Introducing global preferences across Wikimedia wikis

There are a lot of Wikimedia wikis. Wikipedia is the best-known of them all, but there’s also Commons, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary, and more. Also, each of these sites is available in multiple languages. Wikipedia, for example, has nearly 300 language editions. The newest launched just this week. Until this month, each wiki and language version….

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Many faces of Wikibase: Rhizome’s archive of born-digital art and digital preservation

Rhizome, an arts organization in New York City, was one of the early adopters of Wikibase, having been using it since 2015 for its archive of born-digital art and digital preservation activities. Sandra Fauconnier interviewed Dragan Espenschied (Rhizome’s preservation director), Lyndsey Moulds (software curator), and Lozana Rossenova (external Ph.D. researcher) to ask them why and….

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What took place during the movement strategy discussions at Wikimania 2018

The Wikimedia 2030 Strategy Process is about addressing complex challenges and seizing the opportunities for the Wikimedia movement, now and in the future. It is a process initiated by the Wikimedia Foundation, seeking broad affiliate and community involvement on a global scale. Currently, the Strategy Process focuses on determining how the movement needs to change….

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Your internet is under threat. Here’s why you should care about European Copyright Reform.

You can also read this post in Spanish and in French. Back in 2001, the European Parliament came together to pass regulations and set up copyright laws for the internet, a technology that was just finding its footing after the dot com boom and bust. Wikipedia had just been born, and there were 29 million websites. No one….

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Diversity and inclusion information for Wikimedia workers, by the numbers

The Wikimedia vision is a world in which every single person can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe knowledge belongs to everyone, and that people from diverse backgrounds should be empowered to participate in the collaborative creation of knowledge. While we often discuss diversity and inclusion in the context of the….

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Many faces of Wikibase: Cataloging the history of the Illuminati

Dr. Olaf Simons works as a historian at the University of Erfurt’s Gotha Research Centre. He is the initiator of FactGrid, a database for historians. As a long-term Wikipedia editor, he grasped the potential of Wikibase for historical research early on. Among the treasure trove of data he has recorded with Wikibase’s help is an….

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Ars Electronica 2013 - Quotidian Record

Can Beethoven send takedown requests? A first-hand account of one German professor’s experience with overly broad upload filters

Imagine you are a teacher at a public school, and you want to use a free recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in your classroom. As an author of music textbooks and a music theory professor, I am always looking for creative ways to develop teaching materials as Open Educational Resources (oer-musik.de), so that everyone can….

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Collage of Wikimedia GSoC and Outreachy 2018 students

See the completed Google Summer of Code and Outreachy projects from this year

Fifteen students from India, Israel, and Cameroon contributed over fifty thousand lines of code to Wikimedia projects this past summer* under the mentorship and guidance of twenty-four mentors. Thirteen of those projects were conducted under the Google Summer of Code program, and one was managed under the Outreachy program.  In addition, one student completed a….

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Where did that paragraph go? This software change helps volunteers hold up Wikipedia’s high quality

One key to Wikipedia’s high quality is a system of mutual checks, based on the fact that every version of every page is stored and accessible. Thousands of community members review the latest edits of others in order to find errors or inconsistencies, comparing each new version of a page to older page versions and….

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Nagoya Castle

The Japanese Wikipedia is now on Line

We are always looking for ways to connect with our audiences around the globe on the platforms that they use on a daily basis, and so we are excited to announce that Wikipedia is now on Line. We’re using it reach our audiences in Japan, which has one of the most-active Wikipedia communities in the….

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