30/07/2026-05/08/2026

Mapping campaigns

• Uber has proposed, on the OSM Community forum, an organised editing activity to improve pedestrian mapping in 21 countries. Various mappers criticise it due to a lack of details and because Uber has a poor track record in the UK.

Community

• Rphyrin made an Overpass Ultra script for viewing image=* tags in OpenStreetMap.
• MideaFind has used OpenStreetMap data to collect the locations of stores that might sell portable air conditioners.
• Andrea Grandi explained why Book Corners won’t sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap. Pieter Vander Vennet responded in his blog.

Imports

• Oscar Car Rental announced ► that they are planning an organised editing activity to add their 93 missing car rental locations in Germany, along with performing some data maintenance.

OSM research

• Marni Davis documented Atlanta’s immigrant population in the late 19th century, visualising their neighbourhoods on an OpenHistoricalMap basemap.

Maps

• ^[1] Victor Rotariu and his team are developing a live urban heat map that estimates street-level thermal conditions at a resolution of roughly 25 metres. This data will power a new ‘Cool’ routing mode. Rather than selecting only the fastest or shortest cycling route, Cool mode will identify the route with the lowest estimated heat exposure. The goal is simple: help cyclists avoid the hottest streets, enjoy a more comfortable ride, and arrive at their destination with less sweat on hot summer days.

OSM in action

• A 23-year-old student developer from South Korea has created a navigation app for finding shade covered areas, which has shot to the top of the App Store’s navigation apps. The app uses OpenStreetMap data to plot routes.

Software

• HeiGIT presented their latest update on the roadmap toward the new ohsome API 2.0, outlining the next steps in the evolution of the ohsome platform for analysing OpenStreetMap data. The update introduced planned developments, improvements, and future directions aimed at creating a more flexible, efficient, and sustainable API for OSM history data analytics.

Releases

• The CoMaps team published release 2026.07.16, which is now available via Codeberg, F-Droid, Google Play, and the iOS AppStore. This version adds a preview of turn-by-turn directions when creating a route, adds lane guidance and improved next turn descriptions for iOS/CarPlay, per-transport-mode routing options, support for more OSM tags, and many further bug fixes and improvements.
• Organic Maps July 2026 has been released, bringing a collection of bug fixes and general improvements.
• A note for mappers resolving notes: Organic Maps version 2026.07.15 has fixed a long-standing issue, where notes left inside large forest polygons and road lines would always move to the centre of the object. Notes are now added at the user’s click location.
• Tina announced that OsmAnd Astronomy, currently available in the OsmAnd Android 5.4 beta (on paid plans Maps+ and OsmAnd Pro), now includes tools for exploring solar and lunar events. Users can move through a timeline to preview upcoming astronomical events, check eclipse visibility from any location on Earth, and watch exactly how each solar or lunar eclipse will unfold before it actually occurs.
• HeiGIT reported the release of Ohsome-Planet version of 1.3.1, codename ‘Baarle-Hertog‘. This tool is designed to facilitate the transformation of raw OpenStreetMap history data into the geoParquet format, making it more accessible for spatial data analysis.

Did you know that …

• … the OSM Apps Catalog allows you to browse a list of thousands of various map apps?

OSM in the media

• BRUZZ, a local newspaper in Brussels, commented ► on the rise in recent years of private swimming pools in residential neighbourhoods. They praised OSM volunteers for having mapped them and showed maps with their locations.
• Heise’s c’t Open Source Spotlight newsletter reported ► on CoMaps and interviewed OSM community member Bastian Greshake Tzovaras about CoMaps, OSM and free software in general.

Other “geo” things

• Google had integrated its AI image generator ‘Nano Banana 2’ into Google Earth. They removed it two days later after people started abusing it, as the BBC reported.
• The Times of India explained how Polynesian navigators crossed the Pacific Ocean by reading the stars, ocean swells, winds, birds, and clouds to find their way.
• In response to the recent news about Moroccan migrants crossing into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, OpenCage reshared their previously published geo-trivia posts about Spain and Morocco.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
		Online	Racha Mapping Party	2026-07-27 – 2026-08-09
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM’s 22nd Birthday × OSM India Monthly Online Mapathon	2026-08-08 – 2026-08-09
	臺北市	國立臺灣科技大學研揚大樓412-1教室	COSCUP 2026 State of the Map Taiwan 2026 / Wikidata Community Summit 2026	2026-08-09
	New Delhi	Indian Coffee House, Connaught Place	OSM’s 22nd Birthday × OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.30	2026-08-09
	大阪市	11F, Urban Net Midosuji Building, 4-2-13 Awajicho	OpenStreetMap関西カンファレンス2026 / OSM Kansai Conference 2026	2026-08-09
	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-08-09
	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #91	2026-08-10
	Zürich	Bitwäscherei Zürich	190. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich	2026-08-11
	Hamburg	Voraussichtlich: “Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-08-11
		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-08-11
			Missing Maps Online Mapathon von Ärzte ohne Grenzen	2026-08-12
	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-08-12
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2026-08-13
		Hochschule Rhein-Sieg	OSM auf der FrOSCon 2026 in Sankt Augustin	2026-08-15 – 2026-08-16
	Hannover	Hannover Congress Centrum	OSM auf der Maker Faire Hannover 2026	2026-08-15 – 2026-08-16
		Stadt- und Waagenmuseum Oschatz	Kartenwerkstatt Oschatz	2026-08-16
	Magdeburg	Netz39 e.V. , Leibnizstraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg	3. OSM Stammtisch Magdeburg	2026-08-18
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-08-18
	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-08-18
	Bonn	Dotty’s	203. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-08-18
	Derby	The Brunswick, Railway Terrace, Derby	East Midlands pub meet-up	2026-08-18
		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-08-18
	Karlsruhe	Vogelbräu Karlsruhe	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-08-19
	Amsterdam	TomTom HQ	Maptime Amsterdam: 2026 Summertime Maptime	2026-08-20
	Potsdam	MachBar	Potsdamer Mappertreffen	2026-08-21
	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-08-24

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by HeiGIT, MatthiasMatthias, Nakaner, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, TrickyFoxy, barefootstache, derFred.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.

