Talk:Wikimedia Hackathon/Community Proposal 2026

Please share your feedback to the proposal!

As a reminder, the feedback period will close on 30 October 6 November 2026. (The deadline was updated.) LGoto (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

I would consider the 2009 hackathon (developer meetup) in Berlin as the first European hackathon, and originally WMDE organized it and then other chapters in Europe. Also, every Wikimania has had a hackathon (except 2008, 2010 and 2020). Aude (talk) 13:58, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Question about small language tech communities

Hello, I have worked on Amazigh languages in the Wikimedia movement since 2019. For me, the best part of the Hackathon is that it is global. Our tech community is small, and the Hackathon is where we learn how other communities around the world solve the same problems we have. We work with Wikimedia Morocco on technical projects, editathons and meetups so we already work closely with the Arabic-speaking community. WikiArabia shows what a regional event looks like. It is the current MENA regional event, and it focuses mostly on Arabic projects and communities. A regional hackathon would probably be the same. So my question is: how will you make sure that small language tech communities get a place at regional events, and that their projects have a real chance to be presented? Otherwise, regional events may only make the biggest community in each region louder. --ZacharyB (talk) 14:45, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I have worked on Amazigh languages in the Wikimedia movement since 2019. For me, the best part of the Hackathon is that it is global. Our tech community is small, and the Hackathon is where we learn how other communities around the world solve the same problems we have. We work with Wikimedia Morocco on technical projects, editathons and meetups so we already work closely with the Arabic-speaking community. WikiArabia shows what a regional event looks like. It is the current MENA regional event, and it focuses mostly on Arabic projects and communities. A regional hackathon would probably be the same. So my question is: how will you make sure that small language tech communities get a place at regional events, and that their projects have a real chance to be presented? Otherwise, regional events may only make the biggest community in each region louder. --ZacharyB (talk) 14:45, 14 ~2026-56604-33 (talk) 09:15, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi @ZacharyB, thank you very much for this thoughtful comment! I don't have an immediate solution, but I would love your thoughts on what makes the global hackathon feel more welcoming and open to small language tech communities that you're not currently experiencing at regional events? Is it that it gives you the opportunity to interact with other small language tech communities? Exposure to a different skill set? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 18:47, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Another follow-up, I'm wondering if what you're point to is what was mentioned in this comment, specifically that "It is wrong to assume that people from a small part of the world can always share similar technical interests and form successful working groups." BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:10, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Bad idea

• Strong oppose. I go to 2-3 wiki conferences a year, and the hackathon is my favorite one. The current format works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. What I'm hearing is that you want to switch 66% of hackathon years to a format where only one quarter of participants attend. My hackathon friends are from all over the world, and I don't want to only see one quarter of them, I want to see all of them. Also, as someone based in North America, these changes would only shorten my travel times in 33% of years. Finally, the amount of extra work this would create for the hackathon organizers -- holding 4 events a year instead of 1 -- seems significant.
  Accelerated by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the last few years have seen significant shifts in how people discover, consume, and contribute to knowledge online. In response to these changes, the Wikimedia Foundation has focused on strengthening our contributor model and developing a new generation of volunteers and community leaders. This seems like a non sequitur. Why would changing the Hackathon's locations/format be in any way related to ChatGPT? This seems like an attempt to connect these changes to some bullet point in the annual plan, but that connection is extremely weak. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:35, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose I agree with Novem Linguae. The Hackathon as we know it is easily the event I look forward to the most each year. I am WMF staff and have easier means to contact WMF teams and specific staff members. Yet even for someone like me, the global annual Hackathon offers an invaluable, rare occasion where I get to work with all of the smartest people in the same room. For example in 2017, toolforge:global-search happened on a whim, only because Erik Bernhardson and various Cloud Services staff and volunteers were present. There are many more examples, but probably the best one for me was in 2025 when I worked with volunteer Bhsd on Extension:CodeMirror when we got more done in three days then we normally would in three months! That was only possible because we were together with members of the Editing and MediaWiki Engineering teams, and others who all live in different corners of the world. This kind of expedited collaboration cannot happen remotely or at a regional Hackathon where only some or none of these people are there. This, and of course, I would very much miss getting to work face-to-face with my dearest, internationally-scattered volunteer friends and colleagues on an annual basis. Building and maintaining these relationships is critical so that during the rest of the year, we are able to collaborate more easily and rely on each other in the online environment. It's a bit like WMF teams and their need for off-sites. In my humble opinion, the disadvantages of the proposed Hackathon changes significantly outweigh the potential benefits. I am certainly not convinced that the advent of AI-assisted coding has anything to do with the undeniably amazing things that happen at the Wikimedia Hackathon. If anything, I imagine Claude, ChatGPT etc. at the global Hackathon is only going to make it even more successful. At minimum, I would urge the organizing team to wait until after the 2027 Hackathon to make a decision. AI wasn't where it is now at the last Hackathon, so I don't think we've really seen what can be done when we have both AI and the most brilliant and ambitious minds all in the same room. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:54, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
• I disagree with this opposition -- the current version of the hackathon is an unacceptable barrier to participation from developers outside of Europe and North America -- WMF has a bias against running hackathons in other regions, and prevents funding from going to groups in other regions wanting to cultivate technical community. Visas to Europe and North America are constantly a mess, and Wikimedia events get favored in central transportation hubs in Europe more often than not. We are movement that "doesn't need to look the same all the time". The hyperconcentration of WMF staff in Europe and North America, and the inflationary salaries associated with that, is also reinforced by a lack of recruitment in other regions -- hackathons are a fundamental part of that, Sadads (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Although I have only been part of the community for two years and haven't attended many different hackathons yet, I did attend the Mini Hackathon organized by WMNL, the NWE Hackathon organized by WMNL, and the Wikimedia Hackathon 2026. Small local hackathons are fun, but the knowledge is limited to local attendees. Why should we put a stop to the influx of knowledge? The main reason I want to return to the Wikimedia Hackathon in 2027 is entirely influenced by my experience last year. Everyone from all over the world comes together, whereas regional hackathons only bring people together from regional areas. It is precisely bringing together different perspectives from around the world and having them collaborate that makes it so valuable. ItsNyoty (talk) 07:09, 16 October 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose as well. The gatekeeping is a positive. Unlike events such as Wikimania (which is open to a broad group of members, irrespective of experience), the Hackathon assumes a certain level of experience and discourages new members from registering. This means that members can focus on getting things done, instead of having to work with contributors that are new to the movement or have limited technical skills or having to assume that not everyone is familiar with a MediaWiki/Cloud Services tool. There are many local hackathons (where newer members can also contribute without feeling lost, and even contribute in their own language) also organised, so it is unclear to me as to why a proposal is made to add more regional hackathons. Not to mention, the Hackathon at Wikimania is also similarly open to users at all experience levels. However, I do agree with that hosting the event in Europe incurs issues with visas, so I would encourage hosting the global hackathon around the world, just like Wikimania. Leaderboard (talk) 08:23, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

  Hi @Leaderboard, thank you for your comments and the suggestion to move the Wikimedia Hackathon around the work, like currently happens with Wikimania. If this meant that we could fund fewer scholars to attend due to higher travel, would that seem like a worthwhile trade off? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:07, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

  @BPiovesan-WMF "If this meant that we could fund fewer scholars to attend due to higher travel" - but I wonder whether that'll be the case? While there would be higher expenses for those based in Europe, that'll be balanced by lower expenses for those in the region where the Hackathon is held. Leaderboard (talk) 07:04, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose People who collaborate on a specific topic during the Wikimedia Hackathon are often people from different parts of the world. Specific to my own experience with CodeMirror development during the 2025 hackathon, MusikAnimal is from USA while I am from China. Much of the necessary collaboration that made previous hackathons fruitful would become impossible if 2/3 of the global hackathons were replaced by regional hackathons. It is wrong to assume that people from a small part of the world can always share similar technical interests and form successful working groups.析石父 (talk) 09:03, 20 October 2026 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. We are in a period of very rapid change, and we need to address changes and challenges together, at least yearly, and at an international level, within an international team that recognises itself as international. The perception of the challenges varies impressively across continents and the regional gatherings can not substitute for the international ones. Furthermore, the technical communities are very important and with few members: we need to give them all the necessary importance and support, and we need to make sure there is good communication with the Wikimedia Foundation and its staff (not something we did right this year: and related to this, do you really think it is a good moment to reduce the support to the tech communities now? with all the problems the Wikimedia Foundation's decision generated?). It is not a good idea to reduce the number of international tech meetings (which is what the Wikimedia hackathon is about). But the hackathon can be organised better: by making sure we take the most from the venue we are in, and by involving universities and tech communities locally, including the local affiliate (which is not a mascot who should be involved to decide the colour of the gadgets, but a real partner collaborating with the organisation, because it knows the context and it has good connections with local institutions). I would strongly recommend not organising a hackathon like the one in Milan in a hotel separated from the city, complicated to reach for locals and absolutely not connected to Milan in any way. I am sure Tirana and its communities can do great things. --Iopensa (talk) 09:40, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

  Hello @Iopensa, thank you very much for your comments. To ensure that I'm fully understanding and not assuming anything, I had a few follow-ups:

  • Can you say more about your comment that it was “not something we did right this year” when it comes to good communication with the Wikimedia Foundation and its staff? It was my first year organizing the Wikimedia Hackathon, so I’d love to know what occurred differently this year so that I can improve that communication for the 2027 edition.
  • To clarify, this proposal comes from a place of trying to provide better support for the technical community, nothing about this is meant to reduce support even if that support would look different.
  • Your point is taken about the Milan hackathon, I didn’t have a say in that location but moving forward I’m aiming for less expensive cities where we hold the event in the city center. Unfortunately in Milan we could only afford a hotel in the periphery.

  BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

  Dear BPiovesan-WMF, it is a pleasure to hear from you. 1. With "not something we did right this year" I was referring to the WMF Community Tech team disbanding, that I think – considering what happened next – it could have been at least communicated better (and international gatherings are good venues also to anticipate decisions, discussing, talking). 2. To clarify, I am not saying you are not supporting the technical communities: I am arguing that it is very important - in particular in this historical moment and in a period of tensions within the Wikimedia movement (with a wide number of internal and external tensions) to consider ourselves a global movement, and to support and reinforce global collaborations and links. Within our movement, paradoxically, the international dimension is not necessarily natural: our communities tend to be very local, tend to focus on specific languages, territories, regions (articles and tasks), and we tend to compete. We need to boost the perception of belonging to a global movement that needs to produce shared knowledge and solutions (specifically to address the wide number of internal and external tensions). I remember in a discussion during Wikimania in London a sysop from Wikipedia in English telling a contributor from India (he was a tech member) that he should have contributed in its own language: the contributor from India had to explain that English is also its language. Let's not take for granted that people have a perception of the wider world. Wikimania and thematic international events have contributed extensively to creating global links, and I strongly believe that they should continue doing so. 3. Thanks. And please also consider the remarks about the collaboration with the local affiliates.... I remain at your disposal if I can be of any help. my very best regards, Iopensa (talk) 15:58, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

  Thank you very much @Iopensa! Your additional details were very helpful to my understanding, I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate, especially on the need to prioritize creating a global community. BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 21:20, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

More is better

Accelerated by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, we should have more opportunities to improve, instead of less. I understand the core issue in the proposal, but the solution is not to have a global Hackathon every 3 years, but have a global Hachathon every year AND have regional hachathons whenever it is possible, even every two years in a region. I attended the NWE Hackathon last year and it was super productive. Most of the people there went to the Global one in Milano some weeks later, and it also was productive. Theklan (talk) 17:29, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion @Theklan and I definitely agree that more is better!

In a world where there isn't the budget to organize both regional hackathons and an international one, which should we prioritize? Noting also that some regions don't currently have any regional hackathons. BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:32, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

The reason to have less budget would be to be less interesting. The way to make more interesting thing is innovation. Innovation comes from many places, including Hackathons. More Hackathons while there's money (and more innovation on the WMF side) would lead to more interesting things, which gives more budget. Theklan (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Tech is inherently global

Strong oppose. Many tech projects involve collaborators from all corners of the globe. From my perspective, global hackathons were instrumental in helping us build the volunteer community that we now have for the Commons app. Being able to meet in person once every year and work on something together is a huge boon to community-led tech projects, many of which Wikimedia editors and contributors depend on. And being able to meet a diverse range of people from all backgrounds and nationalities is a big part of the reason why the Wikimedia volunteer community is so active and vibrant. Under the proposed model, we would only meet other collaborators once every 3 years just because we happen to live in different geographical regions.

FWIW I do agree that all regions should absolutely receive sufficient and equitable funding for holding hackathons and other events, if they don't already have such. I don't understand, however, why this funding needs to be taken from the once-yearly global hackathon. Misaochan (talk) 09:49, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this thoughtful comment @Misaochan. This is a bit of an aside, but how can I learn more about how the current community was built up around the Commons app? Other than the yearly Wikimedia Hackathon, where other efforts undertaken? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:35, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi @BPiovesan-WMF, in terms of single events I think the WMHack definitely had the most impact on our community building. However, participating in programs like GSoC and Outreachy was also a big part of it - two of our lead maintainers and many of our core developers were interns in those programs. Maintaining a culture that is newcomer-friendly on our GitHub repo has also been a big focus for us, since as a volunteer-driven project, we know that attracting and retaining newcomers is essential if we want our project to stick around. Misaochan (talk) 16:56, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Reflections on almost two decades of hackathons

version 3, with help of Gemini

I have a deep appreciation for the annual big hackathon, traditionally known as the International or European Hackathon (even when hosted in Israel or the European part of Turkey). I've attended every single one since the beginning and have actively helped organize many. I've been present as Wikimedia staff, self-funded volunteer and scholarship recipient of either Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia Nederland. When WMDE stopped making it an annual event in Berlin, I was part of the team that stepped up to organize it in Amsterdam with WMNL. Simply put: I am in favor of having as many hackathons as possible.

The Privilege of Time and Location

I recognize that my perspective comes from a place of privilege. I have the free time and financial stability to dedicate to organizing and attending these events without worrying about paying next month's bills. Furthermore, in the Netherlands, we are fortunate to be located in Northwestern Europe (NWE), surrounded by a high density of technical contributors.

We acknowledge this geographic privilege, though we also put in the hard work to capitalize on it. For a long time, WMNL has organized an almost-annual mini-hackathon: a one-day event for up to 30 participants with no scholarships, save for some reimbursed train travel.

Case Study: NWE Hackathon 2026

In 2026, we scaled up and organized the NWE Hackathon. It was a two-day event with a budget of roughly €50,000 for 80 participants. This budget covered a freelance event organizer, hotel accommodations, and food. We did not offer travel scholarships from the event budget itself, though partner/movement organizations could sponsor participants independently.

Because we hired a freelancer and relied on a team that has consciously developed its organizing skills over the past 15 years, we leaned very lightly on WMNL staff capacity. We knew exactly what we were doing, which kept stress to a minimum.

Strategic Questions for the Future

Looking ahead, there are four key angles we need to evaluate when planning future hackathons:

• Who organizes them? Does the responsibility fall on the WMF, paid movement organizations, volunteers, or partners? How would this be in the new proposal? I'm not sure I believe that "wholly WMF organized with very limited local involvement but volunteering during the event" is the way to go. I believe in skill building; starting small on a shoe string budget. Scaling up from there if the community size allows for it. Regional events must scale naturally alongside local organizing capacity and technical breadth, ensuring event sizes reflect the actual maturity of the host community. That is how we build and sustain communities.

• Why are they organized? Is the goal to bring experienced contributors together, onboard new technical contributors, or recruit technical staff? Based on the Netherlands Hackathon 2018 - Women Tech Storm series, WMNL proved to me that using hackathons to onboard people completely unfamiliar with the Wikimedia technical landscape is inefficient. Spending €70,000 and extensive mentoring time to gain just one sustained contributor is not a structurally sound recipe. Therefore, the focus should primarily be on gathering current contributors and active recruiting (similar to the impact of the 2011-2013 India hackathons, even if that wasn't the explicit goal at the time).

• Where are they organized? This is tightly bound to the "who" and "why" and requires further exploration. One crucial baseline: we should avoid dull conference centers. Hackathons thrive when hosted in vibrant, inspiring city centers or unique locations.

• Who pays and how much? The scale defines the required budget. If this proposal shifts hackathons to a regional model, how does the global budget fracture? Does saving money on international travel and visas mean those funds will be injected directly into regional organizing budgets, or will this effectively defund the international gathering without fully funding the regional ones? What is the current budget for hackathons at WMF, and what is the projected budget for this new proposal? Furthermore, what are the exact metrics for success? Are you optimizing for raw attendee numbers, geographic diversity, or the retention of long-term technical contributors? If WMF cannot articulate the expected ROI, the community cannot accurately assess if the budget is being spent wisely—or if it is just funding inefficient onboarding.

siebrand (talk) 07:47, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Why are they organized? Is the goal to bring experienced contributors together, onboard new technical contributors, or recruit technical staff? In my case, when I was a new contributor, hackathons were instrumental for making the friends I needed to help get my patches +2'd with regularity. And now that I am a +2er myself, hackathons are an excellent opportunity to meet and network with both volunteers and WMFers. My connections with both groups would be much weaker without hackathons or with less global hackathons. Tldr: hackathons help both newbies and experience contributors.

we should avoid dull conference centers. Hackathons thrive when hosted in vibrant, inspiring city centers or unique locations. I love the recent hackathon format of putting us all in a hotel and then using that hotel's conference center for the hackathon. The convenience of it is great, and it is probably logistically simple for the organizers. I can't speak for others, but I don't come to hackathons for world travel. I come to hackathons to spend time with my fellow nerds. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:50, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

I didn't read Siebrand's words that way. As I understood it, he wasn't talking about opportunities for tourist-like exploration unrelated to the Hackathon activities, but rather about stimulating and versatile environments that make the Hackathon activities themselves (including informal discussions away from laptops) more interesting and memorable. This is a key part of strengthening the bonds within the technical community, and motivating contributors to work through the friction points and technical challenges that lie in the path to becoming an established member of this community. Waldyrious (talk) 22:22, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

This is a somewhat distant consideration for me compared to what I wrote in my comment below, but I agree that smaller events have more flexibility to pick nice locations. The NWE Hackathon in Arnhem that Siebrand talks about was held in the beautiful old town of a smaller city, and I could go out for a walk or to get some snacks or something. It was so much nicer in comparison to the ones in Milan and Istanbul where there was basically nothing to see or do in a radius of kilometers from the hotel/venue, and it felt almost as if we were locked in in there for three days. Matma Rex (talk) 19:47, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Build on regional conferences while retaining the annual global hackathon

I have attended several Wikimedia Hackathons in Europe since 2022 and have also been involved in organising Wikimania. In my experience, the concentration of experienced technical contributors at the standalone hackathon creates an energy and momentum that is difficult to reproduce elsewhere. Bringing people with different areas of expertise together, with dedicated time to collaborate, helps projects advance and builds relationships that support collaboration throughout the year.

At Wikimania, technical staff and volunteers often have competing commitments within the wider programme, which makes sustained participation in the hackathon difficult. Regional hackathons would present a different challenge: they may bring together fewer of the people whose combined expertise makes the global gathering so productive. My concern is that reducing the global hackathon to once every three years would weaken those opportunities without necessarily establishing a sustainable alternative.

I recognise the barriers that travel costs and visa requirements create for contributors outside Europe, and I support investing in regional technical communities. However, greater regional access also needs to lead to meaningful opportunities and continued support. For newcomers, meeting experienced contributors and connecting with the wider technical community can help turn initial interest into sustained participation. How would regional events provide those connections, including access to expertise that may not yet exist within the region?

I share Siebrand's questions about purpose and return on investment. Bringing existing contributors together, onboarding newcomers, and recruiting technical staff are different objectives, even if an event can serve more than one. Which outcomes would this change prioritise, what resources would support them, and how would success be measured beyond attendance?

