The Wikimedia Endowment is excited to introduce a new member to its Endowment Board with the appointment of Laura Duchâtelet, an important advocate for Wikimedia’s knowledge equity mission.

“Laura is a knowledgeable and passionate ambassador for the Wikimedia Endowment who brings strong facilitation skills to the board,” said Lisa Seitz Gruwell, President of the Wikimedia Endowment. “We are so fortunate that Laura has joined us.”

Laura Duchâtelet is a Belgian facilitator, philanthropist, and the owner of a small business that facilitates team building among professionals. She is a board member of Elex, leading their philanthropy committee. Laura studied Economics at the University of Antwerp, earning an undergraduate degree; she earned her Master’s degree at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).  Laura and her family have also been longtime financial supporters of the Wikimedia Foundation.

“I am incredibly excited to join Wikimedia’s mission of supporting accessible, equitable knowledge,” said Laura. The Wikimedia community encompasses thousands of volunteers worldwide who use their diverse viewpoints to help each other towards better insights and a more complete understanding of our world–and what a wonderful mission to be a part of!”

With Laura’s addition, the Endowment Board now has ten members who all serve as volunteers; Board members are appointed for three years and may serve up to three terms.

Laura was appointed during the February biannual Endowment Board Meeting hosted at the Sloan Foundation in New York City. In addition, the Board adopted a new investment policy and created an Audit Committee separate from the Finance Committee that had previously included audit responsibilities in its charter.

About the Wikimedia Endowment

Launched in 2016, the Wikimedia Endowment is a nonprofit charitable organization providing a permanent safekeeping fund to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity.  It aims to create a solid financial foundation for the future of the Wikimedia projects. As of December 31, 2023, the Wikimedia Endowment was valued at $130 million USD.  Endowment Board members are selected based on active involvement in philanthropic endeavors, prior nonprofit board experience, fundraising and investment expertise, and a strong commitment to the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission. They serve as volunteers. The Wikimedia Endowment is a U.S.-based 501(c)3 charity (Tax ID: 87-3024488).

The post The Wikimedia Endowment welcomes Laura Duchâtelet as its newest board member appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Feminist solidarity comes in many forms. For me, as a white, British woman, who strives to make the best use of the privileges available to her, editing Wikipedia is closely linked to feminist activism. In 2024 I finished a challenge to write a biographical article for a woman from every country in the world. To celebrate I uploaded a video to my socials. This led to an article in the Guardian (UK), speaking on CBC radio, on Radio Scotland, a Guardian (UK) editorial, a feature on BBC World Service and speaking live on CNN International on International Women’s Day.

I first learned to edit at a training session in Leeds in 2019 organised by a project called West Yorkshire Queer Stories. At the time, I thought I wanted to edit Wikipedia to work on military history; it turned out I was wrong. At the session the trainers told us about lack of coverage for LGBTQ+ communities, but they also told us about the gender imbalance. It shocked me. My editing goals u-turned: this was something more urgent to contribute to.

With some mentoring from a friend edits, from Wikimedia UK, the #WCCWiki team and Women in Red, I found my feet. I had read a lot of novels from African writers, so by the end of 2019 I had started to focus on women from there. I wrote about women whose books I had read – Panashe Chigumadzi and Trifonia Melibea Obono – and discovered the extraordinary lives and achievements of women new to me like Sudanese human rights activists Hawa Al-Tagtaga and Fatima Talib. This led to focus on writing about women from countries that have higher gender imbalances on Wikipedia, such as Sri Lanka, Qatar and Burkina Faso. In October 2021 I decided to extend it into a global challenge. The result is 533 biographies of women (including trans women), covering every UN-recognised or partially recognised country in the world. These are some of my observations:

1. Women aren’t hard to find 

The truth is, women who are notable aren’t hard to find. I saw an exhibition about LGBTQ+ activist Gloria Meneses in a plaza in Montevideo (image of square) and translated her article from Spanish Wikipedia as a result. I wrote about Mexican chef Raquel Torres Cerdán because she was mentioned in a cookery book I was using. 

2. …but sources can be

Whilst there’s no shortage of women to write about – there can still be a shortage of reliable sources to support their inclusion. If you’re thinking about taking on this challenge, I’d encourage you to use dictionaries of biography or awards as starting points. I leaned heavily of the Dictionary of African Biography and the BBC 100 Women Awards. 

3. Check your numbers!

I only speak English but use Google Translate often. Be cautious with it and even check the numbers: I started for Meri Avidzba, and somehow in translation numbers got confused, which led to an error being published in the Did You Know? (see here)

4. It’s very satisfying to redirect a husband to a wife’s page

Although it doesn’t happen often, it’s pretty satisfying to write an article about a woman and to add a redirect so her husband’s page goes to hers. This happens so often with the genders reversed. If you look for Frederick Waage you get to hear about his wife, Dorothy B. Waage’s achievements! 

5. Content gaps extend to images and data

Writing these biographies has made me more aware of other gaps in other projects, for example around menstrual hygiene. I’m currently adding images of sanitary bins to Wikimedia Commons. When I added my first last October, there were just two images of these important objects most often found in women’s toilets and no item for a sanitary bin on Wikidata! In contrast, there were over 200 pictures of condom machines (mostly from men’s toilets)! 

My round-the-world list is here and since I finished, User:Darafsh is doing it too on Farsi Wikipedia! I’d love to hear what people think, so please say hello on my talk page!

Other languages:

Bahasa Indonesia, Deutsch, English, Ghanaian Pidgin, Tiếng Việt, español, français, italiano, norsk bokmål, polski, português, português do Brasil, svenska, čeština, русский, українська, עברית, العربية, فارسی, 中文, 日本語

Tech News: 2024-12

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

• The notice “Language links are at the top of the page” that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [1]
•  IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [2]
•  The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [3][4][5]
• Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [6]

Problems

• RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page’s history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [7]

Changes later this week

•  The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [8][9]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [10][11]

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

Every year Wikimedia Ukraine uses Ukrainian Wikipedia’s birthday on January 30th as an opportunity to organize Wikimarathon, a campaign that aims to recruit as many new volunteers as possible to Wikipedia with an online marathon and a series of offline events. 

Wikimarathon 2024 took place from January 26 to February 4 in Ukraine and around the world. These 10 days were incredible! We worked together to create history in Ukrainian Wikipedia and collectively added many useful articles, making Wikipedia even more accessible and informative for everyone.

Key achievements of Wikimarathon 2024:

• 1200+ new articles
• 365 participants, including 108 newcomers
• 36 events in Ukraine
• 11 events in other European countries
• 900+ participants in offline events
• 3 webinars

365 participants, including 108 newcomers, took part in the Wikimarathon. They created 1200 articles on various topics including geography, history, chemistry, literature, arts, cinema, sports, and others. All articles are very diverse because everyone could choose the topic that interests them and contribute it to the Ukrainian Wikipedia.

Svitlana Hutsuliak from the Ivano-Frankivsk region says: “Our participants were generally surprised that they could write articles on Wikipedia themselves, they did not know this. One of the participants was interested in adding an article about our village Kosmach, as he is interested in history and has a lot of materials about the history of the village, the church, has a lot of photos of our church and photos of different parts of the village, in particular from a bird’s eye view”.

During this Wikimarathon, a whole series of articles was created dedicated to heraldry, explaining the meaning of different symbols on coats of arms, such as trees. There was also a series of articles dedicated to desserts, such as Black Forest Cake and Maria Biscuits, the history of which turned out to be much more interesting than it seems. And a series of articles about various stadiums around the world, such as Charles Abela (Malta) and Ob Jezeru (Slovenia).

Our community organized 36 events in 17 regions of Ukraine and 11 events in 5 European countries. More than 900 people participated!

Wikimarathon in Khmelnytskyi region, Vinnytsia region and Zaandam, the Netherlands.

Olga Loboda from the Sumy region, which is close to Russia and frequently suffers from Russian rocket attacks, describes how they held Wikimarathon this year: “For the seventh year in a row, we are holding the Wikimarathon in the city of Khmeliv. During the Wikimarathon event for high school students, there was one air raid alarm. It helped a lot that a large part of the text preparation had already been done. But on January 30th, when the adults were working on creating articles, there were two air alarms and almost everyone was finishing the articles at home”.

For online participants, three webinars were held during the Wikimarathon, which are available on our YouTube channel.

Let’s also acknowledge our patrollers who played a significant role in maintaining the quality and reliability of information in new articles. We asked experienced volunteers to check every article created by newcomers during Wikimarathon and offer feedback as needed. NN people joined this program and checked NN articles.

We sincerely thank everyone who participated in Wikimarathon 2024 and joined our community. Your contribution has improved the quality and accessibility of information in Ukrainian Wikipedia for all users.

• Wikimarathon 2024 page: https://w.wiki/8ofZ 

07/03/2024-13/03/2024

Mapping

• Anne-Karoline Distel has written a blog about rag trees mapping (place_of_worship=sacred_tree) in OpenStreetMap.
• Robhubi asked, in a blog post, whether the wiki page for the key name needs to be restructured.
• SK53 described the mapping of chapels in crematorium buildings in a very detailed blog post.
• Codesurfer has requested comments on their proposal social_facility=equine_assisted_centre.
• Voting on the elevator dimensions proposal is open until Monday 25 March.

Community

• [1] GOwin blogged about an AlayData event of the OSM community in Metro Manila to celebrate Open Data Day. Last but not least, the trivia at the end of the article is interesting
• Rebecca Firth, Executive Director of HOT, spoke about how her team uses open maps to help change women’s lives for the better.
• Doué-en-Anjou (in the south of Maine-et-Loire, France) now has ► a small OSM community! It organises itself using the Communecter social network.
• Craftmapper Negreheb ► first searched OSM and then the internet for second-hand shops in his neighbourhood. To record those missing from OSM, he cycled around local shops and mapped them.
• Deus Figendi called for more use of Panoramax. Paul explained Panoramax in a nutshell: ‘Street pictures à la Kartaview/Mapillary, but technically like Mastodon’. Christian Quest explained it in detail in a video from SotM Europe 2023.
• The YouthMappers UFRJ Chapter (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has received an award from the YouthMappers project, for promoting women’s participation in its membership and activities.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board and several of the OSMF Working Groups are launching a membership campaign with the goal of growing and diversifying membership in all regions of the world.
• Engelbert Modo has put ► together a few good arguments for why you should become a member of the OSMF and help shape the composition of the Board and the focus of its work. His appeal is particularly aimed at mappers in regions that currently only have a very small proportion of members.
• Each of the OpenStreetMap Foundation board members shared a few sentences about where they want to contribute in 2024.

Local chapter news

• Rebecca Nyinawumuntu Jeannette, from OSM Rwanda/ecomappers, blogged about their monthly mapathon events.

Events

• Raquel Dezidério Souto blogged about her participation as a special speaker at the Open Data Day UFBA 2024 (Brazil). The keynote video and PDF file are publicly available in Portuguese and English.

Maps

• Matt Whilden has developed TIGERMap, a webmap to help facilitate reviewing the TIGER import of roadways in the United States on OpenStreetMap.
• Martin Brake, an expert in road engineering, rail engineering, tunnel construction and much more, has published a map based on OSM, which helps visualise the development of transport networks over time (rail, motorway, underground, suburban railway) in Germany, London, and Barcelona.

