In 2025, Let’s Connect began its transition from a Foundation-organized program to a community-organized one. Today, anyone or any group in the movement can adopt or adapt the Let’s Connect peer-to-peer learning program to their local and regional context using the Toolkit and the resources and materials collected from the 70+ learning clinics organized over three years. The shift to a community-organized model began through pilot initiatives and discussions with ESEAP Hub, Wikimedia Iraq and Volunteer Supporters Network. You can read about the key learnings here. Our hope is that by using the toolkit, communities can leverage the tried and tested methodologies and templates of Let’s Connect to organize local, multilingual, and audience-relevant clinics. 

Why the Let’s Connect model?

Peer-to-peer learning is not unique to Let’s Connect, and many valuable learning spaces already exist across the Wikimedia movement. What Let’s Connect contributes, however, is a documented and adaptable methodology for intentionally creating these spaces, informed by experience running more than 70 learning clinics across different regions, languages, projects, and experience levels.

Rather than starting from zero, communities can build on what Let’s Connect has learned, developed and documented. This includes best practices for encouraging participation, preparing presenters, creating inclusive learning environments, and capturing knowledge for future use and adaptation. Beyond these practical tools, what makes Let’s Connect distinct is its emphasis on culture-building. Let’s Connect recognizes that safety, joy and care are fundamental to our movement’s growth and sustainability, and embeds these values into how learning spaces are created and facilitated. The result is an environment where newcomers can learn alongside established contributors, organizers can exchange knowledge across linguistic and cultural contexts, and communities from different regions can share successes and challenges. 

The value of the Let’s Connect model is not that it replaces existing community learning spaces, but that it makes both accumulated knowledge and the practices that create safe, inclusive, peer-to-peer learning reusable across the movement.

Key elements of the community-organized model

The Toolkit: Central to making the community-organized model accessible is the Let’s Connect Toolkit – a step-by-step framework and set of materials, templates, and guidance built specifically so any interested community group can start their own Let’s Connect program. 

Local ownership: With the toolkit, local versions of Let’s Connect can emerge and take shape independently. Let’s Connect Across Zones in Nigeria, which expanded from a pilot in the Kwara state, to Wikimedia UAE, which also adopted Let’s Connect’s Connectathon format to create a supportive environment for newcomers.

Resource Repository: A collection of the past learning clinics the Let’s Connect Working Group compiled and facilitated with Wikimedians across the movement. We would love for this repository to grow and welcome Wikimedians to add clinics they have hosted to the list. Some highlights: 

• WikiLearn essentials for course creators: Building community skills online
• Engaging with newcomers in the Wikimedia Movement: strategies and experiences from Wikimedia México
• Mastering the Capacity Exchange (CapX) Tool 
• Spotlight on Women’s health in Wikimedia Projects 
• Understanding and Navigating Conflict in Wikimedia Projects Part 1
• Wikimedia Netherlands: Friendly Space Policies: Fitting the UCoC to Your Local Context
• Color, Clarity, and Commons: Crafting Our Brand for Collective Impact
• Wikimedia UK Changemaker’s Toolkit 

An invitation to you

Now it’s your turn. You’re invited to host your own Let’s Connect clinics, wherever you are in the world. Start with the toolkit, review the resource repository, and design your first clinic! 

Let’s Connect is designed to be adapted. Communities are welcome to use the Let’s Connect brand while adding their own flavors, colors, and culture, making the program their own and ensuring it fits your context. You do not need to adopt the entire model. Use the elements that are most useful to you, adapt what needs to change, and build on what has already been learned.

The Community Development team is here to answer questions and share guidance. Feel free to reach out at comdevteam@wikimedia.org.

As the sun sets over the Seine and Wikipedia’s 25th year draws to a close, we set our sights on Santiago. Sitting at the foot of the Andes mountains – the largest mountain range on land spanning seven South American countries – the city embodies the cultural richness, diversity and dynamism of the region. 

The Wikimedia movement also faces unprecedented change. The open spirit that once defined the Internet is at an inflection point, under threat from increasing concentration in the hands of few, surveillance, geopolitical fragmentation, and changes to the technological landscape. Against this backdrop, Santiago offers a powerful setting for the Wikimedia movement to come together and respond to a fundamental question: What kind of Internet do we want?

Preparing for Wikimanía 2027

Wikimanía 2027 will take place in Santiago and online from 18 – 21 August, under the theme “The Internet we want.” The Core Organizing Team is already hard at work conceptualizing a conference around a shared vision for the future. A vision of an Internet that is more diverse, more equitable, and more just; where knowledge is a right rather than a privilege; where minority languages are valued on par with hegemonic ones; and where collaboration prevails, where digital public goods (geared toward the public interest rather than profit) are promoted and strengthened.

2027 will mark the third time Wikimanía comes to Latin America, following editions in Buenos Aires (2009) and Mexico City (2015). Its return celebrates the growth of the Wikimedia communities in Latin America – communities that have strengthened and coalesced around core principles of democracy, access to information, freedom of expression, and that have devised innovative strategies for overcoming significant structural barriers in sharing free knowledge with the world. We look forward to hosting a space for global Wikimedia communities to share their own knowledge and experience, and innovate with us as we work toward building the internet we want.

Looking ahead to scholarships

Are you interested in applying to attend Wikimanía Santiago in person? Scholarship applications will open soon to allow successful applicants ample time to apply for and obtain a visa. The team is also aiming to align scholarship applications with programming, so that prospective scholars will know whether they’ve received a scholarship before applying to speak at the conference. 

The application will be announced widely when it is live – please keep an eye here on Diff, the Wikimania Wiki, or on the Wikimania social channels (Telegram: @wikimaniachat | Instagram | Facebook). 

 ¡Nos vemos en Santiago! 

On 30 August 2026 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 27 community members were invited from across the country to attend the annual strategic meeting of Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia. As a programme manager for ESEAP Hub, I was invited to attend and had the privilege to learn from local leaders gathering from Sabah, Sarawak, and West Malaysian communities. I shared the vision of ESEAP Hub as a service provider for East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific region. 

For ESEAP Hub, WCUGM’s role is instrumental in the establishment and implementation of Hub’s theory of change. Four Wikimedians from Malaysia take part as ESEAP Community Connector and drive the leadership as members of the Steering Committee. In the coming months, ESEAP Hub will collaborate with WCUGM in project partnership for training of trainers on AI, indigenous communities, and gender responsiveness within the ESEAP region. Our ongoing discussion to support Brunei Darussalam will also hopefully be realized by the end of the year. 

This meeting started at 8am by Taufiq, WCUGM’s chair and Wikimedian of the Year 2023. He shared the importance of sharing Malaysia’s vision to the Wikimedia ecosystem. The meeting is divided into discussion of movement, society, ecosystem, and future. Sakti, Senior Partnership Manager from the Wikimedia Foundation’s emphasized on the 2030 strategy of providing free knowledge service and equity. It will be done by contextualizing global missions to local context.

WCUGM has had a significant role to play especially in Malay language related projects in the Wikimedia ecosystem. Furthermore, programs and activities including WikiGap Malaysia, Wiki Loves Ramadan, Wiki Loves Earth, collaboration with Japan, Korea, Estonia, and Greece communities throughout the year were planned and executed successfully. 

Community leaders shared the challenges facing their outreach programs and plans for collaborating with wider audiences particularly utilizing social media, local network, and regional cooperation. Main concern from the volunteers requires technological tools of providing standard UI/UX interface particularly for Wiktionary. This infrastructure development will support the work of Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia and invites non-English speakers to participate actively and contribute their existing knowledge to the open source community. Moreover, this aligns with Foundation’s goals and ESEAP Hub’s mission for improving engagements from diverse communities.

The day ended at 10pm with newly elected board members. Taufiq is once again named the chair of WCUGM, with 4 new board members, in which 3 of them are women. At midnight, we also celebrate WCUGM’s 10th year anniversary and Malaysia’s 69th Independence day. The spirit of togetherness and vision of the future strengthened us that night. It will also be a reminder for continuing the journey of free knowledge. 

It sounds like a joke, but the weakest area on the Korean Wikipedia is Korea itself. At one point, the community even debated whether to fill the gap by translating Korea-related articles from the English Wikipedia. The reasons are tangled, but it comes down to a loop: the articles are in poor shape, so nobody wants to touch them; and because nobody touches them, they stay in poor shape. The Korean Wikipedia we have today is what that loop, left to roll on, has produced.

