I’m Berkay, also User:Piyanist on Wikimedia projects. I have been contributing to Wikimedia projects since 2020. I’m member of the Wikimedians of Turkic Languages User Group, CEE Youth Group, and WikiPortraits.

My Wikimedia activities mainly focus on edits and corrections to Wikipedia pages related to my area of interest, adding cited informations, photography, Commons, youth-related projects, and topics related to music and culture.

In this report, I will share my experiences, observations, and highlights from Wikimania 2026. I will also describe the events I enjoyed the most during the conference.

Wikimania 2026 in Paris was my first Wikimania. I had attended other Wikimedia events before, but this was my first time experiencing Wikimania itself. During the conference, I joined sessions related to my interests, volunteered as a photographer at some activities, met new people and spent time again with friends I already knew from the CEE community. Some of the sessions also gave me new ideas about how I want to contribute in the future, especially through photography, youth activities and music.

The time between sessions was also an important part of the conference for me. During coffee breaks, meals and while moving around the venue, I met Wikimedians from many different countries and had conversations that I probably would not have had through scheduled sessions alone.

And of course there was also no shortage of small things to bring home. I collected stickers, pens, postcards, badges, notepads and other materials from different Wikimedia communities and projects, along with considerably less permanent souvenirs in the form of snacks and food. I kept some of these for myself, but I also plan to use many of the printed materials, stickers, and other items as materials for events we organize in the future. They can help me create a more visual stand where people can see different Wikimedia communities, projects and events instead of only hearing about them.

During Wikimania, I moved between many different sessions and activities. Sometimes I stayed until the end of a session, while at other times I left to see something else. Below are the sessions that I enjoyed the most or that gave me ideas about things I may want to work on in the future.

AI, Wikidata and the opening ceremony

One of the first sessions I attended was “If AI becomes the first web interface, how can the Wikimedia movement adapt? Communities’ levers.”

The discussion focused on how different Wikipedia communities are dealing with generative AI. Matthias Schindler shared an example about a tool made to check ISBN numbers in Wikipedia references. The tool helped identify articles containing fake references generated by AI. Some of the text looked normal, but the books used as sources did not actually exist.

The speakers also discussed how language communities can experience AI differently. One point I found interesting was that language models can flatten different perspectives instead of understanding the context of each language and community. The discussion was not simply about accepting or rejecting AI. It was also about understanding where these tools fail and keeping human review in the process.

After that, I attended Philippe Saadé’s “Wikidata MCP: Grounded SPARQL Query Generation.”

He demonstrated how a language model can make a basic mistake while still producing something that looks technically convincing. In one example, a model trying to find female physicists who had won the Nobel Prize in Physics initially selected the QID of a dog breed instead of the Nobel Prize.

The workflow presented in the session separated discovery, structure inspection, SPARQL generation and validation. This made it easier to see where a mistake happened instead of only looking at the final answer.

Later, I attended the opening ceremony, which also celebrated Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary.

UNESCO’s Mariya Gabriel spoke about knowledge as a public good and about the responsibility of AI systems that depend on open knowledge. Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan talked about the people behind Wikimedia. She reminded us that readers normally only see the finished article. They do not see all the discussions, photos, translations, corrections and other work that happens behind it.

Jimmy Wales talked about assuming good faith and making newcomers feel welcome. He also spoke about freedom, equity and the importance of keeping Wikipedia reliable. He also discussed misinformation bubbles and unequal access to information. One point that stayed with me was his description of Wikipedia’s role in the age of AI: its value is not simply providing the fastest answer, but providing information that can be checked and verified.

He also described Wikipedia as something built gradually through edits, lines of code and discussions rather than around one person.

The ceremony continued with the Wikimedian of the Year awards. I photographed all of the award recipients and later uploaded my photographs to Wikimedia Commons. You can access these photos from the following Commons category

A morning inside the Sainte-Geneviève Library

The next morning, I joined an organised visit to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

We met at the Wikimania venue early in the morning, received public transport tickets and travelled to the library together. Before entering, I walked around the Panthéon area with other photographers and took street and architectural photographs.

In the lower levels, we saw large collections of books, archive materials and older reproduction formats. Pauline showed us the microfilm archive: before digitisation, books and newspapers were copied on small reels, and readers can still use them today. She also explained how physical collections are digitised and made available through the Genovefa digital library. The library holds around two million documents in three buildings. When a reader requests a book, the request is printed in the stacks and the book is sent up with a small lift, in about twenty minutes. The rolling shelves stay only on the lowest level, because anywhere else their weight would harm the foundations of the building.

We also saw historical documents, rare books and materials connected to preservation and digitisation. For me, the most impressive piece was a planetary clock made in southern Germany at the end of the 16th century – one of the very few surviving in the world, and still working, showing the movements of the planets. The photos I took of the library and the archive area during these events are in this Commons category.

Photography and WikiPortraits

“Behind the Lens: WikiPortraits on a Global Scale”, presented by Kevin Payravi, Jennifer 8. Lee and other WikiPortraits contributors.

The problem behind WikiPortraits is simple: many Wikipedia biographies still have missing or poor photographs, but taking a good photograph of a notable person often requires being at the right event and having media access. WikiPortraits helps photographers attend and cover these kinds of events, so that useful photographs can later be uploaded under free licences and used across Wikimedia projects.

WikiPortraits now has more than 200 photographers from over 40 countries, and together they have uploaded more than 95,000 photographs. The group covered over 180 events in 2025, and another 169 events had already been covered in 2026 by the time Wikimania took place. These photographs are also widely used, receiving around 400 to 500 million views every month.