OSM in action

• The German Amateur Radio Club (DARC) is offering ► an introduction to amateur radio with the help of a learning ► platform. In addition to a detailed course map ►, the DARC has also created a training sponsor ► map based on OSM. To keep the data up to date, a registration form can be accessed via a link on the map.
• governorkeagan spotted his first ‘mapinthewild’ that uses OpenStreetMap.

Software

• Ian Wagner, from Stadia Maps, gave a talk on using the open-source routing engine Valhalla. The talk systematically covered aspects of Valhalla’s flexibility through reference documentation and live demos using QGIS and the JSON API.
• Mapstories allows you to tell stories using maps. It uses OpenStreetMap, or the Mapbox library, as a base map and is available in DE, EN, ES, and FR.
• Tobias Zwick announced his plan to develop an iOS version of StreetComplete, using Kotlin Multiplatform and JetBrain’s Compose for the UI. Part of the development is being funded by the Prototype Fund, a German public interest tech grant program. For the remainder, he asked for help from the community, noting the numerous contributions up to this point that have made this endeavour feasible in the first place.

Programming

• 2hu4u wrote a tutorial on how to add wireless connectivity to enhance his previously documented very cheap and ultra portable street level imagery setup.
• Kamil Monicz has tested the performance of his OpenStreetMap NextGen (osm-ng) for the first time. The main task was to evaluate static and unauthenticated queries, which showed osm-ng to be much faster than osm-ruby, with the fastest execution time of 0.00314 seconds. mmd’s diary comment outlines some of the shortcomings in the testing methodology.

Releases

• Tobias Zwick has released StreetComplete v57, which now includes an overlay with which all those small map features such as benches, bicycle parking, roadside trees, ATMs, and other street furniture in general can be mapped. Another highlight of v57 is the building overlay, which mappers can use to view and edit building types in their vicinity.
• The OrganicMaps March 2024 update has been released. You can now export all of your bookmarks with a single click for backup; maps are updates to 28 February, and there is a track colour editor for iOS.
• Sarah Hoffmann announced the release of Nominatim version 4.4.0 and Photon version 0.5.0. This release comes with bug fixes and performance improvements and a new, experimental feature for exporting a Nominatim database to SQLite.
• Version 0.7.0 of OpenStop, the app to collect information (about accessibility) at public transport stops, has been released. Aside from many other improvements it’s now possible to translate the app into any language using Weblate. The development team have also created a video briefly introducing the app.

Did you know …

• … there is a modified version of StreetComplete called SCEE? It is aimed at experienced OSM contributors who desire more advanced editing capabilities in StreetComplete and is available on F-Droid.

OSM in the media

• Outsite featured an article on how to contribute (pp. 40–43) to OSM using mobile apps. Outsite is a Danish magazine aimed at hikers and other outdoor people.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
Chemnitz	Chemnitzer Linuxtage		2024-03-16 – 2024-03-17
Perth	Social Mapping Saturday: QEII 2024		2024-03-16
Puerto López	Latam meeting – SOTM LATAM 2024		2024-03-16
Defence Colony Tehsil	6th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2024-03-17
England	OSM UK Online Chat		2024-03-18
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-03-19
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-03-20
Strasbourg	Apéro OpenStreetMap		2024-03-19
Bonn	173. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-03-19
City of Edinburgh	OSM Edinburgh pub meetup		2024-03-19
	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2024-03-20
no location	[Online] Map-py Wednesday		2024-03-20
no location	Map-py Wednesday	✓	2024-03-20
	Map-py Wednesday		2024-03-20
	UN Mappers training – Validating OSM data – session #3		2024-03-20
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-03-20
Hamburg	FOSSGIS 2024 – OSM-Samstag/Preevent		2024-03-22
Hamburg	FOSSGIS 2024 – OSM-Samstag		2024-03-23
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen		2024-03-25
Grenoble	Rencontre « OpenStreetMap et territoires »		2024-03-26
Gent	OpenStreetMap-meetup in Gent		2024-03-26
	iD Community Chat		2024-03-27
	[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting		2024-03-28
Potsdam	Radnetz Brandenburg Mapping Abend #4		2024-03-28
	MapComplete Community Call		2024-03-29
Athens	Mapathon with OpenStreetMap: Improving Athens County’s Mapped Infrastructure @ Ohio University		2024-03-29
Düsseldorf	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)		2024-03-29
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #63		2024-04-01

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

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) sets the standard for collaboration and behavior across the Wikimedia community and its projects. To ensure its principles are well understood and effectively implemented, the UCoC’s Enforcement Guidelines (EG) recommends the development of training modules. These are not just any modules; they are the keystones for fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all Wikimedians. Its goals are to provide a common understanding of the UCoC and skills for its implementation.

The EG mandates that varied stakeholders should be consulted in the development of the training modules. While Foundation staff have developed initial drafts for two modules, we’re extending an invitation to community members to gather their insights, feedback, and suggestions. Your perspectives are invaluable as we strive to ensure these training modules comprehensively address the needs and expectations of our global community. 

There are still some open questions relating to the EG such as: 

• How cases will be triaged from the incident response system?
• Who will be the instructors of the module on complex cases?
• How will those instructors be selected? 
• What are the details around the role of the U4C in enforcing the UCoC?

As such, the training modules will also reflect some vagueness on these topic areas and will be improved once those questions are answered.

While the modules provide a baseline understanding of the UCoC and how it will be enforced, you may feel that the way it’s structured or the examples used are not relevant to your context. Please note that the modules are just a baseline, much like the UCoC, and different communities are encouraged to develop training materials that reflect their context and needs.

If you’re interested, sign-up here so we can keep you informed about the progress! We look forward to your input on the respective talk pages! 

How can you help?

• Do you have general thoughts, comments, suggestions, questions?
• Is there anything unclear or could be phrased differently? 
• Could a word, a sentence or paragraph be changed to make the text more translatable?
• Do you have any ideas for making the modules more interactive?

For more information please see the Meta page Universal Code of Conduct/Training.We look forward to your participation! Please share any questions or comments you may have on the talk page.

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC) continues drafting the Movement Charter for the Wikimedia Movement in alignment with recommendation #4 of the Movement Strategy, which advocates for ensuring equity in decision-making processes.

In early February, the Committee members assigned themselves to new roles: chapter stewards and chapter internal reviewers. The chapter stewards worked towards refining each chapter to a “good enough” version. These chapters then underwent a preliminary, two-week-long review phase by a diverse group of reviewers and advisors. The reviewers group included former members of the MCDC, members of communities and affiliates, WMF Board of Trustees (BoT) members, and members of the Affiliations Committee. The MCDC received invaluable proposals for improvement from their advisors and reviewers on the full Charter draft both in writing and during their closed call with the advisors on February 22. The Committee extends its gratitude to everyone who invested their volunteer time and provided constructive feedback. This collective effort shows the shared ownership and commitment of all involved parties. 

MCDC’s February convenings  

• 1 February – MCDC’s regular meeting: Committee members recapped the outcomes of their January in-person meeting and spent most of their time drafting in breakout rooms. During this meeting, it was decided that the roles of chapter stewards would include deciding which points need to be voted on by the full MCDC, drafting their respective chapters, preparing readers’ notes, integrating feedback from reviewers, and resolving comments from the MCDC, among others. The internal chapter reviewers provided actionable feedback on the chapters for which they volunteered. In addition, the Committee reached an agreement to produce three layers of text, namely: 1) the full Movement Charter draft, 2) Reader’s notes – to assist readers in understanding the context and intention, and 3) Supplementary documents – this level provides background information on the charter content. It focuses on how to advance the Charter after ratification and serves as a form of handover to the future Global Council.   
• 2 February – Meeting with WMDE to discuss details of the Wikimedia Summit 2024. 
• 5 February – A group within the MCDC met to discuss the Global Council text, other members worked a-sync to improve the chapter texts. 
• 8 February – MCDC’s regular meeting: Chapter stewards provided updates on their work progress and discussed the next steps, the Committee then discussed the Global Council draft. 
• 10 February – A group within the MCDC met to finalize the Global Council text for the preliminary review by advisors and reviewers.  
• 15 February – MCDC’s regular meeting: The Committee discussed the chunks they will present for deliberations at the Wikimedia Summit 2024. In addition, the Committee spent some time preparing for their closed call with advisors and reviewers of the Charter draft. 
• 22 February – MCDC’s closed call with Advisors to provide space to listen to the feedback from the advisors and reviewers on the draft Charter.   
• 24-25 February – MCDC’s online working weekend: This weekend was dedicated to the incorporation and reconciliation of the feedback received from the advisors and reviewers. 
• February 29 – MCDC’s regular meeting: The chapter stewards shared updates on each chapter. The Committee members brainstormed about the questions or topics they want to bring to the table at the Strategic Retreat with the WMF staff, WMF BoT, and WMF Endowment in New York on March 7 & 8.

In other news

The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation shared their perspectives on the Global Council. In this letter, the BoT presented some areas of responsibility to reassign from the Foundation to the Global Council as well as the changes that are not under consideration for the time being. Please read the full message on Meta. 

Upcoming community engagement period on the full draft Charter

The MCDC will share the full Charter with everyone on April 2 on Meta-wiki to kick off the community engagement period between April 2-22. We encourage all members of the Wikimedia community, including movement volunteers, individual online contributors, Affiliates, project communities, stakeholders, regional groups, and WMF staff, to actively engage with the Charter draft during the community engagement period. This means carefully reviewing the draft and providing suggestions for improvement to the MCDC. Acknowledging that this period overlaps with the Wikimedia Summit between April 19-21, where many affiliates will convene, this engagement is inclusive of all stakeholders, including those who won’t be at the Summit or are part of an affiliate. Community engagement details will be shared on Meta closer to the start of the engagement.

The movement-wide voting period on the full Movement Charter will take place between June 12-25.

In fall 2023, 20 esteemed experts in art history joined Wiki Education for a special ten-week Wiki Scholars course funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Designed to train experts to edit articles about European art and architecture from antiquity to the early 19th century, the course demonstrated the incredible impact a small group of professionals can create through Wikipedia – nearly 3 million views and counting! 

Collectively, the course participants contributed more than 900 total edits in more than 100 Wikipedia articles, adding almost 50,000 words and 718 references. The course not only yielded a substantial number of article edits, but it also resulted in a marked increase in the quality of articles. The work from the course raised the scores of 31 articles by at least five ORES points, a measurement Wikipedia uses to help rank the quality of an article. The ORES score is determined by several variables, including article size, number of sections, references, and images. 

While Wikipedia encourages anyone to make edits to pages, regardless of background or experience, professional expertise – including knowledge of and access to high-quality sources – proves invaluable in enhancing and expanding the content of articles. 

“Contributing to Wikipedia aligns with a core professional goal I have: to democratize knowledge,” said participant Anne McClanan, art history professor at Portland State University. “The Wiki Education course empowered art history professors to contribute, ensuring that scholarly expertise is accessible to a wider audience, breaking down barriers to information.” 

McClanan, a Byzantine art historian, improved several articles including Byzantine silver (explore her changes inspired by a specific thesis), as well as the Wikipedia article about the Byzantine Empire. McClanan’s improvements of the Byzantine Empire article are particularly noteworthy, as the text was already considered one of the highest quality articles on Wikipedia, indicating the comprehensive and robust nature of its information and sources. Using her deep understanding of the subject area and related sources, McClanan was able to add small yet key pieces of information to the article, filling in content gaps previously unaddressed by editors. This article has been viewed 250,000 times in the past month alone and continues to be regarded as one of Wikipedia’s best articles.