If the goal is to grow regional technical communities, I suggest working with regional hubs and affiliates through funding, dedicated developer relations support, and participation by experienced technical contributors. This could build on existing relationships and activities, with support continuing between events.

For transparency, I am an ESEAP Hub Steering Committee member and have a direct interest in developing these opportunities. I would welcome regional hackathons, while retaining the annual cadence of the global gathering.

One starting point could be to attach a regional hackathon to an existing regional conference, with dedicated time and appropriate technical support. At the last ESEAP Conference, we had defined tracks for youth, women, and hub governance, with some protection from competing programme demands. A similar arrangement could give technical participants focused time while keeping them connected to the wider regional community. Alternatively, dedicated hacking days before or after the main conference could reduce competing programme commitments further. Either arrangement would need protected time for participants and mentors, together with follow-up support.

However, attaching a hackathon to a regional conference also creates expectations beyond the first event. Once established as a track, participants may reasonably expect it to return at subsequent editions, alongside other recurring programme areas. The hackathon could therefore become tied to the conference's cadence. Where conferences take place annually, this could create an expectation of annual regional hackathons, even if the proposed funding model only supports each region once every three years.

This is not necessarily an undesirable outcome: regular opportunities to meet could help sustain a regional technical community. But it would require continuing funding, organising capacity, and access to experienced contributors and mentors. We should consider this recurring commitment from the outset, rather than assume that a regional hackathon can be introduced periodically without creating expectations for continuity.

Supporting regional hackathons alongside existing conferences could provide a practical way to build regional organising capacity and assess what sustains technical participation before deciding whether to reduce the frequency of the global event. Regional hubs and affiliates should help shape both the format and frequency according to their communities' needs and capacity, with a shared understanding of the ongoing resources required. Robertsky (talk) 12:33, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Robertsky, we met at the ESEAP Conference 2026 in Kaohsiung. I’d like to connect your idea on growing regional technical communities with the discussion we had there. I think we should pay attention to the baseline skills newcomers already have or have not, and that probably includes creating pre-hackathon sessions or designing beginner-friendly tutorials.

I also think regional conferences are a good starting point, as you suggested. We would probably need to invite some developers from outside the region to join and teach. Inviting a few developers from Europe may be easier than sending many ESEAP contributors to Europe on scholarships, since some of us face difficult visa requirements and high travel costs.

I also wrote about this recently in a Diff article. Cheers. Yamato Shiya (talk) 10:09, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

@Yamato Shiya what a well timed Diff post! Thank you for sharing your experiences building a technical community in ESEAP.

To narrow my questions down to one specific one: If you were going to invite developers from other parts of the world to an ESEAP event for technical contributors, how would you identify which skills you would want? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:59, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your question, after reading responses in a thread I started below, I would start by

1. Learnt at least beginner-intermediate computer science topics (web programming (PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScripts), APIs, basic SQL)
2. Attempted to work inside a Wikimedia project (templating, scripting)

I must admit I am myself a bit lost in defining the baseline skills other than that. I listened to friends in my community who said that Hackathon communities had their own benchmark, and it is said that if someone approaching them and did not pass those benchmark, it would be hard to communicate with them.

Additionally, before we have any hackathons, I would really hope that we have a set of learning resources to introduce people to this kind of contributions, such as what I see in API:Tutorial, or in Phabricator help. They are already there, and we need to build a "bridge" or a "tapestry" connecting and painting them as one for the beginner. Thank you. Yamato Shiya (talk) 23:32, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Ack, my apologies @Yamato Shiya, I realize that I didn't articulate my question very clearly. In your original post, you mentioned that "We would probably need to invite some developers from outside the region to join and teach". I was curious how you would find the right developers from outside the region? Specifically, how would you identify what skills you'd like them to teach?

I'm sorry for the confusion caused! BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 21:23, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

I drafted an answer previously and a bug happened, and so it gone. To answer shortly: to find experienced user to teach I would say: (1) ask a WMF staff, probably from dev outreach or Indonesian staff working with ESEAP communities, (2) look at several Diff articles about Hackathon, and approach the author through email or user talk page, (3) scouring discussion boards (like this) and look for users who spoke about relevant issues. For how to identify, I am not sure too, but I would set basic assumption that anyone wants to join should have probably basic experience with programming languages (especially Web ones like PHP), have previously work collaboratively through Git, and have proper English skills. I think I would start by designing surveys for community. I hope that answer. I apologize for previous answer, I did not read it carefully and answering them while working on something else. Yamato Shiya (talk) 10:09, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

I can add to it from my experience at IMDUG, we generally start by understanding the technical needs of our regional communities, such as the tools and extensions they frequently use, the issues they face, and the improvements they would like to see. We then identify specific tasks or projects around these needs and break them down into the technical knowledge required to work on them. For example, if a task involves improving a ContentTranslation-related feature, we identify the need for PHP knowledge, if it involves a tool, it might require web development skills. This helps us understand what skills are missing or need to be strengthened among potential participants.

For beginner-level workshops and hackathons, we also assess applicants' existing familiarity with these prerequisites from their scholarship forms to understand where they might need additional guidance. This gives us a reasonable picture of the knowledge gaps and helps us shape the event content and tasks accordingly.

So, rather than starting with a predefined list of skills we want to teach, we try to work backwards from community needs and actual technical contributions. The knowledge gaps become clearer when we identify what people need to know to work on something meaningful. Finding the right mentors also becomes easier in this scenario.Kalli navya (talk) 18:25, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Robertsky, thank you for your thorough and thoughtful feedback! I appreciate you presenting the alternative of having a technical event in parallel/right before or after an existing regional event.

One thing that has come up a few times in this thread is the idea of moving the Wikimedia Hackathon around the world, like is currently done for Wikimania. As a former Wikimania organizer, what are your thoughts? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 20:04, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

I first participated in the hackathon back in 2022 and this question came out in informal conversations among the participants. the overall feel that I got back then is that the hackathon should be held in Europe primarily because many of the developers that employed by the foundation and WMDE are based in Europe and those in US, it is cost effective. Moving the hackathon out of Europe may result in these developers not being able to travel because now they may not be able to travel without the support of their departments. And for those who can afford they might not want to travel because in their point of view it incurs a higher carbon cost in their travels. Will the foundation want to pay for travels of the same group of people out of Europe, which may be more than the number of developers in the host region? Can the foundation convince them to travel? Has the diversity of the employment of developers and engineers worldwide changed since then to offset a lack of presence of the European and North American developers? Are there enough +2 or experienced developers, or developers who are subject matter experts within certain niches outside of Europe to have a hackathon of the same level of synergies we see in the last few years? If not, we have to be upfront with what we what of an international hackathon outside of Europe. Is it more to get new developers into the ecosystem or getting things done with the same people within the ecosystem?

Another issue is visa availability. I am assessing this objectively, not just Europe vs the rest of the world. Europe has a permissive Schengen policy which enables European developers to travel freely without needing to worry about visa issues. That takes at least 29 countries off an organiser's worry. While most international visitors can freely apply for a Schengen visa, the visa applications are still largely based on the host country's policies, and thus far we have seen rejections among many selected wikimania scholars when it was held in Europe (I have no access to the data, this is just anecdotal, but I am confident to say that it was more than one rejection at the very least). However, if we host outside of europe, an organiser will now have to worry for all nationalities (except for any existing bilateral/multilateral arrangements like the ASEAN's visa-free/lite policy for ASEAN nationalities).

The first reason is entirely controllable within the movement while the second is purely a matter of selection. If we don't have a similar pool of developers as indicated above in the various regions, then cultivate them first with regional hackathons or events before rotating the international hackathons out of Europe. Or that it is decided that we can be comfortable with using the international hackathon as a cultivation platform for new contributors? If so, then we could just have the international hackathon outside of Europe as soon as possible. Whereas for the second issue, it would be great to consult the travel team and/or wikimania team for their advice as to where would be good locations to hold the hackathon internationally and sound out with the local affiliates on at what level of support does one need from them to host an international event. Robertsky (talk) 01:54, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Support All valid thoughts Kalli navya (talk) 17:40, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

The risk of running consultations on proposals that aim to solve structural inequities

Hello,

From Wikimedistas de Uruguay, we are very glad to see this proposal put forward and will soon share a more detailed, structured response. However, reading through this thread, we are concerned by a familiar pattern in the movement: the loudest and most entrenched voices dominate the conversation, and their pushback is treated as a hard "no." This happens without acknowledging that their visibility is itself the product of structural privilege.

Established contributors are directly impacted, but centering only their input ignores the vast majority: newer contributors, those without the insider experience needed to navigate these governance channels, and those historically excluded by the very nature of these events.

Technical communities outside Europe are the fastest-growing across the movement. Yet while a geographically compact Europe receives granular regional divisions (CEE, NWE, etc.) and matching resources that this year alone allowed them to have two hackathons, vast continents with massive populations like Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are lumped together and under-resourced. We had to combine a proposal for a technical event with a Regional Conference this year in Latin America, meaning that the percentage of technical community that will be able to be present at the event is significantly smaller than if we'd have had a technical space only.

Furthermore, intercontinental travel costs differ by orders of magnitude compared to regional travel. European events remain accessible and affordable primarily for Europeans, effectively penalizing talented contributors based solely on the lottery of place of birth, and putting a more significant burden over affiliate's budgets from the Global South, should they want to send people to Europe for the hackathon.

All voices should be heard, but they must be weighted accordingly, with equity in mind. Otherwise, we risk falling into the trap of asking an entrenched majority whether the underrepresented deserve equal access, which is much like asking men whether women should have the right to vote. We all know how that turned out.

cheers, Scann (WDU) (talk) 12:52, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this feedback. I very much support your view. Silvan Heintze (WMDE) (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

@Scann (WDU), I'm not that familiar with the technical capabilities of Wikimedia Uruguay, could you point to folks within the community who would be interested in facilitating a hackathon event? (See my response below for why I am worried). Sohom (talk) 14:34, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Hello @Sohom Datta we do. We have it both in Uruguay, and in Latin America. The most important thing -- we also have capacity to host regional conferences and gatherings. Scann (WDU) (talk) 16:19, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

@Scann (WDU), I was more expecting you to name folks/well known members of the Wikimedia technical community in your areas rather than telling in blanket terms "we do".

