Wikimedia community. Florence will share some memorable moments from the campaign and explain why it’s so important to continue this work.

Could you tell us about yourself?

I have been a member of the Wikimedia Community for 22 years. I have got involved in many different areas, under many different hats, and it would be hard to summarize it all. I noted very early on that women were few on our projects, but only really got involved in fighting the gender gap when Isla Haddow-Flood and myself launched the Wiki Loves Women initiative in 2016. We have explored different strategies to get recruit more women, provide a more inclusive environment, train and support, implement different strategies. The topic is complex..
In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I came forward with the idea of #SheSaid… and there we are 4 years later !

Can you share the inspiration behind the #SheSaid campaign? What motivated you to start it?

Soon after the pandemic started, I revamped the Gender Gap portal on meta. The previous pages were quite disorganized, sometimes outdated, and I felt more clarity was needed to motivate newcomers to better grasp the context and to foster more initiatives. After I was done with the creation of the new portal pages, I wondered what could be done to work on the topic, whilst every one was stuck home and edit-a-thons were suspended. With the experience of the poorly welcoming Wikipedia environment for newcomers, I thought we could focus on a different wikimedia project. I went looking for a more peaceful and inclusive space, where new participants could fit whilst experienced wikipedians could enjoy a new experience.
An important piece of the puzzle also was to make it a “not too demanding” initiative, an easy going drive, to balance the mentally taxing time of the lockdown we were submitted to.
Those were the three seeds of the inspiration : continuing our efforts to collect and curate knowledge, whilst facilitating the renewal of contributors, and preserving the energy of the experimented.

What were the initial challenges you faced when launching the first edition of #SheSaid?

I think the main challenge I have faced has been the same one year after year after year : tracking what was produced. This is particularly difficult as #SheSaid is multilingual and every active team has its own way of tracking (or often not tracking) what is being done. Missing or broken or non adapted tools are not helping measure impact. And measuring impact is very important to maintain energy levels !

Can you share any memorable moments or milestones from previous editions of the campaign?

One memorable moment might be when I realized the hashtag tool, which I planned using to measure impact, was not working any more… and that the owner of the tool was not really responding. Uh. 
Another memorable moment was when we were called sexists and accused of transphobia. I will not go into more details, but it really hurt and made me upset. 

How do you measure the success of each edition, and what achievements are you most proud of?

I was very happy that some groups immediately thought it was a great idea and joined in 2020. Participants come and go and participating figures are on the rise. Entries are created, and they are on the rise too. People get interested in Wikiquote more than before. New Wikiquote languages are open, in new languages. New participants enter the community through this initiative door. All that is pretty cool.

What is your vision for the future of #SheSaid? Are there any new initiatives or directions you’re excited about?

I hope we can keep the initiative a rather easy going, low pace one. It is essentially a multilingual WikiProject. What would be nice is to be able to capitalize on some of the best entries to promote our knowledge base to the larger public. 

The #SheSaid campaign highlights women’s voices, but inclusivity remains a key topic in today’s discussions. How do you ensure the campaign is inclusive of diverse voices?

I think it is worth pointing out that #SheSaid is open to any contributors, regardless of age, gender, language, region.

Everyone is welcome and this is a very key point of #SheSaid. Last year we had contributors from any gender, participating in Arabic, Italian, Gungbe, Catalan, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, English, Bengali, Igbo, Central Bikol, Tagalog, German, Slovene, Swahili, Serbian, Telugu, Fante, Dutch and Assamese.

We also took the time to clarify the aim in terms of content expected. The primary and most important goal of the drive is to collect quotes « from women ». Occasionally, the quotes may be « about women » or they may be in tight relation with female gender topics (such as reproductive health); that’s ok but not the primary goal. The primary goal is « from women ».

“Woman” must be understood as “person identified or self-identified as a woman”. Some participants do sometimes add quotes from non-binary people; that’s ok, but not the primary goal.

What advice would you give to others looking to start similar initiatives?

There is space for everyone. Join the existing initiatives, learn from them, do your reading to understand more of the context, talk to people. Stay involved in initiatives you think are relevant and where you enjoy the company. If not, start your own initiative.

What is your favorite women-empowering quote?