One part of the model was especially relevant to me. WikiPortraits encourages photographers to begin with events in their own area. As they build experience and a portfolio of Wikimedia work, the group can help with accreditation for larger international events. For some major coverage, there can also be support with travel or accommodation.

This connected closely with my own photography work. In Türkiye, I already photograph musicians, artists, concerts and other events. Until now, these photographs were usually produced for artists, organisers or their own media use, and I had not really connected this part of my photography with Wikimedia Commons.

The session made that connection much clearer for me. When licensing and other conditions are suitable, I hope to make some of my future artist and concert photography useful on Commons as well.

For me, this is a practical way to connect photography work I already do with my Wikimedia activities instead of treating them as completely separate things.

And after that session, I joined WikiPortraits. For me, this was one of the sessions I enjoyed most at Wikimania 2026.

Indigenous knowledge and responsible sharing

“Respecting Indigenous Knowledge in Open Spaces.”

The panel discussed Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property and Indigenous Data Sovereignty. The speakers explained why open knowledge is not only about copyright or whether something can technically be uploaded.

Cultural context, consent and the communities connected to that knowledge also matter.

The Wikimedia Australia team presented a guide that helps contributors think about culturally sensitive material and whether a source is culturally appropriate. One of the practical ideas was to ask not only whether material can be uploaded, but whether uploading it is the responsible choice.

Thérèse Ottawa also spoke about the Atikamekw-language Wikipedia project in Canada and its connection with education and language revitalisation. The project included work with younger people and schools, helping the language remain active in a digital environment.

This session connected with what I had seen at the library. Digitising cultural material can help more people access it, but we also need to think about how that material is shared.

CEE Youth and ideas for future activities

Youth participation was another part of my Wikimania programme.

“Bring in the Youth! Discussing Ways to Support Youth on a Regional Level.” Participants shared examples from different regions and talked about mentoring, universities, informal activities and ways to support young contributors who may not have an active local community around them.

One example I liked was the use of simple social activities such as board game meetings. These meetings helped young Wikimedians get to know each other, and some later developed projects together. The discussion also looked at the role of regional groups in connecting young people who may otherwise feel isolated in their local Wikimedia community.

Later, I joined the CEE Youth session and workshop.

Meeting WikiOrchestra

At the end of the day, I went to the WikiOrchestra rehearsal and met the conductor, Lukas Mezger

I told him that I am playing the piano and composing musics. I also mentioned that I had composed the opening music for the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 in Istanbul.

There is also a separate diff post on this topic here:

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024 Istanbul through the eyes of its designer

We talked with Lukas about music at Wikimedia events and possible future collaborations. I had discovered the information about the closing choir late, but after our conversation Lukas invited me to join.

Manuscripts and the closing ceremony

On the final day, I attended “From Wikilontar to Wikisami: How Regional Partnerships Power Community-Led Growth in Bali”, presented by Carma Citrawati and Sakti Hendra Pramudya.

The session explained how work around Balinese manuscripts developed through local community participation and wider partnerships. The discussion was not only about scanning documents. It also focused on trust, local leadership and giving communities a role in decisions about their own cultural heritage.

For me, this connected naturally with both the Sainte-Geneviève Library visit and the Indigenous knowledge panel. All three showed different sides of digitisation and cultural heritage.

After the session, I studied the score for “Oh, Wikipédia!” and joined the WikiOrchestra and choir rehearsal. I spent hours working on the music, pronunciation, stage positions and performance.

Near the end of the closing ceremony, the WikiOrchestra and choir went on stage and we performed the song together.

Performing with the choir at the main amphitheater stage, became one of the most memorable parts of my first Wikimania.

Lukas and I also talked about future music projects. I also plan to continue composing original music for Wikimedia events when there is an opportunity. For me, music is not only something separate from Wikimedia activities.

After the ceremony, we joined the Wikimania 2026 group photo.

On the final day of Wikimania, there was another very literal example of how many small contributions can create something much larger. Wikimania participants worked together on a giant version of the Wikipedia Puzzle Globe outside the venue. When it was finished, the puzzle covered around 100 square metres and had 944 pieces. It was one of the largest jigsaw puzzles ever assembled in France. It later became the backdrop for the final group photo.

I also kept one of the puzzle pieces as a souvenir. Together with the badges, postcards, stickers and other things I collected during the week, it will probably become one of the more unusual pieces of my future student club stand.

Looking back at my first Wikimania

My first Wikimania included discussions about AI, photography, cultural heritage, youth activities and music.

But the experience was not limited to the sessions. Meeting Wikimedians from different countries during breaks, seeing the projects people brought with them and simply spending time with other contributors were also important parts of the week.

I returned from Paris with several ideas for what I want to do next, like connect more of my photography with Wikimedia Commons and WikiPortraits, become more active in CEE Youth and youth-related activities, and continue exploring ways to bring music into Wikimedia events.

I also want to continue contributing to the topics I already edit while trying these different forms of participation.

One useful part of Wikimania for me was seeing that some of the things I already do outside Wikimedia can also become Wikimedia contributions.

The week ended with the group photo, the giant Puzzle Globe (Of course, I took one puzzle piece with me.) and the memories and small objects I brought home from Paris. It was a memorable end to my first Wikimania.

After 21 years as a Wikimedia contributor, I consider myself a veteran Wikimedian. I have attended many Wikimedia conferences around the world, but Wikimania always feels special. They create incredible opportunities to meet fellow Wikimedians, listen, and learn. However, the highlight of the event for me this year was not the main conference itself, but a pre-conference event: the WikiWomen+ Summit, where I was also honored to give a talk.