Rajshahi Public Library, Bangladesh, established in 1884, is one of the oldest libraries in Bangladesh. Over more than a century, it has collected a wide range of books. When we opened the first old books in Rajshahi Public Library for GLAM project, it was clear that numerous books were at least a century old. That was when we realized this is the best place for GLAM.

The challenge was to preserve these works without harming the original books and to make their knowledge available beyond the walls of the library. This idea led to the Wikimedia GLAM Project at Rajshahi Public Library, where I joined as a Wikimedian in Residence. The project aims to identify public domain books, digitise them carefully, and make them available through Wikimedia projects, including Wikimedia Commons and Bengali Wikisource.

The possibility of starting a GLAM project at Rajshahi Public Library was explored on 29 April 2026, when members of the Wikimedia Bangladesh visited the library. The visiting delegation comprised Masum-Al-Hasan Rocky, Program Coordinator of GLAM in Bangladesh, Manik, Assistant Coordinator of the Rajshahi Wikimedia Community, and myself . We discussed the library’s collection, preservation needs, and the possibilities of digitising suitable books. On 30 April 2026, a meeting was held between representatives of the Wikimedia Bangladesh and the library’s authorities regarding the proposed collaboration. After reviewing the plan, the library authority provided permission to begin the GLAM project on 2 May 2026. The first scanning work started on 6 May 2026. Using a CZUR ET25 Pro scanner, I scan selected books and process the images using my personal laptop before preparing them for upload.

Each file requires careful attention to page order, image quality, metadata, and copyright information. The digitisation process requires much more than simply scanning pages. Before a book is selected, it must be examined carefully. We check whether the book is suitable for scanning and whether it can be confirmed as being in the public domain. Between 6 May and 31 July 2026, we scanned more than 20,000 pages from around 100 books. These books have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and are being prepared for proofreading on Wikisource.

Through Wikisource, volunteers can convert scanned pages into Unicode text, correct errors, and make the books readable.

The most difficult part of this work is not operating the scanner. It is deciding when a book should not be scanned. Many books in the library are very old and have suffered from years of deterioration. Some have been damaged by insects. Others have lost their first or last pages, which often contain important information such as the author’s name, publication year, and publisher. Without these details, confirming copyright status can become impossible. Some books are so fragile that turning the pages itself creates a risk of damage. In these situations, preservation must come before digitisation.

There are also books where previous repairs created new challenges. Some volumes were rebound in a way that covered parts of the printed text near the spine. Technically, removing the binding and scanning individual pages could solve the problem, but doing so could permanently damage already fragile books. For this reason, we follow a simple principle: a digitisation project should never harm the collection it is trying to preserve.

When scanning books, the airflow from a ceiling fan can sometimes cause the pages to move, resulting in blurred images. This is a significant challenge, especially in a tropical country like Bangladesh, where working without a fan during the hot season is extremely difficult. As a result, we have to scan books very carefully to ensure that the pages remain still and the images are not blurred.

The work at Rajshahi Public Library is still continuing. During the project, we have identified around 100 additional books that may be suitable for future digitisation. Our long-term goal is to preserve all eligible public domain books from the library’s collection and make them available through Wikimedia projects. However, the vision extends beyond a single institution. The experience gained from this project can help develop similar GLAM initiatives in other libraries across Bangladesh. Many libraries in the country hold rare collections that remain unknown to the wider world. By preserving these pages today, we help ensure that future generations can continue to read, learn, and discover the voices of the past.

Wikipedia’s credibility relies on its sources. To help editors reliably evaluate external references, a group of us at WikiCredCon 2025 built WikiSignals.org, a searchable database of website credibility indicators. Our goal is to include the trove of reference-reliability data in Wikimedia. But their lack of structured data and accessibility is an obstacle. This is our appeal to the community for help helping you. We need the community’s assistance with four proposals:

1. Wikimedia: Create a standardized, machine-readable template for Reliable Sources pages.
2. Wikipedia: Make external-link count by website domain easy to machine-harvest.
3. Wikidata: Populate missing news-source data in Wikidata, especially from Wikipedia article Infoboxes. 
4. Wikidata: Extend the news-source related properties in Wikidata.

Reliable/Perennial Sources

Wikipedians have spent 25 years defining reliable sources. Only 15 language projects (out of 347 active projects as of July 2026) have their own Reliable Sources Page (RSP). These lists have little coordination. Their formats vary wildly. At least six tools harvest the RSPs, including the popular Cite Unseen and Unreliable Source Detector. We each have our own parsing methods and frequency. This is inefficient.

