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….
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….
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….
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….
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….
Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA: Court rules for government on evidentiary issue
It has been some time since we last provided an update on Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA, our legal challenge to the United States National Security Agency’s “Upstream” mass surveillance practices. As you may recall, after we brought the suit in 2015, the government argued that the Foundation’s claims weren’t “plausible” because the NSA hadn’t admitted….
You don’t need to pay for a Wikipedia article
The benefits of having a Wikipedia article about yourself or your business seem obvious—they rank highly in search engine results, and having one can make your online presence more “professional”. However, Wikipedia works in a very different way than the rest of the internet. An article is by no means guaranteed; it can seem really….
Newspaper partnership results in thousands of freely licensed infographics
This year, the Basque Wikimedians User Group carried out an ambitious education project that aimed to improve a series of essential articles for high school students, in collaboration with university professors and lecturers. The project was accomplished with financial support from the Basque government’s Department of Culture, who additionally stipulated that a portion of the sum would be put….
The insights series: Liang-Chih Shang Kuan
Over the last few years, the annual Wikimedia Conference has seen many more individuals in emerging communities. This year, Wikimedians from 79 countries, representing nearly one hundred movement affiliates, contributed to the event’s cultural, regional, and language diversity. Community member Rupika Sharma interviewed several of these attendees to get their thoughts on the Wikimedia movement, their own communities,….
How many Wikipedia references are available to read? We measured the proportion of open access sources across languages and topics.
Let’s say you’re planning a trip to a subtropical region and you want to learn about available vaccines for yellow fever. You look up the English Wikipedia article. You’re lucky to find a well-sourced section, with a wealth of references, many of them pointing to information from public health agencies and reputable news articles. Great!….
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