I don't think the ability to host regional gatherings is the most important thing in hackathons. What I'm concerned about particularly the ability to facilitate new users while they get acquainted with technical areas. Much of this facilitation is restricted to a small group of users -- to give a example, only 55 people outside of WMDE and WMF have mediawiki/* +2 access, without which you cannot get a hackathon participant's code merged into production). Similarly, there are 18 people who are able to approve people on Toolforge. Without both of these, hackathon participants cannot get started or have any real impact.

Re technical capabilities in Latin America, I know @Ederporto from his work on the m:PTAC and @Albertoleoncio who is a steward and is significantly familiar with Toolforge/bot development, but I'm blanking on anyone who has +2-er rights. (or other folks who might have experience with core mediawiki development) Sohom (talk) 16:36, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the reason why you do these events. It allows you to plan, mitigate and solve for those problems in advance. I don't see how any of this is not something that you can't solve beforehand, in preparation for the event . Scann (WDU) (talk) 16:39, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

It allows you to plan, mitigate and solve for those problems in advance. I don't see how any of this is not something that you can't solve beforehand, in preparation for the event. It takes significant continuous engagement with the technical community over multiple years to get +2 permissions. (Ditto with being a volunteer Toolforge admin). To put things into perspective, it took me 4 years of off and on continuous technical work to get +2. This is not something you can "plan/mitigate for a hackathon event". Sohom (talk) 17:14, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta it's clear we disagree on this. I don't think is worth you or me spending more time on this point. Scann (WDU) (talk) 17:22, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

@Scann (WDU) @Sohom Datta: I think both are correct here.

Yes, we have a chronic problem of lack of attention to demands from the Global South. Just remember that Wikidata was without support for mobile editing for more than a decade and even slightly simpler things, like phab:T337241, are classified as low priority for "reasons". This is undeniable.

On the other hand, access to people with +2 privileges and people with deeper expertise is essential for events like the hackathon. Often, some very specific areas only have two or three people with real know-how, and they are all in Europe. Without the participation of these people, the event could result in just us complaining about the same things without the power to resolve them.

This is why I have always advocated the creation of pre-hackathon events, where we could in each region aggregate all these technical demands and some "representatives" could "advocate" for them when traveling to the main hackathon. Albertoleoncio (talk) 13:38, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Tbh, I kinda/sorta agree, one of the things I've liked in Wikimania hackathon iterations and some other events is that hacking (for me) is often more fun when folks describe problems to you, cause I often go into events to look for cool problems to work on (as opposed to trying to fix my own issues) Sohom (talk) 16:07, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this suggestion @Albertoleoncio! I've never heard of this type of pre-hackathon event, could you say a bit more about how these could be organized so that technical requests are effectively gathered?

Would there be a corollary to this in which we could identify what technical skills are lacking at the regional level and find ways to build those skills? I know this is a big question, but thought I'd through it out there in case you had thoughts! BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 21:49, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

@BPiovesan-WMF: Many of the issues that affect regional communities are small and everyday: a workflow that breaks, a missing feature, a long-ignored Phabricator task. For one user, such a problem may not seem worth reporting. When several people from the same region discover that they share it, it becomes a real task. These requests rarely arrive ready-made; they often emerge from conversations at events, when people compare their daily experience on the projects.

Even once a task exists, in my experience it is far more likely to move when someone can advocate for it in person. Contributors living in other contexts may consider a bug low priority because it affects few people, or too complex to be worth the effort. Being convinced face to face is much more effective than an on-wiki thread, and several comments here (for example about +2 rights and the relationships behind them) point in the same direction.

So, the idea is to keep the annual global Hackathon and add short regional "satellite" gatherings immediately before it. Each would be a 1-2 day event of roughly 20 people in a country that is easy to reach (visa-free access for the region, affordable flights, safe for all participants), chosen by a call for proposals and organized by the WMF or a local affiliate. At each gathering, participants would share pain points in a structured way (for example, "what got in your way this month?"), group similar complaints, turn them into prioritized Phabricator tasks and choose 3-4 volunteer representatives to carry those tasks to the global event. By attaching these dates close together, representatives can travel on a single multi-city itinerary (for example, Santiago → São Paulo → Europe → Santiago) instead of two separate trips.

I suggest starting with a pilot in regions with the least access today: LAC, SSA, SA, ESEAP and MENA. That means five satellites with about 100 participants in total, of whom 15-20 would continue to the global event. For this to work, the global Hackathon should reserve dedicated time for these regional requests, with people who can act on them present, and publish a short follow-up report on what happened to each task. I see this as a complement to the global Hackathon and as one possible way to answer the equity concerns raised here without reducing the annual gathering that many contributors value. Albertoleoncio (talk) 14:04, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

@Albertoleoncio Building on your idea, but providing a slightly different way of approaching it: Could we use regional events (like the LATAM regional conference in Bolivia next month) to surface these issues?

I realize this would take coordination and clear flow, but I'm wondering if that might be easier than adding another event to everyone's calendar (and workload). BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:59, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

@BPiovesan-WMF: My hesitation is about focus and about who would be in the room. Building on Robertsky’s point about competing commitments at Wikimania: the same dynamic would likely apply at regional conferences, where even volunteers have competing interests (governance, community networking, other tracks) that pull attention away from technical discussions. Also, as I understand it, scholarships for conferences follow broader criteria than those for the Hackathon, which select specifically for technical profiles. This is not a criticism, since the two events have different purposes, but it means a conference is likely to gather fewer of the people who can turn everyday problems into well-formed tasks. A dedicated satellite, tied to the global event, keeps both the purpose and the audience aligned.

To keep the workload low, I imagine a single registration form for both events, where participants choose either to attend only the satellite or to also act as a representative at the global Hackathon. Satellites would then be short (1–2 days) and small (~20 people). Albertoleoncio (talk) 12:09, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

How do you imagine getting more Toolforge admins and +2 rights in regions outside of Europe and North America? It requires 2-3 years of mentoring and paticipation, in a context where its cost affordable to partipicate -- running events in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay or Brazil would be easy for Europeans to participate in, AND would make it cost effective for folks in Southern Africa and the rest of LATAM to participate (because flight hubs). Your argument is cutting off the participation of valuable technical contributors without 20 years of investment that the European community has had, Sadads (talk) 12:21, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

@Sadads Your argument is cutting off the participation of valuable technical contributors without 20 years of investment that the European community has had I'm sorry, but I'm very much a realist. I came into the movement as a Google Summer of Code student from India back when the Foundation appeared interested in growing it's technical userbase. I've spent a significant chunk of my 2019-2024 time at Wikimedia mentoring new technical contributors in the ecosystem in India/Asia through the Google Summer of Code, hackathons, and subsequently through discussions on Discord. I think I speak from experience when I say that our problems are not a function of bringing in new people but retaining them. Too many people burn out/drop out over their patches sitting in the wilderness, finding Phabricator and Gerrit too confusing to navigate, not having new code to work on and generally being stuck in b-cracy land. This is why I care that we actually solve the problem properly by having folks at the conference/hackathon who can actually guide folks towards having a impact and not half ass it by waving our hand at "oh we will figure it out, somebody will participate". In my mind, new folks and old folks will be willing to participate regardless of where the hackathon is held if it is held once a year. The question is "can we actually scale so that we have multiple affiliate-led hackathons in terms of technical capability?" and right now the answer in my mind is "we don't have the infrastructure to do this" and so local hackathons conducted will lack the ability to actually retain the technical talent and make any impact potentially hurting the global community as well. Sohom (talk) 16:05, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

First and foremost: it sounds like you have been let down by the movement. Having worked on the organizer side of this problem for a decade: I know this isn't easy to fix.

BUT you have described the problem: the bureaucracy, requiring everyone to have access and knowledge before they "can do things", not the events.

The question is how do we make sure that experienced users can be at the regional events to unblock participation? Right now I am sitting in a hackathon with 20 people in Uruguay, where most of us are building tools and user scripts without any of the need to push into mediawiki core -- this is critical for building experience, but also educating people (most of whom who primarily participate in Spanish) that they too can be involved -- and some of these folks will be building tools on toolforge, or whatever, that then brings them along to the global community.

Especially when coding tools, like AI, make prototyping much more rapidly-- pushing code to core technologies cannot be a requirement for onboarding developers -- we need to be seeding thousands of experiments, not requiring them to cross boarders, and enter countries with structural barriers to getting visas in our most promising countries like India and Nigeria, Sadads (talk) 19:25, 17 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for refocusing the conversation a bit @Sadads, it's helpful to focus on the barriers to entry and how we can constructively address those.

I'd love to hear more about how the hackathon you were attended went, how the participants were recruited and plans for retention. Feel free to share here or message me directly! BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 20:15, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta thank you for engaging throughout this conversation. You made a lot of good points, but I want to ensure that I'm accurately synthesizing them. Would it be fair to say that you're saying that global hackathons are invaluable because the range of skills of a global participant base are needed both to effectively onboard newcomers and provide the support needed to retain existing contributors? But that the location of that global hackathon doesn't really matter? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 20:18, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

@BPiovesan-WMF the location of that global hackathon doesn't really matter? In the grand scheme of things I don't think it does. I have my own quibbles about location (ideally imo we would want to invest in rotating the hackathon around the world) but what matters the most is the people at the hackathon. If we don't have that newbies are going to crash and burn. Sohom (talk) 00:39, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you @Sohom Datta! And picking up on the aside, would your preference be to have a Wikimedia Hackathon that rotates locations around the world, like is done for Wikimania? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 21:34, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Yess! Sohom (talk) 11:14, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

"Technical communities outside Europe are the fastest-growing across the movement." This could be a great development, and I'm not yet aware of it. Where is the underlying data to support it?