During the icebreaker, we shared stories about the first articles we ever wrote and whether we had ever experienced the deletion of a biography about a woman we created. When the talks began, I learned more about the Celebrate Women Campaign and fell in love with its vision, which is deeply inspired by Wikimedia’s overall mission: “Imagine a world in which every single woman can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, and where representative information about all women and non-binary individuals is accessible to everyone, everywhere.”

Sukkoria’s presentations gave us a lot to think about in a short time, from what could potentially go wrong from a WikiWomen+ perspective to how we can responsibly integrate generative AI into wiki workflows.

Leila Zia from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) gave a presentation about Wikipedia readers, revealing that women are underrepresented not only as editors but also as regular readers. I was surprised by this statistic: roughly 65% of readers are reported to be men. This was the first time I had seriously considered what we can do to encourage more women to become frequent Wikipedia readers. 

Among the many great tools and projects introduced at the summit, we were also introduced to a new Wiki Gender Stats tool. I was delighted by Natacha’s roleplay, which brilliantly illustrated what features were needed and why male editors with technical skills often struggle to understand and prioritize those needs. Her roleplay perfectly captured the moment when women decided to take charge:

“Now I want to be a woman in progress! I will design our own tool according to our own needs, doing it ourselves.”

In my presentation, I addressed how governance and editorial decisions on Wikimedia projects can have consequences far beyond individual content disputes. I shared my concerns about contributors, particularly women+, being blocked or banned because of off-wiki disputes rather than their actual editorial work, and discussed how this can affect both content neutrality and the health of our communities. I explored these questions further in my presentation, “How Editorial Decisions Reach Beyond Wikipedia”, which you can watch here.

I’m a volunteer with the Wikimedia Tanzania community, contributing to Wikimedia Commons, Lingua Libre, Wikidata, and Swahili Wikipedia. I also work as a Program Coordinator for the Digital Youth Clubs Program in Tanzania. I attended Wikimania 2026 in Paris on a Tandem Scholarship funded by Wikimedia Deutschland, and here is a report of my experience.

Pre-Conference Experience: WikiWomen Summit and Wikimedia Deutschland Dinner

A pre-conference for women across Wikimedia communities. One of the things I gained from the pre-conference was discovering the Wiki Women Conference. I had never known that such a conference existed within the Wikimedia movement. It was inspiring to see a dedicated space where women could openly share experiences, and encourage one another to take on leadership roles and contribute to closing gender gaps across Wikimedia projects.

The summit continued after lunch on gender equity, I learned about the #VisibleWikiWomen campaign which inspired to give women the visibility and acknowledgement they deserve by uploading quality images to Wikimedia commons.

 Later, Wikimedia Deutschland hosted a dinner with Tandem partners, creating another opportunity to connect. The pre-conference and dinner expanded my network and inspired me to contribute more in Wikimedia. Many thanks to Wikimedia Deutschland for generous sponsorship.

An Impactful Session: Learn How to Grow Your Local Wikimedia Project Initiatives

One of the most impactful sessions I attended at Wikimania 2026 was “Learn How to Grow Your Local Wikimedia Project Initiatives,” facilitated by Mattia L. Nappi, board member of Wikimedia Italia, and Ferdinando Traversa, President of Wikimedia Italia. I chose it because I want to strengthen Wikimedia initiatives in my local community and learn practical ways to build a sustainable team.

The message that stayed with me most: you don’t need to know everything before starting. The facilitators encouraged us to begin with the skills and resources we already have, and improve as we go. It was a reminder that progress starts with a first step, not a perfect plan.

The workshop included a group exercise where we designed an imaginary local group and planned its first activity. As writer and mentor for my group, I documented our ideas and guided discussion. We focused on building a community around GLAM and universities, proposing an online event for students, with mentorship and partnerships with university leaders to attract new contributors. I then presented our work to the room my first time presenting at Wikimania, and it gave me real confidence speaking to an international Wikimedia audience.

The session pushed me to think harder about improving the Digital Youth Clubs program, which just finished its pilot phase in Tanzania. Successful projects don’t need big resources at the start, they need commitment, teamwork, and people willing to act.

This experience reinforced how much collaboration and international connections matter in growing Wikimedia communities lessons I hope to apply to empower more contributors locally.

What I personally gained and what I can pass on to others

Wikimania 2026 introduced me to new ways of contributing to free knowledge. Beyond the sessions, I built friendships with international Wikimedians, gained mentors and collaborators, and discovered ideas to bring home.

One highlight was learning about Open Food Facts, a project I had never encountered before. I learned how to contribute, installed the app, and exchanged contacts with the team for future guidance. I was also introduced to the Wikidata tools Cradle and TABernacle.

In return, I shared my Wikimedia work in Tanzania with participants, connected fellow Tanzanians with my Tandem partner and Mattia L. Nappi, and invited another participant to a session that led to a valuable discussion with Asaf Bartov. I also shared Tanzanian Kilimanjaro Premium Blend tea with attendees. I returned home inspired to strengthen my contributions and share what I learned with the Youth Digital Clubs Program, where I serve as Program Coordinator.

At Wikimania 2026 in Paris, Carma Citrawati and I presented “From Wikilontar to Wikisami: How Regional Partnerships Power Community-Led Growth in Bali.” The session explored how a local initiative to preserve Balinese manuscripts gradually developed into a regional learning program and, later, engagement with international memory institutions.

Carma opened the session by introducing the audience to lontar, traditional Balinese manuscripts containing knowledge about history, literature, spirituality, medicine, and everyday life. Many of these manuscripts are fragile, difficult to access, or held in collections outside Bali.