I expect everyone reading this is nodding along — yes, this is a problem, and some of you might have a similar problem on your Wikipedia. But how many of you would raise a hand and volunteer to sort it out yourself? And there is simply far too much of it for one or two people to take on. What is needed, then, is something that pushes people into going out, finding sources for themselves, and building Korea-related articles up.

The Wiki Village Project was created to be that something. We took our starting point from Japan’s Wikipedia Town, but where those events are led by local residents, we chose a form in which editors travel to the town instead.

Editing runs on affection and interest — so what if we asked people to come to the place itself? Wouldn’t they care more? Rather than wrestling with scattered online sources that make little sense even once you have found them, wouldn’t it be easier to receive, all at once, the material the town keeps itself? And on Wikipedia, where the only people editing are the people who already edit, could local residents become a new kind of contributor? Working from the idea that closing the physical distance would close the psychological distance too, we planned an editing event that would go there in person.

The story of Wiki Village Ganggyeong comes in two parts: the event, and the organizing behind it. This post is the event part, meant to be an easy read — how the day unfolded, what we managed to achieve, and where I felt we came up short.

A town called Ganggyeong

The question I heard most often while introducing the Wiki Village Project was: where is Ganggyeong? I can’t really blame anyone — that was my own first reaction too. So let me take a moment to introduce the place.

Ganggyeong — officially Ganggyeong-eup, in South Chungcheong Province — is a small inland town sitting on the Geum River, on the west side of Korea. It is known for its seafood, and above all for jeotgal, seafood salted and left to ferment… which does raise the question of how an inland town became famous for seafood at all. By all accounts, Ganggyeong long served as the place where seafood coming up the Geum River from the Yellow Sea was gathered and sent on into the inland area. The trade made it famous enough that Ganggyeong Port was spoken of alongside Wonsan as one of the two great ports of Joseon, and Ganggyeong Market as one of its three great markets. That flow held up through the opening of Korea’s ports to foreign trade, and modern-style buildings sprang up all over the town. But once the railways came and goods no longer travelled by boat, Ganggyeong shrank little by little, until it became the town it is now — one you may or may not have heard of.

For all its history and culture, Ganggyeong is not widely known today, precisely because of that decline. Its Wikipedia article was in much the same state: it existed, more or less. But as its history would suggest, the sources keep turning up the moment you go looking for them — which is exactly what makes it the ideal town for people whose goal is to build articles up.

The night before

Wiki Village Ganggyeong ran over two days. The main event was on Saturday, August 29, but the Ganggyeong National Heritage Night Tour — a night-time heritage festival held in the town — happened to fall on the day before, and some participants said they wanted to come early and see it. Getting people interested in the town was the whole point of the project, so if they wanted to start a day early, I was hardly going to complain.

Three of us, myself included, had dinner together and walked a loop around town to take some photos, then staked out a spot on the bridge for the highlight of the evening, which we had been told was a beautiful thing to see. Then the rain came down hard enough that we half-watched it at best. We got back to our lodgings soaked through, where I walked the early arrivals through what we would be doing at the main event the next day, and we spent a little time reading and editing articles.

A short morning talk

The main event started the next morning. Participants gathered at Ganggyeong Station at around 9:30, and by 10:00 we had all assembled at the local culture center, where we filled the wait for the talk to begin with a round of introductions and a little editing. From 10:30 we sat in on a talk on the history of Ganggyeong by the director of the Ganggyeong Institute of History and Culture. It felt less like a formal lecture than like “an event for hearing the stories of someone who lives there” — not by design, but it matched the intent behind the whole project perfectly.

Most of the participants had no particular interest in Ganggyeong; they barely knew of it, so I was honestly pretty worried about how much the talk would land. Watching the questions and the back-and-forth pick up, I realized the worry had been completely unnecessary. Reading about something and hearing someone tell it really are not the same thing at all. That alone made it feel worth coming all this way to hold an editing event. By the end, the questions showed no sign of stopping and I had to cut them off.

Photowalk and editing marathon

After lunch, we split into two groups for the photowalk. It was humid and raining, so we hurried around by car. One team concentrated on public institutions, and the other on heritage sites. The photowalk was a side activity this event could have done without, but it alone produced many good photos.

All the teams were back by around 2:30, and the editing event properly began. Just before we started, the books and other materials provided by the Ganggyeong Institute of History and Culture were piled up in front of us, and although it was really a stretch of everyone tapping away at their own laptop, questions kept crossing the room — “Anyone got a photo of this?” “Does anyone remember where this turned up?” “What was the title again?” — and “solitary work, done together” was exactly the phrase for it. One participant went so far as to ask whether the books could be borrowed, so that they could keep contributing once they got home.

(We asked the institute about the books, and they said they have plenty and to take as many as we needed… so they are currently kept at the Wikimedia Korea office. If you need them for your own contributions, do get in touch.)

The end of the event, but not the end of the story

Fifteen minutes before editing wrapped up, we took some time to share what everyone had worked on. Although we only had about two hours, the results were striking: existing articles had been expanded, and a substantial article — History of Ganggyeong-eup — had been written from scratch on the spot. That participants who half a day earlier had known almost nothing about Ganggyeong could get this far really did astonish me as the organizer. In some articles, the expansion came together with photographs taken only hours before, which was its own demonstration that coming to the place in person had been worth it.

The strangest part came afterwards. Editing events like this usually flare up on the day and then are forgotten, but this time unprompted contributions kept coming in after it ended. Below are four of the articles that saw the most work after the event. The full list and activity record are available on the event dashboard.

Compared with an ordinary edit-a-thon, participants stayed interested for longer and some of that interest turned into real contributions — which made me wonder whether it is simply easier to get drawn in once you have seen the thing the article is about with your own eyes.

What worked, what fell short, and what comes next

We had run earlier events aimed at building up local content — WikiTambang, built around photography — but the problem was that taking photographs was really all there was to them, so there was no expectation that related articles would be expanded at all. This time, by contrast, the photowalk element survived intact while the articles themselves were substantively filled out, and it was encouraging to see participants get a chance not just to photograph a subject but to study it.

The cooperation we got locally was positive too. Normally, when you set up an event out in the regions, what comes back is indifference; this time Wiki Village was given a venue, source materials, and on top of it, a talk from the local institute, and that fed into a great deal of enthusiastic editing. To that extent I think we managed at least part of the original idea — the Wikipedia community and a local community joining hands. Since the storytelling format went over so well, I have been thinking about combining the talk and the photowalk next time: walking the town together with local residents and hearing them explain it as we go.

One important limit remains, though. We secured the town’s cooperation, but we did not draw the town’s people into Wikipedia. To extend this project to other places, we will eventually need to bring in participation from inside and outside the region alike, so that something self-sustaining begins to happen — and on that front, this event left me feeling we have a long way to go.

All in all, given that this was a first attempt, it went very well. We got both effects at once: introducing Wikipedia to the town, and filling in local content on Wikipedia. I think the way forward is to hold on to this framework, grow the numbers gradually, and reach out to more places. How to gather more people, and how to adapt this for other regions, will be the work ahead.

Published to mark International Literacy Day, 8 September 2026

This year marks the 60th International Literacy Day, under the theme “Literacy for people, the planet, and prosperity.” Sixty years on, literacy means more than reading and writing. It also means being able to question the information in front of us, understand the technologies shaping it, and decide on our own terms what role those technologies should play in our lives.

As Hardiansyah, Chair of the Executive Board of Wikimedia Indonesia, puts it:

“Literacy is not only about reading or writing; it is also about opening a window to the world. Through Wikimedia’s open knowledge movement, we can make knowledge freely available in Indonesian and in many other languages so that anyone can access it. This spirit of openness means that knowledge is not something held by only a few but a shared resource that everyone can benefit from.”

That spirit sits at the heart of WACANA, a new regional initiative supported by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.

It started with one afternoon

In February 2026, Wikimedia Indonesia ran a session for young content creators from all 11 ASEAN member states as part of the ASEAN Y Impact programme, organized by the Canadian Mission to ASEAN together with the ASEAN Foundation.

Participants were introduced to the Wikimedia projects and tried editing Wikipedia themselves. Many arrived skeptical about Wikipedia’s reliability. Several left wanting to contribute.

Read about the session on Diff.

The conversation with our Canadian partners continued. We found common ground around digital literacy, information integrity, and the belief that healthier information ecosystems are built with communities, not simply delivered to them. When the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives opened its 2026 funding round, Wikimedia Indonesia applied. That idea became WACANA.

