What does it take to bring a film from an idea to the screen?

During Day 3 of Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0, delegates visited Trino Studios for an introduction to the creative and technical processes behind filmmaking.

The visit offered participants a glimpse into the different stages of film production: pre-production, production, and post-production.

During the discussion, delegates learned about the planning involved before filming begins, including casting, budgeting, and identifying suitable locations. They also explored what happens during production and the work that follows filming, such as editing, sound production, and colour grading.

One participant was particularly struck by how much work happens after filming has ended. A movie may take months or even a year to become ready for release, depending on the project and its production requirements.

The visit also revealed that the final version of a film may differ from the original script. Scenes can change, and producers and directors may need to work through different creative decisions as a project develops.

The financial side of filmmaking generated further curiosity. Discussions about the substantial investments that can go into movie production raised questions about how filmmakers recover their costs and generate revenue.

Participants considered the role of cinemas, streaming platforms, television, licensing, and other distribution arrangements in making films available to audiences and creating potential revenue streams.

Beyond the technical knowledge gained, the visit prompted an important reflection on the relationship between the creative industries and Wikimedia.

African films are more than entertainment. They can preserve histories, reflect social realities, document cultural practices, and shape how audiences understand African experiences.

The people involved in making them, the studios where they are produced, the locations featured in them, and the stories they tell are all potential subjects for responsible documentation through Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and other Wikimedia projects.

The visit therefore offered a practical reminder that opportunities for documenting African knowledge can be found in industries and spaces that may not initially appear connected to Wikimedia editing.

Exploring Contemporary African Art at Windsor Gallery

From the moving image to visual art, the bootcamp’s Day 3 excursion continued at Windsor Gallery in Lagos, where participants explored contemporary African art and the stories communicated through visual expression.

The visit provided an opportunity to appreciate the creativity behind the artworks and reflect on how artists communicate ideas, experiences, and perspectives through their work.

The visit illustrated how art can invite people to look at familiar experiences differently. A painting or other visual work can preserve memories, communicate identity, challenge assumptions, and tell stories that words alone may not fully capture.

The People Behind the Experience: Networking and Shared Learning

Beyond the sessions and excursions, Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 created space for participants to meet people with shared interests, exchange ideas, and build relationships.

For some delegates, being selected for the bootcamp was itself a meaningful milestone. One participant described the selection as a recognition of the effort invested in developing their skills and pursuing opportunities to contribute to positive change across Africa.

The experience brought together learning, collaboration, and the possibility of future connections within and beyond the Wikimedia movement. Participants also expressed appreciation for the organisers and facilitators who contributed their time and expertise, including Kolawole Oyewole, Richard Edozie, Blessing Linason, and Demilade, alongside the session facilitators and fellow delegates.

These expressions of gratitude highlighted the collective effort behind the bootcamp. A successful learning experience depends not only on the Bootcamp itself but also on the people who plan it, facilitate From Ideas to Action: Participants Shape the Future of African & Proud discussions, support participants, and create an environment where everyone can engage.

The friendships, conversations, and connections formed during the event were an important part of the experience, offering a foundation for future collaboration and continued participation in open knowledge initiatives.

Outside the formal sessions, team games and evening activities provided opportunities for delegates to relax, interact, and form new connections. These informal moments were an important part of the experience. They created room for conversations beyond the classroom, encouraged collaboration, and helped participants connect with one another in a relaxed environment.

The combination of structured learning and shared recreation demonstrated that community building happens both during formal sessions and through the everyday interactions that bring people closer together.

From Ideas to Action: Participants Shape the Future of African & Proud

From the first day, participants had been organised into different groups. On the final day, these groups were given the opportunity to present their ideas on how to promote African & Proud’s projects and how they could actively participate in the organisation’s activities.

The session was interactive, encouraging participants to share their perspectives, propose ideas, and reflect on ways to remain involved beyond the bootcamp.

The organising team took note of the suggestions and contributions shared during the presentations. This created an opportunity for participants to have their voices heard and contribute ideas that could inform future engagement and project development.

Beyond marking the end of the programme, the activity reinforced an important message: participants were not simply attending a bootcamp; they were being encouraged to become active members of a community with opportunities to contribute, collaborate, and help shape its future.

Celebrating African Culture at the Closing Dinner

The bootcamp concluded on a celebratory note with a special dinner held in honour of the participants and the shared experience.

Delegates arrived dressed in their respective native attire, bringing colour and cultural pride to the occasion. A brief cultural display provided an opportunity for participants to showcase aspects of their cultural identities, with winners recognised for their presentations.

The celebration also featured a lively game session called Lemon Lemon, which became one of the night’s memorable moments. The excitement and enthusiastic participation brought everyone together, creating an atmosphere filled with laughter, friendly competition, and shared memories.

The dinner provided a fitting opportunity to celebrate the connections formed throughout the bootcamp, appreciate the diversity represented among the delegates, and reflect on the experiences they had shared.

A Closing Message: The Journey Continues

As the Bootcamp came to a close, Linason Blessing, Community Manager at African & Proud, delivered the final address to participants. She thanked the delegates for being part of Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 and wished everyone a safe journey back to their respective destinations.

Her message also emphasised that the end of the bootcamp did not mean the end of the relationship between participants and African & Proud. She encouraged delegates to remain responsive to official emails, stay connected with the community, and actively participate in future activities and opportunities. The message was a reminder that the true value of a bootcamp lies not only in the sessions attended or the memories created but also in what participants do with the knowledge, relationships, and opportunities they gain.

As delegates prepared to return home, the hope was that the connections established during Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 would continue to grow into meaningful collaborations, stronger community participation, and new contributions to documenting African knowledge. The closing dinner marked the end of the programme, but the journey of learning, collaboration, and community building continues.

What Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 Reinforced

Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 reinforced the importance of documenting African knowledge, contributing responsibly to Wikimedia, and embracing volunteering as a pathway to personal and community growth. It highlighted opportunities for leadership, movement participation, and engagement with emerging conversations around AI governance. Through cultural visits to Trino Studios and Windsor Gallery, participants also explored how African creativity, storytelling, and heritage contribute to knowledge preservation and representation.

Overall, the bootcamp strengthened the connection between open knowledge, leadership, culture, and community impact.

Looking Ahead: Turning the Experience into Action

Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 offered participants opportunities to strengthen their Wikimedia skills, explore new ideas, engage with creative industries, and connect with a community of people committed to knowledge sharing.

The next step is to carry those lessons beyond the bootcamp. For participants, this may mean applying Wikipedia’s editorial principles, documenting overlooked African stories, developing their leadership skills, supporting fellow volunteers, or collaborating on projects that make knowledge more accessible.

For African & Proud, the experience reinforces the importance of creating spaces where young Africans can learn, exchange ideas, discover opportunities, and contribute to documenting the continent’s diverse cultures and experiences. The work of building a more inclusive knowledge ecosystem cannot be completed by one person or one event. It requires sustained participation, collaboration with knowledge holders, responsible documentation, and continued support for the people doing the work.

The experience leaves participants with a question worth carrying forward:

What knowledge, story, person, or cultural experience from your community can you help bring to the world? Because building the future of knowledge begins with the stories we choose to preserve today.

To mark the 14th birthday of Wikidata, the Wali Wikimedians Community organised a virtual birthday celebration and training session to introduce its members to translating Wikidata properties into the Waali language.

For the Wali Wikimedians Community, this special occasion was about more than cutting a birthday cake. It was an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the growth of Waali on the Wikimedia platforms and ensure that the language is represented in the global digital knowledge space for present and future generations.

The event took place on Friday, 30 October 2026, via Zoom. It brought community members together to celebrate Wikidata’s milestone while learning how to edit and translate Wikidata properties into Waali.

During the session, participants were introduced to Wikidata, its role within the Wikimedia movement, and the importance of making its content accessible in different languages. As a multilingual, free and collaborative knowledge base, Wikidata provides opportunities for people across the world to access and contribute knowledge in their own languages. The community believes that Waali should not be left behind in this growing digital knowledge ecosystem.

The practical training focused on helping members understand how to translate Wikidata properties into Waali directly on the Wikidata platform. Through this exercise, participants gained practical knowledge and skills to contribute to the platform’s multilingual development and help increase the visibility of Waali in the digital world.