I do not know if this is my favorite, but I rather like “From a dull life, even a fungus dies”. Johanna Westerdijk, Dutch plant pathologist.

Being an agricultural engineer by training, and a 22 years old wikipedian… it fits well with my own involvement in the Open Knowledge Movement. 

Thank you Florence!

Thank you.

Read more about the campaign and the fifth edition in our #SheSaid 2024 Launch diff and don’t forget to follow us on social media:

• Website: www.wikiloveswomen.org
• Twitter: @Wikiloveswomen
• Instagram: @WikiLovesWomen
• Facebook Page: @WikiLovesWomen
• Facebook Group: Mind The Gender Gap
• Telegram Group: WikiGenderGap

September was more hectic than planned, so here comes two months of reporting at once.

Wikimania

As I mentioned last month, I organized a meetup for anyone interested in sustainable development. While decently attended, it did not pan out the way I had planned. Instead of sharing ideas of what to do, there were plenty of people who felt a need to vent their worries about the climate change. I think for the future, having a separate climate café where people just can talk about that would be useful and can make the community more sustainable in itself.

I don’t know if many others used the list all sessions related to the SDGs that I created, but at least it was useful to me during the event.

User group meetings

We had meetings in both August and September, in the first we mostly did some planning and in the second, we started the work on a strategy for the user group. More work to do in the following weeks.

Newsletters

While hectic, I managed to get the newsletters sent both for August and September.

This is the second half of my eighth report of my New Year’s resolutions.

 Recently I decided to make a Hashtags extension for MediaWiki.

The idea is - if you add something like #foo to your edit summary, that becomes a link in RecentChanges/history/etc, which you can click on to view other edits so tagged.

I implemented this using MediaWiki's newish services framework. This was the first time I used this as an extension mechanism, so I thought I'd write a blog post on my thoughts.

Why Hashtags

The main idea is that users can self-group their edits if they are participating in some sort of campaign. There are already users doing this and external tools to gather statistics about it. For example Wikimedia hashtag search so there seems to be user demand.

MediaWiki also has a feature called "change tags". This allows edits to be tagged in certain ways and searched. Normally this is done automatically by software such as AbuseFilter. It is actually possible for users to tag their own edits, provided that tag is on an approved list. They just have to add a secret url parameter (?wpChangeTags) or edit by following a link with the appropriate url parameter. As you can imagine, this is not easily discoverable.

I've always been excited about the possibility of hashtags. I like the idea that it is a user-determined taxonomy (so-called folksonomy). You don't have to wait for some powerful gate-keeper to approve your tag. You can just be bold, and organize things in whatever way is useful. You don't have to discover some secret parameter. You can just see that other people write a specific something in their edit summaries and follow suite.

This feels much more in line with the wiki-way. You can be bold. You can learn by copying.

The extension essentially joins both methods together, by automatically adding change tags based on the contents of the edit summary.

Admittedly, the probability of my extension being installed on Wikipedia is probably pretty low. Realistically i am not even trying for that. But one can dream.

For more information about using the extension see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Hashtags

How the extension works

There are a couple things the extension needs to do:

• When an edit (or log entry) is saved, look at the edit summary, add appropriate tags based on that edit summary
• If an edit summary is revision deleted or oversighted, remove the tags
• Make sure hashtag related change tags are marked as "active" and "hidden".
  
• When viewing a list of edits (history, Special:RecentChanges, etc), ensure that hashtags are linked and that clicking on them shows only edits tagged with that tag

 The first three parts work like a traditional extension, using normal hooks.

I used the RevisionFromEditCompleteHook and ManualLogEntryBeforePublishHook to run a callback anytime an edit or log entry is saved. Originally I used RecentChange_saveHook, however that didn't cover some cases where an edit was created but not published to RecentChanges, such as during page moves. ManualLogEntryBeforePublishHook covers more cases than it might appear at first glance, because it will also tag the revision associated with the log entry. All this is pretty straightforward, and allowed tagging most cases. Restricted (confidential) logs still do not get tagged. It seems difficult to do so with the hooks MediaWiki provides, but perhaps its best not to tag such log entries, lest information is leaked.