A shared, standardized, consensus-based, and machine-readable template for RSP data would go a long way for projects in other languages to have their own RSPs. A Phabricator ticket related to this proposal is already underway.

Further, it would give language projects more visibility in how others classify domains. Currently, domains spam-blocklisted in one language are used in thousands of external links in another, a problem we suspect is partly driven by the lack of a shared resource.

External-link counts

We view a website’s external-link count — the total times its domain appears in the References, Citations, Notes, or External link sections — as a critical signal of credibility, proportional to Wikipedians’ trust in that site.

Currently, three services return a domain’s link count: a search form, the Quarry SQL tool, and an API. The language-agnostic reference risk model gives a related count of how many pages cite that domain. However, each has limitations: the search can’t limit results by namespace (e.g., articles only), Quarry lacks API access, the API’s pagination loops hit limits for high-count domains (complicated further by miser mode), and the reference risk model has not been updated since 2024.

At present, we rely on a kludged combination of API and Quarry results for an incomplete count. We propose creating an easily accessible way to get a domain’s external-link count totals, for a specific language and for all languages. Community wishes to add and update that data are included in the Community Wishlist.

Wikidata

Wikidata has more than 92,000 entries for news-related organizations. Currently, though, most of those entries lack critical credibility-related data.

Some of that missing Wikidata is in Wikipedia Infoboxes. The community needs an effort to populate this information in Wikidata, and existing information from Wikipedia article Infoboxes is one place where we can start.

We’ll be uploading WikiSignals’ wealth of data (on 70,000+ domains) into Wikidata in the coming months. However, there’s no place to store a key type of information. Adding this property would help Wikimedians evaluate reference reliability: 

• ‘indexed by’ — We need a property to indicate that a news source is included in a vetted list of legitimate media, such as Global Project Oasis. This is a valuable reliability signal, but we currently have no way to connect the index with the indexed item. Our request for comment is on Wikidata.

We’re not experienced Wikimedians and need assistance shepherding these new-property proposals. We can share our work harvesting RSP data and external-link counts. Please join us: Help us help you.

What I Learned About 3 Zero-Funding Programs You Can Do. Link of session slides (Google slides)

I’m a volunteer with the Wikimedia Tanzania community, I contribute to Wikimedia Commons, Lingua Libre, Wikidata and Swahili Wikipedia. I attended Wikimania 2026 in Paris on a Tandem Scholarship funded by Wikimedia Deutschland. As someone engaging to grow our local community, I went into this workshop curious about what’s possible without a budget at all and left with more than I expected.

There are countless knowledge gaps out there that volunteers and communities can start closing today, with the knowledge we already have. And often, that work is exactly what opens doors to bigger platforms, partnerships, and more opportunities in the movement.

Asaf Bartov’s workshop had 3 parts but I will share about two first parts.  

1: A streamlined contribution campaign for complete newcomers.

The mechanic: recruit people with no editing background, and teach them the basics of contributing through structured data-entry on Wikidata, using tools like Cradle or Tabernacle. These tools enable rapid start, and real contributions a newcomer can make a genuine edit almost immediately, without first wading through wikitext syntax or policy pages. At the end of the campaign, you collect the names of everyone who’s interested in becoming an ongoing member of the community.

What shifted for me wasn’t the mechanics themselves. It was a message on one of the slides (FAQ)

Q: Are you saying we shouldn’t ask for grants?
A: No! By all means ask for grants! I am just reminding you there are always things you can do without any funding, too.

Q: Wouldn’t it hurt our chances to get a grant, if we are seen to do work without a budget?
A: No! On the contrary: a track record of effective work without funding would encourage a grant officer to empower you further with funding!

That reframed something, I’d been treating community growth as something that needs funding first, momentum second. This session flipped that order. The highest-leverage growth work often costs nothing but coordination — and doing it well can make the case for funding later, not the other way around.  

2: Documenting your government on Wikidata
the goal is to Improve your own country’s documentation of public contact points on Wikidata GovDirectory by network with government officials, encouraging them to keep the resources up-to-date.

If your government has a public commitment to accessibility, you can try contacting the people/agency specifically tasked with ensuring this accessibility, and suggest to them that GovDirectory is one good vehicle for achieving this accessibility.

You can start here: –

1. In Wikidata, go to [[WD:GD]]
2. Find your country
3. Run some queries, see if the information is current.
   For example, is the number and names of current ministries correct? Are there embassies missing? Social media accounts missing?
4. Fix all the things!

Just over two months ago, we introduced three tools built by and for community language documenters: Subtitler, Tome, and Bento. They were alpha/beta then. We want to update that all three are now stable, thanks to our fellow technical contributors. We’re also introducing a fourth tool, the OpenSpeaks Media Dashboard (OMD), to help documenters see how media files are used across Wikimedia projects.

Subtitler, Tome, and Bento: from alpha to stable

OpenSpeaks Subtitler is our flagship tool and a subtitle editor. In addition to captioning/subtitling, it can now fetch audio, video, and subtitle files from Wikimedia Commons, edit and machine-translate subtitles, and upload the subtitles back to Commons. It has gotten simpler: load a file, caption it, translate it, publish it, without leaving the tool. A side-by-side translation panel with machine-translation assistance is in place, too. Our future plan is to add a feature for automatic speech recognition (ASR)-assisted rough drafts, though ASR is still weak or absent for Indigenous and various local languages.

