According to Liv Marte Nordhaug, CEO of the DPGA Secretariat: 

“Wikipedia’s recognition as a digital public good is a testament to the power and importance of open access to knowledge. Wikipedia stands as a prime example of how technologies can drive equitable and unrestricted access to information, accelerating the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals worldwide.” 

Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia and only top-visited website operated by a non-profit organization, contains reliably sourced information that is shared, maintained, and verified by a global community of nearly 260,000 volunteers in over 300 languages. 

“The Wikimedia Foundation works with affiliate organizations and volunteer Wikipedians across the world to advocate for policies that protect and support Wikipedia and other digital public goods upon which the free knowledge ecosystem depends,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. “We look forward to working with the Digital Public Goods Alliance, along with other organizations and communities that create and maintain digital public goods, to build a better internet that serves the public interest.”

In 2024 Wikimedia Foundation staff along with Wikipedia volunteers from around the world participated in the UN General Assembly’s Summit for the Future and the drafting of the Global Digital Compact—the UN’s blueprint for global governance of digital technology and artificial intelligence. 

In an open letter in early 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia affiliates called on UN Member States to:

• Protect and empower communities to govern online public interest projects.
• Promote and protect digital public goods by supporting a robust digital commons from which everyone, everywhere, can benefit.
• Build and deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to support and empower, not replace, people who create content and make decisions in the public interest.

The recognition of Wikipedia as a digital public good strengthens these advocacy efforts and affirms Wikipedia’s role in the broader global movement for an internet that protects and promotes community-led spaces. The Wikimedia Foundation will continue working with the UN and other international institutions, governments, and civil society partners to ensure that digital public goods like Wikipedia are protected, supported, and accessible to all.

For media inquiries, please contact press@wikimedia.org. 

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed on internet policy and Wikipedia’s future.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects; build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content; support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

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The post Wikipedia Recognized as a Digital Public Good appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

For more than a decade, the volunteer-organized Wiki Loves Earth has been capturing the breathtaking essence of the planet’s natural heritage. Photos of all sorts of nature, from iconic national parks to hidden gems in local green spaces, are eligible. Wiki Loves Earth’s winners fell into two categories: a “macro/close-up” category (including animals, plants, fungi) and a “landscapes” category for wider shots.

This year’s winner of the macro category captures a majestic deer emerging from a mist-shrouded forest a bit east of Rome. One of Wiki Loves Earth 2024’s judges called the deer “a scene straight out of a mystery film,” while another said that the connection between the deer and photographer Michele Illuzzi felt “supernatural.”

The equivalent winner of the landscapes category went up high to portray the scaly land that reveals Lake Burdur‘s evaporating footprint in western Turkey. A contest judge commended photographer Fatih Yılmaz’s artistry and “unusual dynamic composition” that found a balance between color and texture.  This year, Wiki Loves Earth received more than 80,000 submissions from over 3,800 participants in 56 countries — the highest number of countries ever in the contest’s history. From those, 583 were selected by local jury teams and forwarded to the international competition. You can learn more about Wiki Loves Earth and its full rules on its website. Check out the nineteen other winners below.

Landscapes

Photo by Maksat Bisengaziyev/Максат79, CC BY-SA 4.0

Second place (landscapes): The Ustyurt Nature Reserve in the far southwestern portion of Kazakhstan supports a wide variety of fauna across its varied landscapes, which range widely in elevation. It’s a bit larger than the country of Mauritius. Photographer Maksat Bisengaziyev framed this view of a few of the reserve’s many rock formations so that there would be a diagonal line running from the bottom left to the top right. One judge noted that this technique “created depth without compromising too much of the objects’ sharpness.”

Photo by İsmail Daşgeldi/Ismailtasgeldi, CC BY-SA 4.0

Third place (landscapes): The Wiki Loves Earth judges loved İsmail Daşgeldi’s composition and sense of scale in this photo. A viewer’s eye starts at the top of the enormous and looming mountains. Their true size is slowly revealed as the eye follows the winding road to Yaylalar, a small Turkish village of just 43 people, at the bottom.