To make the story more tangible, Carma brought a copy of a lontar manuscript from Bali, written on palm leaves. Seeing the manuscript in person helped the audience understand that this work is not only about digitizing old documents. It is also about reconnecting communities with living knowledge passed down through generations.

We shared the journey through three connected stages. Wikilontar began with the Balinese community’s own concern for preserving its manuscripts. Volunteers learned to digitize, describe, transcribe, and upload the materials while building trust with manuscript owners and cultural custodians. The initiative showed that effective partnerships should begin with community-defined priorities, rather than externally designed projects.

Through Wikisource Loves Manuscripts, or WILMA, the experience from Bali became part of a broader regional learning process. The community was no longer only receiving support; it was also sharing its experience with other language communities facing similar challenges. This helped build confidence and encouraged longer-term thinking about cultural heritage stewardship.

The next stage, Wikisami, seeks to connect Balinese communities with digitized manuscript collections held by institutions such as Leiden University Libraries and the British Library. The goal is not simply to place images online but to improve metadata, add cultural and linguistic context, involve students, and help reconnect collections held abroad with communities in Bali.

The session also highlighted how the role of regional partners should evolve over time. At the beginning, they may provide technical support, help communities navigate institutional processes, and open doors to new relationships. But as the community’s experience and confidence grow, regional partners should gradually step back and create space for community members to represent their own knowledge, priorities, and aspirations directly.

We were grateful to receive positive feedback from the audience about the initiative and its community-led approach. The discussion reinforced that success should not be measured only by the number of manuscripts digitized or pages uploaded but also by stronger community ownership, confidence, capacity, and the ability to engage institutions as equal partners.

The journey from Wikilontar to WILMA and Wikisami shows what becomes possible when regional partnerships invest in trust, stay beyond a single grant cycle, and create space for communities to lead.

Technology can preserve a digital file, but relationships preserve its meaning.

Welcome to “Don’t Blink”! Every month we share public policy developments from around the world that shape people’s ability to participate in the free knowledge movement. In case you blinked last month, here are the most important advocacy topics that have kept the Wikimedia Foundation busy.

The Global Advocacy team works to advocate laws and government policies that protect the volunteer community-led Wikimedia model, Wikimedia’s people, and the Wikimedia movement’s core values. To learn more about us and the work we do with the rest of the Foundation: follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky; sign up for our quarterly newsletter or Wikimedia public policy mailing list; and visit our Meta-Wiki webpage.

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Understanding online age verification and its impact on the Wikimedia projects

Over the past several years, lawmakers around the world have been passing a wide variety of legislation and regulations aimed to make using the internet safer for children. These laws differ in the kinds of platforms they target, the age ranges they intend to protect, and whether they apply to specific content, entire platforms, or even to devices. What they share in common, however, is the idea that minors should, in some way, have a different experience online than adults, whether that includes restricting access to certain features or types of content or banning them completely from using certain types of websites and services like social media.

This practice, called age gating, relies on a website or service host identifying and verifying the age of its users through a process called age verification. Age verification typically requires that a user, regardless of age, show a government ID and submit to a facial scan to prove that the ID is theirs. In fact, you may have already seen some of these requirements popping up on websites you use every day or have read headlines about users’ personally identifiable information (PII) being stolen. While the effectiveness of these laws remains to be seen, the Wikimedia Foundation has been raising concerns about how versions of these laws can impact important human rights like privacy, freedom of expression, and access to reliable information, as well as advocating that these laws be narrowly tailored to address some of the riskiest websites and services online. 

Explaining the basics of online age verification
[Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our explainer blog post series]

To provide context on this complicated legal and technical shift in internet policy, the Foundation published a three-part blog series, which explains the history of age-based restrictions online, basic concepts and technological measures of age verification, and the specific types of laws repeated across many different government initiatives. 

In Part 1, we take you through an internet policy timeline, which explores how age verification and its various requirements to show different content depending on the users’ age have evolved over time. We also shed light on why the trend of child safety online has escalated the calls for age verification in recent years. In Part 2, we spell out the meaning of terms related to age verification and explain the technical processes behind complying with age verification laws. We also highlight how age gating on public interest educational content like the Wikimedia projects could impact the human rights of Wikimedia users, especially those of minors. In Part 3, we discuss the specifics of the types of platforms and content that these laws typically target, and highlight some of the public policy advocacy work we have done in the form of “friend-of-the-court” briefs related to challenges to certain state laws requiring age verification in the United States.

If you want to be informed about the recent developments around age verification regulations, as well as the potential effects these developments might have on your rights and freedoms online, this blog post series is a great place to start learning more.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our online age verification explainer blog post series.

Contributing to a public consultation on the Brazil’s ECA Digital child safety regulation
[Learn more about our response in our blog post]

As we shared early this year, Brazil has joined the global conversation around child safety and age verification online by passing the Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA Digital). The ECA Digital established a new framework for protecting minors in digital environments, and included a sweeping requirement that app stores and certain online platforms implement age verification mechanisms to show only content deemed appropriate for minors given their age. During the drafting of the law’s regulations, we submitted comments urging the Brazilian authorities to customize the application of these regulations proportionally to a platform’s risk level, and to consider an interpretation of the law that would exempt digital public goods entirely from the age verification requirements in order to protect crucial rights like freedom of expression and access to reliable information on the internet.

In July 2026, we responded to another public consultation: Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) solicited comments on their proposed guidelines about how to conduct age verification. In our submission, we explained that because the draft guidelines were too broad in their definition of social media, they could potentially end up capturing digital public goods like open-source software repositories, citizen science portals, and collaborative encyclopedic platforms such as Wikipedia as well.