Similarly, I used the ArticleRevisionVisibilitySetHook to delete/undelete tags after revdel. Unfortunately MediaWiki does not provide a similar hook for log entries. I proposed adding one, but that is still pending code review.

Marking tags as active was also quite straightforward using normal hooks.

All that leaves is ensuring hashtags are linked. For this I leveraged MediaWiki's newish dependency injection system.

Services and dependency injection

For the last few years, MediaWiki has been in the progress of being re-architectured, with the goal to make it more modular, easier to test, and easier to understand. A core part of that effort has been to move to a dependency injection system.

If you are familiar with MediaWiki's dependency injection system, you might want to skip past this part.

Traditionally in MediaWiki, if some code needed to call some other code from a different class, it might look like this:

In this code, when functionality of a different class is needed, you either get it via global state, call some static method or create a new instance. This often results in classes that are coupled together.

In the new system we are supposed to use, the code would look like this:

The idea being, classes are not supposed to directly reference one another. They can reference the interfaces of objects that are passed to it (typically in the constructor), but they are not concretely referencing anything else in the system. Your class is always given the things it needs; it never gets them for itself. In the old system, the code was always referencing the Whatever class. In the new system, the code references whatever object was passed to the constructor. In a test you can easily replace that with a different object, if you wanted to test what happens when the Whatever class returns something unexpected. Similarly, if you want to reuse the code, but in a slightly different context, you can just change the constructor args for it to reference a different class as long as it implements the required interface.

This can make unit testing a lot easier, as you can isolate just the code you want to test, without worrying about the whole system. It can also make it quite easy to extend code. Imagine you have some front-end class that references a back-end class that deals with storing things in the database. If you suddenly need to use multiple storage backends, you can just substitute the implementation of the backend class, without having to implement anything special.

MediaWikiServices

All this is great, but at some point you actually need to do stuff and create some classes that have concrete implementations.

The way this works in "new" MediaWiki, is the MediaWikiServices class. This is responsible for keeping track of "services" which are essentially the top level classes.

Services are classes that:

• Have a lifetime of the entire request.
• Normally only have one instance existing at a time.
  
• Do not depend on global state (Config is not considered state, but anything about the request, like what page is being currently viewed is state. Generally these services should not depend on RequestContext)

You can register services, in a service wiring file. This also allows you to register what services your service needs as constructor arguments.

Some classes do not fit these requirement. For example, a class that represents some data we would expect to have multiple instances with shorter lifetimes, to represent the data in question. Generally the approach for such classes is to create a Factory class that is a service, which makes individual instances and passing along dependencies as appropriate.

But still the question remains, how do you get these services initially. There is an escape hatch, where you can call MediaWikiServices::getInstance()->getService( $foo ), however that is strongly discouraged. This essentially uses global state, which defeats the point of dependency injection, where the goal is that your class is passed everything it needs, but never reaches out and gets anything itself.

The preferred solution is that the top level entrypoint classes in your extension are specified in your extension's extension.json file.

Typically extensions work on the levels of hooks. This is where you register a class, which has some methods that are called when certain events in MediaWiki happen. You register these hook handlers in your extension's manifest (extension.json) file.

In old mediawiki, you would just register the name of some static methods. In new MediaWiki, you register a class (HookHandlers), along with details of what services its constructor needs. MediaWiki then initiates this class for you with appropriate instances of all it dependencies, thus handling all the bootstrapping for you.

To summarize, you tell MediaWiki you need certain services for your hook class. When the hook class is instantiated, it is constructed with the default version of the services you need (Possibly including services you defined yourselves). Those services are in turn instantiated with whatever services they need, and so on.

All this means you can write classes that never reach out to other classes, but instead are always provided with the other classes they need.

What does this have to do with Hashtags?

All this is not generally meant as an extension mechanism. The goal is to make it so classes are isolated from each other for easier testing, modification and understanding.

However, the services bootstrap process does have an idea of default services, which it provides when creating objects that have dependencies. The entire point is to be able to easily replace services with different services that implement the same interface. Sure it is primarily meant as a means of better abstraction and testability, but why not use it for extensibility? In this extension, I used this mechanism to allow extending some core functionality with my own implementation.