What WACANA is

WACANA stands for Widening AI Capacity Across Native and Indigenous ASEAN. In Indonesian and Malay, wacana also means “discourse,” fitting for a project that is less about telling people how to use AI and more about creating space to question it. WACANA is led by Wikimedia Indonesia with the Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with WCUG Malaysia, Wikimedia Thailand, and Wikimedians in Timor-Leste.

Through online learning, in-person training, and locally led activities, the program aims to support conversations around AI literacy, accountability, and Indigenous self-determination. Each participating community can adapt the approach to its own language, context, and local needs.

Two principles are especially important: consent and accessibility. Community knowledge should not be shared without permission, and activities should remain useful even in places with limited internet access.

The question at the center

One of WACANA’s central inspirations and a partner for this project comes from Wikimedia movement partner Rising Voices, a Global Voices initiative that has collaborated with a number of Wikimedia affiliates and the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub. They were also one of the co-conveners of the first Meeting of Indigenous Communities of Latin America in Wikimedia Projects, which took place in June in Riohacha, Colombia. Earlier this year, Rising Voices worked with Mayan languages digital activists in Chiapas, Mexico, on AI, accountability, and Indigenous self-determination. Their discussion arrived at a simple but powerful question:

Who decides if, and how, AI is used?

The activists challenged the narrative that adopting AI is urgent or inevitable. Communities should first have the opportunity to understand the technology, ask what it means for their languages and knowledge, and decide for themselves whether (and under what conditions) they want to use it.

Read the Rising Voices account.

What we hope for

WACANA does not set out to convince anyone to adopt AI. Instead, we hope to create spaces where people can ask:

1. What does this technology know about us?
2. Where did that knowledge come from?
3. Whose language is represented and whose is missing?
4. Who gets to decide?

Some participants may choose to use AI tools. Others may not. WACANA’s learning activities are not primarily about using AI for Wikipedia. Rather, they focus on helping participants understand how AI works, how it may affect Indigenous and minority languages and knowledge, and how communities can make informed decisions about its use. The connection to Wikimedia comes through the broader question of who creates, represents, and governs knowledge online. Participants will also have opportunities to contribute knowledge about their own communities and languages to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

What we hope remains is something practical and community-owned: stronger regional connections, openly licensed learning resources, and people who feel more confident making informed decisions about technology. And perhaps a few more people will also discover that Wikipedia is not only something they can read. It is something they can write in their own language, about their own community, on their own terms. Over the coming months, WACANA will put these ideas into practice through virtual learning sessions on AI literacy and accountability, including how AI works and how it may affect Indigenous and minority languages and knowledge, an in-person master-trainer workshop, and locally led activities across participating communities in Southeast Asia. Participants will then bring what they learn back to their own communities, adapting the approach to their languages and local contexts. The project will also produce openly licensed learning resources that can be reused and adapted by other Wikimedia and language communities. The program will continue into early 2027, with communities taking the work forward.

Wikimania brings together Wikimedians from around the world to discuss challenges facing their projects, share achievements, and discover aspects of the Wikimedia movement they may not have encountered before. It is a large gathering that combines conference sessions, workshops, meetups, and many other activities. Wikimania 2026 took place in Paris, France, from July 21 to 25, 2026.

I received a scholarship to attend as part of the ESEAP delegation and traveled to Paris as one of five Korean participants.

Learning Through the Sessions

I arrived in Paris on July 20 and spent the following day participating in the Users with Extended Rights Convening, part of the pre-conference program. Users with extended rights, or UwERs, include administrators, CheckUsers, bureaucrats, interface administrators, and others who hold permissions beyond those needed for ordinary reading and editing on Wikimedia projects. The gathering offered an opportunity to discuss shared challenges and exchange practical knowledge and experiences.

One of the highlights of the first day of the main conference was “New Frontiers in Higher Education Wiki Collaboration.” I was particularly interested in a presentation about an initiative to turn Basque Wikipedia articles into educational videos. The project selects articles on various subjects, adapts them into videos, and shares them on YouTube and other social media platforms.

The presentation addressed several practical challenges, including deciding which articles to adapt and making video content easier to edit and update. It also described how open formats and materials have supported the use of this content in university education, including activities in which participants adapt and edit the videos. What stood out most was the response to short-form versions of the original videos. According to the presenter, these received more than 40 times as many views and interactions as the written content.

A related session on the second day of the main conference was “How Wikipedia is seen through the eyes of social media superstars.” It presented the results of social media initiatives promoting Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. The team had established partnerships with content creators, including YouTubers, to produce promotional videos together. The speakers explained the criteria, policies, and procedures behind these partnerships, as well as how different approaches were tailored to specific goals.

Publishing creator-produced content on Wikipedia’s own social media channels helped expand the ways people could discover and visit Wikipedia. The speakers reported a remarkable response. What particularly struck me was how entertaining content could challenge the perception of Wikipedia as dry or unapproachable, introducing it to people who might not otherwise have engaged with it.

As social media shifts from the text-heavy feeds associated with Facebook and Twitter toward short-form video on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, written content faces increasing competition for people’s attention. This presents an ongoing challenge for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

In response, various initiatives are experimenting with selecting, adapting, and promoting Wikipedia content in short-form video formats. These sessions made me think that Korean-language Wikimedia projects should also explore ways to reach people beyond text, through videos and other formats that are easy to engage with and understand. Such efforts could help spark interest and attract new contributors.

Another session that caught my attention, on the third day of the main conference, was “Wikiexpeditions training: How to conduct outdoor activities aimed at exploring and documenting local places?” It introduced Wikiexpeditions carried out in villages across North Macedonia. Participants visit different villages to photograph buildings, cultural heritage sites, and landscapes, while also contributing to related articles where possible.

I was particularly interested in the similarities with Japan’s Wikipedia Town activities and Korea’s more recent “Wiki Village” projects. The main difference was one of emphasis. Wiki Village projects focus on a particular village, bringing residents and Wikimedians together to develop the fullest possible coverage of that place. By contrast, the Wikiexpeditions described in the session emphasized visiting multiple villages and creating photographic records of each. Despite these differences, I came away with useful ideas for organizing Wiki Village activities.

Meetups and Outcomes

Alongside the regular conference sessions, Wikimania offers meetups, often held over lunch or in the evening. These provide opportunities to share a meal, discuss a particular topic, or hold community meetings. I attended the Asian meetup on the first day of the main conference, the Wiki Loves Monuments meetup on the second, and the ESEAP meetup on the third.

At the Asian meetup, Wikimedians from across Asia discussed Wikipedia Asian Month and proposals for other collaborative projects and edit-a-thons. I took the opportunity to introduce “Wiki Loves Korea,” a proposed initiative in which communities across Asian countries and Wikipedia language editions would work together on Korea-related articles. I also suggested organizing in-person events where participants could meet and edit together.

I attended the Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) meetup to learn more about the initiative’s current situation. The Korean-language Wikimedia community had not been actively involved in WLM for some time. The discussion covered what was working well, what needed improvement, participants’ experiences, and the challenges of sustaining involvement.

My takeaway was that, unless new momentum develops in Korea or volunteers come forward who want to expand the initiative, modest, ongoing outreach would be the most practical approach for now. For example, we could create an introductory page similar to those used for Wikipedia Asian Month, without necessarily creating a separate page for each year. Reusing that page for regular, straightforward outreach and encouraging people to participate could provide a manageable way to sustain interest in WLM.

Challenges, Lessons Learned, and the Way Forward

Meeting Wikimedians I had never interacted with before was one of the most rewarding parts of Wikimania. Even so, gatherings like this can also involve unfortunate incidents and misunderstandings. Although we cannot prevent every problem, I believe it is important to reflect on what happened and why. I am sharing these reflections in the hope that we can avoid similar situations in the future and build stronger relationships.

My participation in Wikimania was made possible by a scholarship as part of the ESEAP delegation. ESEAP stands for East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The ESEAP Hub brings together Wikimedia affiliates and informal communities from across these regions, including Oceania. Wikimedia Korea is one of the affiliates involved.

Within our community, however, we did not have a clear, accessible account of how Wikimedia Korea and the Korean-language Wikimedia communities had become involved in ESEAP, or how that relationship had developed. As a result, we lacked a shared understanding of this part of our history.

