News

Category: Wikimedia Foundation

Hashemite University, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia volunteers partner to expand access to free knowledge resources in Jordan

Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia community members in Jordan, and Hashemite University—one of the most esteemed higher education institutions in Jordan—signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to advance cultural cooperation and access to free knowledge resources in the Arabic language. It is the first MOU of its type signed with any university in the….

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We’re building a future of free knowledge. Donate and join us today.

Today, Giving Tuesday, the Wikimedia Foundation begins its annual banner campaign on the English Wikipedia, inviting anyone who values Wikipedia to join us on our journey and support  its continued growth and evolution as the world’s free knowledge resource. Banners will appear on the English Wikipedia asking our readers to consider contributing to the site….

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George Soros, founder of Open Society Foundations, invests in the future of free and open knowledge

We are pleased to announce a $2 million gift to the Wikimedia Endowment from George Soros, one of the world’s leading philanthropists. Soros is known for his extensive philanthropy to support ideals underpinning a free and open society, including access to knowledge, education, economic development and policy reform. He is also known for founding the….

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Mitigating biases in artificial intelligences—the Wikipedian way

The great potential of AI: Scaling wiki-work At Wikimedia, AIs help us support quality control work, task routing, and other critical infrastructures for maintaining Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis. To make it easier to support wiki-work with AIs, we built and maintain ORES, an open AI service that provides several types of machine predictions to….

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Three spherical conservatories,covered in pentagonal hexecontahedron panels.

Amazon makes $1 million gift to support the future of free knowledge

Today, we’re excited to announce that Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer and creator of such devices as the Kindle and Alexa, has made a $1 million gift to the Wikimedia Endowment, a permanent fund dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Ever since its creation, Wikipedia….

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What we learned from surveying 4,000 members of the Wikipedia and Wikimedia communities

Each year, the Wikimedia Foundation surveys the volunteer communities who edit Wikimedia sites for their input on a variety of topics that, in turn, help Foundation staff make decisions about how to support these communities. In April 2018, over 4,000 Wikimedia community members, answered up to 50 questions about their experiences working on the Wikimedia….

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1Lib1Ref spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and beyond

#1Lib1Ref is an annual campaign where librarians and other contributors to Wikipedia add references to improve statements with the ultimate objective of improving the reliability of Wikipedia. In 2018, the Iberocoop Network participated in the #1lib1ref campaign (1bib1ref in Spanish) in Latin America. The campaign ran for three weeks in May 2018, to commemorate the….

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Himalayan yaks in the Everest region

How impactful are our grants? We’re investigating.

For almost a decade, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Resources team has been funding people and organizations pursuing our vision: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. In the last five years alone, we’ve given out over 35 million US dollars across almost 80 countries. Our efforts….

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Understanding workflows of Wikimedia editors

Wikipedia exists because of a vast army of people who work alone and in concert. The amazing work of these volunteer editors in making Wikipedia is a complex world of interactions, processes, and activities. They range across the whole work of donating content, including editing, fixing things, adding media, and many other ways. Collectively, these….

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Wikimedia joins Partnership on AI to promote more equitable use of intelligent systems

The Wikimedia Foundation has joined the Partnership on AI, an organization that brings together academics, researchers, civil society organizations, companies building and utilizing AI technology, and other groups working to better understand AI’s impacts. The Partnership on AI brings together both commercial and nonprofit organizations to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies. Their….

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