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.