It was only at this Wikimania that my fellow Korean participants and I learned in detail about the Hub’s history, the background to our community’s involvement, and the process through which we had begun working together. This gap in our collective memory brought home to me the importance of documenting and preserving our history.

I also resolved to help gather, preserve, and pass on these records so that similar misunderstandings would not happen again. As I write this in September 2026, that work is still underway. My goal is to bring the information together into a documented account that others can consult in the future.

Closing Thoughts

Wikimania 2026 was an opportunity to experience many things, meet many people, and, most importantly, learn a great deal.

Within the ESEAP Hub, I represent Wikimedia Korea and the Korean-language Wikimedia communities. At the same time, my role also involves bringing the Hub’s perspectives back to Wikimedia Korea and those communities. I hope the lessons I learned at Wikimania will help me contribute more effectively, both within the Korean-language community and across the wider ESEAP region.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone at the ESEAP Hub who made my participation possible, to everyone at Wikimedia Korea, and especially to the Korean participants who traveled with me and offered so much help throughout the event.

Wiki Education is excited to welcome Kate Dimitrova to the team as our new Wikipedia Course Instructor!

Kate facilitates online courses in our Scholars & Scientists Program, teaching professionals about the culture, policies, and community of Wikipedia and how to make high-quality contributions. This includes our new Documenting America initiative, focused on improving Wikipedia’s coverage of topics related to U.S. history, civics, democracy, and the 2026 midterm elections. (Explore all upcoming editing courses here.)

Kate is a medieval art historian with a PhD and MA from the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught at the University of San Diego, Wells College, and the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in New York. She has also worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. 

Her publications include a co-edited book with Margaret Goehring, Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages (Brepols, 2014) and a forthcoming Festschrift, entitled Tributes to Alison Stones—Reading beyond the Page: Medieval Manuscript Imagination through Word and Image (Harvey Miller, expected 2027). Kate’s research has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship in Brussels and a Kress Fellowship at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris.

You might already know Kate from her engagement with Wiki Education programs over the past four years.

In 2022, she launched her first Wikipedia Assignment in her course “The Year 1500: A Global History of Art & Architecture” with support from our Wikipedia Student Program, and has since run several successful assignments. She also participated in our Art History Wiki Scholars course and has presented at conferences to share Wiki Education’s programs with other faculty and subject matter experts.

Based in San Diego, Kate and her husband spend time together hiking trails from the coast to the desert or playing fetch at the park with their beloved labrador retriever, Maisie.

In August 2026, as part of CEE Hub‘s Peer Learning Exchange, I travelled from Slovenia to Armenia to take part in the Summer WikiCamp, organised by Wikimedia Armenia and held in Tsaghkadzor. In my head, the plan behind the exchange was pretty straightforward: I would participate in WikiCamp activities, learn from the organisers, connect with people, spend some time there, and that’s it. But pretty quickly I realised it was going to be a completely different experience from what I had anticipated.

Let me start by saying that I have been to quite a few Wikimedia events by now. I have attended conferences, meetings, edit-a-thons, workshops, and Wikimania. I have met hundreds of people, worked on projects, given presentations, and spent countless hours talking about Wikipedia.

And yet… somehow, a WikiCamp in Armenia became the best Wikimedia experience of my life.

The Warm Welcome

The magic started at 6 AM on the very first day. As I stepped out of the baggage claim hall, I saw a sign welcoming me to Armenia, held by none other than my lovely mentor, Mari Avetisyan, who had been assigned to guide me throughout the exchange. After a very warm reunion, we started our journey to Tsaghkadzor. From that moment on, she took care of me, making sure I got where I needed to be, had something to eat, and always knew what was going on. Having Mari there from the beginning meant more to me than I can really put into words… She made me feel at home before I had even reached the camp. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to have by my side for my first trip to Armenia, and I will always be grateful for that. Thank you for everything, Mari. I’m so lucky to have you not only as a mentor, but as my big sis from another mother.

After a short, scenic drive, we found ourselves right in the middle of the action: we had arrived at the WikiCamp. Immediately, I was bombarded with hellos and welcomes, given a tour, and even had Anna, one of the camp participants, volunteer to be my personal translator. I was genuinely baffled by the sheer warmth of these people, all of whom I had met approximately five minutes earlier. It was only later that I learned they were suffering from a terrible condition known as “Armenian hospitality.”

This was also when I was assigned to Group #2, a wonderful thirteen-person group that I would end up spending the next five days with. There were four groups competing against each other in editing and activities throughout the camp, and at the time, I had no idea just how much these people were about to become a part of my WikiCamp experience.

But more on them later.

Because first, we need to talk about the thing that surprised me most: the group system.

It was the first thing that caught me off guard, because it pushed me beyond being just a random individual from Slovenia. I actually had a team. And not only did I have a team — I desperately wanted my team to win. The whole thing was brilliantly designed to make people connect. You were always talking to your teammates, figuring things out together, rooting for each other, and getting way too invested in whatever ridiculous challenge was happening at that moment.

I’m used to Wikimedia events where you sit people down, tell them about Wikipedia, and then you edit. And there’s usually not that much fun in the editing process itself.

Here, the editing was still serious. There were dedicated editing hours, and when it was time to edit, you edited. But around that, you had games, performances, sports, social activities, and plenty of time to just hang out.

The days were packed. The programme started around 9 in the morning and kept going until almost midnight. It sounds totally nuts — and it was — but somehow it worked. There was a balance between the Wikimedia side and the fun side.

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

From a Guitar-playing Foreign Exchange Student to a Sheikh

Maybe the title of this section doesn’t make much sense, but give me a moment.

One of the best aspects of the camp was seeing how committed everyone was to the performances and competitions. There was Fort Wiki, a Delicious Contest, sports, and all sorts of games and quizzes throughout the week. But the performances were definitely where things got crazy.

The Delicious Contest was probably my favourite. Each group had to prepare a meal for the judges and put on a performance. I ended up playing a Slovenian exchange student living with an Armenian all-girl family and desperately wanting to go home. My “Slovene family” came to visit, ate our food, and immediately all hell broke loose, with the Armenian family screaming, crying, and begging me to stay in Armenia. We ended the performance with me playing guitar while the whole group sang an adapted version of Im Poqrik Navak, a well-known Armenian song:

Im poqrik tgha, (My little boy)
Im poqrik tgha, (My little boy)
Khasnes ardyoq S-lo-ve-ni-a? (Will you make it all the way to Slovenia?)
Te chanaparin du kposhmanes (Or will you lose your way along the road)
U veradardzi champan kbrnes (And find yourself turning back?)

Maybe the title of this section makes a little more sense now.

But I wasn’t done yet.

For our final performance, the theme was “The Arab World,” and I became an arrogant sheikh with three wishes. One of them was for immense wealth to befall me — which, in Armenian, apparently means exactly what it sounds like. The djinn smashed a jar over my head, and I woke up surrounded by dancers. Naturally, I ended the performance by choosing a man as my wife.

One of the most peculiar coincidences of the trip was meeting Armine and Ruzanna. Both of them study German, just like me, so we naturally ended up speaking German with each other throughout the camp. Apparently, I had to travel 2,500 kilometres from Ljubljana to Armenia to find my fellow German majors. Needless to say, this was unexpected.

And then there was my lovely Secret Friend, Ellen, who secretly prepared three Armenian gifts for me throughout the camp: first a little Armenian magnet, then a notebook featuring the famous “Sakh lava” dog sitting in a room on fire, and finally some sujukh, basically the Armenian version of Snickers. But what made them especially cute were the little notes that came with each gift, all written in Slovene. I have to give her props for that. She found out pretty quickly that Slovene grammar is not exactly easy :P.

At some point in between all of this, I was also learning Armenian. I picked up such essential phrases as pupushs (“my dear”) and pogh chka (“I am broke”), so I would say the cultural exchange was going extremely well.

Let’s Get Serious

Of course, the exchange wasn’t just about having fun. Aside from being a participant, I also got the chance to see what is going on behind the scenes. I met with different members of the Wikimedia Armenia team and got to ask about everything from planning and logistics to communication, working with different age groups, and, most importantly, how they keep people involved after their first Wikimedia experience.

I came with lots of questions and fast fingers, eager to note every single detail of our conversations. But the biggest thing I took away from this exchange was just how impressed I was by this team. The way they organise themselves, the amount of thought that goes into everything, and the sheer enthusiasm and energy they bring to their work completely blew me away. Every day I was just in awe.