Like McClanan, the other subject-area experts in the course sought to improve articles related to their own unique interests and professional backgrounds. James Clifton, Director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, focused on the article about Bernardo de’ Dominici, an Italian art historian and minor landscape and genre painter. James not only crafted a detailed section about one of his works, but he also improved the article lead, cleaned up a long list of works, and polished the article’s overview of his life. Take a look at the Bernado de’ Dominici article in “the visual editor” mode – this view shows Clifton’s additions (in green) and text he removed (in red), edits which enhanced the overall quality of the article. 

For Clifton, the importance and impact of Wikipedia for both scholars and the general public cannot be underestimated.

“I use Wikipedia frequently,” said Clifton. “It is the quickest path to at least superficial – and often profound – information on countless subjects.  As such, its importance as a widespread source of information is incalculable, and it behooves those who contribute to it to make it as accurate and accessible as possible. The Wikipedia editing course taught me to do that in my own small corner of the world.”

As the scale and detail of Wikipedia more than eclipse that of every encyclopedia which preceded it, Wikipedia can often feel expansive and even complete. However, as these courses demonstrate, no knowledge system is immune to content gaps and systemic bias. Wiki Education courses provide experts with support to leverage a global platform and share their knowledge, research, and passion with the world. And in the process, they make this vast source of information a little more complete for all. 

This year, our courses will bring together groups including medical professionals, political scientists, and climate change scholars (just to name a few!), creating a bridge between their professional expertise and the information accessible to everyone through Wikipedia – making a great thing even better. 

Interested in learning more about the work of this course and its reach on Wikipedia? Visit our open-access Course Dashboard, and be sure to explore our upcoming courses for subject-area experts provided by Wiki Education.

Wiki Education thanks the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their generous support of the fall 2023 Art History Wiki Scholars course.

Course participants:

• Paul Albert, Scholar, George Mason University
• Anne McClanan, PhD, Art History Professor, Portland State University
• James Clifton, Director, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Curator, Renaissance and Baroque Painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• Margaret Ann Zaho, PhD, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Central Florida
• Kate Dimitrova, PhD, Lecturer, Department of Art, Architecture + Art History, University of San Diego
• Maria Ketcham, Director, Research Library, Archives & Collections Information, Detroit Museum of Art
• Jessica Allison, Collections Database Manager, Detroit Museum of Art
• Maura Wilson, Department Assistant, University of San Francisco
• Elizabeth Macaulay, DPhil, Associate Professor, Graduate Center, CUNY
• Anne Betty Weinshenker, PhD, Professor Emerita of Art History, Montclair State University
• John Hagood, Librarian, National Gallery of Art
• Susanna Caroselli, PhD, Professor Emerita of Art HIstory, Messiah University
• Casey Long, Head of Research & Instruction, Agnes Scott College
• Lalaine Bangilan, PhD, Gallery Director and Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts, Misericordia University
• Zoe Kobs, Student, University of San Diego
• Daniel Maze, PhD, Associate Professor, Head of Art History, University of Iowa
• Shirley Schwarz, PhD, Professor Emerita, Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Evansville
• Lindsay Cook, PhD, Assistant Teaching Professor, Penn State University
• Joy Kearney, PhD Candidate, Royal Netherlands Military Academy
• Eelco Nagelsmit, PhD, Lecturer, Leiden University
• Emily Everhart, PhD, Assistant Professor, Chair of Liberal Arts, Art Academy of Cincinnati
• Daniella Berman, PhD, Project Manager & Researcher, The Drawing Foundation
• Christina Tatum, Instruction & Outreach Librarian, Agnes Scott College

Since 2019 the WikiforHumanRights Global Campaign campaign  has engaged thousands of participants across over 5 continents contributing to over 15000+ articles on different language Wikipedias. Previous years, the campaign had focused on the triple planetary crisis.

Excited to be back as your Anglophone Africa Regional Coordinator for the WikiForHumanRights 2024 campaign! This year, we’re building a powerful network of support. I’ll be working hand-in-hand with Valentin Nasibu, the Francophone Africa regional coordinator, dedicated country coordinators and awesome community organizers across the continent.  Together, we’ll be providing all the resources and guidance you need to make the  2024 campaign a huge success!

In the last edition, the African community gathered in an online call to respond to a survey on the sub-theme that speaks to the ‘’Right to a healthy environment’’ theme and is relevant for the region. This year, the Africa regional coordinators hosted the first regional office hour to hear directly from the community. 40 out of 56 participants engaged in a word cloud survey to share environmental and other issues that are dominant in their countries. Pollution and extreme heat ranked  42.5% and 27.5% respectively in responses, identifying them as key areas of focus for the African community.  

But here’s the kicker:  if your community finds it exciting to focus on other sub themes outside pollution and extreme heat, feel free to tackle that instead! The topic guide on the meta page can support you to use the SDGs and human rights intersection to find themes that inspire you to action.

We saw community interest in hosting a second office hour to explore how they can contribute to Wikidata, WikiVoyage, Wikimedia commons, and local language Wikipedia on these topics. We have learnt how open and safe spaces can empower the African community to lead impactful local activities for the campaign. And we want to continue to offer this support through weekly Friday office hours replacing the region’s ‘Notorious Wednesday’ sessions from the 2023 edition.

These weekly sessions would serve as conversation and empowering ground for local organizers and participants in addition to formal capacity building sessions tailored to equip the community to contribute on Wikidata, Wikivoyage and using the new event registration tool.  Please register your interest if you wish to be invited to the weekly Friday Office horse.

If you want to go beyond the regional perspectives and learn about the global changes happening on the campaign in the 2024 edition, you can read this blogpost. 

How can You Participate

You can organize local campaign activities in your community or join local events happening around you as a participant.  The community events table can help you to find activities around you to join.  The campaign’s series of global workshops is a great opportunity.  . Take advantage of them to learn something new through your participation. .

What is required of Organizers this year

• Create your campaign dashboard under the Wikiforhumanrights Program Dashboard. 
• Access resources from the handy communication kit.
• Explore rapid grant opportunities (March-April cycle).
• Organizers who have annual funds are welcome to allocate a portion of their grant to organizing this campaign in their community
• As part of the campaign this year, we will be piloting the event registration tool to understand organizers’ experience using the tool. To test out the event registration tool request for event page page creation rights.

Stay Engaged and Informed

Join the respective communication channels to get all the updates you need for a successful campaign

• WikiForHumanRights Main Telegram Group
• WFHR Africa Region Organizers Telegram group
• Wikimedians for a sustainable development Telegram group 
• Guide on topic identification
• Listen to the previous podcast and Join in this year’s episode coordinated by Romeo.
• Visit the List building Tools Library

Join us to make this year’s campaign a memorable and impactful one!

Wikimixtura is a series of photography and edition contests, carried out by the Wikimedistas de Bolivia User Group. These contests are designed to close content gaps on topics related to living Bolivian culture, both on Wikipedia and the broader Internet. 

Four versions of Wikimixtura took place in 2023, each with a different theme:

Carnaval: to enrich the content on typical Bolivian dances, artisans, and musicians, in the context of the Bolivian Carnaval

Cuisine: to expand the knowledge about Bolivian foods, ingredients, producers, and traders

Funeral Rituals: to gather more information about funerary traditions in Bolivia

Holidays: to generate more content about Christmas, the New Year, and other end-of-year celebrations in Bolivia

Although these four elements are essential for Bolivian culture and economy, they are not represented well on Wikipedia. For the user group, it is crucial to raise awareness about Bolivian culture and to advance its representation in the encyclopedia. That’s the main reason to promote these events.

Thanks to the Wiklimixtura contests in 2023, more than 1,200 new images depicting dance, food, mortuary rituals, and end-of-year celebrations in Bolivia were uploaded. Moreover, 40 new articles on these and other topics were published. 

Below, you’ll find a small sample of selected images, which were taken and uploaded on the different 2023 versions of Wikimixtura: 

The changemaker advocacy and campaigning toolkit is now available on Wikipedia

In 2023 we delivered our Wikimedia + Democracy research. The research highlighted that groups organised around a shared interest, value or cause and equipped with digital, information and collaboration skills, were more likely to engage in civic participation in public matters relevant to them. Alongside this understanding, the skills fostered in Wikimedia workshops led to further engagement in public matters, empowering the people who took part to be active citizens in other areas of their lives.

We also recognised that globally we are faced with a trend towards a shrinking civil society space. Almost half the world is going to the polls in 2024, and as the need for action grows we are experiencing fewer spaces where citizens can develop and practise key civic skills such as collaboration, self-representation, and working within a context of diversity and difference of opinion. 

In an effort to redress this imbalance and support the development of skills to engage in civic action, we partnered with the Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK). SMK works tirelessly with changemakers and have decades of practical experience in advocacy and campaigning. Together we seek to address the lack of good quality, freely available knowledge on how to address the challenges of changemaking, and support those at the forefront of making change happen.

“Our work with SMK on the Changemakers Toolkit over the last 10 months, brings Wikimedia UK to the forefront of sharing tools to introduce, plan and communicate for change. SMK lead the way in developing training for campaigners and activists; this toolkit condenses and shares that knowledge. Aligned to our strategic themes of knowledge equity and information literacy, embedding the tools across open knowledge platforms ensures they are free to use, for everyone. The Wikimedia platform stands as a testimony to the power of the individual and the impact of collaboration.”

Monisha Shah, Chair of Trustees, Wikimedia UK

We are excited to launch the Changemakers’ Toolkit on Wikipedia, as a free online resource for campaigners and activists, and anyone interested in what these roles involve. The three introductory modules are Introduction to changemaking, Analysing the Problem and Planning for Change, and Communicating for Change. Following these modules will develop an actionable understanding of campaigning and change-making. Our aim is to support everyone to campaign more confidently straight away, and to give anyone interested in changemaking a framework to build more knowledge in the future. 

“Working with Wikimedia UK on these new resources has been a fantastic experience and fascinating to combine our different perspectives on social change and develop this Toolkit. It’s never been more important to find new ways to support those who are working to create change in our communities, and we are thrilled to share our tools and approaches with a wider audience. It’s the first step towards a long-held ambition for SMK.”

Shaan Sangha, Knowledge and Insight Manager, SMK

From Wikimedia UK’s perspective, it is not just about supporting broader access to advocacy skills for all, using these tools unlocks the changemaking potential across our global Wikimedia community. Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation at Wikimedia UK, highlighted that “Within the Wikimedia movement sits a great potential for making change in the world, across a huge range of societal issues: misinformation, shrinking civic space, decolonisation and knowledge equity. Members of the Wikimedia movement are, or have the capacity and aptitude to become changemakers if supported with the right tools and knowledge. This project brings together two communities – Wikimedians and changemakers – so they can benefit from each other’s expertise.” 

The Changemakers Toolkit is based on SMK’s Campaign Carousel which draws on nearly two decades of experience training hundreds of campaigners and activists. 

The ambition is to add to the Toolkit over time, providing changemakers with a comprehensive library of free campaigning resources. We’d love your feedback on how the Toolkit works for you and what else you would like to see added. 

Both Wikimedia UK and Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK) are grateful to the Wikimedia Foundation for funding this project, and supporting the democratisation of resources for campaigning and advocacy. 