To encourage continuous learning and participation, members were given an additional day to practise what they had learned by translating properties on Wikidata. This provided an opportunity to strengthen their understanding and apply their newly acquired skills beyond the training session.

One of the memorable moments of the celebration came towards the end of the session when members shared a special birthday blessing for Wikidata in Waali. In their unique and collective expression, they chanted:

“Aŋjooso, ka mine la paahɩ!”

This beautiful Waali expression conveyed their wishes and blessings for Wikidata, celebrating its achievements and expressing hope for continued growth and success.

For the Wali Wikimedians Community, the celebration was a reminder that preserving and promoting a language goes beyond speaking it. It also involves creating opportunities for that language to thrive in education, technology and the digital knowledge space.

As Wikidata celebrates another year of connecting knowledge across languages and communities, Wali Wikimedians Community remains committed to contributing to this vision by promoting Waali and encouraging more native speakers to participate in Wikimedia projects.

Happy 14th Birthday, Wikidata! Aŋjooso, ka mine la paahɩ!

From 1st to 30th November 2026, the Punjabi Wikimedians User Group is inviting all of India to take part in Wiki Loves Food 2026. It’s a national photography competition to celebrate the incredible diversity of Indian food, the traditional food culture and the richness of our culinary heritage.

Following the successful Indian editions of 2021 and 2022, Wiki Loves Food is back in 2026 with another chance for photographers, foodies and Wikimedia contributors to document and share the flavours of India with the world.

The competition is part of the international Wiki Loves Food 2026 photography campaign which is designed to showcase the food of different countries through freely licensed photographs on Wikimedia Commons.

What can you photograph?

Wiki Loves Food is keen to see photographs that illustrate the full breadth of India’s culinary heritage.

• Meals and dishes: regional thalis, traditional home cooked meals, festive food, ceremonial food and community meals.
• Street food and snacks: Chaat, local snacks, the roadside food stalls, the breakfast specialities and of course the tea.
• Sweets and desserts: Indian mithai, Bengali sandesh, the various types of traditional sweets, festive desserts and the like.
• Ingredients: Indigenous spices, pulses, traditional grains, seasonal vegetables, fruits and produce from the region.
• Food preparation: traditional methods of cooking, hand crafted recipes, traditional utensils, traditional kitchens and the whole art of food preparation.
• Markets and food culture: spice markets, vegetable markets, fish markets, local vendors and the people who keep the food culture of India alive.

Your photos will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a free licence so that people all over the world can use them in Wikipedia articles and other educational projects.

How to participate

Taking part is easy and free!

✅ Step 1: Create an account on Wikimedia Commons.
✅ Step 2: Go out and, find some interesting food from any part of India.
✅ Step 3: Upload your photos to Commons before 30 November 2026.
✅ Step 4: Add a clear description, indicate the the name of the dish, where it’s from, the ingredients

Important: You MUST upload via the campaign button for your photograph to be entered into the competition.

Prizes

A national jury will be assessing the entries on the basis of technical quality, originality, composition, cultural relevance and utility to the Wikimedia projects.

Participants will have the opportunity to win the following prizes:

• First Prize: ₹15,000
• Second Prize:  ₹12,000
• Third Prize: ₹10,000
• Fourth Prize: ₹5,000
• Fifth Prize: ₹5,000

The prizes will be gift vouchers in the amount stated. The top 5 finalists will also receive a digital certificate.

But that’s not all! The very best Indian entries will be given the chance to progress to the international round of Wiki Loves Food 2026 where they can represent India’s food heritage on the world stage.

Make sure your Commons account has a valid email address so we can contact you if you win!
Read more and join the competition here

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when we remember our war dead.

In a discussion on Bluesky of AI slop in FindMyPast’s new database I have just been answering a question about how to record war memorials and the identities and stories of those listed on them, using free-to-write and free-to-read services, as open content and open, linked, data. It would perhaps be useful to record those answers here. Without using AI.

1. Photographs

Take lots of photos—the whole memorial; each side; each panel or set of names (see the picture of my local Hamstead War Memorial, below); each sculptural element; the memorial from a distance, in its setting (like the picture of Brierley Hill memorial, above). A modern mobile phone is OK for this, if you don’t have a good camera. You may need to go back for a second visit, if one side is badly backlit and in deep shade.

Upload those photos to Wikimedia Commons, and create a category for the memorial if one does not already exist.

Transcribe the names as part of the description on Commons—this makes them searchable. If there are multiple shots in which a set of names are visible, you can transcribe for one and put a link to that from the others. See “Help Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons by transcribing small pieces of text” for guidance.

If the memorial is outside the UK, check the local law on Freedom of Panorama, in case the memorial is still in copyright, in which case skip this step.

Examples: Brierley Hill memorial on Commons; Hamstead memorial on Commons

2. WikiTree

Create a “space” page on WikiTree, the excellent free genealogy site (“space” is what they call any non-biographical page about a topic such as a memorial or cemetery; again, check first that one does not already exist).

The individual WikiTree pages of the people commemorated can then be linked to this, and vice versa, and you can create biographical pages for those commemorated, where none already exist.

Examples: Eyam memorial on WikiTree; Marsden memorial on WikiTree

Unlike most of the other wiki sites mentioned here, WikiTree is not a Wikimedia Foundation project, but is run on similar lines, by its community of contributors.

3. Wikidata

After once again checking for an existing entry, create an new item on Wikidata for the memorial.

If any of the people on the memorial are notable in Wikidata terms, check for existing items (pages) and if none exist, create and populate them, and add them to the memorial’s item. Please try to include coordinates.

Examples: Brierley Hill memorial on Wikidata; Eyam memorial on Wikidata; Hamstead memorial on Wikidata

4. OpenStreetMap

Check that the memorial is in OpenStreetMap (OSM), and if not, add it there. A simple node, or point, will usually suffice.

Examples: Brierley Hill memorial on OSM; Eyam memorial on OSM; Hamsted memorial on OSM

OSM is also not a Wikimedia Foundation project, but it too is run on similar lines by its community.

5. Join them together

Add the ID of the OSM node or way, the WikiTree “space” ID, and the Wikimedia Commons category name to the Wikidata item.

Add the Wikidata ID to the OSM object

Add the Wikidata ID to the WikiTree entry.

Add an image to the Wikidata item and WikiTree page.

Examples: see above.

6. Wikipedia

If the memorial is notable in Wikipedia terms, consider writing an article about it there.

Example: Brierley Hill memorial on Wikipedia

Conclusion

Not all of the examples above have all of the features I describe; they are works-in-progress.

If you can’t do all of the things I suggest, you can at least do some of them. All of the above sites are built by ordinary people like you, making modest but important contributions.

There is a small learning curve involved in editing each of the sites listed, but if you can use a word processor, or email software, you can quickly pick up what’s involved.

If you need help, or support, please ask—I’m happy to assist where I can, or to signpost you to local or online groups who will. You can leave a comment below, or find me on Bluesky or leave me a message on Wikipedia.

In memoriam

Remembering my relatives who fought in two world wars, especially Frank Brazier and Eric James Ray, who lost their lives.

The post Remembering War Memorials appeared first on Andy Mabbett, aka pigsonthewing..

The Language Diversity Conference 2026 made me reflect on myself as a woman in the Wikimedia movement and on my journey over the past six years.

Women in Language Diversity

For all these years, the Madurese language has grown to have three Wikimedia projects. What makes me especially proud is that women have played a significant role in bringing these projects to life, especially Madurese Wiktionary and Madurese Wikisource.

Along the way, we have organized various activities to keep our community active and connected, including training sessions, monthly meetings, and informal gatherings at cafés. Although our café meetups do not happen every month, we hold them quite regularly as a way to connect, exchange ideas, and strengthen our relationships as contributors. Beyond our local activities, the Madurese community has also participated in various initiatives organized by Wikimedia Indonesia and the wider global Wikimedia movement. Through these opportunities, we can connect with other communities, share our experiences, and bring our language and culture into broader national and international spaces.

Looking back, I realize that our contributions are not only about creating and maintaining Wikimedia projects. More than that, we take part in preserving our language, making knowledge accessible, and creating a space where our language and culture can continue to exist online.