One thing that shocked me was the demand for WikiCamps. Before coming to Armenia, I honestly expected that getting enough young people interested might be one of their challenges. Instead, I found out that hundreds of people apply for WikiCamps every year, with only a fraction able to attend. At this point, I am pretty sure it is statistically easier to get into Wikimania than Wikimedia Armenia’s WikiCamp.

They have genuinely built something special. They have created a Wikimedia environment where young people actually want to be, where the programme is exciting, where people come back, and where the community keeps growing. And after seeing it from the inside, I don’t just want to take these ideas back to Slovenia — I want to build something like this here.

So a huge thank you to Arshak, Mher, Artashes, Davit, Mari, and Haykuhi, and to every other member of the team whom I didn’t have the privilege of meeting. You completely blew me away. The amount of work, care, creativity, and energy you put into everything is incredible. Every day, you somehow managed to surprise me with something new, and it was immensely inspiring to see a team that is so organised, so enthusiastic, and so clearly passionate about what they do. I feel incredibly lucky that I got to see it all up close, and I really hope I can bring some of that magic back to Slovenia.

Until next time

When I left Armenia, I realised that the thing I was going to miss most wasn’t the WikiCamp itself. It was the people.

Most of all, I knew I was going to miss my incredible Group #2, who managed to make five days feel like a lifetime.

By the end of the exchange, Armenia really started to feel like a second home to me. I arrived knowing almost no one, and left with people I hope will remain my friends for a very long time.

I came to Armenia to learn from Wikimedia Armenia. I certainly did that. But I also found a community that welcomed me as if I had been part of it all along.

I can proudly say that this was the best Wikimedia experience of my life. And I cannot wait to go back.

So, Armenia, until next time.

Սրտիցս մի փոքրիկ կտոր թողեցի այնտեղ.

I left a little piece of my heart there.

The Dagbani Wikimedians User Group (DWUG) has stepped up its public awareness efforts to help more people understand Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and the role they can play in preserving and promoting Dagbani and other African languages online.

As part of this effort, members of the user group participated in radio discussions on Zaa Radio 99.3 FM on 22 August 2026 and Dagbon FM 102.5 on 5 September 2026.

Representing the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group during the radio engagements were Abdul-Rafiu Fuseini (Alhaji Darajaati), Hamidu Rukaya (Ruky Wunpini), Fuseini Mugisu Suhuyini (Sir Amugi), and Musah Fuseini (Musahfm). 

The radio engagements provided an opportunity to speak directly to listeners about the work of Wikimedians, the importance of contributing knowledge to Wikimedia projects, and the growing presence of Dagbani in the digital space.

Understanding Wikipedia and Wikimedia

One of the main areas discussed during the interviews was the difference between Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and Wikimedians.

Wikipedia was explained as a free online encyclopedia that anyone can read and, in many cases, contribute to. It contains articles covering a wide range of subjects, with volunteers around the world contributing knowledge and improving existing content.

The discussions also helped listeners understand that Wikimedia refers to the broader movement and organization supporting free knowledge projects, while Wikimedians are the people who contribute to and participate in that movement.

The question of ownership was also addressed. The Wikimedia projects are not owned by an individual or a private company in the conventional sense. They are supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization, while the content is largely created, maintained, and improved by a global community of volunteers.

Introducing the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group

The interviews also introduced listeners to the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group, a community of volunteers working to promote free knowledge and increase the representation of Dagbani and Dagbon’s cultural heritage on Wikimedia projects.

DWUG brings together people who are interested in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and other free knowledge projects. Members contribute articles, photographs, data, oral histories, and other forms of knowledge that help make Dagbani and local knowledge more visible and accessible online.

The radio discussions emphasized that contributing to Wikimedia projects is not limited to people with a particular professional background. Teachers, students, researchers, photographers, writers, language enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in sharing reliable knowledge can participate.

Why Join DWUG?

Listeners were encouraged to consider becoming part of the community because membership provides an opportunity to learn, contribute, and work with others who share an interest in Dagbani and free knowledge.

Through DWUG activities, members have opportunities to participate in training programs, editing campaigns, community projects, photography activities, and other initiatives aimed at improving the availability of local knowledge online.

For young people in particular, participation can also provide practical experience in digital skills, research, writing, photography, data management, and community engagement.

Celebrating DWUG’s Achievements

The radio engagements also provided an opportunity to highlight some of the achievements of the Dagbani Wikimedians community.

Over the years, DWUG and its members have organized and participated in a number of activities aimed at strengthening Dagbani’s presence on the internet. These include Wikipedia editing programs, photography campaigns, language-related projects, Wikimedia training sessions, community meetups, and collaborations with other language communities.

The community has also supported initiatives involving Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage and Dagbani Wikipedia, while working with partners and other Wikimedia communities to promote African languages and local knowledge.

These activities demonstrate what volunteers can accomplish when they come together around a common purpose.

The Challenges

Despite the progress made, the community continues to face challenges.

One major challenge is the limited availability of digital content in Dagbani. Many aspects of Dagbon’s history, culture, traditions, people, and places remain poorly represented online. There is therefore a need for more people to document and share reliable information.

There are also challenges relating to digital literacy, access to resources, volunteer participation, and the technical work required to support a language in the digital environment.

The community believes that addressing these challenges requires cooperation among Wikimedians, educators, researchers, traditional authorities, language experts, institutions, and the wider public.

How Can Someone Become a Member of DWUG?

The interviews made it clear that anyone interested in the mission of the community can get involved.

People who want to participate can connect with the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group through its official communication channels like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn, and take part in the community activities and training programs.

New contributors do not need to be experienced editors. The community regularly organizes training and orientation activities to help beginners understand how Wikimedia projects work and how they can make meaningful contributions.

Promoting the Language Diversity Conference 2026

Another important part of the radio engagements was the promotion of the Language Diversity Conference 2026, which will take place in Accra, Ghana, from 2 to 4 October 2026.

The conference is being held under the theme:

“Strengthening Language Communities in the Open Knowledge Movement.”

The inaugural conference will bring together language activists, Wikimedia contributors, researchers, educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders interested in strengthening the presence of diverse and underrepresented languages in the digital world.

For the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group, the conference is an important opportunity to showcase the experience of the Dagbani community, learn from other language communities, and build partnerships that can contribute to the future of African languages online.

The conference will also provide space for discussions around the challenges faced by minoritized languages, technology and accessibility, ethical considerations, artificial intelligence, speech-to-text technologies, and partnerships for language development.

Taking the Message Beyond the Wikimedia Community

The radio engagements on Zaa Radio and Dagbon FM are part of a broader effort by DWUG to take the conversation about free knowledge beyond the existing Wikimedia community.

For many people, Wikipedia may simply be a website they visit when looking for information. The radio discussions provided an opportunity to explain the people and community behind the content and to show that everyone has a role to play in making reliable knowledge available.

The message from DWUG is simple: Dagbani and the knowledge of Dagbon deserve a strong presence on the internet, and building that presence requires the participation of the people themselves.

Through continued awareness, training, documentation, and collaboration, the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group hopes to encourage more people to become contributors and help ensure that the language, history, and cultural knowledge of Dagbon are represented for present and future generations.

Hundreds of people sit in long, orderly rows at Masjid Al Mustafa in Dhaka, waiting to break their fast during Ramadan. Seen from above, the gathering takes on an almost geometric form: parallel lines of worshippers and shared tables fill the mosque’s illuminated centre, framed by the sweeping curves of its architecture and the darkness beyond.

The photograph, taken by Rakibul Alam Khan, is the winner of Wiki Loves Bangla 2026. It captures a familiar communal tradition from an unexpected perspective, bringing together faith, shared experience and visual symmetry in a single frame. The orderly gathering is not only a record of iftar, but also a reflection of how festivals and observances bring communities together—an idea that runs throughout this year’s winning photographs.

The jury was particularly drawn to the relationship between the congregation and the architecture surrounding it. Biswarup Ganguly highlighted how the parallel rows of people complement the symmetry of the setting, while Abdul Momin praised the architectural framing and composition, though he noted that the large dark areas around the gathering slightly weaken the overall visual balance.

Together with the other winning photographs—from religious observances and rural festivals to folk traditions and communal celebrations—the image opens a wider visual story of how communities across Bengal celebrate, worship, gather and sustain their cultural traditions.