Photo by Maksat Bisengaziyev/Максат79, CC BY-SA 4.0

Fourth place (landscapes): At least one blogger has called this range the ‘tiramisu mountains’, and anyone who has had the Italian dessert would think it’s easy to see why. This is another Maksat Bisengaziyev photo from Kazakhstan, with this one coming from the Kyzylsai Regional Nature Park. “There is something majestic about the composition,” one contest judge saw. “The low light brings out the structure in the surface really well without tinting the color on the stone too much.”

Photo by İsmail Daşgeldi/Ismailtasgeld, CC BY-SA 4.0

Fifth place (landscapes): İsmail Daşgeldi’s sense of scale was on display in this photo, which backdrops the Hürmetçi Marshes with Mount Erciyes on a mid-April morning. But what puts this image over the top is the lonely animal near the center, pausing for a moment to get a drink.

Photo by Missoni Francesco/Scosse, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sixth place (landscapes): Missoni Francesco’s photo of a glacial lake in extreme northeastern Italy brings chills, and not just for the temperature. Wiki Loves Earth’s judges loved the innovative use of the lake’s reflections and the mist swirling around the mountain peaks. “Such deep blues, and in so many shades,” they added.

Photo by Marat Nadjibaev, CC BY-SA 4.0

Seventh place (landscapes): The first thing you are likely to notice in this shot of Kyrgyzstan’s Madygen Formation are the colors, resulting from lakes and rivers running their way to a nearby ocean millions of years ago. One contest judge thought that Marat Nadjibaev’s photo “truly makes one appreciate the Earth’s many unseen wonders,” while another opined that the cloudy day helped ensure that a blue sky did not detract from the rock’s colors.

Photo by Turan Reis/Turreis10700, CC BY-SA 4.0

Eighth place (landscapes): On this crisp November morning, Turan Reis got out of bed early to capture a moment in time at Karagöl-Sahara National Park in northeastern Turkey. They discovered morning mist drifting through vibrant autumn trees, with a late-year sun creating lengthy rays of light and deep shadows across a few rolling hills.

Photo by Skander Zarrad, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ninth place (landscapes): Like something out of a Bond film, a fish trap provides the frame for Skander Zarrad’s photo of a fisherman returning at daybreak to sell their catch. This scene was found in Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands.

Photo by Ekrem Kalkan/Kecags, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tenth place (landscapes): Wiki Loves Earth’s judges commended the “fantastic perspective” of this top-down shot of Turkey’s Yedigöller National Park, which includes a wide variety of trees in an array of autumnal colors. They also loved how the viewers would be drawn through the photo by the narrow road’s meandering path.

Macro/close-ups

Photo by Lukáš Kött/Luckhy86, CC BY-SA 4.0

Second place (macro): It’s a tender moment between parent and child: this Eurasian hoopoe prepares to feed its hungry offspring with a recently captured bug. Lukáš Kött took this visual poetry in South Moravia, located in the southern Czech Republic near its border with Austria. “Not only full of action, but educational too,” said one Wiki Loves Earth judge. Another photo from Lukáš Kött took tenth place in the macro category.

Photo by Mehmet Karaca/Mkrc85, CC BY-SA 4.0

Third place (macro): Mehmet Karaca’s fascinating image of two conehead mantises in Turkey’s Kapıçam Nature Park lends itself to all manner of personification. One judge who reviewed the photo found themselves humming the theme from the classic American comedy The Pink Panther. What do you see?

Photo by Lubomír Dajč, CC BY-SA 4.0

Fourth place (macro): It may look like these yellow-winged darters are taking a break from work, but they’re not old enough to fly yet. These newly hatched animals are drying out on a twig in the Czech Republic’s Žďárské vrchy protected natural area. One judge called out Lubomír Dajč’s photo for its “wonderfully crisp contours” and added that it was “oozing complementary colors”.

