The World Health Organization and Wikimedia Foundation expand access to trusted information about COVID-19 on Wikipedia
Geneva, Switzerland, 22 October 2020 — The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that administers Wikipedia, announced today a collaboration to expand the public’s access to the latest and most reliable information about COVID-19. The collaboration will make trusted, public health information available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license at a….
Wikimedia Foundation and UN Human Rights launch #WikiForHumanRights campaign to improve and expand knowledge about human rights online
At a time of growing polarization, misinformation, and limits placed on freedom of speech, assembly, and privacy, as well as ongoing conflict—understanding our human rights is a critical part of our daily lives. It dictates everything from how we gather in our communities and speak about the issues and causes we care about, to how….
Content translation tool helps create over half a million Wikipedia articles
In science fiction, the Encyclopedia Galactica is a compendium of a galaxy’s worth of knowledge. Wikipedia isn’t quite there yet—for one, we’ve barely left Earth. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t trying to put together a planet’s worth of knowledge and ensure that all of its inhabitants can learn from it in their own languages.….
Norway and Armenia come together to bring Bodil Biørn’s historic photographs online
Over 180 memories of Armenian history are now available to everyone in the world, free of charge, thanks to a collaborative project between Wikimedia Norge (Norway), Wikimedia Armenia—both independent Wikimedia affiliate organizations—and the National Archives of Norway. All of the photographs were taken by Norwegian missionary and nurse Bodil Biørn (1871–1960), who proselytized within modern-day….
Farhad Fatkullin, 2018 Wikimedian of the Year, looks back on his successes and forward to what’s next
One year ago, Farhad Fatkullin was at home gifting his time to simultaneously translating the speeches being given at Wikimania, the annual conference that celebrates Wikipedia, the Wikimedia projects, and the volunteers who contribute to them. Up on stage for the closing ceremony was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia who at each year gives….
‘Bootcamp’ teaches India’s Wikimedia editors the intricacies of vector graphics
Have you ever tried zooming in on an image on your computer? Did you notice how the quality steadily got worse and worse? This is an unfortunate feature of “raster graphics,” the file formats that use a rectangular grid of pixels to make up an image, and present a particular problem for people making maps,….
By digitizing venerable translations, they’re bringing the world’s literary history to Punjabi speakers
Imagine a world where you grew up in a world where the greatest literary works in history never existed. For many of the world’s language speakers, this can be their functional reality. Titles like these have either never been translated, or were translated decades ago and now hide in ancient paper-bound texts on dusty library….
India’s Wikimedia communities adapt the Wikipedia Library to their own contexts
Wikipedia’s article on the culture of India notes that the country contains “thousands of distinct and unique … languages, religion [and] customs [that] differ from place to place within the country.” To bring the vast knowledge of these many differing cultures to the world requires volunteers who both understand individual languages, religions and cultures of….
Google and Wikimedia Foundation partner to increase knowledge equity online
From our beginning, Wikipedia has aspired to create a world where knowledge is free, accessible and useful to everyone, in every language, in every country, and across any device. Although the volunteers who make Wikipedia possible have made great strides towards achieving this vision, we’re still a long way from getting there. They say Rome….
Photo credits
WP20SocialMediaPreview
Wikimedia Foundation, illustrated by Jasmina El Bouamraoui and Karabo Poppy Moletsane
Rupika Sharma/Wikilover90