Wiki Loves Bangla is part of the wider Wiki Loves movement, bringing photographers and Wikimedia contributors together to document the culture, heritage and everyday life of the Bengal region through freely licensed images. Since its launch in 2024, the competition has focused on a different aspect of Bengali life each year, gradually building an expanding visual archive that can be freely accessed, shared and reused around the world.

In 2026, Wiki Loves Bangla turned its lens towards “Festivals of Bengal“, inviting participants to document the rituals, gatherings, performances and traditions that shape cultural life across the wider Bengali region. From religious observances and folk festivals to rural traditions, processions and community celebrations, the theme offered a broad view of the many ways people across Bengal come together, celebrate and sustain their cultural practices.

Wiki Loves Bangla is organised by Bangla WikiMoitree under the Bangla Culture and Heritage Collation Program, a collaborative initiative of Wikimedia Bangladesh and the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group. Through the competition, photographs of regional traditions are not only recognised and celebrated but also preserved as freely licensed knowledge on Wikimedia Commons, where they can continue to support Wikimedia projects, education, research, publications and other forms of cultural documentation.

Held from 14 April to 15 May 2026, this year’s competition drew 364 participants, including 258 newcomers, who contributed 2,888 photographs and 15 videos. Following the review and evaluation process, ten photographs were selected as the winners of Wiki Loves Bangla 2026.

First place — Moment of Restraint

Seen from above, hundreds of fasting people gather in long, orderly rows for iftar at Masjid Al Mustafa in Dhaka during Ramadan 2025. As the sun sets and the call to prayer echoes through the air, they come together around shared tables to break their fast. The long rows of people and food create a striking visual rhythm, while the architecture frames the gathering from above. Beyond its geometric symmetry, the photograph captures a moment of community and connection, where hundreds of people come together in faith, gratitude and shared tradition.

The jury’s comments reflect that balance between visual precision and human scale. Biswarup Ganguly highlighted the way the parallel rows of people echo the symmetry of the surrounding architecture. Abdul Momin similarly praised the framing and symmetry, while noting that the surrounding darkness occupies a large part of the frame.

Second place — Fire and Smoke

Rows of lamps glow through a haze of smoke as devotees gather at Baba Lokenath Brahmachari Ashram in Narayanganj for Rakher Upobash, also known as Kartik Vrat. As they light lamps and take part in prayers before breaking their fast, the gathering becomes a scene of fire, devotion and shared ritual. A standing figure rises above the seated worshippers at the centre of the frame, surrounded by the warm glow of countless lamps. The smoke softens the background and deepens the atmosphere, while the repeating rows of lights and people create a striking sense of rhythm and scale. Beyond its dramatic lighting, the photograph captures a deeply communal moment of faith and devotion.

Abdul Momin praised the strong atmosphere, engaging central figure and dramatic lighting, noting how the light strengthens both colour and mood. Jury member Timothy A. Gonsalves was similarly drawn to the combination of flames, smoke and rows of people. Biswarup Ganguly’s preference lay with another image from the same subject, illustrating how close the jury’s choices could be even among highly regarded photographs.

Third place — Durga Through the Circle

A child plays with a tyre in front of a decorated Durga Puja idol at a traditional mud house. Seen through the tyre’s circular opening, the idol becomes the visual focal point, while the child’s movement adds a sense of everyday life and spontaneity to the scene.

The unconventional viewpoint is the photograph’s defining feature. Abdul Momin praised the way the tyre encircles Durga, creating depth and a strong narrative structure. Timothy A. Gonsalves also highlighted the framing, composition and perspective. Biswarup Ganguly offered a more reserved reading. While acknowledging the creativity of the perspective, he felt that some elements of the child’s posture and appearance made the action seem less spontaneous.

Fourth place — The Arrival of Durga

Amid fields of autumnal kash flowers, a Durga idol is carried through rural Bengal on the shoulders of devotees, accompanied by the rhythmic beats of dhaks. The surrounding landscape gives the procession a distinctly seasonal and rural character, while the low perspective adds a sense of movement and presence to the scene.

Abdul Momin praised the image’s cultural storytelling, vibrant colour contrast and the natural border created by the kash grass and hillside. He also noted that the low angle gives the procession a grand, celebratory presence, though the harsh midday light creates deep facial shadows and hides some visual detail. Timothy A. Gonsalves found the composition more conventional, describing it as a good photograph without a single element that strongly stood out to him. Biswarup Ganguly similarly observed that although everything is carefully placed within the frame, the limited sense of dynamic action makes the scene feel somewhat posed.

Fifth place — A Circle of Lamps

A group of newly ordained Buddhist śramaṇas perform the traditional lamp-lighting ritual during Prabarana Purnima. Seen from above, they sit around the glowing lamps, their robes forming a near-circular arrangement around the warm centre of light.

The high-angle perspective gives the photograph much of its character. Abdul Momin praised its composition, low-key glowing light, symmetry and storytelling. He did, however, note that the additional candles towards the upper-right draw some attention away from the main circular arrangement. Biswarup Ganguly similarly felt that the separate square arrangement of lamps near the top of the frame distracted from the central composition.

Sixth place — Sea of ​​Worshippers

Thousands of worshippers fill Gor-E-Shahid Eidgah Maidan in Dinajpur for Eid prayer, creating an immense field of colour when seen from above. According to the organisers’ claim, more than 600,000 devotees participated in the Eid-ul-Fitr congregation. The scale is the first thing that commands attention. Individual worshippers become part of a vast patterned congregation stretching across the frame.

Abdul Momin praised the aerial perspective and the striking repetition of colour and form, while noting that the blue-pink cast in the white balance distracts slightly from the scene. Timothy A. Gonsalves felt that the decision to include such a large number of devotees gives the photograph its immediate visual impact. For Biswarup Ganguly, the drone perspective transforms the congregation into a “human mosaic”—an orderly arrangement that becomes a powerful visual expression of the festival.

Seventh place — Dance of Karam

In Purulia, colour and movement fill the frame as devotees gather to worship the god Karam during Karam Parab, a traditional festival celebrated at the end of the monsoon season and deeply rooted in the region’s community life.

Abdul Momin described the photograph as a vibrant cultural scene filled with energy and tradition, while noting some chromatic aberration and loss of detail in the highlights. Timothy A. Gonsalves highlighted its colourful depiction of cultural dance. Biswarup Ganguly was particularly drawn to the sense of movement, describing it as a vibrant action photograph that captures the spirit of the dance within its authentic village setting.

Eighth place — Face of Gajan

Unlike many of the other winning photographs, which show broad gatherings or ceremonial spaces, this image moves close to its subject. A performer’s face fills the frame at the Gajan Festival in West Bengal, surrounded by vivid colour and streaks of movement. The close perspective turns makeup, costume and expression into the visual language of the photograph, while a slow-shutter technique creates light trails across the face, adding rhythm and a stronger sense of movement to the image.

Abdul Momin praised the close-up, particularly the dynamic light trails and rich colours. Biswarup Ganguly described it as a spontaneous festive portrait, noting that although the expression itself is relatively neutral, the slow-shutter motion blur adds a convincing sense of speed and spontaneity.

Ninth place — Fishing with the Polo

Hundreds of fishermen and villagers move together through the shallow wetlands of Bhangura in Pabna during the Polo Bawa festival. At the centre of the tradition is the polo, a bell- or cone-shaped fishing implement traditionally made from bamboo or cane. During the fishing, groups enter the water together and use the polo to catch fish, turning a traditional fishing practice into a large communal event. The scene also reflects the enduring rural culture of Bengal, where community participation, local folk traditions and a close relationship with nature remain central to the festival.

The photograph transforms that activity into an atmospheric landscape. Abdul Momin was drawn to the elegant silhouettes and warm monochrome palette. Timothy A. Gonsalves singled out the lighting and composition, while Biswarup Ganguly praised the candid public moment, its composition and the environmental context surrounding it.

Tenth place — Moichhara in Motion

A farmer races across a waterlogged field behind a decorated pair of oxen during the Moichara festival, as mud and water fly around them. The tradition takes its name from the Bengali word moi, an agricultural implement used to level cultivated land. During the competition, farmers stand on a moi while driving a pair of oxen through a muddy field. Usually held during the monsoon season, Moichara connects rural festivity with agricultural life. The speed of the oxen, the splashing water and the excitement of the crowd make the event more than a competition, reflecting Bengal’s agricultural culture, rural traditions and enduring connection to the land.