Addressing this overbroad definition is important because, under the guidelines, platforms considered to be social media are assumed to be accessed by minors and, consequently, are required to perform age verification. If public interest projects are mistakenly defined as social media, they will be required to do the same. We suggested that the ANPD narrow their definition to focus on platforms with high-risk features, and even to go even further by creating a framework for digital public goods that recognizes their low-risk nature and that, accordingly, prevents them from being regulated the same as social media platforms.

Learn more about our response in our blog post.

Wikimedia’s value in conversations about artificial intelligence

The Foundation has illustrated how the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) companies and services have impacted the Wikimedia projects. We have discussed the negative impact that web scraping to create AI training data has on our technical and human resources, shared how AI companies threaten the social contract behind free and open knowledge, and talked about the technical solutions we are employing to identify and counter this impact. While the vast increase of web scraping is one of the more urgent changes arising from AI’s influence on the internet landscape, there are many other ways that AI tools interact with the Wikimedia projects. The voice of the Foundation and volunteers can contribute significantly with its experience to conversations about maintaining information integrity, making sure that AI-generated content does not entrench existing knowledge gaps, and enabling community moderation so it can remain sustainable while dealing with an influx of synthetic content on the web. 

Sharing how Wikimedia safeguards reliable information at the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance
[Learn more about why participation at the UN is important for our advocacy goals in our blog post]

Jan Gerlach (Public Policy Director) joined the first official session of the United Nations (UN) Global Dialogue on AI Governance to discuss the impact of AI web scraping on Wikipedia and the broader knowledge commons. The UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance was established by the UN General Assembly based on recommendations in the Global Digital Compact to provide a platform for governments, academics, technology companies, civil society, and other interested parties to come together to participate in open discussions about how AI should be governed and to share their best practices. In a panel titled “Safeguarding Reliable Information in the Age of AI: Finding Common Ground,” Jan shared the negative impacts that web scraping by AI tools have on the Wikimedia Foundation’s servers and resources. He shared how Wikipedia can serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for the digital commons as a whole, establishing an early warning when these valuable shared resources are put under strain by new technologies.

Leading up to the official session, the Global Dialogue also hosted several consultations in 2026 , including a discussion held by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) that the Foundation attended last May, and will host its next official session in May of next year, 2027. It is vital that civil society organizations like the Foundation are invited to participate in discussions like these in order to continue sharing how new technologies are impacting the online information ecosystem, especially open knowledge, and to work with UN Member States to determine how to best address these impacts and build a more sustainable future for the digital commons.

Learn more about why participation at the UN is important to our advocacy goals in our blog post.

Wikimania sessions showcased how the volunteer communities are considering the relation between the Wikimedia projects and AI
[Check out our blog post for public policy advocacy sessions at Wikimania and learn in Creative Commons’ blog post about their participation at the conference]

A popular topic at the 2026 Wikimania was the implications of a world that is rapidly adopting AI at scale. The conference, held in Paris, France, this year, began with a full Day Zero of advocacy-related sessions, including a Creative Commons (CC) salon, which celebrated 25 years of the organization and included several CC staff reflecting both on their beginnings there as well as new considerations AI presents to open licensing. 

Several sessions during the week also highlighted discussions about AI: from AI’s impact on creativity to what gets lost when data is scraped without important context, and from open legal and technical questions about AI to how we can best defend Wikipedia’s reliability in the age of rapid AI-generated content. Beyond the official schedule, a pre-conference event and several side events focused on AI were also organized alongside the conference. This wide variety of topics not only shows that developments in AI are top of mind in the Wikimedian communities, but also the depth of wisdom that open knowledge communities can share in relation to this new digital landscape.

Check out our blog post for public policy advocacy sessions at Wikimania and learn in Creative Commons’ blog post about their participation at the conference.

Wikimedians denied a voice at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for a sixth time
[Read our Foundation statement to learn how and why China has vetoed the Foundation’s observer status once again]

For a sixth time, the Foundation applied to become a permanent observer at WIPO and was excluded due to a single veto from China. Despite 25 years of experience hosting one of the world’s most visited open knowledge platforms and navigating complicated and innovative copyright issues on a global scale, and even counting with the positive endorsements of many other Member States, a global community of 250,000 volunteer contributors was denied a seat at the table where the future of intellectual property policy is decided.

Even more worryingly, this year the denial was not only spurred by misrepresentations about the accuracy and neutrality of Wikimedia’s community-driven policies and practices, but also seems to signal a broader trend in suppressing legitimate participation by civil society, as evidenced by the recent cancellation of the world’s largest digital rights conference, RightsCon. The Foundation will continue to pursue accreditation at WIPO and advocate the representation of digital public goods in the world’s most influential intellectual property policy forum. 

Read our Foundation statement to learn how and why China has vetoed the Foundation’s observer status once again.

Check out the latest issue of the Global Advocacy quarterly newsletter!
[Read the newsletter and subscribe for quarterly updates]

The eleventh issue of our Global Advocacy newsletter looks closely a the topic of online age verification, launching our three part blog series on the topic with an introduction from Stan Adams (Public Policy Specialist for North America) and Amanda Jardine (Lead Counsel) explaining the value of pseudonymity online to freedom of expression and how both are threatened by these new regulations.

The newsletter also contains a cautiously optimistic update on the Foundation’s category status under the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (UK OSA), which will determine Wikipedia’s duties under that law. We also celebrated the Foundation joining the Digital Public Good Alliance (DPGA), highlighted a recent New York Times interview with Bernadette Meehan (CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation), and shared news about the Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards recipients and the cancellation of RightsCon.

Read more in the newsletter and subscribe for quarterly updates!