OpenSpeaks Tome now supports both metadata and licensing agreements. The metadata section has five tabs: Basic Info, Production, People, and Subtitles. The People tab captures what the Oral Knowledge Framework actually asks for: gender, birth year, Wikidata QIDs, and named roles for interviewers, interviewees, transcribers, and reviewers. Import covers OpenSpeaks Archives XML/JSON, Commons wikitext, ELAR’s Lameta/OPEX, and LAC’s BLAM/CMDI; export covers Commons wikitext, OpenSpeaks JSON, Markdown, and HTML. Within the tool, we have made a major addition: a language database mapping ISO 639 codes to standard and endonym names and language varieties/dialects. This list is prepared by cross-checking against Glottolog and Wikipedia. It’s small, but exactly the kind of infrastructure oral-knowledge work has had to improvise around for years. Now, any user can type the first few characters of a language/language variety/dialect name and choose from a list. We plan to use this list in Subtitler and other OpenSpeaks tools, and others can use it too.

OpenSpeaks Bento was released as a stable version on 1 July 2026. Its three original utilities are intact as tabs: Organise renames and organises files correctly within folders; Duration helps assess the duration of individual audio and video files, as well as the total audio and video duration; and Compress helps compress files for easy sharing with colleagues. The v.1.0 added a fourth tab, Analyse Media, which can pull codec, resolution, loudness, and SHA-256 checksum data for archival-quality checks. Bento also adopted Wikimedia’s Codex design system in this release, fixing accessibility issues. It still remains an offline utility and works after being loaded once.

Introducing OpenSpeaks Media Dashboard

We’re adding a fourth tool to our tool suite—OpenSpeaks Media Dashboard (OMD).

While our other tools serve the language speaker and Wikimedia communities alike, OpenSpeaks Media Dashboard is primarily for Wikimdian-language archivists. It helps Commons contributors visualise the impact of their contributions by showing statistics.

Input a Wikimedia Commons category containing audio, video and images and run it: it queries Wikimedia’s public APIs in real time, showing which pages across Wikimedia projects use those files, how many people viewed those pages each month, in which language editions, and in which Wikimedia projects, and by which file types. You can see monthly pageview charts, a project breakdown, a file-type view, a table of the most-viewed pages, and export the visualisation as SVG or PNG, or the raw query results as CSV. Most importantly, it can produce an analysis report in wiki code that can be edited to create an on-wiki report. Reports for a particular category can be shared via a link or QR code if one prefers to test themselves. The only downside is it queries live and stores nothing between runs, due to not having a server. As Wikimedia’s pageview processing lags by several weeks, the statistics may be slightly outdated, though that is not an issue introduced by this tool. It faithfully transforms what can be queried in a human-readable manner.

Why did we build this? Impact for oral knowledge work begins with counting the files uploaded. But counting readers helps to understand what that knowledge means to the readers. We hope that OMD can help documenters and project coordinators see how their Commons uploads are used across various Wikimedia projects and language editions. Non-language documentation projects that see image, audio and video contributions can use OMD too. We have used several tools, including GLAMorous, GLAMorgan, and GLAM Stat Tool – Cassandra in the past. But analysing the data took longer, so we started working on OMD to enable quick periodic analysis. The tool has its own built-in help tab, just like Subtitler (to be done soon), Tome, and Bento, which have self-contained user help pages. Check out OMD at https://omd.toolforge.org and let us know whether it works or where it breaks.

Thank you, Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Hyderabad

Indic Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 kindly invited us to mentor community developers Arpitha Bhandary and Govind Lal T. L to improve the OpenSpeaks tool suite. During 25–28 June, we joined 56 other fellow Wikimedians at the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad. For three days, Arpitha and Govind fixed countless bugs and built new features into Subtitler and Tome. We were joined by Bharathesha A from the Tulu Wikimedia community, who shared many useful insights drawn from his experience documenting Tulu cultural events, whereas Jnanaranjan Sahu, a long-time Odia Wikimedian and an advisor to OpenSpeaks, provided technical guidance and mentorship.

Arpitha wrote afterwards that the hackathon “was more than just a hackathon… it was an experience I’ll always cherish,” and that what stayed with her most was the mentorship: “not once did anyone make me feel discouraged.” Govind called it “three amazing days” and said contributing code that will benefit the community was a rewarding experience.”

Bharathesha supported the project as an editor throughout, giving Arpitha and Govind the community-side read on what documenters actually need. Jnanaranjan Sahu co-mentored the OpenSpeaks track with me. Though Ranjith Siji, the lead developer for Subtitler, couldn’t attend in person, he reviewed and merged the pull requests that came out of the hackathon. Opino Gomango, our OpenSpeaks Fellow for eastern Indian languages, also shared input to improve Subtitler, as he has been one of the earliest testers of the tool since its inception.

What we need from the Wikimedia community

• Testers: try Subtitler, Tome, Bento, and Media Dashboard with real recordings and real Commons categories, and tell us what works, what breaks and what can be improved.
• Wikimedians working with audio, video, or oral history on Commons: tell us where these tools fit into your workflow, and where they don’t and why.
• Developers: Subtitler and Tome still have open questions around ASR and deeper Commons/Wikidata integration. You can help us integrate them.
• Community documenters and coordinators: if you’re writing an impact or grant report, try OMD in your project’s Commons category and tell us whether the numbers are actually useful to you.

You can do all of the above on the discussion page of our tool page on Meta-wiki.