Photo by Anissheikh2647, CC BY-SA 4.0

Fifth place (macro): User:Anissheikh2647 helped this bonded couple of pheasant-tailed jacanas while the birds went through the difficult process of raising a chick. ” I love many aspects of this shot,” one judge said. “The color palette reinforces the composition, the sharpness of the details is just right and complements the bokeh effect, and the contrasting motion between the two birds is beautifully captured, adding levels to the image”.

Photo by Mark Kineth Casindac/Kramthenik27, CC BY-SA 4.0

Co-sixth place (macro): The first of two consecutive photos from Philippine photographer Mark Kineth Casindac, also known as User:Kramthenik27, sees these two Apodynerus flavospinosus or potter wasps hanging onto some sort of stalk in Northern Negros Natural Park. The Wiki Loves Earth judges loved the colors on display in this shot, as well as the sharpness Mark Kineth Casindac was able to obtain on the small creatures.

Photo by Mark Kineth Casindac/Kramthenik27, CC BY-SA 4.0

Co-sixth place (macro): Mark Kineth Casindac’s second shot found two leaf-cutting cuckoo bees sitting face to face in the same park. The photographer noted that these bees are endemic to the Philippines, and they can be commonly found in grassy areas. “The composition is simple and clean, but well-structured,” one contest judge noted.

Photo by Mehmet Karaca/Mkrc85, CC BY-SA 4.0

Seventh place (macro): Another photo from Mehmet Karaca, the third-place macro winner, shows that enjoying the morning sun is absolutely not limited to the human race. This baby chameleon, which is evidently no bigger than a flower, is getting a few rays in Turkey’s Kapıçam Nature Park.

Photo by Dasrath Shrestha Beejukchhen, CC BY-SA 4.0

Eighth place (macro): We do not know why this Nepalese spotted deer is in full sprint. But no matter why it got moving, photographer Dasrath Shrestha Beejukchhen ultimately benefited from the deer’s leap to get onto the path running along the right side. One judge noticed that the dots on the side of the deer were stretched—an indicator of the speed at which it was moving.

Photo by Asker Ibne Firoz, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ninth place (macro): This is not your standard nature photo. In this shot, Asker Ibne Firoz sharply captures a stationary lineated barbet chick in its nest right alongside its fast-moving mother. Wiki Loves Earth’s judges applauded the technical skill on display in this photo, with one adding that Firoz managed to take “an artistic approach” that nevertheless “retained its educational potential.” Firoz found this scene at the National Botanical Garden in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Photo by Lukáš Kött/Luckhy86, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tenth place (macro): This river kingfisher has gotten lucky today: it just caught its next meal in the Poodří Protected Landscape Area of the Czech Republic. This is Lukáš Kött’s second photo to place in Wiki Loves Earth 2024’s winners; the judges were a fan of the varied colors, including the contrasting background, and the action implied in the shot.

Volunteer-led and organized, Wiki Loves Earth asks people to venture out into nearby natural areas. The contest’s definition of a natural area is intentionally broad, which helps ensure that anyone, anywhere, is able to participate. The photographers’ submitted work is uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, a media library that holds many of the photos used on Wikipedia. All of the content within that library is freely licensed; it can be used by anyone, for any purpose, with only a few restrictions.*

If you would like to submit your own photos for Wiki Loves Earth 2025 next year, keep an eye on wikilovesearth.org for organizing information and dates. You can also see the winning images from Wiki Loves Earth’s special nominations category of human rights and environment.

———

Post by Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist, Wikimedia Foundation.

*Please be sure to follow each image’s copyright tag. All of the images above, for instance, are available under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA license—you are free to share them for any reason so long as you give credit to the photographer and release any derivative images under the same copyright license.

