Supporting Wikipedia and the environment: The Wikimedia Foundation and Plant Your Change collaborate to plant 400,000 trees
Update: Thanks to the generosity of Wikipedia donors, we were able to meet our goal of planting 400,000 trees! If you have not yet given to Wikipedia and are able to, we are grateful for your support. Visit donate.wikimedia.org to make a contribution. Timed with our 2020 end-of-year fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia, the Wikimedia….
Thanks for the thanks! Examining the efficacy of Wikipedia’s thanks feature
Much like Asgard, Wikipedia is not a place but a people. Specifically, an extensive community of volunteers from around the world who donate their time each day to building, curating, and watching over the largest collection of knowledge ever assembled. Unlike Asgard, the people who contribute to Wikipedia often only rarely meet outside of the….
Content translation tool helps create over half a million Wikipedia articles
In science fiction, the Encyclopedia Galactica is a compendium of a galaxy’s worth of knowledge. Wikipedia isn’t quite there yet—for one, we’ve barely left Earth. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t trying to put together a planet’s worth of knowledge and ensure that all of its inhabitants can learn from it in their own languages.….
Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Grant Ingersoll as Chief Technology Officer
The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to announce the appointment of Grant Ingersoll as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Grant brings two decades of experience in open source software development and natural language processing engineering to the Foundation. He will join the Foundation on 23 September. The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and….
Wikimedia Foundation announces $2.5 million in support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies for security of Wikipedia and organization’s other free knowledge projects
The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to announce $2.5 million in support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies that will help to ensure the security of Wikipedia, as well as the organization’s other sites and global community of volunteers. At a time of increased cybersecurity threats, this philanthropic investment from the organization of craigslist founder Craig Newmark will….
The anatomy of search: In search of…
A galloping overview As we have done before, let’s get a bird’s-eye view of the parts of the search process: text comes in and gets processed and stored in a database (called an index); a user submits a query; documents that match the query are retrieved from the index, ranked based on how well they….
Designing ethically with AI: How Wikimedia can harness machine learning in a responsible and human-centered way
The past few years have seen an explosion of journalism, scholarship, and advocacy around the topic of ethical AI. This attention reflects a growing recognition that technology companies often fail to put the needs of the people who use machine learning (or “AI”) technology, and of society as a whole, ahead of their business goals.….
Wikimedia and Outreachy: Technical internships are bridging the free and open source inclusion gap
At Wikimedia, technical internships aren’t reserved just for new college grads seeking work experience at the beginning of their professional lives. We invite individuals of any age and at any stage of their careers to learn and collaborate with technical staff members and volunteers. Throughout the year, our Developer Advocacy team partners with established programs….
Wikimedia Czech Republic hosts hackathon to improve Wikimedia’s software
The annual Wikimedia Hackathon brings people with different skillsets together to improve the software that powers Wikimedia websites. This edition took place at the Prague National Library of Technology and provided an opportunity for volunteer technologists to meet in person, share ideas, have fun, and work together to improve the software that Wikipedia and its….
Four open design methods we used to improve Wikipedia’s iOS app
Wikipedia is built and edited by the collaborative efforts of volunteers around the world. When it came time to improve the editing features on Wikipedia’s iOS app, we here on the Wikimedia Foundation’s iOS team wanted to ensure that our design process reflected that and the values of our organization, including our design principles. To….