Links

• OpenSpeaks Subtitler: tool (repository)
• OpenSpeaks Tome: tool (repository)
• OpenSpeaks Bento: tool (repository)
• Media Dashboard: tool (repository)

Wikimedia UK has been informed of a data security incident involving Beacon CRM, the platform we use to manage our contacts database.

Beacon detected the incident on 29 July 2026 and informed us on 3 August. Beacon’s current understanding is that compromised login details were used to access its systems and download copies of database backups. Their investigation is ongoing and, at this stage, we are not aware of the information having been published online or misused.

Beacon has secured its systems and is investigating the incident with external cyber-security specialists. It has also informed the relevant authorities.

Wikimedia UK has revoked and reconnected all Beacon integrations and security keys, including connections with forms, payment services and email platforms. We have also reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Following an internal risk assessment, we have decided that the information currently available and the type of data we hold do not warrant contacting all members, donors and other contacts directly. We do not store sensitive personal information, dates of birth, bank details or full payment-card details in Beacon. We have contacted our volunteers directly because their records may include information about their volunteering relationship with Wikimedia UK, as well as basic contact details.

There is no action that individuals need to take at this time. However as a general precaution, please remain alert to unexpected emails or messages claiming to be from Wikimedia UK or Beacon. 

Beacon is continuing its investigation and strengthening its security measures. We will monitor developments closely and will contact individuals directly if further information identifies a specific risk or action they should take.

We recognise that incidents of this kind can be unsettling. Please be assured that we are doing everything within our control to protect your information and maintain the highest possible standards of data security.

Anyone with questions or concerns can contact us at: info@wikimedia.org.uk.

The post Statement on Beacon CRM security incident appeared first on Wikimedia UK.

July for Wikimedia Ghana User Group was a month of collaboration, learning, and community participation. We localized Wikimedia features for Ghanaian language Wikipedias, took our Wiki Loves Places 2026 campaign to the streets through a photo walk, and connected with the global Wikimedia movement during Wikimania 2026.

Here’s what we’ve been up to!

WMGH Hosted a Localization Workshop to Translate Suggestion Mode Feature to Ghanaian Pidgin

On 11 July 2026, we hosted a localization workshop to translate interface messages of the Suggestion Mode feature under Edit Check for the Ghanaian Pidgin Wikipedia through Translatewiki.net.

Both new and experienced contributors learned how to translate on translatewiki and explored best practices for producing high-quality translations.

By the end of the workshop, all 110 messages for the Suggestion Mode feature had been translated into Ghanaian Pidgin. We look forward to localizing more of Wikimedia’s widely used features to make them more accessible for contributors.

Read more on Diff: Localization of Wikimedia Features: Translating Suggestion Mode for Ghanaian Language Wikipedias

Wiki Loves Places – Kukun Photo walk

We partnered with Kukun, a workspace and cafe in Accra, Ghana, to take the Wiki Loves Places campaign to the streets of Osu Ako-Adjei on 18 July 2026 in a photo walk. 

Participants worked in groups, using physical maps to explore the neighbourhood and captured geotagged photos of roads, landmarks, businesses, and other places in the area.

These photos will help improve free online maps and make Osu Ako-Adjei easier to find and explore. We thank everyone who participated! Every photo helps make knowledge about Ghana more freely accessible.

Check out event photos and geotagged images here: Wiki Loves Places 2026 Osu Ako-Adjei Photo walk

Wikimania 2026

Wikimania 2026 brought together Wikimedians from around the world to learn, share ideas, and connect. 

To help our community get the most from the conference, we curated recommended virtual sessions covering topics that support individual growth of contributors to the community development as a whole. 

Wikimedia Ghana User Group also contributed a session, “Supporting Participation or Creating Transactional Engagement? Rethinking Internet Data Refunds as Volunteer Support”, exploring approaches to sustainable volunteer support in participation.

We hope all who participated found the sessions inspiring and have fresh ideas to share and apply within our community.

Opportunities!

Wikimania 2026 Swag Giveaway

Wikimedia Ghana User Group will be giving away Wikimania 2026 swag to members of the community. Community members who joined virtual Wikimania sessions are eligible for a Wikimania 2026 swag giveaway. More details about the giveaway will be announced soon.

Check out giveaway swag here: Wikimania 2026 Swag- Giveaway

Find Articles to Edit with SuggestBot!

Not sure what to edit on Wikipedia?

SuggestBot recommends articles that need improvement based on your editing history and interests, delivering  personalized article suggestions directly to your Wikipedia talk page!

Read our step-by-step guide on how to set up SuggestBot and start receiving article recommendations today: Guide 

Looking Ahead

We look forward to more opportunities to learn, collaborate, and grow together through workshops, campaigns, and other community activities in the months ahead.

As always, thank you for every edit and effort that helps expand the sum of all free knowledge. 

Warmly,
Wikimedia Ghana User Group

The 2025 Wikidata Research Grant Program, organized by Wikimedia Indonesia, has resulted in two studies demonstrating how the Wikidata ecosystem can be leveraged to address a wide range of needs, from managing Indonesian legal data to developing knowledge management systems within organizations. The two studies show that Wikidata serves not only as an open database but also as a foundation for developing knowledge graphs and enabling data interoperability.

LegaLi-JSON: Building a Knowledge Graph of Indonesian Court Decisions

The study LegaLi-JSON: Building a Linked Knowledge Graph of Indonesian Appellate and Supreme Court Decisions focuses on developing a structured data representation for appellate court and Supreme Court decisions in Indonesia. Until now, court decisions have generally been available in document form, making it difficult to automatically analyze relationships among cases, judges, and cited regulations.