As a Madurese woman, this journey has made me realize how meaningful it is to contribute to my own language and community. It also reminds me that women are not only participants in the Wikimedia movement, we can be builders, leaders, and the ones who help create something that will remain for future generations.

Six years later, I’m grateful to see how far we have come, and I hope we can continue building, preserving, and expanding Madurese knowledge together.

Women’s Voices at the Language Diversity Conference 

At the Language Diversity Conference, I was awarded a scholarship from the ESEAP Hub. Making me participate as one of several Wikimedians from ESEAP in the conference.

I had the opportunity to speak with several women from India, Kenya, Ghana, and Rwanda through short interviews. They shared their thoughts and experiences about the conference, offering different perspectives on what the event meant to them as women in the Wikimedia movement.

A woman from Rwanda shared her experience of mentoring new Wikimedia users. Her story made me realize how powerful women can be in encouraging other women to join and contribute to Wikimedia. Women mentors can create a more comfortable and supportive environment for newcomers, especially other women, encouraging them not only to participate but also to start writing and creating content. This reminded me that our role as women in Wikimedia is not only to contribute ourselves, but also to open doors for other women to find their confidence and voice within the movement.

Two women from Ghana and Kenya shared their experiences of contributing to free knowledge. Their stories opened my eyes to new perspectives on what contributing to Wikimedia can mean. It was my first time learning about these experiences, and I am truly grateful for the opportunity to hear their stories. They helped me realize that there are many different ways to contribute to the free knowledge movement and that every contribution can make a meaningful difference in a community.

An Indian woman shared that the conference provided a safe space for her as a woman, allowing her to feel comfortable, feel culturally connected with others, and build meaningful relationships with people who understood her experiences. Her perspective reminded me how important it is to create inclusive spaces where women feel safe, connected, and supported.

Wiki Women Lunch

At the Language Diversity Conference 2026, we also had WikiWomenLunch, a session where women shared their experiences and challenges as contributors to the Wikimedia movement.

One issue that stood out to me was that many women still struggle with technical aspects of Wikimedia, which can make them feel discouraged from contributing. This highlights the need for more extensive and accessible technical training, as well as leadership development opportunities for women. Moving forward, I hope we can expand these initiatives to help more women build their technical skills, gain confidence, and take on leadership roles within the Wikimedia movement.

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• The Wikipedia Apps team is preparing to launch Year in Review in early December. Year in Review gives app users a personalized recap of how they read and engaged with Wikipedia throughout the year. The team is looking for volunteers to help make it available in as many languages as possible. Translators can contribute through translatewiki.net. For Android, search for yir under the “Untranslated” tab, and for iOS, search for year-in-review under the “Untranslated” tab.
• The Article guidance feature that helps editors create articles that follow a Wikipedia’s policies, is now available on all Wikipedias. Administrators and interface admins can configure and expose it for editors to use via Special:CommunityConfiguration/ArticleGuidance. A configuration guide is available. Visit the project talk page to ask any questions.

Updates for editors

• Following the release of Reading Lists to all Wikipedias in September, logged-in users will soon be able to organize articles saved in their lists into customizable categories. This will enable readers to create collections and revisit saved articles based on their interests, potentially encouraging frequent visits to Wikipedia. The update will roll out to all Wikipedia users between November 9 and 16.
• The Wikipedia Apps team is preparing to launch the first of two notification experiments for English Wikipedia readers on Android who have opted in to notifications. The three-week experiment will send notifications suggesting personalized Discover reading lists which are collections of Wikipedia articles recommended based on articles the reader has previously viewed. The goal is to understand whether these recommendations help readers discover relevant content and encourage them to return to the app. No action is required, and users can manage their notification preferences in the app settings. Learn more and share feedback.
• A bug in the Global Watchlist was causing the page to fail to load for users who have unseen changes on Wikimedia Commons. The bug has now been fixed. If you temporarily removed commons.wikimedia.org from your personal Global Watchlist settings due to the bug, you can restore it there. [1]
• A new Beta feature called “Home” will be deployed to 10 Wikipedias for a limited test. This new feature aims to replace Special:Homepage for newcomers, with additional modules planned for the future to improve upon the current experience. If you want to participate in the test, please sign up. “Home” will be released to all users later this month.
• On English and Russian Wikipedias, Source Verification is now available as an experimental Suggestion for experienced editors within Suggestion Mode. It uses an LLM hosted on LiftWing to try to check whether a cited source supports the claim it’s attached to. To try it out, please see these testing instructions. If you are at another language Wikipedia and your community is interested in trying it out, please express your interest.
• View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where dates passed as blank parameters to functions in wikitext were incorrectly interpreted using the month-day-year format instead of the day-month-year format, has now been fixed. [2]

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting on 1 December 2026, hCaptcha will be required for edits made via the API by non-autoconfirmed users. If your tool, gadget, or user script makes edits on behalf of newcomer users, see how to update it.
• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new Toolforge standards committee members. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations close on 22 November 2026.
• Toolforge has introduced two new beta features. “Toolforge alerts” send email notifications when a tool becomes unavailable, returns errors, or restarts frequently. “Extended logging” makes it easier to investigate problems by providing logs for events such as job creation, deletion, and deployment failures through the toolforge logs command. Both features are opt-in and help tool maintainers become aware of and resolve problems with their tools more quickly. Maintainers can enable alerts and learn how to access extended logs. They are also encouraged to try the features and provide feedback.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• A proposal to change how we currently organize the Wikimedia Hackathon has been shared. It explores making the event more accessible to technical communities in different regions. Share your feedback on the proposal’s talk page; the deadline has been extended to November 13th.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Volume 2 | June–September 2026

Across the African Wikimedia movement, participation takes many forms. It can mean speaking confidently about Wikimedia to a potential contributor, improving the quality and visibility of an image on Wikimedia Commons, connecting Wikipedia articles to Wikidata, documenting the pronunciation of an African language, sharing community work through a Diff blog post, or making a first contribution from a smartphone.

From June to September 2026, the African Wikipedian Alliance created spaces for its members within the Anglophone and Francophone communities to build these practical skills, exchange experiences, and explore new ways of contributing through six learning sessions with 136 attendees recorded. Participants engaged with communication and advocacy, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, African language preservation, storytelling, and Wikipedia mobile editing.

Together, the sessions reflected a broader idea: building a stronger Wikimedia movement is as much about onboarding more editors, as it is about equipping those contributors with the skills, confidence, and opportunities to create, improve, preserve, connect, and share free knowledge.

Finding a Voice for Free Knowledge

AWA’s June Anglophone session explored how community members can communicate and advocate for Wikimedia more effectively. Led by Airat Abdul Rahmon, Africa Wiki Women Community Engagement Lead, the session focused on understanding audiences, simplifying complex ideas, using storytelling, and communicating with clarity and confidence.

Participants explored how to explain Wikimedia to different audiences, develop an effective elevator pitch, respond to questions around volunteering and paid work, and represent the movement as ambassadors for free knowledge. The discussion also reinforced that community contribution extends beyond editing. Contributors can help grow the movement by communicating its value and creating stronger connections with others.

Making African Knowledge More Visible

The conversation then moved from communicating about Wikimedia to improving the knowledge being created within it. In June, the Francophone community explored Wikimedia Commons through a practical session on renaming images and proposing files for quality labels, led by Aboubacar Keita of Wikimedia Guinée Conakry.

Participants learned how to locate and rename files, add multilingual descriptions, organise media, and navigate the processes for Quality, Valued, and Featured images. The session also drew attention to African images contributed through initiatives such as Wiki Loves Africa and Wiki Loves Monuments, and the importance of making these resources easier to discover, understand, and reuse.

The session highlighted the importance of documenting visual knowledge by making sure images are properly named, described, organised, and presented to improve its usefulness to others.

Connecting the Pieces of Wikimedia Knowledge

In July, the Anglophone community turned its attention to the relationship between Wikipedia and Wikidata through a practical session on Duplicity, led by Chibuike Ezenwanne of the Igbo Wikimedians User Group.