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“Don’t Blink” is for you! Please take one minute to complete our survey about how our monthly public policy advocacy recap meets your needs and reflects your interests. Thank you for reading, every month, about how the open knowledge movement shapes discussions and decisions about the future of the internet!

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Follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky; sign up for our quarterly newsletter to receive updates; join our Wikipedia public policy mailing list; and visit our Meta-Wiki webpage. We hope to see you there!

Wikimania 2026 brought the Wikimedia movement together in Paris this summer, and the Content Partnerships Hub (CPH) was there in full force. It was a fantastic opportunity for us not only to speak to the whole Wikimedia movement about our achievements and activities, but also to spend time together and have valuable discussions about the future of our project in person. Spread across several countries and time zones, from Chile to Sweden, we do not get this opportunity often!

Over the course of the conference, CPH members ran a number of sessions focusing on different aspects of our work as well as a physical helpdesk. They were all well-attended and we were excited to hear your thought-provoking questions and input. In this post, we re-cap what we did – if you find it interesting, make sure to look at the recordings.

Taking GLAM collections online at any scale

Cultural heritage collections remain inaccessible in the digital realm for myriad reasons, this workshop addressed at least two common obstacles with practical solutions: how to digitize both 2D and 3D collections, and how to do so with limited resources. The workshop introduced a toolkit — now available on Meta-Wiki in multiple languages, with more translations welcome — that walks through the entire process from start to finish. To illustrate the workflow in practice, we digitized a collection of antique French postcards that had been gathered in Portugal.

We invite you to explore the toolkit, and to help us bring it to even more languages through translation!

The Helpdesk booth

We wanted the CPH to be a presence at Wikimania, not just as sessions that people would have to seek out. That’s why we used the opportunity to have a stand at the conference, which we held on Thursday and Friday. The focus of the stand was our Helpdesk initiative – one of the most important parts of the Hub. The Helpdesk provides hands-on support to Wikimedians who want to form a content partnership, especially for local groups in the underserved and underrepresented communities. And is there a better way of advertising it to the community than inviting them to a physical helpdesk?

If you were there, our table was hard to miss, located conveniently where everyone passed several times a day. And it definitely got a lot of foot traffic. We had great conversations with people, some of whom learned about the CPH for the first time, others who had heard of it before and had concrete ideas for projects we could work on together. This physical Helpdesk resulted in over 20 requests that we are now prioritizing and following up on.

UN workshop

The UN system has spent more than 75 years building up a vast body of knowledge: tens of thousands of publications and hundreds of thousands of images, videos, and audio recordings, much of it multilingual, high-quality, and increasingly released under Creative Commons licenses. UN agencies and Wikimedia have many of the same goals and compliment each other’s work. 

The workshop provided participants with practical examples of work that has been done, thoughts from UN staff and a time for participants to reflect on how they could work with the UN. John Cummings shared examples of the kinds of projects that have been done with UN agencies, from sharing text images and data to collaborations on social media, exhibitions, editathons and working together to collate data. 

Suzanne Lapstun from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations who has worked on Wikimedia projects for several years shared her experiences and thoughts on working with Wikimedia and the benefits and challenges.

John then took participants through a guided reflection to create a plan for working with the United Nations or other organisations in their context. Participants explored what they wanted to achieve in the short, medium and long term, their current situation and resources, their skills, knowledge and connections and what they plan to do to make a start.

Metabase workshop

Metabase is a platform built to collect and connect information about Wikimedia movement activities and resources, developed as part of CPH’s work to strengthen the capacity of the global community. At Wikimania, Connor Benedict and Alicia Fagerving ran a hands-on workshop introducing the project to a room full of participants.

As always when running a practical workshop, we were worried that it would be boring or too hard, but our fears did not come true in the slightest! At no point was there awkward silence. Several participants registered user accounts on Metabase and dove straight into editing. We discussed several issues, from concrete technical questions to more broad ones about the future and scope of the Metabase project. We also demonstrated MEOW, a recently launched browsing interface for Metabase, which allows users to explore the data without writing a single SPARQL query. Truth to be told, it was nerve-wracking because MEOW is so new – but thankfully, it did not break down during the demonstration!

By the end of the workshop, participants had a sense of what Metabase is and how to contribute to it, but the session provided a lot of insight for us as well. The questions about the future of the project were thought-provoking and at the same time filled us with hope, because they show that people care about Metabase and would like it to develop into a strong and sustainable project.

Would you like to learn more about Metabase? Watch the recording of the session on Wikimedia Commons and start exploring it today!

Lunch meetup

A great thing about being at Wikimania is that not everything needs to be super formal, quite the opposite, less structured activities are great for brainstorming and exchanging experiences. That’s why we arranged a lunch meetup for everyone with an interest in developing and contributing to the culture and heritage community across the Wikimedia movement. The meetup was designed as a space to mix people from different corners of the movement. It was great to see new connections being made as well as lots of reconnecting with colleagues and peers.

Looking ahead

We returned from Paris full of new ideas as well as, which is even more important, a sense that the community is excited about the different initiatives that are part of the Content Partnerships Hub. Hopefully we’ll see each other next year in Santiago as well! Until then, have a look at the CPH portal on Meta.

After three years of development, Capacity Exchange (CapX) has entered a new cycle. Funded through a Wikimedia CH grant, from July to December 2026, we will be working to bring the tool to communities around the world and gather feedback from users, with a particular focus on community managers and leaders.

In this cycle, we are focused on building relationships with community managers and leaders, introducing them to CapX and exploring how it can help them carry out their work more easily and with better data to inform their decisions. We also want to understand how the tool could be improved for this audience and explore ways of adapting it to their needs.