Responding to how the toolkit can be used across the whole Wikimedia community, Franziska Putz, Senior Movement Advocacy Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation said “The Changemakers Toolkit meets an important need in that it provides practical decision-making guides, prioritisation frameworks, and templates that campaigners of all kinds can adapt to their needs in order to strategically analyse problems and plan for effective change.” adding “The sections on ‘moving from problem statements to solutions’  and identifying core audiences via the ‘spectrum of allies’ concept strike me as particularly relevant for Wikimedians interested in public policy advocacy. I congratulate Wikimedia UK for creating a resource that will help empower others in the movement with a  step-by-step guide on how to navigate complex advocacy landscapes, and thereby advancing our shared mission.” 

The Changemakers Toolkit includes:

Introduction to changemaking – Provides an introduction to how change happens and the many routes through which campaigning and activism can have an impact. Covers foundational tools including the Social Change Grid, 12 habits, and introduces the topic of social power.

Planning for change – Digs further into how to understand the problem you want to address and your solution, using the Problem Tree tool. Introduces approaches to planning campaigns, and identifying your allies and people you need to influence.

Communication for change – How to achieve an impact with your communications by understanding who you’re speaking to, what you need to say to connect with them, and how you can reach them.

We’d love to receive your feedback, so please use the Changemakers Toolkit and let us know how it works for you, and whether there is additional focus or explainers you would like to see added. Over the next few months we will be adding a version of the Toolkit to WikiLearn. We will explore including video content and make the most of WikiLearn’s features such as quizzes, while continuing to contribute to the central learning resources.

To share your feedback on the Toolkit, please email [email protected]

The African Games and Sports Writing Contest (Afrosports) has the goal of bridging the African sport content gap on Wikipedia. This will be achieved by writing articles about the historical and contemporary African sports scene. This year’s Afrosports contest is no different. We strive to publish articles on Wikipedia that will expand the knowledge currently available in Africa’s historical and contemporary Sports Scene.

This contest hopes to brighten the beauty that lies within sportsmanship and illustrate the beauty inherent in sports. We hope to bring to light the African sports sector by publishing Articles on Wikipedia featuring African games, Sports and Sportspersons.

The Afrosports Contest 2024 will be focusing on the English Wikipedia and 5 other African languages. This includes Igbo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and the Kinyarwanda Wikipedia.

You don’t have to worry if you aren’t proficient in any of the African languages listed. We have made the option of writing as many articles on the English Wikipedia as possible.

If you are new to writing articles on Wikipedia, you don’t have to worry because we have you covered. Free Knowledge Africa will be organizing an in-depth training session. It will be a step-by-step beginner friendly session to teach you all you need to know about creating articles on Wikipedia. These training sessions will be virtual, that way you can join from the comfort of your home at a convenient time. 

There will also be community groups where you will have access to your trainers when you have questions.

As cherry on top the cake, there are amazing prizes to be won ranging from $50 to $150.

What are you waiting for? Get registered here at http://bit.ly/Afrosport24 

We look forward to creating magic with you and sharing stories about our beautiful games and sports in Africa and celebrating our African sportspersons.

The Tech Safari program was an incredibly enriching experience that opened my eyes to the power of contributing to open knowledge. As someone with a passion for the Hausa language, I focused my efforts on translating wiki, translating content into Hausa.

What did I enjoy most?

Definitely the opportunity to take important information and reframe it in my native Hausa tongue. Breaking down complex concepts and finding the perfect phrasing to make them understandable and relevant to my community was immensely gratifying. Seeing my translations published was pure joy.

What skills did I gain?

On a technical level, I built skills using MediaWiki translation tools and workflows. But more importantly, I developed a deeper understanding of the art of effective translation. Carefully considering word choice, idioms, nuance, and cultural context while maintaining accuracy and natural language flow became paramount. Feedback from mentors helped sharpen my abilities.

How will I continue contributing?

I’m passionate about applying my skills to make knowledge freely accessible. I will keep translating articles, interfaces, and educational resources across Wikimedia sites into high-quality Hausa. Lowering language barriers enables the vital sharing of information.

Advice for future participants?

Don’t be intimidated! The translate wiki community is so supportive. Start small and build confidence. Pursue your passions – if a topic excites you, use that fuel to drive your work. Be open to learning and feedback. This grassroots knowledge movement is incredibly rewarding to be part of.

Participating in the Tech Safari was transformative. I’ve gained valuable skills and experience while feeling a deeper sense of purpose. My translations are empowering my community with knowledge. I encourage everyone to explore ways they can lend their talents to this mission.

A digital knowledge act for europe

In December 2023 the Communia Association, which Wikimedia Europe is a member of, rolled out the idea of a Digital Knowledge Act at the European Union level. A EU regulation that makes the interests of knowledge institutions, such as libraries, universities and schools, a top priority. 

In the past five years we have seen the EU tackling various specific digital issues through legislation – content moderation through the Digital Services Act, market power through the Digital Markets Act, data sharing through the Data Act and the Data Governance Act. All these were necessary steps, we believe, they however treated institutions, such as libraries, archives, universities and schools, almost as an afterthought.  

So, what’s in it?

The idea is to have a piece of EU legislation that would pinpoint the pain points of knowledge institutions in the digital world and remedy them through precise changes to the relevant laws. 

1. A secondary publication right would ensure that publicly-funded research can not only be cited, but also linked to and accessed by researchers, journalists and all citizens. 
2. We also need to ensure access and reusability of administrative and legal documents, publicly commissioned studies and works in the public domain. 
3. A unified research exception should allow the sharing of protected materials between researchers for purposes of verification of research results and for engaging in collaborative research. Something that is currently impaired by a multitude of national and incompatible regimes. 
4. A EU-wide e-lending right would allow libraries to lend out works in digital formats under the same conditions as works in physical form, something they are currently barred from doing.
5. The introduction of measures protecting against abusive contractual practices, which would allow to balance the relationship between libraries, archives or other knowledge institutions and right-holders. 

Why do we need all this? Disinformation!

In today’s world citizens are flooded with information, including misinformation and disinformation. Mushroom sites pop up constantly, but their content is also peddled by more traditional outlets and public personalities. There doesn’t seem to be an adequate legislative response to this with regards to limiting access to information, nor does it appear desirable. 

However, the public sector can instigate meaningful change when it comes to the accessibility of reliable information. The public hand finances research and educational materials with humongous budgets, but much of the results can’t be accessed and reused. 

The balance between the online availability of unreliable or even malicious information vs. verifiable and reliable information is shifting in the wrong direction. By opening up publicly-funded research, studies and educational content,  we can start pushing back. Citizens, journalists, researchers, or even just Wikipedia readers would have access to significantly more reliable sources. Information would become easier to verify and more reliable. Not everywhere, but in many places.

why do we need all this? artificial intelligence!

Artificial Intelligence is a hype right now in political and legal circles. But it is also a technology that, we believe, will shift the way the world works. Nowadays we use online platforms to perform almost any activity, from jogging to listening to music and watching TV to talking to friends and participating in public debates. AI will be interspersed in almost any product or service we use daily.  

As a society we must decide whether we want these ubiquitous AI models trained predominantly on mushroom disinformation sites and social media posts or we prefer them being trained on publicly-funded research and projects like Europeana, Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia.

we need this!

The Digital Knowledge Act tackles long standing issues in the field of research, education, libraries and the public domain. But in sum, it is much more than a set of surgical fixes to well known issues. It would be one adequate response to the risks of artificial intelligence and to the threats of misinformation and disinformation. 

Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK) in collaboration with Wikimedia UK, have launched an open access toolkit which empowers people to campaign effectively.

Across the UK people are working to change things for the better. Campaigners, activists, and changemakers of all types are stepping up to address injustices, improve conditions in their communities, and draw attention to neglected issues. From the Post Office Horizon scandal, housing issues such as mouldy homes, and fighting the closure of local libraries, changemakers are grafting away on many vital issues, and are often at the forefront of holding those in power to account. 

Change is possible, but it is not easy work. It requires extraordinary courage, resilience and persistence. Changemaking is made tougher still because of the lack of good quality, freely available knowledge on how to go about it. From our many years of working with changemakers we know that it can be a struggle to know where to start. Today, we launch a toolkit to address these challenges and support those at the forefront of making change happen.

Through this unique collaboration, SMK and Wikimedia UK are committed to making knowledge open and freely available so it can help people campaign effectively. That’s why we’ve launched the Changemaker’s Toolkit, a free online training resource for campaigners, activists, and changemakers.  

The three introductory modules; Introduction to changemaking, Analysing the problem and planning for Change, and Communicating for Change, will enable you to develop your understanding of campaigning and changemaking, providing the  tools to allow you to reflect and plan. Our aim is to support you to campaign more confidently straight away, and to provide a framework to build your knowledge in the future. 

The Toolkit is based on SMK’s Campaign Carousel which draws on nearly two decades of experience training hundreds of campaigners and activists. 

‘SMK’s Campaign Carousel is a cutting-edge training programme shaped by expert campaigners. We provide practical tools and approaches that allow new campaigners to hit the ground running. Our training supports these new campaigners to make powerful, impactful change by giving them the guidance they need across all of the different aspects of campaigning. From social media, to understanding social change, to working with the legal system, and much more- our Campaign Carousel supports campaigners to become powerful forces for change.’ – Kathleen Christie, Head of Programmes, SMK

At Wikimedia UK we pride ourselves on being experts on knowledge equity, committed to the ideal of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. With thousands of contributors to open knowledge through Wikipedia and its sister projects, we have a network of supporters who will benefit from a better understanding on how to campaign on the wide variety of issues that are important to them.

‘Within the Wikimedia movement sits a great potential for making change in the world, across a huge range of societal issues: misinformation, shrinking civic space, decolonisation and knowledge equity. Members of the Wikimedia movement are, or have the capacity and aptitude to become changemakers  if supported with the right tools and knowledge. This project brings together two communities – Wikimedians and changemakers – so they can benefit from each other’s expertise. Wikimedians get access to social change knowledge to increase their effectiveness, SMK is able to support changemakers with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to work effectively and create change.’ Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation

The overlapping interests between our organisations are clear, and we’re grateful for Wikimedia Foundation’s grant to help make  a long-standing ambition a reality. It’s a modest start, but an important one and a foundation we intend to build on.

‘Working with Wikimedia UK on these new resources has been a fantastic experience and fascinating to combine our different perspectives on social change and develop this Toolkit. It’s never been more important to find new ways to support those who are working to create change in our communities, and we are thrilled to share our tools and approaches with a wider audience. It’s the first step towards a long-held ambition for SMK.’ Shaan Sangha, Knowledge and Insight Manager, SMK

The ambition is to add to the Toolkit over time, providing changemakers with a comprehensive library of free campaigning resources. We’d love your feedback on how the Toolkit works for you and what else you would like to see added. You can email us at [email protected]

Further information

The Changemakers Toolkit includes:

Introduction to Changemaking – Provides an introduction to how change happens and the many routes through which campaigning and activism can have an impact. Covers foundational tools including the Social Change Grid, 12 habits, and introduces the topic of social power.

Analysing the Problem and Planning for change – Digs further into how to understand the problem you want to address and your solution, using the Problem Tree tool. Introduces approaches to planning campaigns, and identifying your allies and people you need to influence.

Communication for Change – How to achieve an impact with your communications by understanding who you’re speaking to, what you need to say to connect with them, and how you can reach them.