Participants explored how to identify Wikipedia articles without corresponding Wikidata items, match articles with existing items, create missing items, and connect the two platforms correctly. Using English and Igbo examples, the session also highlighted the importance of strengthening local-language Wikimedia projects and prioritising quality as communities expand their contributions.

The sessions overarching goal was to help participants see how seemingly small connections can strengthen the wider Wikimedia knowledge ecosystem. A Wikipedia article and a Wikidata item may serve different purposes, but linking them helps make knowledge more connected, structured, and reusable across projects.

Giving African Languages a Digital Voice

For the Francophone community, July brought the opportunity to explore a different form of knowledge preservation through Lingua Libre, with Konan N’Da N’Dri of Wikimedia Côte d’Ivoire.

The session introduced contributors to recording pronunciations and documenting spoken languages, with particular attention to the preservation of African languages. Participants explored how recordings can be reused across Wikimedia projects, how to create speaker profiles, document regional variations, and contribute languages that remain underrepresented online.

The discussion placed language preservation within the broader work of building a more representative digital knowledge ecosystem. African languages carry histories, identities, and knowledge that are often poorly represented online. Creating spaces where communities can record and contribute their own voices is another way of ensuring that this knowledge becomes part of the freely accessible digital record.

Turning Community Work into Stories

By September, AWA’s learning sessions shifted toward another important part of community work: documenting and sharing what happens after an activity takes place.

The Anglophone community explored “From Activities to Stories: How to Write an Engaging Diff Post” with Ramatu Haliru, Network Lead of WUGN-Kaduna. Participants learned how to turn community activities into stories that others can understand and connect with, from creating stronger titles and introductions to organising the body of a post, selecting images, adding links and tags, and properly attributing media.

The session also included a demonstration of preparing and publishing a Diff post. The takeaway for participants was that community work does not have to end when an event closes, an activity happening in one community, followed by a well-told story can allow its lessons and impact to travel much further.

Documentation creates another opportunity to share experiences, highlight contributions, and help others discover the work taking place across Wikimedia communities.

Making Contribution More Accessible

The September Francophone session brought the learning series to an important question of access: What happens when someone wants to contribute but does not have regular access to a computer?

Led by Mayéna Stephanie Kanakatom of Wikimedia Togo, the session introduced participants to contributing through the Wikipedia mobile application. Participants explored account creation, navigating the app, making simple edits and corrections, adding references, working with images and captions, and using suggested edits.

The session also created space for experienced contributors to share their own experiences with mobile contribution. During the demonstration, Douti, a first-time user of the mobile app, made a first contribution. The session also addressed practical considerations such as connectivity, Wi-Fi, and contributing with limited access to devices.

The experience was a reminder that access to Wikimedia does not have to look the same for everyone. Sometimes, creating a pathway to participation starts with meeting people where they are and making the tools available to them easier to use.

From Learning New Skills to Expanding Participation

Across the six sessions, a common thread emerged. The skills may have been different, but each was designed to broaden the participation pathways into Wikimedia.

Communication helps contributors speak about free knowledge with confidence. Better Commons practices help make African visual knowledge more visible. Wikidata connections help strengthen the structure of information across projects. Lingua Libre creates opportunities to preserve African languages and spoken knowledge. Storytelling helps communities make their work visible beyond the people who participated in it. And mobile editing helps lower some of the barriers to contribution.

For AWA, the work continues with the same goal: supporting African Wikimedians with the skills and opportunities to create, improve, preserve, connect, and share free knowledge. Join the AWA community to take part in upcoming learning sessions and activities, connect with fellow Wikimedians, and continue contributing to Africa’s free knowledge ecosystem.

The Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0, which was organised by African & Proud, which is led by the two Co founders Richard Edozie and Kolawole Oyewole the Bootcamp  unfolded through interactive learning sessions, practical Wikimedia training, conversations about volunteering and leadership, team games, and visits to creative spaces in Lagos, Nigeria.

The bootcamp brought together young people passionate about knowledge sharing, community development, and creating meaningful change across Africa. For participants, it was an opportunity not only to learn new skills but also to connect with fellow Wikimedians, reflect on their contributions, and discover how their interests and experiences could help make African knowledge more visible and accessible.

From understanding Wikipedia’s editorial policies to exploring Nigerian filmmaking and contemporary art, Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 demonstrated that promoting open knowledge goes beyond editing articles. It also involves understanding the people, cultures, institutions, and creative industries whose stories deserve to be documented.

Building the Future of Knowledge: African Youth and Knowledge Equity

The first day of the bootcamp opened with an interactive team activity, Beat the Internet: What Do We Know That the Internet Doesn’t?, led by Kolawole Oyewole, Co-founder of African & Proud.

The game challenged delegates to think beyond the information already available online and explore the wealth of knowledge held within their communities. Through questions about local languages, traditions, histories, cultures, and lived experiences, participants reflected on the many African stories that remain undocumented or underrepresented in digital spaces.

The activity encouraged friendly competition while raising an important question: How can we make the internet more representative of the communities and experiences that shape our world?

It also reinforced the importance of local knowledge holders. Communities possess valuable information about their histories, traditions, languages, and identities, but that knowledge does not always find its way into digital repositories.

For Wikimedians, this presents an opportunity to work with communities to document, preserve, and share knowledge that might otherwise remain inaccessible to a wider audience.

The day continued with a session led by Mr Kayode Yusuf, titled “Building the Future of Knowledge: African Youth, Wikimedia, and the Movement for Knowledge Equity.”

The session explored the role of African youth in shaping the future of knowledge through Wikimedia and the broader movement for knowledge equity. Participants were encouraged to reflect on their responsibilities as contributors to a global knowledge ecosystem and consider how their involvement could help address gaps in the representation of African perspectives.

For some delegates, the discussion extended beyond the familiar principles of Wikimedia participation. The conversation around leadership and sustainable impact offered an opportunity to think more deeply about how young people can position themselves to contribute meaningfully to their communities over time.

The central message was clear: creating a more inclusive internet requires deliberate participation, collaboration, and a commitment to sharing knowledge from perspectives that have historically received less attention.

Understanding Wikipedia: Beyond Adding Information

An important part of building a stronger Wikimedia community is ensuring that contributors understand the principles that guide the content they create.

During the Day 1 learning sessions, participants explored Wikipedia’s core content policies, including notability, verifiability, reliable sources, and Neutral Point of View (NPOV).

The facilitator who is also a participant in the person of  Melody Idoghor made the session practical and interactive by encouraging participants to work through real editing scenarios rather than simply memorising policy definitions.

The discussions highlighted the distinction between notability and popularity, the importance of supporting statements with reliable sources, and the need to present information fairly and neutrally.

These principles are essential to creating trustworthy Wikipedia articles. Information may be interesting or widely discussed, but that alone does not establish whether it belongs in an encyclopaedia. Contributors must also consider the available evidence, the quality of their sources, and the way information is presented.

As the facilitator reflected, good Wikipedia editing is not simply about adding information; it is about understanding what can be supported, verified, and presented neutrally.

The sessions equipped participants with a stronger foundation for making responsible contributions to Wikipedia and reinforced the importance of evidence-based knowledge sharing.

Beyond Giving Back: Understanding the True Value of Volunteering

Volunteering is central to the Wikimedia movement. Across communities, volunteers contribute their time, skills, and energy to make knowledge freely available to everyone.

At Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0, this familiar idea was explored from another perspective by a volunteer Andikan Efiok Eduok   during a session titled “Beyond Giving Back: Understanding the True Value of Volunteering.”

The session encouraged all participants to think about volunteering not only as an opportunity to serve others but also as a pathway to personal and professional growth.

Through volunteering, people can acquire new skills, build practical experience, develop meaningful relationships, discover opportunities, and become better equipped to contribute to their communities.

This perspective offered an important reminder for emerging Wikimedians: while community work requires commitment and generosity, it can also create opportunities for learning, confidence-building, networking, and leadership development.

The value of volunteering, therefore, extends beyond what volunteers give. It also includes what they learn, the relationships they build, and the people they become through the process.

For Afroyanga bootcamp bringing together young people with different experiences and ambitions, this conversation was particularly relevant. Sustaining participation in open knowledge communities requires creating environments where volunteers can contribute meaningfully while continuing to develop their abilities.