One of those services is called CommentParserFactory. This is responsible for parsing edit summaries (Technically, it is responsible for creating the CommentParser objects that do so). This is exactly what we need if we want to change how links are displayed in edit summaries.

In the old system of MediaWiki, we would have no hope in making this extension. In the old days, to format an edit summary, you called Linker::formatComment(). This was a static method of Linker. There would be no hope of modifying it, unless someone explicitly made a hook just for that purpose.

Here we can simply tell MediaWiki to replace the default instance of CommentParserFactory with our own. We do this by implementing the MediaWikiServicesHook. This allows us to dynamically change the default instantiation of services.

There are two ways of doing this. You can either call $services->redefineService() which allows you to create a new version of the Service from scratch. The alternative is to call $services->addServiceManipulator(). This passes you the existing version of the service, which you can change, call methods on, or return an entirely different object.

Hashtags uses the latter method. I essentially implemented it by wrapping the existing CommentParser. I wanted to just replace hashtags with links, but continue to use MediaWiki core for all the other parsing.

Using Services as an extension mechanism

We are excited to announce that nominations are open for the 2024 UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards. 

We are asking you to nominate individuals and organisations that have been involved with Wikimedia UK’s efforts to advance open knowledge in 2023/24.

The categories for this year are:

• UK Wikimedian of the Year (Individual)
• Partnership of the Year (Organisation)
• Up and Coming Wikimedian (Individual)

We are looking for people and partnerships within the Wikimedia UK community who have really impressed you with their open knowledge work, in 2023/24. We are particularly keen to hear about people and organisations who delivered projects addressing our strategic themes of Knowledge Equity, Information Literacy, and Climate and Environment.

Nominations will be judged by members of the Community Development Committee and winners will be announced at the Community Celebration on Saturday 23rd November 2024. 

You can read about last year’s winners here.

You can submit two nominations per category. Use this Google Form to submit your nominations. Nominations close on 1st November.

The post Wikimedian of the Year Awards 2024 – nominations now open appeared first on WMUK.

Luckily, I speak Leet.

– Amita Ramanujan, Numb3rs, CBS’s IRC Drama

There’s an episode of the CBS prime-time drama Numb3rs that plumbs the depths of Dr. Joel Fleischman’s¹ knowledge of IRC. In one scene, Fleischman wonders, “What’s ‘leet’”?

“Leet” is writing that replaces letters with numbers, e.g., “Numb3rs,” where 3 stands in for e.

In short, leet is like the heavy-metal “S” you drew in middle school: Sweeeeet.

 / \
/ | \
| | |
 \ \ 
| | |
\ | /
 \ /

ASCII art version of your misspent youth.

Following years of keen observation, I’ve noticed Git commit hashes are also letters and numbers.

Git commit hashes are, as Fleischman might say, prime targets for l33tification.

What can I spell with a git commit?

With hexidecimal we can spell any word containing the set of letters {A, B, C, D, E, F}—DEADBEEF (a classic) or ABBABABE (for Mama Mia aficionados).

This is because hexidecimal is a base-16 numbering system—a single “digit” represents 16 numbers:

Base-10: 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 16 15
Base-16: 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F

Leet expands our palette of words—using 0, 1, and 5 to represent O, I, and S, respectively.

I created a script that scours a few word lists for valid words and phrases.

With it, I found masterpieces like DADB0D (dad bod), BADA55 (bad ass), and 5ADBAB1E5 (sad babies).

$ mkdir /tmp/BADA55-git && cd /tmp/BAD55-git
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/BADA55-git/.git/
$ echo '# BADA55 git repo' > README.md && git add README.md && git commit -m 'Initial commit'
[main (root-commit) 68ec0dd] Initial commit
 1 file changed, 1 insertion( )
  create mode 100644 README.md
$ git log --oneline
68ec0dd (HEAD -> main) Initial commit

$ git cat-file -p 68ec0dd > commit-msg
$ sha1sum <(cat \
    <(printf "commit ") \
    <(wc -c < commit-msg | tr -d '\n') \
    <(printf '%b' '\0') commit-msg)
68ec0dd6dead532f18082b72beeb73bd828ee8fc  /dev/fd/63