There is a version tailored for Wikimedians available on metawiki. Modules are Introduction to changemaking, Analysing the Problem and Planning for Change, and Communicating for Change. 

Rob Abercrombie, Deputy Chief Executive, SMK

Daria Cybulska, Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Wikimedia UK

The post Announcing the Changemakers’ Toolkit: your go-to, free training resource for campaigners, activists, and changemakers of all kinds appeared first on WMUK.

🕑 38 minutes

Taavi Väänänen is a site reliability engineer in the Wikimedia Cloud Services team at the Wikimedia Foundation. In 2022, when he was still just a volunteer contributor, he was named Tech Contributor of the Year by Jimmy Wales.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Taavi Väänänen homepage
• Wikimedia Toolforge
• CentralAuth MediaWiki extension
• RealMe MediaWiki extension
• "Fediverse" Wikipedia article

In a template it says: "[[Lowell Thomas Award]] (2015)". The link it a redirect to [[Lowell Thomas]] the man the award is named after. This is accepted practice in Wikipedia and it is not a problem. The redirect page has 23 links to articles mostly of people who received the same award.

With a Red&Blue Wikibase for the English Wikipedia, it will be possible to associate a relation with the award. This could fit in a template and additional red links can be added based on the source. 

When a Wikipedia adds new links, it is done by typing in the name of an potential article. Given that people who received an award are notable, consequently new blue links are highly likely to occur. New red links are entered in a template so there is this implied relation. 

At Wikidata an item for the Lowell Thomas award was recently added because of Mr Hay. It currently only refers to one recipient; Mr Hay. The 23 relations known at the en:red&blue are more than welcome to be added to Wikidata. Red links are more tricky as Wikidata is a superset of data of all the Wikipedias  articles of all Wikipedia and then some. 

So when Wikidata already knows about a recipient, it can make a red Wikibase link blue. When any Wikipedia adds the Lowell Thomas Award as a link, all the information can be populated from Wikidata making it much easier to have sanity checks indicating where data may be right or wrong..

• Hidden data in redirection articles are given an additional use
• Data available in multiple Wikipedias is actually shared making knowledge more complete
• Data only available in one Wikipedia becomes more generally available

• Albania report: One village, One article in Albania and Kosovo
• Australia report: On tour
• Brazil report: News from Rio de Janeiro
• France report: Open Content Observatory letter
• Italy report: Antarctic Writing Month and GLAM call
• Kosovo report: One Village, One Article Campaign
• New Zealand report: WikiProject Te Papa Research Expeditions, wrapping up the Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau local histories project, and the Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large
• Poland report: WikiMatejko editing action; The eighth European GLAM Wiki coordinators meet up
• Spain report: SMALL GLAM SLAM Pilot 1 Rapid Grant
• Sweden report: Working life museums
• UK report: National Trust, Leeds 2023, and Khalili Foundation
• USA report: Hacking Night; Seattle Meetups; Denver Huddle; Wikipedia Day LA; San Diego/February 2024; Supreme Court visit
• Biodiversity Heritage Library report: BHL-Wiki Working Group February Monthly Highlights
• Wikidata report: Working with catalogues: a Wikidata volunteer’s perspective
• WMF GLAM report: Updates on OpenRefine training and Wikisource Loves manuscripts
• Calendar: March’s GLAM events

29/02/2024-06/03/2024

Mapping

• [1] Koreller explained how he mapped Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, in 3D. An effort was made to recreate both ordinary buildings and city landmarks in detail. Inspiration for the project came from the popular simulation game ‘Cities: Skylines’.
• Penegal shared ► his thoughts on mapping the natural regions of mainland France: what is a natural region? How should they be mapped? What sources should be used?
• Geozeisig has made a request for comments on aerodrome=*, a proposal that the aerodrome=* key should be used to classify aerodromes according to their importance and purpose.

Community

• mikeocool stumbled upon an intriguing discovery while mapping Forest Service roads in northwest Montana: two airstrips across the road from each other. Further investigation revealed a backstory involving retired US Navy commander Murland Searight and Hollywood director Michael Cimino.
• Ali Ingersoll, from WRAL-TV, reported that residents of Raleigh, North Carolina, have been mapping pedestrian infrastructure in OSM as volunteers for Code with the Carolinas.
• The UN Mapper of the Month for March 2024 is Pawan Muddu, from India.

Local chapter news

• The OSM-FR association has announced that the 10th SotM France will be held in Lyon from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 June 2024. Detailed information and the call for papers should be available soon.

Maps

• TrailStash has developed OpenBikeHero, an OSM and Overpass powered application for finding bicycle repair stands.
• Rtnf has overlaid weather satellite data onto an OpenStreetMap base map to produce weather forecasts around specific coordinates.
• Sebastian Pertsch found an interesting project – a virtual forum with maps from Saxony, Germany, and the University Library of Dresden. The site has more than 9000 georeferenced historical maps that can be overlaid on a modern OpenStreetMap layer. Some maps were created in the 17th century, which makes this platform even more valuable.

OSM in action

• By using OpenStreetMap data, Ben Ashforth has devised a mathematical route-planning algorithm in order to visit the streets around Europe that are named after each day of the year.
• Stolpersteine (literally ‘stumbling blocks’) are small brass-plated cubes laid, around Europe, in front of the last-known residences or workplaces of those who were driven out or murdered by the Nazis. Heise Online reported ► that 100,000 such memorial plaques have now been laid of which 30,000 have been recorded in the Stolperstein app. The app is primarily based on OSM data. In OpenPlaques you can find 5786 Stolpersteine, many with a photo. OSM has 33,876 blocks currently mapped.

Programming

• In the year of OpenStreetMap vector maps (we reported earlier), Paul Norman has described his work on minutely updates of a tile server and provided a webpage demo where we can see the result. Developers are invited to test and provide comments.
• Adrien Pavie has shared a tutorial to help users create custom models for object recognition in Panoramax photos. The tutorial walks users through the process of creating a dataset, marking up photos, training the YOLOv8 model, and recognising objects in new photos.
• Mary Knize has developed an OpenStreetMap-based 3D map using the A-Frame framework.
• Using the Monaco example Kamil Raczycki explained, in Towards Data Science, how to use DuckDB to read OpenStreetMap data, while providing insights into nodes, ways, and relations; perfect for SQL enthusiasts looking for streamlined GIS operations with QuackOSM.
• Volker Krause tooted some of their progress on indoor routing in KDE Itinerary and OSM infrastructure for Transitous (a public transport routing app).

Releases

• Joseph Elfelt has released GeoJPG version 2, a web app to display offline maps (we reported earlier).

Did you know …

• … Bexhill’s OSM map, which leaves nothing to be desired? Bexhill-OSM is completely open source. The project is freely available for anyone to review, modify, and improve. Highly recommended for imitation.
• … about the ‘awesome-maplibre‘ GitHub repository? This repository features various projects that use or support MapLibre.
• … the MapLibre webmap Javascript tool? It renders vector maps including 3D models, animations, adding icons, style labels, etc. This open source API is a community led fork derived from mapbox-gl-js that uses WebGL to render interactive maps from vector tiles in a browser. Paul Norman used MapLibre GL for his vector map example in the article above.
• … HeiGIT has an instance of overpass-turbo that defaults to using their Overpass server?  update: the instance is for internal use only

OSM in the media

• Brian Sperlongano described StreetFerret, which uses OSM and Strava data to generate ‘activity completeness’ maps, often resulting in corrections to OSM. StreetFerret’s OSM-based progress tracker for ultra-runner Paul Johnson’s quest to run across the United States was recently featured on a Los Angeles TV news station.

Other “geo” things

• Shaun McDonald raised concerns about proposed traffic solutions in the Ravenswood area of Ipswich, England. He suggests developing alternatives such as walking, cycling, and public transport.

Upcoming Events

Where	What	Online	When	Country
	OSMF Membership Drive – March Volunteers Meetup		2024-03-09
Bologna	Open Data Pax 2024		2024-03-09
Intramuros	#AlayData sa Intramuros Open Data Day 2024		2024-03-10
København	OSMmapperCPH		2024-03-10
Zürich	161. OSM-Stammtisch		2024-03-11
臺北市	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #62		2024-03-11
Rennes	Cartopartie “Places PMR” du Master SIGAT		2024-03-12
Salt Lake City	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night		2024-03-13
Berlin	Missing Maps – DRK Online Mapathon		2024-03-12
Hamburg	Hamburger Mappertreffen		2024-03-12
Plano Piloto	Encontro OSM Brasil		2024-03-12 – 2024-03-13
Autelbas	OSM Belgium – Ardenne belge – Réunions des contributeurs		2024-03-12
Potsdam	Radnetz Brandenburg Mapping Abend #3		2024-03-13
Lorain County	OpenStreetMap Midwest Meetup	✓	2024-03-14
Berlin	189. Berlin-Brandenburg OpenStreetMap Stammtisch		2024-03-14
Bochum	Bochumer OSM-Treffen		2024-03-14
München	Münchner OSM-Treffen		2024-03-14
Stainach-Pürgg	12. Österreichischer OSM-Stammtisch (online)		2024-03-14
Hannover	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover		2024-03-15
Chemnitz	Chemnitzer Linuxtage		2024-03-16 – 2024-03-17
Perth	Social Mapping Saturday: QEII 2024		2024-03-16
Defence Colony Tehsil	6th OSM Delhi Mapping Party		2024-03-17
England	OSM UK Chat		2024-03-18
Lyon	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon		2024-03-19
Strasbourg	Apéro OpenStreetMap		2024-03-19
Bonn	173. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn		2024-03-19
San Jose	South Bay Map Night	✓	2024-03-20
City of Edinburgh	OSM Edinburgh pub meetup		2024-03-19
	Map-py Wednesday		2024-03-20
Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe		2024-03-20
Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen		2024-03-25

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.

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This is the second half of my second monthly reports of my New Year’s resolutions.

User group meeting about roles and responsibilities

I organized a user group meeting and got some great help from Alex Stinson to facilitate it. We wanted to explore what further roles could be created in the user group to get more people to feel there was space for them to be more deeply involved. We go some ideas, but there is more work to be done. Minutes from the meeting.

In 1915, Alice Ball, an African American chemist, developed the most effective treatment for leprosy the world had ever seen. For years, her discovery was dubbed the “Dean Method,” after chemistry professor Arthur L. Dean, who had worked with Ball and took credit for her work following her untimely death in 1916. 

Ball is one of countless women written out of history — whose accomplishments and discoveries were either forgotten, appropriated, or excluded. This erasure is even more pronounced for Black, Indigenous, and women of color. 

As we celebrate the achievements of women like Ball, whose contributions are finally being recognized, we must also acknowledge that our history is still incomplete. Even now, coverage of women’s issues and perspectives is marginalized and excluded.  

For years, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia, has been raising awareness about gender gaps. Wikipedia is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive knowledge and educational resources. Its 62 million, and counting, articles are viewed 15 billion times each month. 

Wikipedia’s importance has only increased in today’s world of generative AI. Almost every Large Language Model, including those that drive tools like ChatGPT, relies on Wikipedia data as their primary source for training. 

Wikipedia must represent all the world’s people and knowledge because of how much people use it. Despite its widespread global reach, however, Wikipedia lacks the participation and perspectives of about half the world’s population. The truth is that Wikipedia needs more women.