Understanding the Wikimedia Movement: Why Your Contribution Matters

As the bootcamp progressed, delegates also explored how their individual contributions fit into the wider Wikimedia movement.

Mr Ayokanmi Oyeyemi facilitated a session titled “Understanding the Wikimedia Movement: Why Your Contribution Matters.”

The session examined the importance of understanding the movement beyond individual editing activities, with insights into harnessing global opportunities, remaining relevant within the Wikimedia ecosystem, and making meaningful contributions.

For participants, these lessons extended beyond Wikimedia. They offered useful reflections on personal growth, leadership, positioning, and the importance of recognising opportunities to create impact in different areas of life.

Being part of a global movement means more than participating in individual projects. It also involves understanding the broader ecosystem, building relationships, identifying opportunities to learn, and finding ways to contribute to shared goals.

The discussion encouraged delegates to consider how they could continue developing their skills and strengthening their involvement beyond the bootcamp.

Exploring Governing Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Public Knowledge

Learning at Afroyanga Bootcamp 3.0 was not limited to Wikimedia policies and movement discussions.

Samuel Adedokun facilitated an interactive session on AI governance, introducing participants to conversations around artificial intelligence and the importance of considering how emerging technologies are governed and used.

The session added another dimension to the bootcamp’s learning experience, encouraging participants to engage with issues shaping the digital environment in which open knowledge communities operate.

As the bootcamp progressed, participants had the opportunity to deepen their understanding of Wikidata through an interactive session facilitated by Chinonso Chidi 

The session introduced delegates to Wikidata, exploring what it is, how its structured data is organised, and the gadgets and tools available to support contributions. Participants also explored different Wikidata interfaces, gaining practical insights into how information can be added, managed, and accessed on the platform.

The learning went beyond theory. Delegates edited Wikidata items and experimented with queries using the Wikidata Query Service and the Wikidata Query Builder.

These hands-on activities gave participants an opportunity to explore how structured data can be used to retrieve information, identify knowledge gaps, and make connections between different items in the Wikimedia ecosystem.

The session was highly interactive, allowing participants to learn by doing, explore the available tools, and develop a better understanding of how Wikidata supports the organisation and discovery of free knowledge.

At the Wikimedia CEE Meeting in Cluj-Napoca in September, I opened my talk by asking the room a question. Who here has heard of Western Armenian? A fair number of hands went up. Who knew about it two years ago? Fewer. Five years ago? Fewer still. Ten years ago? The hands came down slowly, one by one, until there were almost none left.

Then I introduced myself properly. Western Armenian is one of the two standard forms of modern Armenian. It is the diaspora one, spoken across Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Greece, France, Argentina, Canada, the United States and so many more. No country administers it. It is not an official language anywhere; it has no ministry and no national broadcaster, and it received its own ISO language code, hyw, only in 2018. Its Wikipedia launched in 2019. Before that, our articles lived inside Armenian Wikipedia with a tag banner. Our user group has around forty-five regular editors spread across a dozen cities, and we have never had a physical office.

That took about ninety seconds, and I had not yet made a single point.

If you represent a large chapter, you say its name and the room already knows what you are, what you do, and roughly what you are about to ask for. You begin at zero. I begin at ninety seconds, at every coffee break, in every first email, every single time. That is the tax for being a small community. It is also very close to the tax for being young in this movement, where you spend your first few minutes establishing that you belong in the room at all. The same gap, arrived at for two different reasons. My talk was about both.

Why small wikis carry more than their size suggests

Roughly half of the web whose language can be identified is in English. Spanish and German follow at about six percent each. There are around seven thousand living languages in the world, and only a few hundred have any meaningful presence online. There are ±345 Wikipedia language editions.

This matters more now than it did ten years ago, because the systems that increasingly decide what people find – search engines, translation tools, and the newer generation of AI models – all learn from what already exists in the open. A language that is not there is not neutrally absent. It is invisible to the tools that are becoming everyone’s first point of contact with knowledge.

For a large language, Wikipedia is one resource among millions. Let’s be completely honest, nobody’s understanding of English depends on Wikipedia. For a language like ours, whatever the community builds is plausibly the largest structured, openly licensed body of text that exists in that language anywhere. Not the largest Wikipedia in the language, the largest anything open source really.

Western Armenian Wikipedia now holds more than ±15,100 articles. That is more than Maltese, an official language of the European Union, and more than several other state languages. Around forty-five people maintain it; none of us were appointed by anyone, and between us we are effectively deciding how this language will be represented to machines for a long time to come.

I say that not to boast about the number, but because volume is a poor way to measure any of this. A stateless language can out-produce a state language precisely because the wiki is the only thing it has.

What I got wrong for nine years

In 2017 I gave my first Wikimedia talk, at Wikimania in Montreal. I was eighteen. I ended it by asking the movement to put more faith in young people and to trust them at higher levels. My evidence was that I had written 445 Western Armenian articles and was only eighteen years old. People were kind about it, and nothing in particular happened, and within a year I had drifted out of the movement almost entirely.

For a long time I explained that by saying I had no structure. That is not true, and it is not fair. I worked inside Wikimedia Armenia’s Western Armenian programme, which ran the Wikicamps, and a camp is how I entered this movement in the first place. I had colleagues and an affiliation.

What I did not have was anywhere to make decisions from. A programme inside a chapter is a programme, however well it is run. It can host a language, but it cannot be one.

So the thing that was missing was never enthusiasm, and it was never belonging either, but it was agency. Our Wikipedia launched in 2019, our user group was recognised in 2020, and I came back within months. Not because anyone persuaded me, and not because I had matured, but because there was finally somewhere for the work to go.

The part that is not about how I felt

Before recognition, approaching other affiliates was not difficult; it was close to impossible. I was one person with an unfamiliar language and no standing, asking busy organisations for their time, and most of the time there was no reply. That was not rudeness; there simply was nothing on my side of the email for anyone to evaluate.

This year we approached seven affiliates cold. Three of those projects are running this autumn. Nothing about us became more interesting in the meantime. We did not grow significantly; I did not get better at writing emails. We just became easier to say yes to.

The pattern is larger than one community. The Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Insights research has found that contributors aged 18 to 24 are now the largest single group of active editors, and that a substantial majority of newcomers are under 35. Most of the people doing the work are young. Look at who sits on the boards, the committees and the working groups, and you see something different.

How you can help

The best question I received in Cluj was the simplest one: how can we help?

If you have been in this movement a long time, find one young Wikimedian or one representative of a small affiliate this week. Ask them what they are trying to build, and come back with something concrete. An idea, an introduction, an offer. Not encouragement, and not a link to a grant page.

And if you want to see what this looks like when it is built deliberately rather than left to chance, the CEE Youth Group selected the host for its meeting later this month through an open bid run by its own young volunteers, with published criteria and a documented decision; Wikimedia Serbia is hosting in Belgrade. See more details about that here.

Listen to the ones you are not used to listening to. I promise you will learn more than you expected.

A recording of the talk is available on Wikimedia Commons. You can find it here.

One of the ultimate goals of the Wikimedia movement is to preserve and share knowledge freely, without reservation or intimidation. To further this mission, representatives from the movement are frequently invited to take part in wider advocacy gatherings. The International Civic Forum (ICF) is one such prominent platform that I had the opportunity to attend last November (2025).

Hosted by the International Civil Society Centre—a Berlin-based organisation that supports civil society sectors worldwide—the ICF is an annual global gathering where civil society leaders discuss pressing challenges, explore strategic approaches, and seek opportunities for collaboration.

The 2025 edition took place in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand, at Thammasat University’s Tha Prachan campus—a historic site central to the country’s 1973 uprising and 1976 massacre. Held alongside International Civil Society Week (the world’s largest civil society gathering, co-hosted by CIVICUS and the Asia Democracy Network), the forum focused on the theme: “Advancing Rights Together: Shaping Strategies in the Face of Aligned Opposition”.

To provide some context before sharing my key takeaways, a central concept discussed throughout the event was the rise of “anti-rights movements”—groups or campaigns that actively work to roll back human rights, particularly targeting marginalised communities such as LGBTQ+ people and migrants.