"vast continents with massive populations like Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are lumped together and under-resourced.": I hear you, and the math backs you up: relative to their populations, the lack of resourcing in those regions is glaring. But we have to be realistic about how we fix it. We can't just parachute in and expect a jump in community health by throwing money at it. It has to be an evolution so the local base can sustainably absorb the growth. To figure out our next immediate step, what's our current foundation in the areas you mention? Which grassroots technical events, no matter the scale, have already taken place there and are there repeat events maybe already, or small communities of tech contributors that are often finding each other? siebrand (talk) 14:41, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Hello @Siebrand, global open-source metrics (including GitHub's annual Octoverse reports) consistently demonstrate that Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia host the fastest-growing developer communities in the world. The technical talent exists; our movement has simply failed to build the on-ramps to tap into it.

I disagree with your approach: investing at communities that have been under-resourced, historically excluded by reasons of geography, and that haven't received enough attention is exactly the way to solve structural inequities that have stunted community growth because they can't participate. What's "throwing money"? Well, keeping on funding well developed infrastructures just because they occupy positions of privilege and power, and just happen to have the knowledge because the organization has invested in it for the past 20 years. Has the community in Europe "organically evolved"? Or maybe it is related to the fact that WMF has been supporting this community for quite a long time now? Pointing to Europe's current technical capacity as proof that other regions don't deserve technical event funding ignores the fact that this capacity was bought and paid for through two decades of sustained movement investment.

At least from what I can speak on our side (Wikimedistas de Uruguay), we've been investing in this community. We did 3 technical gatherings this year, 2 last year, we've been supporting MediaWiki developers with some technical features useful in Spanish, etc. So yes, there's base to organize this event, and we'd be happy to support any other affiliate in the region that wants to organize something like this (such as Wikimedia Brasil). Scann (WDU) (talk) 16:36, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

I think you may have misinterpreted what I've meant to convey. I don't think we disagree.

"The technical talent exists; our movement has simply failed to build the on-ramps to tap into it.": This is true everywhere, in my opinion.

"I disagree with your approach: investing at communities that have been under-resourced": I don't think I wrote that we shouldn't invest. I think I wrote that we should invest with a clear plan.

On the stats: Having links would be great. Our community was build on references.

"Has the community in Europe "organically evolved"?" Yes.

"Or maybe it is related to the fact that WMF has been supporting this community for quite a long time now?" Yes. That's how skill building works. Slowly and over time, from small to large.

"Pointing to Europe's current technical capacity as proof that other regions don't deserve technical event funding": Are you accusing me of stating that? I don't think I did.

"We did 3 technical gatherings this year, 2 last year": Awesome. I'd love to read more on it. Is there a page like Mini Hackathon October 2026 or a category like wmnl:Categorie:Hackathon where I can read more?

Thanks! siebrand (talk) 18:41, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this feedback @Scann (WDU) and your point about the equity issues inherent in this consultation are well taken. I'm relatively new to this community and despite my best efforts, ignorant of how to best reach communities that might not read these specific pages. If there's a way to ensure I'm capturing a wider range of voices, I'm all ears (eyes?)

In a different thread @Robertsky mentioned that in ESEAP having a technical event on the sidelines of a regional event seems to work well in that region. It sounds like this year you were trying to make the same budget work for a regional event and a technical event. If you had received additional budget to better support the technical community, would that have been an effective way to bring technical contributors together? Robert, tagging you so you can correct me if I'm misinterpreting your statement.

I look forward to your more details comments! BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 20:37, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

@BPiovesan-WMF we have yet to have a full scale technical event in the region. But we are looking to have one in 2 years actually. To this end we've started conversations among the technical contributors in the region. Robertsky (talk) 00:59, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

@Robertsky this is a bit in the weeds and might be easier to discuss on a call (if that works for you), but what is the difference between the event you previously organized and the "full scale technical event" that you are planning in two years? What does the preparation look like over the next two years to organize that event? BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 21:37, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

We currently don't have the infrastructure to do this

A version of this was originally posted on Discord and is being copied here.

I don't think we have a strong enough "base" at the regional level to build on in terms of people with deep technical knowledge, +2 privileges, etc to have a “regional affiliate-powered hackathon” work. So, for example, I can think of only 3 volunteers in Asia (me, @SD0001 , @chlod I think?) who have the ability to merge code in production and are active in the community. And this is assuming that I take time off from my university to fly in from the US. If we hosted a hackathon today (or even next year), I don’t think it would be a good experience for either the 3 of us or the other participants if we were the only people able to be the bottleneck for all hacking at the event, and I don’t see the number drastically increasing anytime soon.

Alongside this, besides WMDE (and maybe Wikiproject Med now?), there isn't another affiliate with any kind of pull in terms of active MediaWiki dev experience. If you look at m:Product and Technology Advisory Council/May 2026 draft PTAC recommendation for feedback (and the associated talk page), I think you will get a fairly accurate representation of the current landscape of MediaWiki development within the affiliate community. The closest affiliate is WMB, which has done a fair bit of tooldev and a small amount of work with the help of WMDE on a VE feature. Literally, that's it; there is no +2er. Unfortunately, my understanding is that P&T leadership hasn't made significant investment/has interest in changing the status quo, which makes it hard to run a model like the one you are proposing, especially if there is no affiliate capacity to take the code that is being produced, review the code and put the patch into production. Sohom (talk) 14:17, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

In regions where regional hackathons are already regularly organized (India is a salient example), additional funds could be put towards supporting increased attendance, including of experienced global volunteers or WMF staff.

As somebody who is fairly familiar with the Indian events (and really likes the initiatives), I don't think y'all (WMF) grasp the significant divide between the audience of those events and the typical Wikimania Hackathon participants. Y'all are basically asking to replace m:Wikiconference North America with a bunch of local editathons (the teaching people to edit kind). Sohom (talk) 15:42, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Sohom that the audience at our regional technical events in India differs significantly from the typical participants at the Wikimania Hackathon. Most of our events are designed for developers who are still building their skills and understanding of the Wikimedia technical ecosystem. Organizers curate tasks and arrange mentors to provide hands-on guidance, helping participants learn, contribute, and gradually become more independent.

Over the past several years, we have built a pathway through preparatory workshops, smaller collaborative events, and mentorship. National Hackathon participants would have made some beginner-level contributions and are ready to identify and work on tasks independently. They may still need experienced developers to help them navigate the codebase, resolve blockers, review patches, and take their contributions to completion. This is a slight progress over the years, but having experienced mentors and maintainers at these events is important.

I see regional technical events as serving a different but equally important stage of community development. Perhaps the question is not whether regional hackathons can immediately replace the Wikimania Hackathon, but how they can complement it and help develop a broader, more geographically distributed technical community over time. There is value in creating opportunities for newer contributors to enter the ecosystem and grow, while also creating pathways for those who are ready to take on more complex development and maintenance work. Kalli navya (talk) 07:53, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Can you hyperlink WMB please? I'm not familiar with the acronym. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:21, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

WMB should be m:Wikimedia Brasil:) Sohom (talk) 16:52, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

When I was hosting Wiki Game Jam SF in March of this year, I reached out on the Cloud mailing list to coordinate and make sure toolforge admins knew that we would have some approval requests coming in. I also reached out to my guest list and gave everyone some "pre-work", which included signing up for Toolforge. It can work. Audiodude (talk) 01:00, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

@Audiodude, I don't doubt it can at a individual/smaller hackathon level, scaling it to bigger hackathons (and multiple hackathons a year) is the part that I worry about. The Toolforge team might be okay doing a all-nighter for a single hackathon (and tbh they somehow manage to be around even at very odd hours of the day) -- but I don't see that being scalable. Sohom (talk) 01:40, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Some external idea

Hi! This is based on my experience outside the Wikimedia movement. I participate in a few similar conferences where people from around the globe gather for a few days to discuss, create, and celebrate their participation in shared spaces. Before the pandemic, the main organizers decided to host a "Global Summit" every two years in a selected city (e.g., London, Dublin, Mexico City, etc.) alongside "Regional Summits" (e.g., three per year: one for the Americas, one for Europe + Africa, and one for ESEAP). This way, community members feel more connected because they meet every year to discuss local matters in their native languages, followed by a global event to address global issues (primarily in English). I wanted to share this with all Wikimedians not as a definitive solution, but simply as a potential perspective to help rethink our approach.

Kindly, Superzerocool (talk) 14:24, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing this perspective! Which specific movement or organization are you referring to? siebrand (talk) 14:46, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Experts Product Summit from Google (on X: @GooglePEProgram). I understand: different budget scale and other issues, but this a possible idea. Superzerocool (talk) 16:10, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Aspiring what a trillion dollar company can do is great. It does appear to be a few orders of magnitude out of our league. :/ siebrand (talk) 18:43, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Sure... It's a weird idea. It could be a reality if we think about the current capacities in different regions of the movement and how to bring people around the globe together and create capacities to share in a global meeting. Hackathons have, in some cases, mysterious outcomes for the Wikimedia movement, and creating local gatherings (on a minor scale, obviously) to sum up in a global summit could help to understand different perspectives to create more tools, solve community problems, and enlarge the technical community. As I think: the wiki-nerds need spaces to write the outcomes and how they impact the communities, and think about "hey, wiki-nerds are so boring, alone, and they are not part of the community", is part of this focus: locally, we can sum up different perspectives, in our native languages, with our local problems, and then sum in the global community to solve a similar problems. (nothing new, if we think, about other processes in the Wikimedia movement). Wiki-nerds are not lonely persons... sorry for being "a dreamer", but someone dreams things, and they become a reality :) Superzerocool (talk) 22:07, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for this suggestion @Superzerocool! In some ways it seems like a middle ground between what I had proposed originally (global hackathon every 3 years, with regional hackathons in the intervening years) and the current situation (global hackathon every year).

I'd be curious if those who opposed my original proposal might find this more appealing? @Novem Linguae @MusikAnimal @ItsNyoty @Leaderboard @Iopensa @Misaochan - Thoughts? Or same concerns as expressed previously?