The photograph captures that energy at its peak. The oxen surge forward, the farmer follows their momentum, and the muddy field becomes part of the action. Where the winning photograph begins with stillness and order, the tenth-place image closes the top ten with speed, water and movement.

A wider portrait of Bengal’s living heritage

Taken together, the winning photographs resist any single definition of a Bengali festival. They move from Ramadan iftar and Eid prayer to Buddhist observance, Durga Puja, Rakher Upobash, Karam and Gajan. Elsewhere, communities fish together in wetlands, while farmers race oxen across monsoon fields. Some photographs capture gatherings of thousands; others focus on a small group or a single face.

That diversity was central to the 2026 competition. The submitted photographs documented festivals across Bangladesh and West Bengal, reflecting differences in ritual, clothing, environment, folk traditions and forms of community participation.

Wiki Loves Bangla also treats these images as more than competition entries. Photographs submitted to the contest are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence, making them available for reuse across Wikimedia projects, education, research, publications and other forms of cultural documentation.

This is where the lasting value of the collection becomes especially clear. A festival may last for a day, an evening or a season, but a well-documented photograph can continue to preserve and communicate its story long after the moment itself has passed.

Across all ten winning photographs, Wiki Loves Bangla 2026 brings together individual moments, traditions and places to create a broader visual record of how communities across Bengal celebrate, gather, worship, work and sustain their cultural heritage.

See the Winners and Finalists of Wiki Loves Bangla 2026.

🕑 25 minutes

Highlights from five recent episodes! Sandra Fauconnier notes the irony of centralization in the Semantic Web, Ad Strack van Schijndel discusses the workings of Juggel, Daniel Dobriy extols wikis for AI, Cory Massaro praises the translation abilities of Abstract Wikipedia, Shani Evenstein Sigalov discusses the role of nonprofits in AI, and more!

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

Updates for editors

• Add a Link has been upgraded for English Wikipedia users with improved detection of links that have different capitalization. This will help reduce ambiguous suggestions caused by differences in capitalization in article titles, including articles about cultural goods. A second phase of improvements is planned, which will also prepare the feature for release in other languages. [1] [2]
• The Article guidance feature will be enabled by default for junior editors on Simple English and Turkish Wikipedia starting 10 September 2026 following an experiment. Junior editors with 0 to 99 edits will automatically see the feature when they click a red link or use the “Madde oluşturto” option on Turkish Wikipedia to create a new article. The change is intended to help junior editors create higher-quality articles that meet each Wikipedia’s standards. Additional improvements will continue based on the experiment results and community feedback.
• The Pageviews Analysis tool which allows users to compare pageviews across multiple pages, turns 10 years old this year and several new features have been added. They include WikiNav which provides insights into how readers of Wikipedia explore the content, editing stats in Siteviews, the ability to lookup articles belonging to a WikiProject, and support for dark mode. [3]
• A visually simplified Minerva navigation bar is being tested for logged-out readers using mobile web on the Bengali, Czech, English, Farsi, and Polish Wikipedias. The experiment aims to determine whether simplifying the navigation improves reader retention. The test will run from August 31 to September 28, and no action is required from users.
• WMDE Technical Wishes is working on improving auto-generated reference names in VisualEditor. Editors will only notice a slight change starting this week. When adding automatic reference names the numbering will start at :1 instead of :0. Read more on the project page. [4]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 23. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [5]
•  View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where Parsoid could mishandle nested nowiki tags, causing content to be lost and displaying unwanted text has now been fixed. [6]

Updates for technical contributors

• Interface administrators can configure gadgets from MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. The definition format has been updated and no longer requires the ResourceLoader option, as gadgets are always loaded through ResourceLoader. This simplifies gadget configuration by removing an option that is no longer necessary, making gadget definitions easier for administrators. [7]
•  Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

27/08/2026-02/09/2026

Mapping campaigns

• Hiki introduced the Deutsche Bahn Metadata Cleanup project, an effort to improve the quality of OpenStreetMap data around German railway stations.
• Denmark’s OpenStreetMap community has made mapping accessible parking spaces its September 2026 project, encouraging contributors to survey and add missing spaces nationwide to improve the country’s free accessibility data.

Community

• Bigbug21 blogged on the current state of defibrillator mapping in OpenStreetMap, concluding that much has been achieved, but there is still plenty of work to be done.
• While attending State of the Map 2026, Juminet noticed a decline in the influence of big tech companies within OpenStreetMap, suggesting a shift back toward the volunteer contributions that formed the heart of the project in its early days. This contrasted with his experience at State of the Map 2018, when major technology companies were investing heavily in OpenStreetMap mapping.
• Anne-Karoline Distel showed how to map disused fish weirs on OpenStreetMap.
• Rawaz has mapped population data from Iraq’s 2024 census onto OSM administrative boundaries, covering admin levels 2 through 6.
• rphyrin praised Stylus Labs Maps after SotM 2026 as the best mobile OpenStreetMap vector map app they have tried.
• rphyrin plans to share his experiences from attending the global State of the Map 2026 online. He is still writing about the first day, with the remaining days a work in progress.
• Vishal Kumar shared several insights on the role of AI in mapping, from State of the Map US 2026, held 11 to 13 June.

Local chapter news

• OpenStreetMap US has published its August 2026 monthly newsletter, featuring the OSM US team heading to Paris for State of the Map 2026, an upcoming September Mappy Hour in collaboration with Foursquare, and the announcement of its newest Charter Project, OldInsuranceMaps.

Events

• [1] Volker Krause wrote about his attendance at SotM 2026 in Paris.
• A 360° version of the SotM2026 group photo is now online on Panoramax!
• The official PeerTube channel of State of the Map 2026 can be found here.
• Muki Haklay has shared his impressions of attending State of the Map 2026 in Paris. Muki, Professor of Geographical Information Science at the UCL Department of Geography, won the IEEE Pervasive Computing’s Test of Time Award for his 2008 paper on OpenStreetMap.

Education

• Lucy Kago reported, as a UN Mappers’ ambassador, that UN Mappers Kenya has completed its first ever Youth Climate Mapping Externship, a seven-week virtual programme designed to equip young Kenyans with real geospatial tools and apply them to climate challenges in Nairobi. Nineteen university students participated in the programme. The initiative had the support of IVIDES DATA (as a full sponsor), GeoMind Solutions and Geospatial Developers (as technical partners), and Community Mappers Kibera (as community partner). You can see the results on the UN Mappers’ blog.

Humanitarian OSM

• HOTOSM interviewed the CoMaps team about how the app was used to help rescuers after the earthquakes in Venezuela.

Maps

• Cody Blatt has created DepthScout, a depth-mapping platform designed to aid fishing, which uses shoreline data from OpenStreetMap.
• Map4 has released a free trial version, limited to 50 queries per day, of their US telecom fibre intelligence dashboard, built on top of OpenStreetMap basemap data.
• The Plataforma latinoamericana y del caribe por la justicia climática (Latin American and Caribbean platform for climate justice) maintains ► a uMap for mapping ‘false solutions’ to the climate crisis, those which claim to advance the protection of the planet and its inhabitants through approaches that include deception, technical shortcomings, so-called technological innovation, and rhetoric but which perpetuate consumption and the hoarding of wealth as we know it. The initiative is a collaboration ► of organisations from 15 Latin American countries.

OSM in action

• The California Ocean and Coastal Monitoring Inventory is an interactive dashboard of ocean and coastal monitoring programmes operating within 12 nautical miles of the California coast, using basemap data from OpenStreetMap.

Open Data

• The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre tooted that it is making its archive of Landsat data accessible ►, with support from the Technical University of Munich and the German Aerospace Centre.

Software

• Ashuttl has made linecast, a free open-source collection of terminal apps for weather, radar, sunshine, moon data, tides, and maps that uses public data sources including OpenStreetMap-derived vector data.
• Inspired by a recent Mapterhorn talk at State of the Map 2026, rphyrin has developed a web app that accepts coordinates pasted from JOSM and displays an interactive 3D terrain visualisation. The app can help JOSM users better understand the three-dimensional geographic context of the area they are currently mapping.

Programming

• Developer NameError has built Draw.city, a US geography game where players draw circles on a map to estimate populations and explore census demographics and OpenStreetMap points of interest.
• rphyrin has experimented with Sourdough to build a mobile-friendly vector map that treats roads uniformly and prioritises displaying as many mapped points of interest as possible, especially at high zoom levels.
• An agentic bot (Claude Code) ‘explained’ ‘its’ approach to filling in Belgium’s national secondary road route relations on OpenStreetMap in an OSM Diary entry. The community’s response to the edits can be judged from the posts in the OSM Community forum thread.