Participants noted that anti-rights actors have grown increasingly sophisticated. They frequently frame their campaigns around family values, cultural protection, and zero-sum arguments (such as pitting trans rights against women’s rights). Furthermore, they combine multiple strategies in the digital sphere, relying heavily on mis- and disinformation to push their narratives.

To counter such a well-coordinated movement, the forum agreed that civil society must respond with equally multifaceted approaches. One tactic that resonated strongly with what Wikimedians do best is knowledge sharing and digital resilience. Within our projects, we can contribute by rigorously documenting the actions and impacts of these movements, while applying strong editorial standards to ensure that public information remains verifiable, neutral, and grounded in reality.

During the forum, participants explored counter-strategies across three main themes: digital governance, network and coalition-building, and narrative shaping.

Even when broader civic spaces feel distant from our day-to-day editing, civil rights matter deeply to the free knowledge movement. Protecting open civic space and defending free, reliable information go hand in hand.

I have explored our movement and found that there are several approaches that resonated with these proposed approaches. For example, the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC), a global policy, sets a zero-tolerance baseline of acceptable behaviour and anti-harassment for all online and offline Wikimedia projects and spaces. Furthermore, the movement focuses on empowering marginalised people to claim their space in the digital world through various initiatives, such as #WomeninScience content campaign in Indonesia, Wikipedia’s silver jubilee celebration for indigenous people in the Philippines and out-of-school learners in Thailand, and South Korean community contributions supporting neurodivergent editors in the regional gathering.

I believe that even simple community guidelines, such as “Assume Good Faith”, help foster the empathy and support society needs to defend civil rights. 

Finally, my participation in this insightful forum would not have been possible without the generous support of Wikimedia Deutschland, the ESEAP Hub, and Wikimedia Thailand.

29/10/2026-04/11/2026

Mapping

• The iD tagging schema v7.3.0 was released, bringing new features to iD, GoMap!!, EveryDoor, and other editors. It includes several new, better icons. A number of new structural definitions are now available for editing software. Presets now state, for example, that nodes within power=line are more likely to be power=tower than, for example, waterway=waterfall. Information about more relation roles was also added. Note that editing software needs to be updated to use this new info. Also included were many other improvements, new presets for railway=platform_edge and more. Many icon improvements, bugfixes, tweaks and documentation improvements. 151 changes in total. Thanks to all contributors!

Mapping campaigns

• Tykayn is inviting people on Mastodon to contribute to the France Project of the Month (Projet du Mois) on schools . There are 9,900 schools left to be added to OSM in the France metropolitan area, and 45,000 schools have been recorded by OSM contributors since the project began in 2025.

Community

• jfd553 has described, in his OSM diary, two years of mapping natural features around the Icefields Parkway in Alberta. It was possible to add more details with recent aerial imagery and revise previous CanVec imports. The diary links to a short video that shows an animated time-lapse OSM map that illustrates the progression of edits over this two-year journey.

Local chapter news

• The OpenStreetMap community held ► its Hackweekend in Berlin on 24 and 25 October 2026, the largest so far with 25 participants. Topics included embroidered OSM maps, LiDAR scan puzzles and a mobile redesign of the BBBike Extract Service.

Events

• Geomob has announced its upcoming meetings: Lisbon on 18 November 2026 (venue to be confirmed), Berlin on 25 November 2026 at UP42 (Ohlauer Str. 43), Bristol on 24 February 2027 at The RobinHood Pub and Berlin on 3 March 2027. The first Geomob Bristol will be held in conjunction with OSGeo:UK. It is worth noting that the event will be streamed online and will serve as a trial run for FOSS4G 2027, which is due to take place in Bristol from 23 to 29 August 2027.

• The organisers of Geomob tooted on their meeting held on 1 October in Berlin, at which six speakers presented innovative geodata projects including an open-source mapping platform, AI-assisted indoor mapping, cost-effective traffic light monitoring using dashcams, AI-based geospatial data analysis and the detection of dead trees using drone imagery, for which Sarah Habershon received the audience award.

• On Saturday 7 November, Christopher Beddow talked ► at itWikiCon 2026 about photomapping and fotoshi, a new app that lets you link photos to features on OpenStreetMap. Photos are distributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence but their use is permitted for the purpose of improving OpenStreetMap.

Education

• Fränze Kellig reported ► that the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering had approved FOSSGIS’s funding application, enabling the organisation to establish an OpenStreetMap training programme. The first pilot courses will begin in January 2027, with FOSSGIS currently testing and refining the training modules with initial groups.

• rphyrin attended the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Global Validator Training Session 1 on 29 October 2026 and learned how to use JOSM’s Extrude tool to create complex building geometries more easily.

Maps

• David Westerhoff has created a map showing where you can travel by bus and train across Germany within a selected time frame. You can also combine several starting points to find, for example, a meeting point or place of residence. The base map is based on OpenStreetMap data (OpenFreeMap), whilst the timetables come from GTFS.de (DELFI). The calculations are carried out directly in the browser.

• relytworks has made Printed Canyon, a browser-based tool that transforms OpenStreetMap streets, waterways and parks, alongside Overture Maps building footprints, into city map posters and 3D-printable (STL/3MF) city models, as well as GPX tracks into 3D terrain models.

OSM in action

• ^[1] MIYADAIKU (Oyasumi-Gamedev) developed a tool that automatically generates manga background illustrations using OpenStreetMap data. Users can change the location and viewpoint, as well as adjust effects and line thickness. Perhaps the day when OpenStreetMap appears in manga credits is not far away.

• neketguy is developing an art project to create an interactive 3D map of Kyiv using OpenStreetMap data and elevation data from the World Resources Institute. Some landmark 3D models are also created manually using photographic references.

• Raffael Meyer has released vlcbici, a web app that helps plan door-to-door trips with València’s Valenbisi bike sharing. It reads live station data from the city’s open data portal, picks a pickup station with bikes and a return station with free docks, and routes the walk, the ride and the final walk using OSRM on OSM data. A CyclOSM layer shows the cycling infrastructure. The source code is available under the MIT licence.

Open Data

• Isometric Bielsko-Biała is a live pixel-art map of 456 km² of southern Poland built from OSM and Polish open data (GUGiK LiDAR and LoD2). OSM supplies the ground, the ~39k buildings newer than the LoD2 data, the road graph for a traffic microsimulation, the rail graph for timetable trains, aerialways, lamps and trails. leaf_type decides the species of 1 million LiDAR-detected trees.

• Marcelo Medina has created three tools that combine data from the 2024 Bolivian census with OpenStreetMap data. The first answers the question of where to start a business in the Cochabamba Department, the ‘2024 Census Atlas of the Cochabamba Department’ displays census data broken down by municipality, zone, neighbourhood and block, and the third lets you find nearby businesses and services.

Software

• Nikandr Surkov’s phone app BlockMap, built on the open-source Arnis engine, turns any place into a playable Minecraft world. A new page shows, on central Ubud (Bali), what OpenStreetMap’s roads and buildings, Overture buildings, ESA WorldCover land cover, canopy heights and terrain each add to the world.

• Simon Legner built DinoData, an OpenStreetMap tag editor inspired by Wikidata’s editing interface.

• Gomal Amin has developed OpenHVRA, a hazard, vulnerability and risk assessment tool, powered by OpenStreetMap data.

Programming

• Jonathon Ready demonstrated how he optimised the compact AI model Finch through supervised training and reinforcement learning so that it can answer questions about locations using OpenStreetMap data entirely offline on a smartphone. In a benchmark he developed himself, comprising 100 travel-related questions, Finch achieved the same answer quality as Gemini 3.8 Flash, provided verifiable source references significantly more often, and required only around 782 MB of memory on an iPhone 16 Pro, whilst the experiments also demonstrate how AI models can exploit vulnerabilities in automated evaluation systems.

• The developers at Voygr are testing six AI language models to see whether they can reconstruct San Francisco without access to maps or the internet, using only coordinates. By comparing 41,526 points with OpenStreetMap data they demonstrated that whilst the best models correctly identify around 86 per cent of the city’s area and well-known geographical features, they largely fail to identify the exact course of the streets, even with greater computational effort.

