News

Category: Projects/Initiatives

What we learned from the Inspire campaign to increase gender diversity on Wikimedia

The Inspire Campaign sought ideas for initiatives to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects. Community members proposed 266 ideas, leading to 16 grant-funded projects. Here's what we learned from this pilot.

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A dark side of comedy: the impact of John Oliver’s ‘fowl’ jokes on Wikipedia

After John Oliver called on the Internet to vandalize the Wikipedia biographies of US congressional representatives, Wikipedia's volunteer editors cleaned up the vandalism.

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Children in Mali can now read Wikipedia offline, thanks to MALebooks e-readers

MALebooks e-readers provide an offline library to children in Mali, including the French version of Wikipedia and over 4,000 educational books. This experimental project addresses the serious lack of books for children in Mali, and is made possible by Kiwix developers, Wikimedia Switzerland and other supporters.

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A Wikimedian asks European Parliament members for copyright reform

European copyright laws are very complex, making it hard to share free knowledge. To address this issue, a longtime Wikimedia contributor traveled to Brussels to meet members of the European Parliament and explain why copyright reform is needed.

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What happens when you give a Wikipedia editor a research library?

The Wikipedia Visiting Scholars program gives editors special access to university and library resources, which helps them improve content quality and support new collaborations, as part of the Wikipedia Library project.

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Taking a stand for free knowledge in the European Union

When the European Commission held an official hearing on copyright reform, a representative of the European Wikimedia chapters participated (...)

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Who links to Wikipedia?

To learn more about who links to Wikipedia, University of Sheffield researchers analyzed the structure of links that point to Wikipedia pages from external websites. Here's what they found. (...)

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How we made editing Wikipedia twice as fast

The creator of the wiki, Ward Cunningham, wanted to make it fast and easy to edit web pages. Cunningham named his software after a Hawaiian word for “quick.” That’s why the Wikimedia Foundation is happy to report that editing Wikipedia is now twice as quick. Over the last six months we deployed a new technology that speeds up MediaWiki, Wikipedia’s underlying PHP-based code. HipHop Virtual Machine, or HHVM, reduces [...]

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For Rexford Nkansah, Wikipedia represents the future of education for his country

Despite its growing economy, Ghana is not the first place one would associate with technology, but for 20-year-old native Rexford Nkansah, it’s second nature. “In Ghana you don’t have hobbies like skiing or going to restaurants,” he says. “So these are the little things I do to keep myself busy.” The youngest of five, Rexford….

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Recent events with Russian Wikipedia

On Tuesday, July 10, the Russian Wikipedia community made a decision to blackout their project for 24 hours to protest a piece of legislation before the Russian Duma. The legislation, which has since been passed (although with important amendments) could threaten the mission of the Wikimedia projects in Russia – to spread free knowledge globally.….

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