Through this research, the team developed a JSON-based data format capable of representing decision metadata in a structured manner and linking it into a linked knowledge graph. This approach enables entities such as cases, judges, courts, and regulations to be interconnected, making them easier to explore and analyze.

Illustration of a knowledge graph of Indonesian court decisions, Wikimedia Commons

In addition to producing a data structure that is easier for machines to process, the study demonstrates how Indonesian legal data can be integrated into the linked open data ecosystem, including Wikidata. The results open up opportunities for the development of legal analytics applications, semantic-based decision retrieval, and data-driven legal research.

Integrating Private Wikibase and Wikidata

The second study, titled Developing an Enterprise Knowledge Framework by Integrating Private Wikibase and Public Wikidata, addresses the needs of organizations to manage internal knowledge without losing the benefits of open data.

The study develops a framework that connects Private Wikibase as an organizational knowledge repository with Wikidata as a source of public data. Through this approach, organizations can independently manage their internal data while enriching their information using data available on Wikidata.

Architecture for integrating Private Wikibase with Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons

One of the outcomes of the study is the development of a dual-database architecture. The system prioritizes information retrieval from the internal Wikibase and then leverages Wikidata when the available data is incomplete or its level of confidence is low. The study also develops entity linking and cross-validation processes to improve data quality within the organization’s knowledge base.

Through this approach, the study demonstrates that Wikidata can serve as an important component in building modern knowledge management systems that connect private and public data in an interoperable manner.

Contributions to the Open Knowledge Ecosystem

Although they focus on different areas, both studies share the same goal: expanding the use of Wikidata through linked data and knowledge graph approaches. The LegaLi-JSON study demonstrates the potential of Wikidata to support the openness of Indonesian legal data, while the Private Wikibase integration study shows how organizations can build knowledge systems that remain connected to the open data ecosystem.

Through the 2025 Wikidata Research Grant Program, Wikimedia Indonesia is not only supporting academic research but also encouraging innovations that can benefit researchers, institutions, communities, and technology developers. Together, the two studies demonstrate the growing relevance of the Wikimedia ecosystem in supporting digital transformation, knowledge management, and the development of semantic web-based applications in Indonesia.

Looking ahead, the results of these studies are expected to serve as a foundation for further collaboration among Wikimedia Indonesia, universities, communities, and various institutions to expand the use of Wikidata for research, data governance, and the development of open knowledge-based solutions.

This blog post is the fifth in the series about CommonsDB. If you don’t know about the project at all, I recommend checking out the first one, it also has a nice video introducing the project.

The pilot project CommonsDB, the registry with public domain and freely licensed images, is in the later stage, and it was with some excitement we wanted to test some ideas with the wider Wikimedia community.

The workshop

With this in mind, we’ve designed a workshop we titled “Putting CommonsDB into use“. To get everyone to the same knowledge level on how the system works, we had a brief introduction, and you can find these slides on Wikimedia Commons. From that, we broke into groups to have the participants try to solve different kinds of questions of importance to the CommonsDB registry and the Wikimedia Commons community. For example, to avoid that “bad” uploads to Wikimedia Commons are being declared to the CommonsDB registry, the groups discussed various factors that can act as signals to understand if an image is ready to be declared to the registry or if it should be held off for a while since the risk for deletion is considerable. Factors such as user rights, time since upload, metadata, and templates were discussed, and the groups came up with many suggestions that widened our view of what to consider. Taking these factors into consideration will be important if the project moves into a continuous phase with an aim to cover all current and future images on Wikimedia Commons. When criteria like this have been defined and tested for the CommonsDB project, they will likely also be useful for others that want to reuse Wikimedia Commons content in a streaming way and still want to safeguard their image selection somewhat.

Insights

The workshop gave us some good validation of our ideas and further insights to the wider community. One important outcome was that when it comes to trusting an upload, basically any extended rights were a good trust signal. Some other good trust signals that the groups came up with were watching for license templates being reviewed, if copyright information in EXIF data aligned with license templates, and if media was being reused in many places (invoking the many eyeballs principle). On the other hand, mismatches in EXIF data or files where the metadata itself is inconsistent or corrupt could be signals that these images still may need human review along with, of course, any deletion templates.

An idea for a backlog tool was also hatched. If we find matches in CommonsDB from another data provider, we can check their source to see if they have a file with higher resolution than the one on Commons and create a queue for a human reviewer to judge if the file we have should get a new version or if the file should be complemented with a new high-resolution upload.

The hackathon

While we at the previous hackathons had been hacking a bit ourselves to create prototypes on how finding similar images through CommonsDB can assist a user in the upload process, this time we instead were available for other developers looking to integrate such searches in their tools. There were two developers with related ideas. One who wants to create an interface for Wikimedia Commons focusing more on exploration and in that have an option to show similar images. While our previous use case mainly shows really similar images, thanks to the bit distance, it can be “loosened up” and experimentation with this can be done. Another developer was interested in doing similar matching as our prototypes but integrated into external upload tools rather than the upload wizard. Both of these would be very interesting, and we hope that the work continues after the hackathon.