$ truncate -s -1 commit-msg    # remove final newline
$ printf '\t\n' >> commit-msg  # Add a tab
$ # Check the new SHA to see if it's BADA55
$ sha1sum <(cat \
    <(printf "commit ") \
    <(wc -c < commit-msg | tr -d '\n') \
    <(printf '%b' '\0') commit-msg)
27b22ba5e1c837a34329891c15408208a944aa24  /dev/fd/63

$ time lucky_commit BADA555

real    0m0.091s
user    0m0.653s
sys     0m0.007s
$ git log --oneline
bada555 (HEAD -> main) Initial commit
$ xxd -c1 <(git cat-file -p 68ec0dd) | grep -cPo ': (20|09)'
12
$ xxd -c1 <(git cat-file -p HEAD) | grep -cPo ': (20|09)'
111

$ cat > .git/hooks/post-commit && chmod  x .git/hooks/post-commit
#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo 'L337-ifying!'
lucky_commit BADA55
$ echo 'A repo that is very l33t.' >> README.md && git commit -a -m 'l33t'
L337-ifying!
[main 0e00cb2] l33t
1 file changed, 1 insertion( )
$ git log --oneline
bada552 (HEAD -> main) l33t
bada555 Initial commit

19/09/2024-25/09/2024

Mapping campaigns

• The Trufi Association reported about their project to fully map the Zamora (Mexico) public transport system
  in collaboration with Codeando México and with the support of HOT. They observed that the project revealed fewer routes and vehicles than expected, leading to better informed urban mobility planning.
• Yulia Fedorova presented ► the Missing Maps project, in collaboration with HOT, along with a mini-guide on how to join in with volunteer mapping. Tools such as the Tasking Manager were also presented.

Community

• Ezra Edwards blogged about the first mapathon in Pakistan. The collaborative event took place in Islamabad, Karachi, and online.
• Jennifer made an embroidered OpenStreetMap logo using the InkStitch plugin for Inkscape, an open-source machine embroidery design platform.
• Kajord spent 11 nights backpacking in Glacier National Park (U.S.A.) and mapped the area around the Hole-in-the-Wall Camp.
• CycleStreets has proposed a complete overhaul of the Bicycle page on the OSM wiki. The work is already underway, with several gaps being addressed, and feedback via the OSM Community forum is welcome.

Imports

• Tallcoleman shared some lessons learned from the completion of the Toronto public toilet import project.

Events

• Jennifer shared ► a report from FOSSGIS e.V. and the local OSM group’s participation in the 22nd Kiel Open Source and Linux Days. They presented a talk titled ‘20 Years of OpenStreetMap‘ and managed the OSM stand, which featured tactile maps, maps with surveillance cameras, and a game where visitors could complete a map of Kiel that had been stripped of its labels.
• The IVIDES.org hosted a seminar in support of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, with the participation of scientists who acted during the critical phase of the disaster (we reported earlier). Special keynotes included a systems approach to environmental planning, collaborative mapping, free software and open data in disaster risk reduction, and critical geography. Raquel Dezidério commented ► about the event in her diary.

OSM research

• Bobby Xiong et al. modelled the European high-voltage grid based on OpenStreetMap data.
• HeiGIT reported that they have conducted a data quality assessment of open source data (including OSM) using their ohsome quality API. They analyzed aspects such as currentness, completeness, comparison with external datasets, and the activity of OSM contributors. The results of the analysis were to support the efforts of the World Bank to develop an analytical tool, the Gender Enabling Environments Spatial Tool, designed to assess localities based on how supportive they are in enabling women to access employment or business opportunities in the renewable energy sector.

OSM in action

• Jordi Gauchía has developed IceNav, an ESP32-based satellite navigator device using OSM offline maps.
• The Ostsee-Zeitung newspaper has utilised ► an OpenStreetMap-based map to display the locations of flea markets in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.
• Transitous is a community-run, provider-neutral international public transport routing service. It uses the MOTIS routing engine, which utilises the OpenStreetMap basemap. You can check out the live demo at MOTIS.
• Jiří Eischmann observed ► that Czech state organisations extensively used OpenStreetMap to assist with the recent flood disaster, including for flood services, radar maps, and flood risk maps.
• Auto Motor und Sport is a German automotive publication that focuses on delivering news, reviews, and insights into the automotive industry. In one of their articles, they used ► an OSM-based map as an illustration.
• The volunteer project Companionaid, for women’s safety, has launched a map of (un)safe places in Russian cities, from which women can collect information about dangerous places in cities. An OSM-based map is used as the background.