I'd also be curious if this creation of slightly broader regions than those currently used by Wikimedia would be useful or fail to really target the regional communities that we're seeking to build. @Sadads and @Scann (WDU) I'd love your thoughts. BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 19:56, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

I'd like a yearly global conference. It is my favorite conference of the year, and I get to see all my tech friends from around the world and work shoulder-to-shoulder with them on important projects. My idea of a palatable compromise would be moving the global conference out of Europe every once in awhile. I am afraid I am opposed to anything that REPLACES the global conference with regional ones, because it would mean that I wouldn't get to work with the typical people I work with at the Wikimedia Hackathon. To give some context, the regulars that I usually work with at the hackathon (without naming names in case they want to keep their home countries private) are from India, the Philippines, Singapore, Germany, Finland, the UK, Turkey, China, etc. This is a cosmopolitan group from all over the world, and fragmenting into regional hackathons would completely change the composition of the people I work with, probably resulting in only a fraction of these people going to the same regional hackathon that I go to. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't see an issue with "regional summits" (which already exist in some form, right?), but I agree with Novem Linguae that there is value in keeping a yearly global conference. The other problem with regional summits is that accessibility can be difficult; I wouldn't fit anywhere for instance. Leaderboard (talk) 06:42, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

So we have decided with the more thematic communities (like GLAM and Education), to have an every other, or every three year cycle. I might be the minority, but the amount of energy that goes into Wikimania every year, dilutes the amount of resources (time, scholarships, planning capacity) for making those events first class movement building activities, but also reduces the amount of time "central/critical/high knowledge" figures in the movement have for participating in the regional and thematic events where more productive "movement building" happens (exchange of skills, bringing low to medium experience individuals up to "central" figures"). One big central event may feel like a party of old friends, but it gets in the way of building an inclusive and expansive movement.

I think the same can be said of the technical community -- they have annual spaces at Wikimania and the Hackathon -- and we don't have nearly large enough contingents of technical contributors from either WMF or groups in the regional or thematic conferences --> its far easier to say "big event, that's where I go, simple" -- whereas what we really need (especially with AI coding and tool development makes toolbuilding far more democratic) is every regional event to have a technical space, AND ALSO tech-only regional gatherings that help us identify which of the technical contributors from those regions are worth investing in and which ones (as Sohom Dutta pointed out above) are still in a learning journey.

I am all for annual alternating cycles, and I think folks would be surprised how deep our volunteer base can be if you don't put up the unnecessary barrier of gatekeeping through 1 event a year, usually in a high barrier to entry place for underrepresented groups in order. Conferences like Wiki Conference North America and WikiIndaba have really expanded what we think is possible in those regions, and only after the ESEAP gatherings started happening did most of the local communities there get more voice in the global movement, Sadads (talk) 13:47, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

@BPiovesan-WMF I think once every two years is better than once every 3 years, but not ideal. :) Misaochan (talk) 16:51, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

2030 will not be the same

I am afraid this kind of rotational planning "every three years", "2030" assumes we continue operating as we are. We most probably will not be the same in 2030. We might need to scale down, limit budgets and I wouldn't be surprised if the current hackathon is better suited to survive, even if it becomes a smaller and/or sponsor-funded event (especially given a high number of self-funded participants).

The stated goal seems to be more "newcomer retention" than "serving experienced contributors". If the goal is to speed up a newcomer to the experienced contributor, a different event might be needed indeed.

The velocity at which we deliver solutions is generally not good. This is one of the rare opportunities to get things done, pushed and deployed and not an outreach event.

In general, we should ask the question, "Why contribute to MediaWiki (and related projects)?", with a mindset - why MediaWiki and not something else? I stopped contributing many many years ago, but was very happy to attend 2024 and 2026 hackathons attached to Wikimania and still contribute something there, even if this was helping others to bootstrap their projects and navigate the bureaucracy we have.  « Saper // talk »  23:08, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

50% of the proposal is very good

For many years, we have not fostered enough our local tech capacities. Investing more on local gathering and in person exchange is one of the most important thing to be done. That's the 50% good.

And at the same time, having at least one global meeting every year has never been as important as today. The technical landscape have changed a lot in the last 12 months. In a time of acceleration, do we truly believe meeting once every three years is a good idea?

If anything, we should be meeting, sharing and exchanging more than ever.

So, yes push for local tech related meetup, thematic hackathons, and incentivize the network of affiliates to organize them (and a local hackathon only needs a location, internet, food and drinks. If we want to make sure knowledge and capacity are transferred, have a small budget to help the most engaged technical volunteers to go to other local gatherings.

But our non-technical communities have never been as engaged as today with the technical side of our movement which comes with both huge challenges and huge opportunities. If anything we need more hackathon. Schiste (talk) 08:17, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with this. Legoktm (talk) 03:44, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

Newcomer gap to attend Hackathon

Thank you for opening this consultation. I’d like to share the perspective of someone who has never attended a hackathon.

I mostly contribute to Wikipedia articles, templates, Wikidata, and SPARQL. I’ve tried learning to code, but I often get stuck on the concepts, and the idea of sitting in a room where everyone already seems fluent in the vocabulary feels intimidating. I suspect many contributors in the Indonesian community feel the same.

I want to learn and build tools. For example, I’d like to make a small web page that compares Wikipedia categories across languages and shows which articles have been translated and which haven’t. But I don’t yet understand how the API works or how to handle request limits, and I don’t know where to start. I also notice that people at hackathons (and in this discussion) mostly talk about building tools on Toolforge, whereas I was imagining hosting something externally, for example on Netlify. I realize I may already be speaking a different technical vocabulary.

So my concern is less about where the hackathon is held, and more about whether there is a path for people like me to get there. If regional hackathons go ahead, I’d suggest a beginner-friendly track or pre-event learning materials (including an introduction to what Toolforge is and how it differs from external hosting, Wikimedia API and its limitations, using live recent change and sifting through its data, etc.), with newcomers paired with mentors. Right now there is a wide gap between us and the people who attend hackathons.

What would be considered “the basics” someone should know before joining a hackathon? For example Git and code review, APIs and web services, Toolforge, or something else? Knowing this would help newcomers like me see where to start, and could also help organizers (or perhaps another interested contributor) design a beginner-friendly track or pre-event materials.

Thank you. Yamato Shiya (talk) 09:27, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

I hear you. I've been running bots on English Wikipedia for 14 years, and Milan this year was my first Hackathon. Hmm, https://www.netlify.com/ interesting. I started by running bots on my own PC, before Toolforge even existed. There was a learning curve to figuring out how to run a bot on my Windows 7 machine but after a month I figured it out, with help from people at the bots noticeboard, and Google Search, and buying a book about regular expressions. Later I figured out how to run bots on Toolforge; that was another steep learning curve, where I helped by updating the Toolforge documentation as I went along. That's just another platform like my PC, albeit one that's more closely connected to the actual platform that Wikipedia sits on. Netlify would just be another platform for me to learn... one that comes with AI assistants, I see. It would be nice if its AI could shorten my learning curve. I still have not made any web page on an outside platform. My bots only update web pages on English Wikipedia itself. There's more than one API. I could help you get started using the Action API, the one I use, if you're coding in PHP, which is the current language I'm comfortable enough with to get the job done. I've taken over support of a "framework" that uses that API, after its original authors abandoned it. You would primarily code your application by making function calls to the framework, rather than directly to the API. Though you might need to add code to the framework as well if it didn't have a function for what you wanted to do. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:26, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

@Yamato Shiya It depends, but Wikimedia events in general are not designed to be accessible for new users. Assuming that you're a Wikimedia contributor that's relatively new in the technical space, I think this level of experience would be suitable for hackathons with an entry-level component like Wikimania. I do think someone in the Wikimedia Hackathon should be able to get, at least an intuitive level, an understanding of "how the API works or how to handle request limits" (though I haven't attended such an event but have seen users struggling in the classic Wikimania which is why I think some gatekeeping is needed for the main Hackathon).

I'll also use this opportunity to answer the questions:

• "how the API works". Suppose you want to get some information from a website. The API is a way for the website to (i) understand who you are, (ii) understand what you want, and (iii) get the information you're looking for. So suppose you are using the MediaWiki API to get the contents of a page. MediaWiki will ask for (i) some proof of who you are (not always required, usually needed if you want to access a lot of information or are editing something) - this is usually via an API key that you can get. It will also ask for (ii) the details of your request (like the page). MediaWiki will return the page details. The benefit of an API is that all this is done in a common format (JSON) which everyone can understand. I've found the documentation at API:Action_API to be helpful - it's reasonably well-written with example code so you can see how it works.
• "request limits" - the problem with an API is that it's easy to request too much information, which causes server overload. Request limits are a way to prevent users abusing (often unintentionally) the serve. When a limit is hit, MediaWiki wil not allow you to continue and will ask you to wait.
• "I don't know where to start" - as said above, I recommend playing around with the MediaWiki API. In fact, you can even use Special:APISandbox in say test.wikipedia to see how the API works - it's OK to use the API to make some edits there. That'll get you quite far.

Let me know if this helps; I wasn't sure if you already knew this. Leaderboard (talk) 13:50, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry much about "request limits" unless you're trying to train a large language model ;) If your requests are large they may need to be broken up into smaller request packets and then re-package them together. If you use a framework that should handle all the internals of that for you, so you don't really need to learn that unless you want to start from scratch and write your own framework (which I don't recommend). Likewise don't worry about JSON; just use that in the sandbox (I think it's the default there) as that's something only your framework needs to handle. I still barely understand JSON and get along fine with the stuff I do. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:48, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the reply. If Wikimedia events in general are not designed to be accessible for new users. to make them "more experienced ones", what do you think are the "baseline" skills?

I have met people who: either were developers for backend and frontend, or data analysts knowing Python well, but zero understanding in Wikimedia ecosystem, or in contrast, an experienced contributors, GLAM activists who dabble in Wikisource, Wikidata and Wikipedia, and for some reason interested in collaborating together to make tool for GLAM stuffs/Wikidata stuffs, but have limited understanding of programming.

If basic programming skills are enough, how should we bridge them to technical contributions? Thanks. Yamato Shiya (talk) 02:15, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

@Yamato Shiya For Wikimania (not technical, so I mean as a general participant), I wouldn't recommend people without at least a few months' of experience to be part of the event. So it's about knowing how the core aspects of Wikipedia (or whichever WMF project they are active on), so that they can find at least a few events of their liking where they can contribute and learn. Someone just starting won't have that.