Finally, we are presenting the possibilities of working with the CapX API to develop tools and solutions tailored to specific community needs.

Read more about these activities below.

A new cycle: outreach and community engagement

This new cycle is focused on outreach, community engagement, and understanding how CapX can be useful in the everyday work of Wikimedia communities.

Benny Lin, Joris Quarshie and Amanda Jurno are scheduling workshops, meetings, and conversations with communities and organizations around the Movement. These conversations are an opportunity to introduce CapX, demonstrate what the tool can do, and, most importantly, listen to what communities need.

We are particularly interested in talking with community managers, organizers, and leaders about how CapX could support activities such as finding people with specific skills, connecting communities, sharing knowledge, organizing learning opportunities, and building capacity.

We are also reaching out to Wikimedia organizations and networks to better understand where CapX can fit into existing community practices.

And, in true Wikimedia spirit, we are asking Wikimedians to help us reach other Wikimedians. If you know a community, organization, or community leader who might benefit from learning about CapX, please help us connect with them!

You can get in touch with us by email at capx@wmnobrasil.org, send us a message in our Telegram group, or contact us directly through your CapX profile.

We want to hear from you

Alongside our outreach activities, we have launched two new feedback surveys to help us evaluate the current version of CapX.

The first survey focuses on usability and user experience. We want to understand how people experience the tool, what works well, and what could be improved. (Access it here).

The second survey is aimed at community leaders and managers. It seeks to understand how CapX could better support their everyday work and what they would need from the platform to make it genuinely useful for their communities. (Access it here).

Both surveys are anonymous and will remain open until December 2026.

We encourage everyone to participate and, especially, to share the surveys with their communities and networks. The feedback we receive will help us assess whether another development cycle is needed and, if so, what it should focus on.

CapX is open to new (tech) possibilities

Although the main development cycle has ended, CapX is not a closed platform.

CapX has an open API, which means that developers and organizations can build upon the data and functionalities of the platform according to their own needs and interests. We hope this can open the door to new uses, integrations, experiments, and tools built by the community.

Whether you are a developer interested in building something with CapX, a community leader looking for ways to use it, or simply a Wikimedian who wants to explore the platform, there is room for you to help make CapX more useful for the Movement. 

Volunteers with technical skills can also contribute to CapX by helping with bug fixes, code maintenance, and other technical improvements.

To contribute, developers need a GitHub account and access to the project repository. Contributions should be linked to a GitHub issue and submitted through a pull request for review. Routine maintenance can be carried out by volunteers, while significant changes or new features must be discussed and approved by the CapX Committee beforehand.

For more information, please see these documents:

• CapX API Documentation (Backend)
• CapX API Documentation (Front-end)
• Capacity Exchange Technical Report (2023-2026)

Reach out to us if you need more information, by email or through our Telegram group.

Explore CapX, share it with your community, give us your feedback, and build upon it. Find out more about our activities and documentation on our Meta-wiki page.

Are large language models widening the digital divide between majority and minority languages? Or can they be harnessed in preserving language diversity?

On Day 3 of Wikimania Paris, representatives of many different language and cultural communities shared their experiences in working within the Wikimedia movement.

Respect for indigenous communities

Erroneous information about indigenous languages and cultures can alienate potential contributors. During the keynote panel, Michelle Collipal, a member of the indigenous Mapuche community in Chile, shared how she has started to motivate Mapudungùn speakers and cultural authorities to engage with the Mapudungùn Wiki project. 

Moderator Dr Terri Janke underscored the importance of involving indigenous communities, respecting their knowledge as well as their right to self-determination. What this means in practice for wiki spaces is discussed in the white paper “CutureStrong Platforms: Setting the Standard at Wikimedia”.

Automating and improving translation

During “Language Diversity in the Digital Commons”, Pau Giner of the Wikimedia Foundation shared that the MinT (Machine in Translation) was designed from the start to support diverse language models. The platform currently supports 200 languages.

His ideas for the future include making Wikipedia articles more accessible on mobile phones, and to offer a collection of tools to help people create their first wiki, going beyond translation.

During the Q&A, Kepa Sarasola (User:karasola) of University of Basque reflected on the improvement of translation tools available since he started working on Basque Wikipedia in 2011. The tools, he said, had made it possible to grow minority language Wikipedias – while giving them the flexibility to choose which parts of articles to translate and where to start from scratch. The integration of AI tools has accelerated the process significantly.

Collaboration across communities

The need for collaboration across language communities was a recurring theme across multiple sessions. One example of a cross-border network is Linguatec-IA, an EU project for the digitization of languages in communities in the Pyrenees region, including Basque, Catalan, Occitan, and Aragonese.

David Castillo Parra of UNESCO discussed the launch of the New Commons Incubator for indigenous-led capacity building programs. Applications will be accepted for indigenous-led teams through 14 August.

The need for the Wikimedia movement to remain true to its mission – and to aligning on milestones that matter – was an inspiring message from Audrey Tang in “The State of Wikimedia & AI 2026”. “Don’t let it be a race…Wikipedia never tried to win. We tried to make sure there were many winners at any one time.”

As Jimmy Wales told Le Monde, “It’ll be all right. We’ll adapt, change, use AI in our own way. We’ll find a way.”

How can the Wikimedia community defend freedom, equity, and reliability on the internet? Are we in a global information crisis?

Several sessions on Day 2 of Wikimania Paris explored these questions from different angles. The morning kicked off with breakout sessions on how global trends are impacting government regulation – with attendees joining Wikimedia Foundation board members in small group discussions. Protecting free knowledge was a core theme throughout the day.