Licenses

• The Fédé des pros d’OSM (OSM Pros’ Federation) announced the publication of their practical guide Tout Savoir
  Sur La Licence ODbL (All about ODbL Licensing).

Software

• Rudo Kemper has created a webpage to convert Google Maps GeoJSON data into GPX and KMZ files, allowing them to render properly in Organic Maps.

Releases

• Sarah Hoffmann announced the release of version 4 of pyosmium, a Python wrapper for the Osmium C library, used for reading, writing, and processing OSM data. This major update includes several new features, such as iterative processing, filter functions, and an OSM data writer with automatic reference completion.
• Eugene Kizevich announced the release of OsmAnd Web Version 1.01. You can explore the latest version directly at OsmAnd Map.
• osm2pgsql version 2.0.0 has been released.

Did you know …

• … that you can geolocate an image by comparing the height of an object with the length of its shadow?
• …that there is an in-depth course on validating OSM data on the UN Maps Learning Hub? It has been available since the beginning of the year and was used for a 20-hour training course organised over several weeks, followed by weeks in which participants applied their new knowledge. To access it, you will need to create an account on the Moodle platform used by the UN Maps Learning Hub.

OSM in the media

• [1] Diario Norte, a online news outlet based in Argentina, reported ► that Federico Pértile mapped 629 trees (while also identifying the species of each one), 324 streetlights, 268 benches, and 74 trash bins around the Plaza 25 de Mayo de 1810 in Resistencia City, Argentina, on OpenStreetMap and then shared a 3D map visualisation of the area.
• OpenStreetMap data powered The Washington Post’s story about the size and territory of supermarket chains in the US.

Other “geo” things

• Julia Fritzsche has directed a documentary The Answer to Almost Everything: How Powerful Are Maps? It discusses the political aspects of map-making, from a historical perspective to some practices that still exist today.
• Matthew Daniels has collected all the outdoor basketball courts in the United States based on OpenStreetMap and Google satellite imagery. The site also has the option to leave comments and likes on these courts and group them by colour.
• Michael Tandy explained the complexity of address data in ‘Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Addresses’, their 2013 classic on the subject.
• Wildfires in Peru have reached critical levels, severely affecting ► the flora and fauna in various regions of the country. In response, CONIDA, the Peruvian space agency, has intensified its satellite monitoring ►, providing authorities with accurate and timely data. This information is crucial for making quick and effective decisions based on the scale of the disaster.
• The Tokyo Cartographic Co., Ltd and MIERUNE Ltd have released ► ‘Mamore! Saigai Boueitai’ (守れ！サイガイ防衛隊 / Protect! Disaster Defense Squad), a map-themed educational game about disaster prevention.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Marpingen	Craft Mapping an der “Marpinger Grenzstein-Tour”		2024-09-29
Defence Colony Tehsil	12th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2024-09-29
City of Edinburgh	Geomob Edinburgh		2024-10-01
Salzburg	OSM Treffen Salzburg		2024-10-01
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-10-02
	Missing Maps London: (Online) Mapathon [eng]		2024-10-01
Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen		2024-10-02
Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen Nr. 22		2024-10-03 – 2024-10-06
Montrouge	Réunion des contributeurs de Montrouge et du Sud de Paris		2024-10-03
Pontarlier	Cartographie collaborative pour tous		2024-10-05
Chanakya Puri Tehsil	OSM India casual online mapathon		2024-10-06
London	London pub meet-up		2024-10-07
中正區	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #69		2024-10-07
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-10-08
Ifẹ̀	State of the Map Nigeria 2024		2024-10-09 – 2024-10-11
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-10-10
Bochum	Bochumer OSM Treffen		2024-10-10
	OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting		2024-10-11

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

This weeklyOSM was produced by MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, SeverinGeo, Strubbl, TheSwavu, TrickyFoxy, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid, rtnf.
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