Understanding gender gaps on Wikipedia

To truly reflect the complexity and richness of the human experience, it is essential that Wikipedia actively engages and includes more content about and contributions from women — cis, transgender, and non-binary — from around the world.

While there’s been some progress in closing gender equity gaps, today, only 19% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women. That means out of the almost two million biographies, less than 400,000 of them are about women. Similarly, while nearly half (49%) of Wikipedia’s readers are women, only 13% of active editors on Wikimedia projects identify as women.

Wikipedia depends on the availability of existing published sources to verify the facts in its articles. But, because women have been left out of historical narratives and traditional sources of knowledge, many of these knowledge gaps are present on Wikipedia. That means women remain significantly underrepresented — an issue that many publications and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, are trying to address.

So, how are we closing the gaps and changing the stats?

For many years, the Wikimedia Foundation and a global community of volunteers (known as the Wikimedia movement) have been making efforts to enhance women-related content and increase the participation of women on Wikipedia and beyond. Here are just a few of my favorite examples of this work happening worldwide and the people who make it possible… 

• Nitesh Gill, a volunteer administrator on the Punjabi language edition of Wikipedia, has created 1,000 new articles about notable women, including late Congress leader Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder, the only woman in the country to become a Member of Parliament (MP) six times, and Man Kaur, the 105-year-old track-and-field athlete.
• In Nigeria, grandmother and proud librarian Dr. Nkem Osuigwe has trained 300 fellow African librarians on how to contribute to Wikipedia. 
• Since 2014, the organization Art+Feminism has hosted more than 1,500 events around the world, engaging over 20,000 people in editing Wikipedia to close gender gaps.

These and many other efforts are helping to move the needle. Since 2010, for example, the percentage of Wikipedia editors who identify as women has grown from 10 to 20 percent today. Over the same period, the percentage of women’s biographies on Wikipedia grew from about 10 to 19 percent. 

While we celebrate this progress, we know there is much more work to be done. And we need your help to do it!

How can you help to close gender gaps?

This month, we invite you to participate in the “Wikipedia Needs More Women” campaign. This new campaign, launched by the Wikimedia Foundation in honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, is open to everyone, everywhere to help improve gender equity on Wikipedia and beyond.

• Join an event for Women’s History Month and Celebrate Women. Every year in March, Wikimedia volunteers around the globe get together in person and virtually to edit women’s content onto Wikimedia projects. Celebrate Women is a volunteer-led campaign that is open to all, beginner and experienced editors. Visit their webpage to find everything, from events happening near you to helpful resources, and how to get started. 
• Improve a Wikipedia article by adding a citation or expanding an article about a notable woman. 
• Join your local community of Wikipedia volunteers. 
• Share how you are helping to #ChangeTheStats on social media, and follow and tag us on Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Thank you in advance for joining us. Together, we can close gaps, #ChangeTheStats, and make the internet a more equitable place. 

Anusha Alikhan is Chief Communications Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she leads strategy to advance understanding of Wikimedia projects, and the Foundation’s values and social good mission, across external, internal and community audiences. Additionally, Anusha is a writer and speaker on topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion in the nonprofit sector. You can follow her at @AnushaA100.

View related content from the Wikimedia Foundation

History has a gender gap problem. How free knowledge and open tech can help

In a world that has regularly omitted the acts, inventions, accomplishments, and activism of women, and, in particular, women of color, from history, this rapid recording of the actions of previously unknown young women, and the close documenting of their growing influence, reveals the power of our digital knowledge landscape.

Read more

Project Rewrite: Tell the missing stories of women on Wikipedia and beyond

For as long as written history, women have far too often been left out of the record. And in a world that tells us to stay quiet, telling women’s stories is a radical act.

Read more

Ten ways to close the gender gap on Wikipedia and beyond

Women’s History Month in March serves as a designated time to commemorate women and highlight their contributions to society. As we showcase the many women who have shaped our world, however, their struggles to be recognized and seen for their many achievements also become clear.

Read more

The post Wikipedia Needs More Women appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Summary

• Install debugging packages: apt-get -y install php7.4-common-dbgsym php7.4-cli-dbgsym
• curl -o ~/php-gdbinit https://raw.githubusercontent.com/php/php-src/php-7.4.30/.gdbinit
• gdb <your php command>
• Enter run then once the command has failed: bt and zbacktrace

The Beta-Cluster-Infrastructure is a farm of wikis we use for experimentation and integration testing. It is updated continuously: new code is every ten minutes and the databases every hour by running MediaWiki maintenance/update.php. The scheduling and running are driven by Jenkins jobs which statuses can be seen on the Beta view:

On top of that, Jenkins will emit notification messages to IRC as long as one of the update job fails. One of them started failing on July 25th and this is how I was seeing it the alarm (times are for France, UTC+2):

(wmf-insecte is the Jenkins bot, insecte is french for bug (animals), and the wmf- prefix identifies it as a Wikimedia Foundation robot).

Clicking on the link gives the output of the update script which eventually fails with:

+ /usr/local/bin/mwscript update.php --wiki=wikifunctionswiki --quick --skip-config-validation
20:31:09 ...wikilambda_zlanguages table already exists.
20:31:09 ...have wlzl_label_primary field in wikilambda_zobject_labels table.
20:31:09 ...have wlzl_return_type field in wikilambda_zobject_labels table.
20:31:09 /usr/local/bin/mwscript: line 27:  1822 Segmentation fault      sudo -u "$MEDIAWIKI_WEB_USER" $PHP "$MEDIAWIKI_DEPLOYMENT_DIR_DIR_USE/multiversion/MWScript.php" "$@"

The important bit is Segmentation fault which indicates the program (php) had a fatal fault and it got rightfully killed by the Linux Kernel. Looking at the instance Linux Kernel messages via dmesg -T:

[Mon Jul 24 23:33:55 2023] php[28392]: segfault at 7ffe374f5db8 ip 00007f8dc59fc807 sp 00007ffe374f5da0 error 6 in libpcre2-8.so.0.7.1[7f8dc59b9000+5d000]
[Mon Jul 24 23:33:55 2023] Code: ff ff 31 ed e9 74 fb ff ff 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 41 57 41 56 41 55 41 54 55 48 89 d5 53 44 89 c3 48 81 ec 98 52 00 00 <48> 89 7c 24 18 4c 8b a4 24 d0 52 00 00 48 89 74 24 10 48 89 4c 24
[Mon Jul 24 23:33:55 2023] Core dump to |/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-coredump 28392 33 33 11 1690242166 0 php pipe failed

With those data, I had enough to the most urgent step: file a task (T342769) which can be used as an audit trail and reference for the future. It is the single most important step I am doing whenever I am debugging an issue, since if I have to stop due to time constraint or lack of technical abilities, others can step in and continue. It also provides an historical record that can be looked up in the future, and indeed this specific problem already got investigated and fully documented a couple years ago. Having a task is the most important thing one must do whenever debugging, it is invaluable. For PHP segmentation fault, we even have a dedicated project php-segfault

With the task filed, I have continued the investigation. The previous successful build had:

19:30:18 ...have wlzl_label_primary field in wikilambda_zobject_labels table.
19:30:18 ...have wlzl_return_type field in wikilambda_zobject_labels table.
19:30:18        ❌ Unable to make a page for Z7138: The provided content's label clashes with Object 'Z10138' for the label in 'Z1002'.
19:30:18        ❌ Unable to make a page for Z7139: The provided content's label clashes with Object 'Z10139' for the label in 'Z1002'.
19:30:18        ❌ Unable to make a page for Z7140: The provided content's label clashes with Object 'Z10140' for the label in 'Z1002'.
19:30:18 ...site_stats is populated...done.

The successful build started at 19:20 UTC and the failing one finished at 20:30 UTC which gives us a short time window to investigate. Since the failure seems to happen after updating the WikiLambda MediaWiki extension, I went to inspect the few commits that got merged at that time. I took advantage of Gerrit adding review actions as git notes, notably the exact time a change got submitted and subsequently merged. The process:

Clone the suspect repository:

git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/extensions/WikiLambda
cd WikiLambda

Fetch the Gerrit review notes:

git fetch origin refs/notes/review:refs/notes/review

The review notes can be shown below the commit by passing --notes=review to git log or git show, an example for the current HEAD of the repository:

$ git show -q --notes=review
commit c7f8071647a1aeb2cef6b9310ccbf3a87af2755b (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD)
Author: Genoveva Galarza <[email protected]>
Date:   Thu Jul 27 00:34:03 2023 +0200

    Initialize blank function when redirecting to FunctionEditor from DefaultView
    
    Bug: T342802
    Change-Id: I09d3400db21983ac3176a0bc325dcfe2ddf23238

Notes (review):
    Verified+1: SonarQube Bot <[email protected]>
    Verified+2: jenkins-bot
    Code-Review+2: Jforrester <[email protected]>
    Submitted-by: jenkins-bot
    Submitted-at: Wed, 26 Jul 2023 22:47:59 +0000
    Reviewed-on: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda/+/942026
    Project: mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda
    Branch: refs/heads/master

Which shows this change has been approved by Jforrester and entered the repository on Wed, 26 Jul 2023 22:47:59 UTC. Then to find the commits in that range, I ask git log to list:

• anything that has a commit date for the day (it is not necessarily correct but in this case it is a good enough approximation)
• from oldest to newest
• sorted by topology order (aka in the order the commit entered the repository rather than based on the commit date)
• show the review notes to get the Submitted-at field

I can then scroll to the commits having a Submitted-at in the time window of 19:20 UTC - 20:30 UTC. I have amended the below output to remove most of the review notes except for the first commit:

$ git log --oneline --since=2023/07/25 --reverse --notes=review --no-merges --topo-order
<scroll>
653ea81a Handle oldid url param to view a particular revision
Notes (review):
    Verified+1: SonarQube Bot <[email protected]>
    Verified+2: jenkins-bot
    Code-Review+2: Jforrester <[email protected]>
    Submitted-by: jenkins-bot
    Submitted-at: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 19:26:53 +0000
    Reviewed-on: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda/+/941482
    Project: mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda
    Branch: refs/heads/master

fe4b0446 AUTHORS: Update for July 2023
Notes (review):
    Submitted-at: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 19:49:43 +0000
    Reviewed-on: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda/+/941507

73fcb4a4 Update function-schemata sub-module to HEAD (1c01f22)
Notes (review):
    Submitted-at: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 19:59:23 +0000
    Reviewed-on: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda/+/941384

598f5fcc PageRenderingHandler: Don't make 'read' selected if we're on the edit tab
Notes (review):
    Submitted-at: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:16:05 +0000
    Reviewed-on: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda/+/941456

Or in a Phabricator task and human friendly way:

• 19:26 Handle oldid url param to view a particular revision
• 19:43 AUTHORS: Update for July 2023
• 19:59 Update function-schemata sub-module to HEAD (1c01f22) for T335583
• 20:16 PageRenderingHandler: Don't make 'read' selected if we're on the edit tab

The Update function-schemata sub-module to HEAD (1c01f22) has a short log of changes it introduces:

• New changes:
• abc4aa6 definitions: Add Z1908/bug-bugi and Z1909/bug-lant ZNaturalLanguages
• 0f1941e definitions: Add Z1910/piu ZNaturalLanguage
• 1c01f22 definitions: Re-label all objects to drop the 'Z' per Amin

Since the update script fail on WikiLambda I have reached out to its developers so they can investigate their code and maybe find what can trigger the issue.