• The Leaflet GeoSearch maintainers released version 5.2.0 on 27 October. It added an OpenGeocoding provider for address autocomplete and reverse geocoding using OpenStreetMap and other open data. This release also fixed submitting search results without coordinates. The hosted API requires a key; its geocoding engine is source-available, not open source.

• Simon Legner compared several existing OSM data formats, including Level0L, JOSM, and OsmChange, and explored what OSM data might look like in TOML (Tom Preston-Werner’s ‘obvious minimal language’ configuration file format).

Releases

• Another month, another recap of changes to the openstreetmap website. Since the last there have been a number of small interface fixes, a first look into reducing certain inefficient database queries, and a continuation of the work around fixing issues flagged by the error monitoring tool.

• Version 2.0.0-beta.1 of Leaflet has been released, introducing full tree-shaking support so applications only have to bundle the features they use. As a result a map with a tile layer now requires just 25.6 kB gzipped, down from 38 kB.

Did you know that …

• … you can set reminders for OpenStreetMap notes using NotesReminderBot? You can also explore other OSM-related bots on the wiki.

OSM in the media

• Bastian Greshake Tzovaras reported how the State of the Map LatAm conference went and why it is important, for the German magazine Amerika21.

Other “geo” things

• Kieran Healy analysed New York City’s 311 service requests and complaints data from 2022 to 2025, categorised them by neighbourhood and complaint type, and visualised the results on a map.

• UNESCO is launching a new comic book on the mangroves of Latin America and the Caribbean, Las visiones del manglar (the visions of mangroves), which was presented during the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October 2026. The comic, in Spanish, combines illustrations, storytelling and scientific research to raise awareness of mangrove conservation, in connection with a UNESCO project.

• The BBC reported that the telephone box at Dunsop Bridge, in the Ribble Valley, Lancashire, was the 100,000th telephone kiosk installed in Great Britain. It is considered a nationally significant kiosk because it stands near one of the claimed geographical centres of Great Britain.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
🇪🇸	Madrid	TomTom, Edificio Aqua, Calle Agustín de Foxá 4	State of the Map España 2026 (SotMes 2026)	2026-11-06 - 2026-11-07
🇫🇷	Angers	L’Arrière Train, 3 rue de Frémur, Angers	Angers Rencontre mensuelle OpenStreetMap	2026-11-06
🇮🇳	Bengaluru	Sanjay Nagar	OSM Bengaluru Mapping Party	2026-11-07
🇦🇹	Salzburg	HTL Itzling	Maker Days Salzburg	2026-11-07
🇮🇹		Angera	Mapathon @ Angera	2026-11-07
			Mapathon	2026-11-08
🇩🇰	København	Cafe Bevar’s	OSMmapperCPH	2026-11-08
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-11-09
🇹🇼	臺北市	MozSpace Taipei	OpenStreetMap x Wikidata Taipei #94	2026-11-09
🇺🇸	Salt Lake City	Woodbine Food Hall	OSM Utah Monthly Map Night	2026-11-10
🇩🇪	Magdeburg	Netz39 e.V. , Leibnizstraße 32, 39104 Magdeburg	OSM Stammtisch Magdeburg	2026-11-10
🇩🇪	Hamburg	“Variable”, Karolinenstraße 23	Hamburger Mappertreffen	2026-11-10
🇬🇧	City of Westminster	The Volunteer pub	London pub meet-up	2026-11-10
🇺🇸	San Jose	Online	South Bay Map Night	2026-11-10
🇩🇪		temporärhaus	OSM-Stammtisch Ulm/Neu-Ulm	2026-11-10
			iD Community Chat	2026-11-11
🇨🇭	Zürich		192. OSM-Stammtisch Zürich	2026-11-11
🇩🇪	München	Echardinger Einkehr	Münchner OSM-Treffen	2026-11-11
			OSM US Mappy Hour: Mapping Route 66 Past & Present	2026-11-11
🇨🇿	Olomouc	Přírodovědecká fakulta Univerzity Palackého	Olomoucký listopadový mapathon	2026-11-12
🇩🇪	Berlin	Neumanns	221. OSM-Stammtisch Berlin-Brandenburg	2026-11-12
🇫🇷	Tours	Étape 84	[Tours] Rencontre locale de novembre 2026	2026-11-12
🇩🇪	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen Bochum	2026-11-12
🇮🇳	Kottayam	Kottayam, Kerala	State of the Map Kerala (SoTM Kerala)	2026-11-14 - 2026-11-15
🇮🇪	Dublin	4 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin, D08 XY00	OpenStreetMap Ireland AGM - 2026	2026-11-14
🇮🇳	New Delhi	South Delhi	OSM Delhi Mapping Party No.34 (South Zone)	2026-11-15
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-11-16
			Missing Maps London Mid-Month for Advanced Mappers (no training provided) (Online) [eng]	2026-11-17
🇫🇷	Lyon	Tubà	Réunion du groupe local de Lyon	2026-11-17
🇩🇪	Chemnitz	Kaffeesatz, Chemnitz	OSM-Stammtisch Chemnitz	2026-11-17
🇩🇪	Bonn	Dotty’s	206. OSM-Stammtisch Bonn	2026-11-17
🇩🇪	Berlin	Online	FOSSGIS AG OSM und Outdoor	2026-11-17
🇩🇪		Online	Lüneburger Mappertreffen (online)	2026-11-17
🇬🇧		Mott MacDonald Offices	Mott MacDonald GIS Day Mapathon [18/10/2026]	2026-11-18
🇬🇧	Manchester		Pegasus Group Mapathon Charity Day	2026-11-18
🇺🇸		Cal Poly Humboldt Library 121	Cal Poly Humboldt GIS Day Mapathon	2026-11-18
🇩🇪	Karlsruhe	Schwarzer Kater	Stammtisch Karlsruhe	2026-11-18
🇨🇿	Praha	Kanceláře Lékařů bez hranic - Qubix	Pražský GeoWeek mapathon s Lékaři bez hranic	2026-11-19
			GeoWeek Luxembourg Mapathon [FR/EN] - Hybrid	2026-11-19
🇧🇪	Gent	Gemeenschappelijke ruimte Wijgaard	Meetup in Gent	2026-11-19
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2026-11-20
🇬🇧	Leicester	University of Leicester	Friends of MSF Leicester Mapathon	2026-11-20
🇫🇷	Metz	Espace Arob@se - Metz	Atelier OpenStreetMap Metz	2026-11-21
🇫🇮	Espoo	Aalto-University, Space 21.	OSM Suomi 2026	2026-11-21
🇩🇪		Magrathea Laboratories e.V.	1. OSM Stammtisch Fulda	2026-11-22
			CartONG : Mapathons en ligne 2026-2027	2026-11-23
🇨🇿	Brno	Univerzitní kampus Bohunice, Kamenice 753/5, Brno,	Listopadový brněnský Missing Maps Mapathon na Ústavu botaniky a zoologie	2026-11-23
🇬🇧		Llanfairfechan Library	Mapwyr Cymru: Mapathon Gogledd Cymru #2 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿	2026-11-23
🇩🇪	Stadtgebiet Bremen	Online und im Hackerspace Bremen	Bremer Mappertreffen	2026-11-23

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

From October 23–25, a hundred LGBT+ knowledge enthusiasts from over 30 different countries gathered in Montréal, Québec, Canada, for Queering Wiki 2026. Organized by Wikimedia LGBT+ and Wikimedia Canada, funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, and sponsored by Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia Deutschland, this conference marked the first in-person global gathering of LGBT+ Wikimedians and allies, following virtual Queering Wiki events held annually from 2022–2025.

Programming and activities

The QW2026 program kicked off with a Culture Crawl, offering a guided bus tour with information about the host city’s rich LGBT+ history. Attendees then participated in three days of sessions, including keynotes, lightning talks, posters, and presentations in three tracks: Knowledge Without Borders, Queer Histories, and Queer Futures. Sessions were offered in English, Spanish, and French, with live translation and transcription available via a smartphone app.

A keynote from Constance Crompton, the director of the Humanities Data Lab at the University of Ottawa, introduced the Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada (LGLC) project and its intersection with Wikipedia and Wikidata in making archival information available online.