Did you know that …

• … a curated collection of all European E-roads, an international network of major roads connecting countries across Europe, is mapped in OSM?

Other “geo” things

• Natsuhei Eno, a Senior Policy Officer at the Tokyo Foundation, published an article on the Foundation’s blog discussing what supports regional information infrastructure. Featuring Associate Professor Yasuyuki Matsumoto , of Setsunan University, who researches civic activities using OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia (such as Wikipedia Town and mapping parties), the article highlighted the importance of citizens participating not merely as recipients but as contributors to local information.
• Ryan Christoffel reported that Apple Maps is now showing advertisements to their customers; they will appear both as suggested places in the map and in the search result list with a little blue ‘ad’ text next to them.
• Kaio Bárbara has developed climateBR, a software package that provides tools for downloading, processing, and analysing historical meteorological data from Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology.
• Science Daily reported that NASA has successfully tested a system that allows satellites to navigate without GNSS by using other spacecraft and debris as landmarks in orbit.
• Neha Arora and Aboudy Kreidieh, of Google Research, reported that coordinating a small fraction of navigation routes in Google Maps can measurably improve driving speeds and reduce emissions across an entire city.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India – Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-09-05
	大阪市	中崎町ホール Nakazakicho HALL, Salon de AmanTo天人 (Osaka)	State of the Map Asia 2026	2026-09-06 – 2026-09-07
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #92	2026-09-07
	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2026-09-08
	Braunschweig	Stratum 0	Braunschweiger Mappertreffen im Stratum 0 Hackerspace	2026-09-08
	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-09-08
		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-09-08
	Tours	Étape 84	Rencontre locale de Touraine	2026-09-09
	Berlin	Kastanienallee 7-9, 10435 Berlin	219. OSM-Stammtisch Berlin-Brandenburg	2026-09-10
	München	WikiMUC	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-09-10
	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen Bochum	2026-09-10
	Zürich		191. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich	2026-09-11
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-09-13
	Delhi	Too Mikki Tapas, South Extension	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.32 (South Extension)	2026-09-13
	Greater London	1 Cabot Square, 7th Floor, Canary Wharf E14 4QJ	EAW Volunteering Event	2026-09-14
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-09-14
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-09-15
	San Francisco	Near BART 24th St. Mission station	Bay Area WikiSalon	2026-09-15
	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-09-15
	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-09-15
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-09-15
	Bonn	Dotty’s	204. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-09-15
	Stainach-Pürgg	Online	22. Österreichischer OSM-Stammtisch (online)	2026-09-15
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-09-15
	St. Gallen	Rosenbergstrasse 59, 9000 St.Gallen	Map The Climate! Ein Mapathon	2026-09-16
	Köln	Lokal K, Hackländer Straße 2, Köln-Ehrenfeld	OSM Stammtisch Köln	2026-09-16
	Nantes		COntrib’atelier	2026-09-16
		MJC de vienne	Réunion du groupe local de Vienne	2026-09-16
	Kiel	Kieler Innovations- und Technologiezentrum	OSM auf der Kielux 2026	2026-09-18 – 2026-09-19

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

This weeklyOSM was produced by MarcoR, MatthiasMatthias, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tool that speaks MCP to Wikidata and to your own Wikibase. Ask questions in plain language, create items and enrich them, without writing SPARQL or entity JSON.

Our MediaWiki MCP Server speaks Wikibase. It works with Wikidata and with any Wikibase you run, and it is free and open source. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the standard that lets AI tools work with external systems and data.

3 September 2026 (United States) — Today, eligible Wikimedia Foundation staff in the United States voted in favor of union representation. The election was conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by secret ballot. We expect the results will be certified by the NLRB within 7 business days.

Throughout the voting period, staff were able to meet and organize during working hours without restriction, and Wikimedia Foundation leadership repeatedly affirmed staff’s right to decide for themselves whether union representation was right for them. The Foundation respects this outcome and is glad that all eligible staff had the opportunity to participate and make their voices heard.

The Foundation will now move forward with good-faith collective bargaining with the union. We will approach this next phase constructively, lawfully, and with care for the staff whose work makes it possible for us to serve people everywhere.

For 25 years, Wikipedia has established an unparalleled resource for reliable information with the mission to make knowledge accessible for everyone, everywhere. Achieving this mission depends on the combined contributions of staff, volunteers, donors, partners, and readers across the globe. We are grateful to all those who continue to support Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects and continue to strive toward a vision of a world in which everyone can share in the sum of all human knowledge.

At the Wikimedia Foundation, we value collaboration across differences, constant improvement, and curiosity. These values do not just define the projects we host; they are also our commitment to how our employees should be treated. A commitment to these values will be central to the Foundation’s approach in this next phase of the process.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. We support the people, technology, and policies that enable reliable information to be shared with the world. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

The post Wikimedia Foundation Statement on US staff unionization appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

For more than two centuries, Rachel Walker Revere existed mostly in the margins of someone else’s story, defined by her relationship to her famous “midnight rider” husband rather than by her own life and impact on U.S. history.

And until recently, Rachel appeared as only an unlinked name in Wikipedia’s article for Paul Revere — one of countless women throughout history whose presence on Wikipedia, if it exists at all, is filtered through the men in their lives. But thanks to the expertise and efforts of Mehitabel Glenhaber at the Paul Revere House in Boston, Rachel has a biography of her own on the world’s go-to encyclopedia. 

Glenhaber’s work is part of Wiki Education’s “250 by 2026” initiative, a partnership with the American Association of State and Local History. Together, we brought 259 cultural heritage professionals from around the country into the world of Wikipedia, empowering them to contribute their expertise and collections. (Read more about the 250 by 2026 initiative.)

Across thirteen editing courses offered by Wiki Education, participants added more than 250,000 words to the encyclopedia, improving coverage of history topics, including notable women of U.S. history who either had no Wikipedia article at all or only a short stub.

Rachel Walker Revere was one of these missing women.

For new Wikipedia editor Glenhaber, the appeal of the initiative and its goal directly aligned with the everyday mission of museum work: getting history out of the place-bound building and into the hands of people who may never get the chance to walk through the door.

“I am always excited about ways that museums can share information with audiences who may not be able to visit the museum in person,” said Glenhaber. “At the Paul Revere House, we have such a wealth of knowledge about the life of Paul Revere, his relatives, and his neighbors, and we want to make sure that this information is for everyone, not just people who can make a trip to Boston.”

Before joining the course, Glenhaber knew just how impactful enhancements to Wikipedia can be, not only for the general public but also for historians and museum professionals like them.

“Wikipedia is an incredible resource which reaches so many people,” explained Glenhaber of their motivation to join the course. “I’ve always been grateful to people who contribute to it and help me with my own historical research, so I wanted to help give back to that community, too.”

Inspired by conversations with their course instructor and fellow editors about underrepresentation of women on Wikipedia, Glenhaber decided to add Rachel Walker Revere to the site.

But as with any new Wikipedia article, that meant building a case for their inclusion. Glenhaber had to prove through their sources that Rachel met Wikipedia’s notability threshold and deserved her own standalone biography.

“Writing about Rachel Revere and making the case that she is a ‘notable figure’ was an interesting challenge to me,” said Glenhaber. “Something that’s always interested me about Paul Revere is the fact that he’s actually a very ordinary and unglamorous participant in the American Revolution: he’s a person who delivered messages, illustrated political cartoons, and organized military supply chains.”

Rachel’s story followed the same trajectory, Glenhaber noted.

“Similarly, Rachel Walker Revere was an ordinary and unglamorous participant in the American Revolution: she fed, clothed, and provided childcare for two Revolutionary War soldiers (Paul Revere and his son, Paul Jr.) and helped evacuate her family from a city under siege,” said Glenhaber. “We are lucky to know so much about the lives of these two 18th-century people.”

And it’s this reframing that gets at something bigger than just one person’s biography: The American Revolution is often remembered in speeches and signatures, but was sustained by the quieter, essential labor of figures like Rachel.

“Making sure that her story gets told as well is very important to me,” said Glenhaber. “I didn’t want her to just come up as an unlinked name on Paul Revere’s page, but as an agent of her own.”

Interested in learning how to add your expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming editing courses.