On the PHP side we need a trace. That can be done by configuring the Linux Kernel to take a dump of the program before terminating it and having it stored on disk, it did not quite work due to a configuration issue on the machine and in the first attempt we forgot to run the command by asking bash to allow the dump generation (ulimit -c unlimited). From a past debugging session, I went to run the command directly under the GNU debugger: gdb.

There are a few preliminary step to debug the PHP program, at first one needs to install the debug symbols which lets the debugger map the binary entries to lines of the original source code. Since error mentions libpcre2 I also installed its debugging symbols:

$ sudo apt-get -y install php7.4-common-dbgsym php7.4-cli-dbgsym libpcre2-dbg

I then used gdb to start a debugging session:

sudo  -s -u www-data gdb --args /usr/bin/php /srv/mediawiki-staging/multiversion/MWScript.php update.php --wiki=wikifunctionswiki --quick --skip-config-validation
gdb>

Then ask gdb to start the program by entering in the input prompt: run ⏎. After several minutes, it caught the segmentation fault:

gdb> run
<output>
<output freeze for several minutes while update.php is doing something>

Thread 1 "php" received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff789e807 in pcre2_match_8 (code=0x555555ce1fb0, 
    subject=subject@entry=0x7fffcb410a98 "Z1002", length=length@entry=5, 
    start_offset=start_offset@entry=0, options=0, 
    match_data=match_data@entry=0x555555b023e0, mcontext=0x555555ad5870)
    at src/pcre2_match.c:6001
6001    src/pcre2_match.c: No such file or directory.

I could not find a debugging symbol package containing src/pcre2_match.c but that was not needed afterall.

To retrieve the stacktrace enter to the gdb prompt bt ⏎:

gdb> bt
#0  0x00007ffff789e807 in pcre2_match_8 (code=0x555555ce1fb0, 
    subject=subject@entry=0x7fffcb410a98 "Z1002", length=length@entry=5, 
    start_offset=start_offset@entry=0, options=0, 
    match_data=match_data@entry=0x555555b023e0, mcontext=0x555555ad5870)
    at src/pcre2_match.c:6001
#1  0x00005555556a3b24 in php_pcre_match_impl (pce=0x7fffe83685a0, 
    subject_str=0x7fffcb410a80, return_value=0x7fffcb44b220, subpats=0x0, global=0, 
    use_flags=<optimized out>, flags=0, start_offset=0) at ./ext/pcre/php_pcre.c:1300
#2  0x00005555556a493b in php_do_pcre_match (execute_data=0x7fffcb44b710, 
    return_value=0x7fffcb44b220, global=0) at ./ext/pcre/php_pcre.c:1149
#3  0x00007ffff216a3cb in tideways_xhprof_execute_internal ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#4  0x000055555587ddee in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1732
#5  execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53539
#6  0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#7  0x000055555587de4b in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1714
#8  execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53539
#9  0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#10 0x000055555587de4b in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1714
#11 execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53539
#12 0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#13 0x000055555587de4b in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1714
#14 execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53539
#15 0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#16 0x000055555587c63c in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_UNUSED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1602
#17 execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53535
#18 0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#19 0x000055555587de4b in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1714
#20 execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53539
#21 0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#22 0x000055555587de4b in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
    at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:1714
#23 execute_ex (ex=0x555555ce1fb0) at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.h:53539
#24 0x00007ffff2169c89 in tideways_xhprof_execute_ex ()
   from /usr/lib/php/20190902/tideways_xhprof.so
#25 0x000055555587de4b in ZEND_DO_FCALL_SPEC_RETVAL_USED_HANDLER ()
 at ./Zend/zend_vm_execute.Quit
CONTINUING

Which is not that helpful. Thankfully the PHP project provides a set of macro for gdb which lets one map the low level C code to the PHP code that was expected. It is provided in their source repository /.gdbinit and one should use the version from the PHP branch being debugged, since we use php 7.4 I went to use the version from the latest 7.4 series (7.4.30 at the time of this writing): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/php/php-src/php-7.4.30/.gdbinit

Download the file to your home directory (ex: /home/hashar/gdbinit) and ask gdb to import it with, for example, source /home/hashar/gdbinit ⏎:

(gdb) source /home/hashar/gdbinit

This provides a few new commands to show PHP Zend values and to generate a very helpfull stacktrace (zbacktrace):

(gdb) zbacktrace
[0x7fffcb44b710] preg_match("\7^Z[1-9]\d*$\7u", "Z1002") [internal function]
[0x7fffcb44aba0] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateString(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb44ac10], array(7)[0x7fffcb44ac20], object[0x7fffcb44ac30], object[0x7fffcb44ac40], object[0x7fffcb44ac50]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:1219 
[0x7fffcb44a760] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateProperties(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb44a7d0], array(7)[0x7fffcb44a7e0], object[0x7fffcb44a7f0], object[0x7fffcb44a800], object[0x7fffcb44a810], NULL) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:943 
[0x7fffcb44a4c0] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateKeywords(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb44a530], array(7)[0x7fffcb44a540], object[0x7fffcb44a550], object[0x7fffcb44a560], object[0x7fffcb44a570]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:519 
[0x7fffcb44a310] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateSchema(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb44a380], array(7)[0x7fffcb44a390], object[0x7fffcb44a3a0], object[0x7fffcb44a3b0], object[0x7fffcb44a3c0]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:332 
[0x7fffcb449350] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateConditionals(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb4493c0], array(7)[0x7fffcb4493d0], object[0x7fffcb4493e0], object[0x7fffcb4493f0], object[0x7fffcb449400]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:703 
[0x7fffcb4490b0] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateKeywords(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb449120], array(7)[0x7fffcb449130], object[0x7fffcb449140], object[0x7fffcb449150], object[0x7fffcb449160]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:523 
[0x7fffcb448f00] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateSchema(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb448f70], array(7)[0x7fffcb448f80], object[0x7fffcb448f90], object[0x7fffcb448fa0], object[0x7fffcb448fb0]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:332 
<loop>

The stacktrace shows the code entered an infinite loop while validating a Json schema up to a point it is being stopped.

The arguments can be further inspected by using printz and giving it as argument an object reference. For the line:

For [0x7fffcb44aba0] Opis\JsonSchema\Validator->validateString(reference, reference, array(0)[0x7fffcb44ac10], array(7)[0x7fffcb44ac20], object[0x7fffcb44ac30], object[0x7fffcb44ac40], object[0x7fffcb44ac50]) /srv/mediawiki-staging/php-master/vendor/opis/json-schema/src/Validator.php:1219

(gdb) printzv 0x7fffcb44ac10
[0x7fffcb44ac10] (refcount=2) array:     Hash(0)[0x5555559d7f00]: {
}

(gdb) printzv 0x7fffcb44ac20
[0x7fffcb44ac20] (refcount=21) array:     Packed(7)[0x7fffcb486118]: {
      [0] 0 => [0x7fffcb445748] (refcount=17) string: Z2K2
      [1] 1 => [0x7fffcb445768] (refcount=18) string: Z4K2
      [2] 2 => [0x7fffcb445788] long: 1
      [3] 3 => [0x7fffcb4457a8] (refcount=15) string: Z3K3
      [4] 4 => [0x7fffcb4457c8] (refcount=10) string: Z12K1
      [5] 5 => [0x7fffcb4457e8] long: 1
      [6] 6 => [0x7fffcb445808] (refcount=6) string: Z11K1
}

(gdb) printzv 0x7fffcb44ac30
[0x7fffcb44ac30] (refcount=22) object(Opis\JsonSchema\Schema) #485450 {
id => [0x7fffcb40f508] (refcount=3) string: /Z6#
draft => [0x7fffcb40f518] (refcount=1) string: 07
internal => [0x7fffcb40f528] (refcount=1) reference: [0x7fffcb6704e8] (refcount=1) array:     Hash(1)[0x7fffcb4110e0]: {
      [0] "/Z6#" => [0x7fffcb71d280] (refcount=1) object(stdClass) #480576
}

(gdb) printzv 0x7fffcb44ac40
[0x7fffcb44ac40] (refcount=5) object(stdClass) #483827
Properties     Hash(1)[0x7fffcb6aa2a0]: {
      [0] "pattern" => [0x7fffcb67e3c0] (refcount=1) string: ^Z[1-9]\d*$
}

(gdb) printzv 0x7fffcb44ac50
[0x7fffcb44ac50] (refcount=5) object(Opis\JsonSchema\ValidationResult) #486348 {
maxErrors => [0x7fffcb4393e8] long: 1
errors => [0x7fffcb4393f8] (refcount=2) array:     Hash(0)[0x5555559d7f00]: {
}

Extracting the parameters was enough for WikiLambda developers to find the immediate root cause, they have removed some definitions which triggered the infinite loop and manually ran a script to reload the data in the Database. Eventually the Jenkins job managed to update the wiki database:

16:30:26 <wmf-insecte> Project beta-update-databases-eqiad build #69029: FIXED in 10 min: https://integration.wikimedia.org/ci/job/beta-update-databases-eqiad/69029/

One problem solved!

References:

• T342769: Beta update.php fails due to PHP segfault in libpcre2-8.so.0.7.1
• A similar debugging session I had to do for update.php back in 2021 {T296539#7531235}
• 2006 notes by @tstarling from whom I have learned about gdb and the PHP gdb config: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/GDB_with_PHP

Many more publications are retracted, most if not all are registered at Retraction Watch. It is reasonable to expect that many publications serving as references in a Wikipedia are retracted. Arguments used to achieve a Neutral Point of View based on a retracted publications, are wrong by definition. 

When all references of a Wikipedia are registered in a Red&Blue Wikibase and, when all books with an ISBN and scientific publications with a DOI are ALSO known at Wikidata, it becomes possible to offer a new service. A service providing information about retractions and citations to the publications used as a reference.

Such a service is to be interactive as well.. Just consider: a Wikipedian wants to check the quality of a Wikipedia article. An update button, first checks for retractions and for all citing publications. It then checks for missing data like citations and authors. At the same time new references are added; they are  all processed in the same way.

In the background, all publications will be checked by a batch functionality for updates at Wikidata. Particularly for new retractions, authors who claim a publication.. In this way the information on any topic will be as good as we can make it.

• scientific publications are retracted and these retractions impact our NPOV
• publications may be used as a reference in multiple Wikipedias
• keeping information on sources up to date protects our NPOV
• making the latest references available to all our Wikipedians ensures an optimal result

Mar 6, 21:31 UTC
Resolved - This incident has been resolved.

Mar 6, 20:07 UTC
Monitoring - A workaround has been applied. Services have returned and are operational again. We are monitoring the situation and reviewing the incident.

Mar 6, 19:49 UTC
Investigating - We are aware that users are having trouble accessing and editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis, and we are investigating.

It’s that time of the year! After the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 recaps, let’s cover what happened in with Wikidata’s WikiProject Video games. If you are not familiar with that endeavour, I will refer you to the mushroom-rambling blog-post I wrote in September 2019.

Overview

We close the year just shy of the 100K mark: as of February 1st 2024, we stand at 97.7K − a whopping 75% growth (+41,6K items) over the year.