For technical events it's tricky. In my opinion, someone should have the foundation that would be covered in a first-year computing course at university (such as an intermediate understanding of a major programming language, basics of SQL and version control, and an intuitive understanding of web technologies), and a few months' of Wikimedia experience (as noted above). On the other side, provided that the first two conditions are met, it should be fairly straightforward to figure out services such as Toolforge so I don't necessarily expect someone to have already created Wikimedia tools or bots before. My limited experience is that people "either were developers for backend and frontend, or data analysts knowing Python well" also more than meet the Wikimedia experience baseline, at least at the Wikimania Hackathon. People in the second category ("an experienced contributors, GLAM activists...") can team up with a developer, and I saw multiple such projects at the Wikimania Hackathon, but I'm unsure about how well such collaborations are supported in the Wikimedia Hackathon.

Regarding the last question, assuming it's someone that knows the basics of programming but wouldn't meet the requirements described above, I would recommend them to spend some time on getting a good grasp of Python and working through basic personal projects (ideally on Wikimedia); smaller Wikimedia Hackathons may also help. I do not consider LLMs (such as ChatGPT or Claude) to be sufficient; it is easy for someone to vibe-code a project, but without knowing what's going on under the hood, it's not worth it. Part of the difficulty is knowing which tools to use (such as Git) and how to use tools and IDEs; LLMs do not do that well. Leaderboard (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi, do you mean global Wikimedia events? Because there are hundreds of local events designed to welcome newcomers around the world. Which also make more sense than having global events for that purpose. Best, DerHexer (talk) 13:48, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

One advantage of toolforge over 3rd party hosting is there is a procedure for someone else to take over your account if you go inactive. So it helps to keep tools maintained and open source. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:51, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

en:User talk:wbm1058/Creating bots, hope that helps. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:48, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Financial overview

@LGoto (WMF): can you provide a financial overview of the last couple of hackathons like Wikimedia Hackathon 2013/Budget so people have an idea what the current cost of organizing the hackathon is? Multichill (talk) 13:23, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

I am very curious as well. I wonder how big the smaller regional events could be, or how many of them we could have, for the same price as the single global hackathon. My guess is that we could have more people participate, but I have no idea how many more. Matma Rex (talk) 19:52, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Regional pre-hackathons as a feeder for the annual global Hackathon

expanded from my previous comment, with the help of Claude

The current proposal frames the choice as global or regional, but I’d like to suggest a third path: keep the annual global Hackathon and add lightweight regional “pre-hackathons” that feed into it. Several comments here point to the same tension. Regions outside Europe and North America are under-served and face high travel and visa barriers, but the people with +2 rights, Toolforge admin access and deep expertise in specific areas are still concentrated in a few places. A regional event on its own can’t fix that quickly, and a global event on its own doesn’t hear enough from those regions. A pre-hackathon could bridge the two.

The idea is that, in the days before the global Hackathon, each region holds a small, low-cost gathering. Its goal would not be to replicate the global Hackathon, but to collect and organize the region’s technical needs: bugs, missing features and long-ignored Phabricator tasks that matter to local communities. Participants would document them, prioritize them and prepare reproducible descriptions.

Then a small group of “representatives” from each region would travel to the global Hackathon with a prepared list of demands, and ideally with the context and relationships to follow them through. Because scholarships would go to people who already know what they want to work on, the funding would be used more effectively, and experienced developers at the global event would have concrete requests to act on instead of vague discussions. After the event, the representatives would bring results and knowledge back to their communities, so the cycle strengthens regional capacity, including future +2ers and Toolforge admins, without removing the global gathering that many here value. This also answers some of the concerns about funding and about how knowledge flows between regional and global events. The first step could be a small pilot in one or two regions, with simple success measures such as the number of prepared tasks and tasks resolved at the Hackathon. Albertoleoncio (talk) 14:29, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

In #Newcomer gap to attend Hackathon I described my gateway to Wikimedia tech spaces, bots support and development. Here I'll discuss my efforts to "take it to the next level" and become a MediaWiki Core developer. The level of PHP knowledge needed to work on Core is significantly higher than what's needed to work on most bots. I've attended six North American Wikiconferences now. Beginning with my second conference in Boston in 2019, I've sought out help with "how to become a Mediawiki hacker" and have been fortunate to find one or two of "the people with +2 rights, Toolforge admin access and deep expertise in specific areas" out of the two or three hundred attendees, who have helped me take baby steps towards my goal, at each of these conferences. But, again, the most useful help to finally take the first big step was online. In Milan, I finally got my second commit submitted, from my new Ubuntu Linux machine, and a month later, from home, my third commit was a regression fix for my second commit. While I did get a lot more help in Milan, I found there that the +2ers with expertise who could help me were also working on their own projects, so I didn't get as much help as I was hoping for.

There seems a real shortage of +2ers with expertise which should be addressed somehow. My thought is to make them bigger world travelers and send them to regional conferences where they can focus on training rather than hacking on their own projects. That they would get to travel more often to more places should serve as an incentive for more developers to move up to +2 so they can do the same. I don't think sending representatives to the global hackathon with a list of demands is the way to go. I would have been happy to help anyone in Milan looking for help with the sort of bots I have good knowledge on, but wasn't aware of anyone looking for that sort of help there. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:16, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Support, i like this idea of two level hackathons. All projects dont need international collaboration: energy spent into intercontinental travels would be better spend in coding. This is even more true at the age of AI. Yug (talk) 12:27, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Support As stated by several people in this discussion, we are facing times where the technical landscape is evolving so fast that we cannot allow reducing the frequency of international hackathons. We as a community need to stay on top of the technological changes happening in the world and we need to have a platform to talk about it, including the systemically under-represented voices. This cross-continental, annual hackathon could happen in different areas of the world, I would find it only fair if it moves every year to a different continent, just like Wikimania.

On top of that, to develop the growth and agency of local technical communities, I support the idea of regional, adequately funded hackathons. These should not be organized directly by WMF, but the regional chapters or hubs should receive funding to organize autonomously. This funding should plan for the travel of experienced users from other regions of the world, so people with experience, +2 rights etc. can mentor local technical users and help them reach a similar level.

The timing of these hackathons should be planned carefully to allow people joining a regional hackathon for the first time to be on time for the start of the scholarship application process of the international hackathon. This way, we can involve existing local open source communities in the Wikimedia ecosystem (like what we tried to do in the past 3 years during the Italian hackathons (2024, 2025, 2026), getting them excited, and offering them the opportunity to join the international event and be involved on the long run. Auregann (talk) 07:33, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Albertoleoncio thank you for providing more detail on this proposal, I appreciate the thought you've put into this.

The one piece I'm struggling with and would like to understand more is how this model would build regional capacity. I am interpreting the pre-hackathon gatherings as a way to gather a list items that that region needs or would like addressed. What I'm not clear on is how that leads to more capacity building in the region. I feel like I might be missing something, so thought I should ask!

Slightly related, your idea of having a way to gather regional needs seems aligned to the recommendation that PTAC put out in May 2026 for the creation of regional Technical Advancement Working Groups. BPiovesan-WMF (talk) 20:33, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

@BPiovesan-WMF: The proposal is mainly meant to give people in regions far from Europe a way to take part in the Hackathon’s work, by aggregating regional needs and advocating for them. Capacity building would be a secondary effect, but I see a few ways it could help.

First, people who take part in shaping a task tend to follow it afterwards, and learn how the system works along the way. Writing a good task (making it reproducible, checking for duplicates, understanding who is responsible for what) is itself a technical skill, and often the first step before sending patches. Second, some of the issues that come up might be simple enough not to need a +2er and could be solved during the satellite event itself, with the help of more experienced participants. That gives people a view of the whole cycle, from the problem to its fix. Third, the representatives who travel to the global event return with contacts and context, and can act as a bridge for their region.

This is clearly more limited than being at the global Hackathon in person, and it does not replace the long-term mentoring that something like +2 rights requires. But I think it addresses a different problem: many people in communities far from Europe have no realistic way to take part in the Hackathon’s work regularly. Some can’t take several days off for a long trip, some face visa barriers, and some don’t yet have the kind of track record that stands out in a competitive intercontinental scholarship process (as I understand it, such criteria tend to favour people with an established technical history, which is harder to build where there has been less investment). The consultation’s footnotes show how much demand there is: over 80% of the 234 scholarship applications in 2026 came from outside Europe. A satellite gives these people a way to have a voice in the Hackathon through their representatives, without a long-haul trip, and it lets them build the kind of record (shaping tasks, following them up) that could later support a scholarship application. I see that as the entry point of the path, not the whole path, but a first step that is currently missing. Albertoleoncio (talk) 14:40, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

Alternative: host the annual global hackathon in the global south sometimes

Another good option might be to keep the annual global hackathons, and host it in a global south country every other year or every couple years. This can address global south concerns without breaking the very successful annual global hackathon format. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:51, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

This is what I support as well. Leaderboard (talk) 18:07, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with this suggestion — despite the logistical challenges that have led to the Hackathon being hosted in Europe as a rule, the systemic and self-reinforcing effects of this strategy are also clear and serious, as several people have pointed out in this talk page. An alternating model could allow balancing out this trade-of in a fairer way. We could even consider beginning this transition more gradually than jumping straight to a 50%/50% split — for example, host the Hackathon one year in the Schengen area, one year in Europe outside the Schengen area, and one year in the Global South, and so on; and over time gradually shift the distribution to a more equitable pattern. Waldyrious (talk) 22:44, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

This proposal hurts something that works while failing to actually foster growth

This is not a sensible proposal. It essentially expects that these regional hackathons, in their first year, will be able to equal what the global hackathon is doing and has been doing for years. That is not going to happen, realistically, so what we'll actually end up with is, basically, two straight years without a global hackathon. This is not a good choice to be making at a time of rapid technological change and when the WMF is talking about ways to move faster. It is an especially poor choice to be making when the WMF is saying, straight-up, that they don't have the resources to run these local hackathons, and will need local affiliates to run them. How are they supposed to do that, given the lack of experience this proposal aims to solve? Here are some alternate ideas for building capacity:

• earmark some scholarship money for the global hackathon for participants who want to be involved in running local hackathons and bringing them up to a "regional hackathon" level that might someday fit in the regional+global model proposed here. They need this kind of experience to be able to start a local one effectively.
• spend some WMF cash on flying in volunteer +2s to some of these nascent hackathons, with the express goal of helping the local community and training the "next level down" so they can train the "next level down" and etc. Part of the obvious problem is that many of these regions don't have people at the level of a volunteer +2 and don't know how to get there.
• support regional hackathons in addition to the global one, as pilot projects, where possible. ESEAP is an obvious choice. Regional hackathons have to actually demonstrate that they can work before the WMF goes all-in on them.

asilvering (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2026 (UTC)

Support to the idea that participants from affiliates/ user group who have the potential to organize upcoming regional hackathons could be invited to the global hackathon to observe its organization, interact with experienced organizers, and learn how to run these events effectively. This would, of course, require considerable advance planning, but it could be a useful way to build organizing capacity gradually while keeping the regional and global hackathons connected and mutually beneficial.