Misinformation on climate change

During the 2025 Iberian peninsula blackout, misinformation was spread that the main cause was renewable energy. In “Climate Conversations: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Knowledge Sharing”, moderator Tatjana Baleta said that rapid response editing on Wikipedia was one way that the scientific community combats misinformation during extreme weather events and other major incidents.

Many readers have also shifted from reading about climate change to reading more about other issues such as the cost of living crisis. Dr. Femke Nijsse (User:Femke) discussed the importance of meeting readers where they are – and explaining the science related to these issues.

While AI-generated content may have the sheen of reliability, it often turns out that the sources they cite are hallucinations or that they do not actually verify the claims made by the LLM. Editors on Wikipedia are now starting to use tools such as AI Source Verification (which itself uses LLMs) to predict the verifiability of claims made in a article.

AI crawlers: Encroaching on creativity?

“Collateral Damage? Human Creativity and Interaction in the AI Crawling Era” explored how organizations in the free knowledge ecosystem are responding to the massive increase in AI scrapers.

There was a consensus among panelists that attribution is a critical concern for authors. Creative Commons CEO Anna Turnadóttir and Monica Westin of Cambridge University Press discussed the need to educate authors about the benefits of open access models – while also acknowledging the need to experiment.

Mark Graham discussed how the Internet Archive is reaching out to news organizations to discuss alternatives to blocking the Wayback Machine, such as rate limiting and allowing access only for certain uses.

Striking a balance

Throughout the day, speakers debated the complexities of regulation – and how the rush to “do something” can backfire. Turndóttir said, “What used to be the internet handshake online is now the middle finger. And that sort of environment forces lawmakers to reach for blunt tools like regulation. The community needs to establish norms, but sometimes regulation does cause real harm.” 

The keynote session on “Protecting Free Knowledge – The New Battlegrounds of Digital Freedom”, Nnenna Nwakanma (from the internet) discussed the discourse around regulation – and how European approaches may not be applicable in Africa. Panelists during the session, including Axelle Lemaire, architect of the 2016 loi numerique, emphasized the need for balance in protecting openness and freedom online, while also protecting the privacy of individuals.

The conference is making waves in France with media coverage in 25 outlets – including La Croix‘s print edition, a Radio France podcast, and more.

For 25 years, the Wikimedia movement has been constantly innovating to promote the values of free and universal sharing of all human knowledge for the benefit of humanity. In 2026, as we face the challenges of connectivity, misinformation, and the rise of AI, our ability to innovate collectively is more essential than ever.

To address these developments, we are introducing a new program focusing on Team Challenges in the lead-up to Wikimania. This year, we are inviting experts and newcomers to the Wikimedia community to join forces with participants in our Wikimania Hackathon. The idea is not to replace the hackathon format, but to offer a different approach. We want to bring together diverse perspectives and skills by pairing Wikimedians from all walks of life (not just developers!) with professionals from other fields. The goal is to share our best practices and design digital tools that are sustainable, inclusive, and accessible to all.

Next week, we are kicking off our first online orientation sessions training newcomers on wiki tools. In the coming weeks, they will form teams with Wikimedia community members to undertake one of the 2026 challenges. Stay tuned for further updates as the teams work together toward the Team Challenges showcase concurrent with Wikimania Paris. 

We can’t wait to see what the cross-pollination between different disciplines, perspectives, and skill sets will bring. Good luck to all!

10 challenges for maximum impact

The goal is simple: To turn the community’s needs into concrete solutions. We have selected 10 major technical challenges that address the complex issues encountered on a daily basis across Wikimedia projects. 

These challenges are based on the three pillars of Wikimania 2026:

• FREEDOM: Ensuring the interoperability of free software to facilitate its reuse and maintenance, and to guarantee its long-term viability.
• EQUITY: Promoting multilingualism. Designing tools capable of overcoming language barriers to bridge gaps in sources and contributions on a global scale.
• RELIABILITY: Developing AI-based detection tools to assist volunteer moderators in their work of verifying and protecting information.

Discover the 10 Challenges
	Fix the sources Automatically detect outdated, retracted or broken sources in articles, and facilitate their updating or archiving.
	Welcoming newcomers Reinvent how we onboard newcomers through chatbots, guided micro-edits, and gamification lower the barrier to entry on wikis.
	Update the obsolete Identify and flag outdated articles, obsolete illustrations and screenshots, and outdated graphics to: encourage the community to update them.
	Boost multimedia experience Enhance the audiovisual experience on wikis: playlists on Commons, a modernised video player, annotation of audio segments, and games focused on accents and pronunciations.
	Deciphering biases Develop tools to detect gender, geographic, and cultural biases in Wikimedia content to: encourage the community to correct them.
	Gamify knowledge Create serious games and playful experiences using Wikimedia data to: learn, contribute, and explore in new ways.
	Stream data with Wikidata Take advantage of Wikidata content to: generate lists, tables or up-to-date visualisations, semi-automatically, for other projects in the Wikimedia galaxy or further.
	The editor of the future Improve the editing experience: search & replace in the source editor, a standardized citation toolbar, a better visual table editor, and text alignment in VisualEditor to modernise and streamline contributions.
	Explore knowledge Design and experiment new ways of sharing knowledge, in interactive and visual ways…for the modern web!
	Connect multilingual knowledge Facilitate translation, the reuse of content across Wikimedia projects, and collaboration with other Open Source projects so that knowledge can flow freely in all languages.

For more information on the Team Challenges and how to participate, please visit the Team Challenges section of the Wikimania wiki. Please note that registration for the Team Challenges does not grant access to the rest of Wikimania.