CommonsDB contributing in other sessions

While at Wikimania, it’s almost impossible to not contribute in more places. Not only were the stickers we brought vanishingly popular, but at the Wikimedia Commons pre-conference we could also present the project and explain how image similarity techniques can be useful to the Commons community and GLAM institutions. For the impromptu Commons categorizers meetup, the introduction video was used as a walk-in-pause video, which set a joyful start to the meetup.

I open my browser, type the word “Casa” press Enter, and wait for the page to load. This is my way of checking my connection when the internet seems to be acting up. If all goes well, the first link that appears on the screen is http://es.wikipedia.org: Casa – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre. Online, most searches related to knowledge lead us to Wikipedia. I’d even go so far as to say they’re all of them.

For a long time, the platform struck me as a kind of “meta-knowledge”: a complex and abstract entity, clearly beyond the capabilities of any user.

My first real encounter with this “meta-cognitive power” took place a little over three years ago. I must admit that at first it wasn’t a pleasant or smooth experience; on the contrary, I found it extremely confusing. I’m not referring to the act of consuming the content, but rather to that of creating it. My first attempt at editing showed me that I was truly facing a complex, incomprehensible system.

But in every entertaining story, there’s a plot twist that changes the course of events. Mine has a name and wears glasses: My Friend “Wikimaster.” Her invitation and her genuine interest in getting me to give the platform a second chance—patiently explaining to me how collective creation works—led to my first effective interaction.

As I kept uploading photos, describing them, captioning them, and adding captions, I realized two things: first, that the process isn’t that difficult and that every small contribution counts; second, that I had become accustomed to immediacy, to the simplicity of fleeting results, and to the pleasure of instant gratification. On Wikipedia, things don’t work that way.

In a socio-digital environment dominated by instant gratification, collaborating on Wikipedia forces you to slow down and understand the value of permanence.

Today, after having edited, written, and proofread articles—as well as contributed photographs intended to spread knowledge rather than chase the “likes” that typically drive social media—I feel confident in saying that Wikipedia is not a metapower; it is a horizontal space where we share what we know and where, by interacting with the knowledge shared by others, we also learn. I don’t consider myself an expert, but rather an enthusiast—someone who experiments with and enjoys an ecosystem that opens doors to connect, create, and achieve.

Something that really surprised me was discovering that every meeting is guided by the Friendly Spaces Policies. At first glance, they might seem like simple rules of basic coexistence: respect for each person’s ideas and circumstances, non-discrimination, valuing others’ opinions… the usual, right? …Well, no! That’s not what we experience on a daily basis. In our daily lives, we’re used to empathy for others’ well-being being seen as an exceptional act of altruism, not as a common rule of coexistence that triggers protocols for action and response. Here, empathy isn’t an obligation, but the foundation for building the environment. It’s not the voice of the strongest that prevails, but dialogue and genuine free expression. At least, that’s what I experienced.

Under this structure designed to allow multifaceted freedom to thrive, it becomes clearer that building free knowledge is not just an academic task—it is a vision and a methodology. Here, the end does not justify the means; rather, it is the means and the methods that, step by step, build it. Thus, the final result ceases to be a static goal and becomes a living process that constantly renews, grows, and diversifies.

I recently completed the “Green Digital Skills in Wikimedia” course, organized by Wikimedians of Uruguay (WDU), where volunteers of different nationalities were able to share their knowledge. As with every Wikimedia gathering and experience, you could feel the enthusiasm for sharing, for spreading knowledge, and for helping others. So: Does this “META-KNOWLEDGE” exist? Definitely yes, but it is not a singular achievement; rather, it is a shared responsibility, shaped by every contributor—every editor.

Now I know that it is a tool within everyone’s reach and for everyone to build upon, one that is not limited to the digital realm; it is a community that facilitates and shares the wisdom that each of us already possesses. What is truly “Meta” lies in every editor who builds, click by click, a reference encyclopedia that—without claiming to be a primary source—disseminates what is closest to the truth: knowledge that is the product of a collaborative effort, which seeks to be free from individual biases because it belongs to us and is created by everyone.

How did I go from being a clumsy photo uploader to promoting inter-institutional projects (a pursuit that now has me swimming in deep, sweet waters)? I don’t know—maybe by applying what I’ve learned, or perhaps because I want everyone to see what I now see. Most likely, when you have the support of people who know that connecting, doing, and achieving are the path to follow, the road becomes smoother, and the journey is a lot of fun.

And that’s how my WikiAdventure (no longer just a story) begins.

How can I end an article that describes a beginning?

(A.— It’s paradoxical, because this adventure isn’t over—only the first few pages have been written and read. I just hope there’s enough ink and paper for what’s to come.)

A.— I won’t do that.

Oh, by the way, I’ve shared a couple of photos above; you know, for someone who lives in and enjoys the visual world, there are no good adventures without images either.

Asọmpi Okwu Narị Abụọ: Growing Igbo Wikiquote, 200 Quotes Challenge

The preservation of indigenous languages extends beyond spoken communication—it also requires creating accessible digital resources that document culture, history, and knowledge for future generations. With this goal in mind, the Igbo Wikimedians User Group organized the Asọmpi Okwu Narị Abụọ – Igbo Wikiquote 200 Quotes Challenge, a month-long campaign held from 2 June to 30 June 2026 to expand content on the Igbo-language Wikiquote.

The campaign encouraged community members to create at least 200 Wikiquote pages, making it one of the group’s focused efforts to increase freely accessible Igbo-language quotations on Wikimedia projects. At the same time, it served as a learning opportunity for new contributors who were interested in joining the Wikiquote community and improving their editing skills.