Another possibility is to reverse this and allocate a few seats at the global hackathon for participants familiar with their regional hackathon's work and outcomes. They could bring documentation of both the event and their region's primary technical needs, like recurring bugs, missing features, long-standing Phabricator tasks, and other community challenges. This could help inform global planning, identify cross-regional collaboration opportunities, and direct technical support where needed. They could also take back relevant learnings and implementations from other regional participants to their local communities. Kalli navya (talk) 17:57, 2 November 2026 (UTC)

Cautiously optimistic

Regarding location: I support attempts to make the Hackathon(s) more accessible in their visa requirements. The 2025 Hackathon was in Istanbul, Turkey and I thought that it was an excellent location: it was much easier for many people to gain entry into Turkey than into the Schengen Area (and I met some people in person for the first time after knowing them for years thanks to this), while for Europeans the travel was no worse than, say, Athens, Greece in 2023. Various North African and non-EU European countries are also welcoming for tourists and would likely offer similar advantages. (This is regardless of whether we'd hold one big event or several smaller events there.)

Regarding smaller events: I also support attempts to make the Hackathon(s) more accessible in terms of affordability, and it seems to me that the bigger the event, the higher the per-participant cost. As the technical community has grown over the years, so did the costs. I understand that this is because venues that can accommodate that many people are more expensive, but I think this has become a barrier to entry for non-scholars, and presumably limits how many scholarships can be offered. I self-fund and the hotels hosting the recent Hackathons in Athens/2023, Tallinn/2024 and Istanbul/2025 have all been expensive enough that I stayed elsewhere while attending the hackathon (and I would have done the same in Milan/2026 if the hotel wasn't in the middle of nowhere).

There is certainly a tradeoff in being able to bring less people together at the same time, as others have written already on this page. Would 4 100-person events bring similar or better value as 1 250-person event? I'll leave it up to you to decide whether that tradeoff is worth it, but I am cautiously optimistic that this proposal would also give us great events. Anecdotally, the 80-person hackathon in Arnhem this year was great, and I also have fond memories of the 150-person global hackathons in 2013 or 2014.

As one last thing I'll mention that if we do regional hackathons, I think it would be crucial to enable people from outside any given region to attend the event there, to some degree. Bringing people from different local tech communities together feels like a very important feature of the current global hackathon.

Matma Rex (talk) 19:36, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

I would also be happy with other approaches that improve my two accessibility problems. The ideas in the threads #Regional pre-hackathons as a feeder… and #…Global hackathon in the global south sometimes above are intriguing. Matma Rex (talk) 20:00, 18 October 2026 (UTC)

Supporting regional hackathons alongside a biennial global Wikimedia Hackathon

Thank you for opening this consultation. We would like to share our perspective from the Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group (IMDUG). Over the last several years, we have regularly organized technical outreach activities, such as workshops and hackathons, to grow the number of developers contributing to Wikimedia projects in India.

Overall, we think it is a good idea to rethink annual global hackathons and improve regional engagement, but a three-year gap would be too long.

In India, we have been organizing a national hackathon for the last two years as part of our User Group's annual plan. It helped the community connect and grow and provided a chance for newcomers to participate in a Wikimedia hackathon. While having a national/regional hackathon has worked well in our context (along with limitations and challenges), it is in conjunction with several other things leading up to it.

Here is our experience briefly, for context,

We started simple outreach during 2018-2020, when there were only a handful of developers across India. Our growth since then has come in stages from several kinds of activity: We began with online workshops in 2020, documented in the Indic Workshop Series 2020 report, which continued fully online for about two years during the pandemic. From 2022, we moved to in-person meetups and smaller hackathons of 15-20 participants, starting with the Indic Hackathon 2022, usually targeting both existing contributors and newcomers. Having a mix of newcomer + hacking-style programs. This was followed by college workshops specifically for newcomers interested in FOSS and contributing to the technical side of Wikimedia projects. Building on these, we began organizing national hackathons in 2022–23, with the latest one being the Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Hyderabad 2026, which brought together ~50 people, most of whom have made some prior contributions already. Similar is the case with the Kochi hackathon 2025. We are also trying to encourage and support folks beyond these activities to contribute more substantially within the ecosystem with follow-ups. Today, our community includes approximately 15-20 developers contributing to tools and a few MediaWiki extensions, along with some additional contributors who participate intermittently. While many of them are active, they aren’t advanced contributors yet. For the first 2-3 years, most of our activity was concentrated around small bug fixes on wikis, followed by good-first-tasks, and later on building tools, user-scripts, and gadgets.

Our experience with national hackathons: While having a national hackathon was helpful and contributed to the overall set of activities, it wasn’t the only activity; as mentioned, we see significant value in investing more in regional technical events. The value of these activities is not limited to the number of people attending the events. They have helped:

• More Opportunity to New Developers: give more opportunities to newer contributors a chance to take part in a Wikimedia hackathon and to move from first tasks towards more complex work. However, this only worked as we had preceding activities like workshops leading up to the hackathons.
• Editors engaging with developers: They bring editors and developers together, so editors can engage directly with the people building and maintaining the tools they use.

National/regional hackathons alone may not help with growing a community or producing experienced maintainers. Moving beyond beginner-friendly tasks takes continued mentoring, opportunities to work on existing projects, code review, and support after the event. Most of the national hackathons we do are quite different from the global hackathon in that sense, where the program we had is more focused on mentorship and peer-learning, and then use that as a base for contributing further post-event. We think regional hackathons should be part of a larger strategy for technical community development, especially combined with some kind of feeder activities as others have suggested above. Regional affiliates are best placed to determine which preparatory activities work for their communities that lead up to a regional hackathon. These help participants learn the technical ecosystem, identify projects to contribute to, and meet potential mentors. The hackathon then becomes a gathering point where contributors work on existing projects and connect with experienced developers. Follow-up activities, including mentoring, code review, and continued project work, would help participants build on what they achieved during the event. The support model should therefore allow them to develop plans collaboratively with relevant technical communities, rather than prescribing the same approach everywhere.

Global hackathon frequency

A suggestion is to think about a global hackathon every two years that could offer a reasonable middle ground. It would provide more room and resources for regional events compared to hosting it every year while ensuring that the global technical community still has regular opportunities to meet in person. One possible model could be:

• Year 1: Hold a global hackathon to preserve regular opportunities for cross-regional collaboration while regional affiliates conduct newcomer outreach, workshops, and smaller technical events in preparation for regional hackathons.
• Year 2: Support standalone regional hackathons, building on the preparation and community engagement undertaken in the previous year.

(repeat the cycle, with alternating years)

Along with bidding, it’d also be good leverage and collaborate with groups that already run hackathons or technical events, with additional funding, technical mentorship, and organizational support, - for example, South Asia, in our case.

With continued effort over a few years, combining newcomer training-style workshops with hackathons would give us better outcomes. We would welcome the opportunity to build on our existing work in India and explore how additional support could help us bring together a wider South Asian technical community. Kalli navya (talk) 18:14, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Making Wikimedia technical contributions more accessible to African developers

As a web developer and African tech contributor, I appreciate this opportunity to share my perspective, particularly as someone who has not yet attended a Wikimedia Hackathon.

I believe regional hackathons could open doors for many African developers who have the technical skills and interest to contribute but face financial, geographical, and logistical barriers to attending international events.

However, one challenge worth considering is that knowing how to build websites or work with technologies such as PHP does not automatically mean someone knows how to contribute to MediaWiki or navigate Wikimedia’s technical ecosystem. New contributors may need guidance on setting up their development environments, understanding the codebase, finding beginner-friendly tasks, submitting patches, and working with established technical communities.

This is where regional hackathons could make a real difference. Rather than focusing only on bringing developers together for an event, they could provide practical onboarding, hands-on coding sessions, mentorship from experienced contributors, and clear pathways for participants to continue contributing afterwards.

I also believe these regional connections should extend beyond Africa. Opportunities for remote mentorship and collaboration with experienced developers from other regions would help ensure that newcomers can access expertise that may not yet be available locally.

Regarding the proposed three-year cycle for the global hackathon, I would prefer to see regional opportunities expanded without losing the annual global gathering, if resources permit. The global event provides a unique opportunity to learn from contributors across different technical backgrounds, while regional events could help more people enter and remain active in the community.

If funding is a major constraint, a pilot programme for regional hackathons, supported by dedicated funding and ongoing developer mentorship, could help establish what works before making a permanent change to the global event’s frequency.

I would also encourage the Wikimedia Foundation to measure success beyond attendance. Useful indicators could include how many newcomers make their first technical contributions, how many continue contributing six or twelve months later, and how many projects or collaborations emerge from these events.

Ultimately, I see this proposal as an opportunity to make Wikimedia’s technical community more accessible to developers who have not traditionally had the same opportunities to participate. I hope the final approach will help African developers move from being interested observers to active, supported, and sustained contributors to Wikimedia’s technical projects.

Thank you for inviting perspectives from people who have not yet attended a Wikimedia Hackathon. I believe our experiences and barriers are important to consider when shaping the future of these events. Davenyi (talk) 21:50, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

This sounds like AI slop @Davenyi. Apologies if I'm wrong there. Leaderboard (talk) 17:55, 31 October 2026 (UTC)