As always, let’s have a look on how well these items are described (using, as always, integraality dashboards): 7K have no platform (P400), 11,3K no publication date (P577): while higher number than last year in absolute, the proportion is better: 12% → 7,2% and 19% → 11,7%. Conversely, 64.9K have no country of origin (P495), and 57,5K have no genre (P136) which is a not so good trend (respectively 47% → 66,8% and 34% → 59,2%).

Regarding external identifiers, the number I have been tracking is the count of items without any identifier property maintained by WikiProject (P6104): WikiProject Video games (Q8485882). Wikidata Query Service gives up trying to pull that number, but Qlever helpfully tells me it’s 2,341 (0,2%) at time of writing. Down from 11%, this is amazing progress − getting to zero unidentified games is in sight!

Data-model wise, we gained one new property: demo of (P12050), used to link 37 game demos (Q1755420) to 36 games.

In other news, since August we have a “Wikidata WikiProject Video Games” Telegram group! Thanks to Nicereddy and Facenapalm to get it started. There are now 12 of us in there, it’s a nice place to discuss things

External identifiers

New additions

We have now reached 462 video-game related external identifiers − compared to 356 external last year, so more than 100 new identifiers. (I may have contributed quite a bit to that, especially as I made myself -again- an Advent Calendar of property proposals

Again, the additions cover various languages: a lot of English as well, but also German (Gameswelt ID (P11877), ‎GamersGlobal game ID (P11771)…), Japanese (‎GameGear.jp ID (P12246)), Czech (‎Visiongame.cz game ID (P11991)), Spanish (‎DoblajeVideojuegos game ID (P12290)), French (HistoriaGames game ID (P12281)) − and two brand new languages: Dutch with ‎GamesMeter game ID (P12245) and Hebrew with ‎old-games.org ID (P12134).

These new identifiers specialize in various ways:

• platforms, such as iOS with ‎TouchArcade game ID (P12289) or Playdate with ‎Playdate Catalog ID (P12125)
• genres, such as RPG with RPGWatch game ID (P12249) or adventure with ‎Adventure-Treff game ID (P12291)
• country of origin, such as Switzerland with Swiss Games Garden game ID (P11630)
• settings, with HistoriaGames game ID (P12281) for games with a historical setting
• user practices like speedruns (TASVideos game ID (P11701)) or mods (‎‎Mod.io game ID (P12303), Steam Workshop mod ID (P12083))
• specific facets, like engine (Adventure Game Studio game ID (P11608)), anticheat compatibility (‎AreWeAntiCheatYet ID (P12236)) or censorship (‎Schnittberichte.com title ID (P12241))

That’s for games; but we also have new identifiers covering other entity types:

• companies (Hall of Light developer ID (P11742), ‎Visiongame.cz studio ID (P11992)…)
• creators (Hall of Light artist ID (P11744), Abandonware-France person ID (P12259))
• series/franchises (StopGame series ID (P12082), GamersGlobal series ID (P11891)…)
• events (‎Internet Game Database event ID (P12243))
• sources/magazines (RPGWatch press ID (P12251), Abandonware-France magazine ID (P12261))
• e-sports players (cybersport.ru player ID (P11721), Aligulac player ID (P11706))
• characters (Global Smash Roster fighter ID (P11791))

As always, we have the usual mix of community-driven databases and commercial/news websites ; but also one scholarly database with ‎Black Games Archive ID (P12231

We continued making new Mix’n’match catalogues, which we use to align the external database with Wikidata: companies (20→26), genres (10→14), platforms (23→24), series (9→13), sources (6→7) and the default/misc/games (236→263), and a new category for people (8). Overall, that adds up to 355 catalogs (+15%, 50 catalogs).

Highlight 1: Wikis

There are a lot of wikis out there related to video games, and we got quite a few new properties for them. That includes specialized wikis like Chess Programming Wiki ID (P11768), wikis dedicated to a game/series, like Fallout Wiki (P11589) − but also Wiki farms/networks: ‎‎Gaming Wiki Network (P12143), Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance (P12253), ‎Paradox Wikis (P12189), wiki.gg (P11988) − kudos to Shisma who drove a lot of that work.

Highlight 2: Emulator compatibility databases

Some emulators also maintain a so-called compatibility database − indexing how well games run under the emulator. I believe emulators are a key part of video game preservation − and also these databases are often one of the best resource for the particular platform they emulate.
So when Matthias M. opened the year with DOSBox (P11572), I thought it would be fun to follow suit with all the ones I could find: Xemu (P12244) for Xbox, Flashpoint (P11875) for Flash games and ScummVM (P12255) for classic graphical adventure games (although not an emulator strictly speaking). And following on the wikis of the above point, ‎PCSX2 Wiki (P12227) for PS2 and ‎RPCS3 Wiki (P12230) for PS3.

Highlight 3: Demoscene

We also gained several external properties related to the demoscene (Q824340) − demos (Q5610543) (Pouët demo ID (P11974), Demozoo demo ID (P12013)), demogroups (Q5256141) (Pouët group ID (P11972)) and and their members (Pouët group member ID (P11973), Demozoo group member ID (P12014)) − thanks to YotaMoteuchi for the work here!

Highlight 4: MUDs

In August, Sanqui joined Wikidata, with an interest in multi-user dungeons (MUDs) (Q751424). We did not have and identifiers specialized in MUDs, and Sotho Tal Ker found some: MUDlistings ID (P11989) and The Mud Connector ID (P11990).

Overview

Looking at which identifiers are used the most, IGDB game ID (P5794) continues to stand proudly at the top, being now present on 76,4% of our Q7889 items. Lutris game ID (P7597) follows with 62,5% (makes sense, as the Lutris database is seeded with IGDB). Steam application ID (P1733) completes the podium with 58,5% − keep reading for the explanation. RAWG game ID (P9968) and MobyGames game ID (P11688) complete the top-five with ~50%.

Identifier migration

We got two example this year of identifier migration.

In February, Mobygames switched to their-long worked-on redesign − which also finally moved from URLs with slugs to numeric identifiers! (the identifiers were long used in the database and available via the API, but not easily accessible in the UI nor resolvable by URL, as far as I know). We had to migrate, and I like how this was a real team effort: Kirilloparma started and led the whole discussion, I made the proposal for new properties, Facenapalm imported the new-style IDs… We also talked to the MobyGames folks on their Discord and they were kind enough to guide and help us.

In September, Metacritic removed the platform prefix from their URLs, and also switched to numeric identifiers. Up until that point, we had a single Metacritic ID (P1712) property ; we decided to split out games to Metacritic game ID (P12054) and added Metacritic numeric game ID (P12078). Publications were also spun out to Metacritic publication ID (P12079). As Metacritic discontinued their company pages, but we had some 472 such links and they were reasonably well-archived − we also created the posthumous Metacritic company ID (P12080), pointing to the Wayback Machine. I have long mused on creating external IDs for discontinued databases, and that’s a first example. Kirilloparma did pretty much all the work here, researching the topic, proposing the property, migrating the identifiers, and updating the Wikipedia templates. Bravo!

Automation

Steam import

In September, Connor Shea (aka Nicereddy) and Facenapalm collaborated to create 20,800 new video game items sourced from Steam application ID (P1733) and Internet Game Database (Q20056333). Connor tells the story in his blog-post Mass-importing games from Steam into Wikidata, which I invite you to read. In particular, the “Further Data Enrichment” section details how a dozen other datapoints were further inferred, adding close to 100K identifiers.

As of today, we have 43,944 Steam IDs on Wikidata. Out of the 71,845 games on Steam, that makes for 61% coverage of the games on the Steam store. We’ve still got a ways to go, but this import added more than 28% of the entire storefront to Wikidata.

Connor Shea, Mass-importing games from Steam into Wikidata,

In the weeks and months that followed, the pair further imported 15,200 items from Steam. This work certainly explains why 60% of Wikidata’s video games are available on Steam

Automated data enrichment

Browsing through Facenapalm’s WikidataBot repository, many more scripts were added: adding platform (P400) qualifiers to TheGamesDB game ID (P7622), SMS Power ID (P5585), Gaming-History ID (P4806) ; and match identifiers for StopGame ID (P10030), IndieMag game ID (P9870), tuxDB game ID (P11307) , Adventure Gamers video game ID (P7005), UVL game ID (P7555) and PCGamingWiki ID (P6337).

Matthias M. has also been developing some scripts, available in his wikidata-scripts repository − such as matching Schnittberichte.com based on OGDB, Adventure-Treff based on stores, or Kultboy based on Hall of Light.

Outreach and external interest

Talks

End of June, I was invited to give a presentation at the 2023 worklab organized by mur.at, in their “Make Archiving (un)sexy again?” track. In my talk ‘Describing video games, the Wikidata way’, I approached the topic of archiving video games through the lens of cataloguing and metadata − a perhaps narrow aspect, but I believe an important one nonetheless.

In May, the WikiProject was approached by Alex Jung (University of Toronto Libraries) to present at one of the biweekly LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group Calls − I thought this could be fun so I volunteered. I had to call in sick and cancel, but not before Alex’s suggestion to also present at the associated LD4 Conference 2023 (Q117466379) made its way…

So in July, I gave a talk titled “Wikidata and the sum of all video games: putting the « linked » in video game metadata”. The slides are available on Wikimedia Commons, and the talk was recorded and is published on YouTube. I’m pretty happy with the turn-out and the lively reactions on the conference’s Slack channel. I have a draft blog post retelling the talk, which I hope to finish One Day Soon.

It had been a while since I had given any talks or presentations, and while it was a fair amount of work to prepare, I enjoyed developing and sharpening my thoughts, communicating them to an audience, designing slides… I had missed all that

CH Ludens project

You may remember the Pixelvetica project from last year? Well, cool things continue to happen in Switzerland: the research project “Confoederatio Ludens: Swiss History of Games, Play and Game Design 1968-2000” (or CH Ludens) started in February 2023. As part of this multi-faceted project, Eugen Pfister and his colleagues built and published a database of video games from the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) − noting how there is no database that can be filtered by country (and which would had decent DACH coverage). They had in mind to eventually publish that data in Wikidata − which was done and continuously enriched over the year by Adrian Demleitner (I was happy to help him here and there). For more information, the interested reader may refer to their presentation “Why we thought it was a good idea to build a DACH games database” at the DLA Marbach, and the paper (in German) Warum wir es für eine gute Idee gehalten haben, eine DACH-Spieledatenbank aufzubauen (Q124326253) (which quotes my humble underground mushroom metaphor).

External reuse

We had one example of external reuse: GamerProfiles (Q124398839), “a social media platform for gamers”, has launched this year, and it turns out that “the games were originally exported from Wikidata”. I don’t endorse the service (which I have not used nor plan to), but I’m pleased to see that Wikidata can underpin such an undertaking.

The road ahead

I had one goal for the year, which was to publish this year-in-review before March, which obviously did not happen :-þ. I also wanted to blog more − I did start several drafts, but finished none. To a degree, I think the presentations I gave scratched that itch of developing and sharing ideas (and also sucked some time away).

Putting that aside − I know I said that most of the past years, but this time I do believe we will have more discussions − and decisions − on data modelling. It has started already these past weeks on the project’s talk page (see our project’s log for a decision record). I think this is fostered in part by this new Telegram group, which makes it easy and quick to share thoughts and gather feedback − I’m already very grateful for my talks there with Solidest (of WikiProject Music’s ‘herder of genres’ fame). I look forward to many more inspiring discussions in 2024! Feel free to join

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.