Why Wikiquote?

While Wikipedia documents encyclopedic knowledge, Wikiquote preserves the words of notable people—their speeches, memorable statements, proverbs, and expressions that have shaped society. For many indigenous languages, including Igbo, this content remains relatively limited compared to larger language communities.

The challenge was therefore designed not only to increase the number of pages on Igbo Wikiquote but also to improve the visibility of notable personalities whose quotations can inspire readers, researchers, educators, and language learners.

This event was facilitated by Onyinye Achukwu, Akwugo and Ebubechukwu1 from Igbo Wikimedians User Group, Nigeria.

Participants learned how to create new Wikiquote pages, properly format quotations, categorize entries, and contribute quality content that aligns with Wikimedia’s editing standards.

By creating new quote pages and improving existing ones, participants collectively strengthened the digital presence of the Igbo language while gaining practical experience contributing to one of Wikimedia’s lesser-edited projects.

A Month of Collaboration

Throughout June, experienced editors worked alongside newcomers, creating an environment where participants could learn by doing. The campaign emphasized consistency and quality, encouraging contributors to build a sustainable editing culture rather than simply increasing numbers.

Beyond Numbers

The impact of the challenge goes beyond statistics. Every new Wikiquote page contributes to preserving the ideas, voices, and wisdom of notable individuals in the Igbo language. Each contribution strengthens the availability of free knowledge online and ensures that future generations can access these quotations in their native language.

The campaign also reaffirmed the importance of community-led initiatives in addressing content gaps on smaller Wikimedia projects. By focusing on capacity building alongside content creation, the challenge equipped participants with skills they can continue to apply across Wikiquote and other Wikimedia platforms.

Campaign Outcome

The month-long challenge produced remarkable results, reflecting the dedication of the Igbo Wikiquote community. By the end of the campaign, participants had:

• Created 220 new Wikiquote pages
• Edited 292 pages
• Made 631 edits
• Added over 609,000 bytes of content
• Engaged 69 editors
• Uploaded 243 files to Wikimedia Commons
• Generated more than 3,360 article views

These achievements demonstrate not only an increase in content but also the growing interest in contributing to Igbo Wikiquote. The campaign successfully attracted both experienced Wikimedians and first-time Wikiquote contributors, helping to build a stronger editing community for future initiatives.

Looking Ahead

The success of the Asọmpi Okwu Narị Abụọ – Igbo Wikiquote 200 Quotes Challenge demonstrates what can be achieved when a community rallies around a common goal. As the Igbo Wikimedians User Group continues to promote indigenous language preservation through Wikimedia projects, initiatives like this provide a model for growing local-language content while empowering new contributors.

Every quote added during the campaign is more than just text on a page—it is a step toward preserving the richness of the Igbo language and ensuring that its voices remain part of the global body of free knowledge.

The Wikimania conference has a multitude of pathways to engage with Wikimedia projects and fellow Wikimedians. One such pathway is the hackathon. Having run at the Wikimania conference for years, the Hackathon provides an opportunity for the Wikimedia community to collaborate on technical projects and solve problems together.

In this blog post, we look at one of the projects worked on at the 2026 Wikimania Hackathon, a Wikidata Bias Detector. This project was created by Clair Kronk (Superraptor123), and as the name says, the goal is to look at bias in Wikidata, specifically for humans, to direct future work. This started as an early concept exploration and, by the end of the Hackathon, has moved to a beta deployment. Clair has set up a Github for this project, https://github.com/Superraptor/debias-wikidata, where you can follow the progress.

Some of the early results are very interesting and may stimulate discussion in the community. Clair would like to stress the Beta nature of the tool package, and there are still some issues that need to be overcome. One is being able to query the whole Wikidata set around humans. Currently, the dataset is too large and the queries time out. As such, the results are based on samples of 500 responses. Clair would be very appreciative if anyone could help overcome this issue (please contact Superraptor123).

With those caveats, the early results are highlighting biases found by others. For example, in the samples, men are 1.6x overrepresented (17.7% for women vs 82.3% for men). This is similar to what has been found by the Women in Red project, where only 20% of bibliographic articles on English Wikipedia are on women.

Another interesting finding is where people are born – urban vs rural locals. In the sample dataset, urban birth locations accounted for 85% of data. While according to the United Nation’s estimates – based on satellite data – 57% of people live in urban locations. There are caveats to the UN data, it is based on satellite data so the actual number may be different. However, we are likely talking in the range of 55-60% so the 85% is still well outside the error range. As Clair explained, this might not necessarily be a bias in the Wikidata, there could be cultural/economic/other reasons that people in urban locations dominate in areas of notability in general and Wikidata is just reflecting that.

This theme of outside issues affecting the data is highlighted in another finding: Iran, Egypt, China, India, and Brazil account for 18% of the world’s population but only 0.3% of people in the dataset. However, China bans access to Wikimedia projects for its population and given the local nature of who/what is added to Wikidata, this missing data, in some cases, is the result of local laws/censorship.

These early results highlight that there are biases in Wikidata when it comes to humans, but the reasons for these biases are varied and, in some cases, will need further research to understand why they are occurring. Clair’s toolkit is a great first step in examining Wikidata and its biases that can guide future work in Wikidata and it is great to see something so useful to come out of the Wikimania Hackathon.