During the event, the Queering Wiki 2026 Challenge encouraged participants to create and improve articles and photos about queer history in Québec, as well as the QW2026 conference itself. Baby Globe plushies were awarded to two winners at the closing ceremony, with the Baby Globe mascot also making an appearance.

Safety and access considerations

Given the threats to LGBT+ community members throughout the world, safety for QW2026 attendees was a top priority during the event. The conference organizers followed the Wikimedia events safety and security protocols. The event venue was not publicly announced prior to the conference, bag checks were conducted at the entrances to the session areas, and Trust and Safety team members were present throughout. Color-coded lanyards highlighted T&S staff, as well as attendees who did not want their photos taken.

Scholarships were granted to cover travel and accommodations for select attendees. Though every continent save Antarctica was represented at the conference, travel was a challenge for some, and fifteen prospective attendees were denied visas. “The blanket refusal of visas to all the delegates from Africa by the Canadian government cast a big dark cloud on the conference,” said Bisi Alimi, executive director of Wikimedia LGBT+. “Free knowledge is a collective human endeavor, and an act of exclusion based on region of birth is nothing but discriminatory and disgraceful.”

Participant experiences

Sebastian Flores (he/him), a member of Wikimedia Chile, WikiProyecto LGBT+, and the Core Organizing Team for Wikimanía 2027, said that what he enjoyed most at QW2026 was “the opportunity to share my experiences with other users—particularly regarding the campaigns and activities I’ve been involved in over the last few years—and to learn about interesting projects and ideas that are helping to increase the visibility of LGBT+ communities worldwide. It was also wonderful to meet many people (including some wiki-friends!) in person, with whom I had previously only interacted virtually.”

Michele Jones Pérez (she/her), a learning and development officer for Wikimedia LGBT+, said that the conference “gave me the opportunity to connect with LGBTQ+ Wikimedia activists from so many countries. Meeting people who shared my struggles around visibility gave me hope and a powerful sense of community.”

Ege Atacan Doğan (he/him), a Wikidata editor from Turkey who now lives in Germany and is active in WikiProject Ontology, said he “was pleasantly surprised at the wide variety of skills and networking opportunities in this conference. With a great social environment, it was really easy to find people to collaborate with. The majority of my work starts now, with the seeds having been planted in the conference!” Ege also expressed regret that those whose visas were rejected were unable to attend the conference.

Kamila Ś. (they/them), a nonbinary Wikignome from Warsaw, Poland, said that they had a great experience at QW2026, their first in-person Wikipedia-related event. “The fact that I was surrounded by queer people (and probably allies) with the same goal and enthusiasm about Wikipedia as a source of open knowledge was also something miraculous,” they said. Kamila “loved talking to such different people in the breaks and learning about the situation on ‘their’ Wikipedia, in their countries, etc., giving me some ideas for plwiki,” the Polish-language edition of Wikipedia; that project was the subject of Kamila’s talk at the conference. They also loved seeing people from different generations “who seemingly refuse to be as conformist as so many people I’ve seen”.

Resources and future plans

Photos, videos, and presentations from QW2026 are available on Commons. Follow the Wikimedia LGBT+ user group for more information about our work.

Semantic MediaWiki 7.4.0 released

November 2, 2026

Semantic MediaWiki 7.4.0 (SMW 7.4.0) has been released today as a new minor version of Semantic MediaWiki.

It adds the #property_search_link: parser function and job-queue rebuilds for the full-text search index, together with bug fixes and three security fixes (two cross-site scripting and one missing-authorization vulnerability). Please refer to the help pages on installing or upgrading Semantic MediaWiki for detailed instructions.

Semantic MediaWiki 7.4.0 is out. Enjoy increased performance and security, link to property searches via a new parser function, or rebuild the full-text search index in chunks.

As maintainers of Semantic MediaWiki (SMW), we are proud to announce version 7.4.0, released on November 2, 2026. This minor release is compatible with MediaWiki 1.43 through 1.46 and PHP 8.1 through 8.5. See Upgrading for the steps that may apply to your wiki. We recommend upgrading.

Credits

This release was led by our own Alistair Kim. We thank the security researchers who reported these issues responsibly, and everyone who contributed.

Semantic MediaWiki is free and community-driven. Please consider donating to Semantic MediaWiki to support its continued development.

It’s the day before the U.S. midterm elections, and somewhere right now, a voter is typing a ballot measure’s name into a search bar. Another is asking a chatbot about the candidates running for governor of their state. A third is scrolling through unsourced claims on social media about absentee ballots, wishing the text included citations.

Many of these trails will lead to Wikipedia, and whether the corresponding article is thin, outdated, or solid depends on the efforts of volunteers who took the time to contribute to it. 

There’s no doubt that public access to well-cited, neutral information about politics is always critical, but never more than during an election year. But thanks to the many political scientists, educators, historians, and other experts who joined Wiki Education’s Civics and Democracy editing courses this fall, the free encyclopedia now offers more up-to-date information on a broad spread of topics related to the midterms.

Led by our expert instructors, our course participants have already improved more than 100 Wikipedia articles and created 11 new articles, and those numbers will grow as they continue to update content to reflect results in the weeks after the elections. 

Like the participants themselves, their work spans the country. New articles range from ballot measures in Rhode Island and Erie County, New York to 2026 Colorado Amendment 83, 84, and 85. The cohort of editors enhanced existing articles, from the local level (2026 San Francisco Board of Supervisors election) to a national scope (Elections in the United States).

Austin Barraza, an assistant professor of Political Science at San Diego Mesa College, enrolled in a Civics and Democracy course ready to move beyond minor edits.

“I never took the leap into adding more substantive changes to an article even though I had long wanted to,” said Barraza. “This course seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn how to edit Wikipedia while bringing my expertise as a political scientist.”

Course participant Rob Alper, a U.S. history expert and instructional and learning designer in higher education publishing, has spent most of his career developing U.S. history textbooks and digital courseware for undergraduates. Much of that material is built on political history, using pivotal moments like elections to help students trace change over time, Alper explained.

After years of building learning materials about the past, Alper saw the Wikipedia editing course as a chance to put that experience to work on the immediate present.

“The goal of producing educational materials for history survey courses is to present a factually accurate representation of the country’s history and not to advance any argument, ideologically rooted or otherwise, that attempts to persuade readers to take a position,” said Alper. “And though objectivity and neutrality are not synonymous, they are analogous, so I’ve relied on my dispassionate approach to creating courseware materials for the great diversity of learner populations in my Wikipedia work, where I strive to contribute content that will clarify topics in a concise, reliably cited manner.”

Like Alper, many participants joined the courses already practiced at maintaining neutrality in their work. Fabiola Bernier, museum educator at the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray Beach, Florida, does it professionally as a historian, but also at home mediating arguments between her children — a process, she explained, not so different from editing election topics.

“I listen to both [children’s] sides but never choose a side, even when I lean toward one,” said Bernier, who also serves on the Boca Raton Historic Preservation Board. “I know favoring a child would cost me their trust, while being fair would earn both of their respect. When covering something as politically charged as an election, that means leaving out my own opinions, vetting sources, and letting the reliable sources tell the story.”

As Wikipedia content spreads much farther than its own pages through large language models, getting that balance right matters more than ever. 

“It’s an important responsibility that only highlights the need for Wikipedia to remain a high-quality source of free information,” noted Barraza. “This responsibility is also partly what brought me to the course, as I have a role to play in ensuring Wikipedia stays accurate and up-to-date, especially since this information may ultimately be reflected in the answers provided by AI chatbots.”

Bernier echoed this sense of responsibility, explaining that for a historian, preserving and sharing stories comes with a duty to be a trustworthy source of reliable information.

“In the age of AI’s hallucination tendencies and toxic social media algorithms, it can be used to distort and or provide false information,” she explained. “Wikipedia offers a positive way to contribute to local history through community collaboration backed by reliable sources.”

For many participants, the course is only the beginning of their work on Wikipedia.

“I’m truly grateful to have contributed to the world of information that Wikipedia provides, and I look forward to learning more in the days, weeks, and years ahead,” said Alper. “Now, go vote if you haven’t already!”

Interested in learning how to add your expertise to Wikipedia? Explore Wiki Education’s upcoming editing courses.