The post “Straight out of a mystery”: The winners of Wiki Loves Earth 2024 appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

“In this year’s Board selection process, 6000 members of the Wikimedia movement from more than 180 communities cast their vote. As a result, at our last meeting on December 11, we welcomed Maciej and Christel, veteran community members who bring their experience as volunteers and community leaders, as well as their commitment to our shared mission of free knowledge. We also appointed Lorenzo and Victoria to another term and appreciate the experience and continuity they will also provide to the Board.” – Nataliia Tymkiv, Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Maciej Nadzikiewicz is an editor, organizer, and activist with extensive experience in governance within the Wikimedia movement, including his past roles as a member of the Wikimedia Poland Governance Board, an administrator of Polish Wikipedia, and as a Board member and Secretary for Wikimedia Europe. Most recently, Maciej led the core organizing team of Wikimania 2024, which took place in his home country of Poland. Outside of the Wikimedia movement, Maciej has been a member of the Working Group on Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Disruptive Technologies at the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs since 2023.

“We are at a pivotal time in the evolution of the internet, and I believe it is more important than ever to ensure that the Wikimedia projects continue to be relevant in this new era. I want to bring my experience as a Wikimedian, leader, community organizer, and member of the first digital generation to guide the organization and the movement on how we can best support our users and volunteers while growing and curating knowledge on the Wikimedia projects.” – Maciej Nadzikiewicz

Christel Steigenberger is a Wikimedia volunteer administrator, social activist, and community organizer. She started her journey as a Wikimedian in 2014 on the German-language Wikipedia, where she served as an administrator from 2015–2018. In 2023, Christel was granted administrator rights on Wikimedia Commons, where much of her volunteer work is now focused. Christel also previously worked at the Wikimedia Foundation in both Trust and Safety and community support roles. Currently, Christel is working in social work as a Social Pedagogue supporting patients with mental health issues. 

“My journey in the Wikimedia movement started as a volunteer, continued as a staff member at the Wikimedia Foundation, and now as a Trustee of the Board. I find joy in contributing to this  ‘best place on the internet,’ and I want to bring to the Board my focus on closing knowledge gaps, attracting and supporting contributors from around the world, and helping the Wikimedia projects to stay technologically fit and ready for the future.” – Christel Steigenberger

Christel and Maciej have terms that will run until December 2027. Also, as part of the selection, current Trustees, Dr. Victoria Doronina and Lorenzo Losa have been reappointed to the Board for another term, which also runs through December 2027.

The Board thanks its two departing members, Dr. Dariusz Jemielniak and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, for their service and contributions. The next Wikimedia Foundation Board selection process will take place in 2025.

Want to know more about the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees? Check out this short informational video or visit the Board’s page on Meta-Wiki.

The post The Wikimedia Foundation welcomes community-and-affiliate selected trustees appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikipedia is the largest knowledge resource ever assembled in the history of the world. Its content is a reflection of all the people who live on our planet—its story is your story, your interests, your questions, and your curiosity.

That’s why people spent an estimated 2.9 billion hours—over 331,000 years!—reading English Wikipedia in 2024, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates the website and its sister projects. During those long hours, English Wikipedia’s volunteer editors continued updating the site: about 4 billion bytes of information were added this year via over 37 million edits.

But some topics on Wikipedia fascinated you all more than most. These are English Wikipedia’s 25 most popular articles of 2024. You can also check out our dedicated 2024 Year in Review webpage.

• #1: Deaths in 2024
• #2: 2024 United States presidential election
• #3: Kamala Harris
• #4: Donald Trump
• #5: Lyle and Erik Menendez

The most popular article of 2024 belongs to a topic that has been at the top of Wikipedia’s most-read articles five times since we began sharing these lists in 2015: “Deaths in 2024”. In fact, in that time period, it has never been lower than third place. 

Wikipedia’s volunteer editors update this article when they find published obituaries that come out after the deaths of notable individuals—specifically, “notable” according to Wikipedia’s definition of the word. With eight billion people in the world, there are a large number of notable deaths to update the page with each day.¹

Scroll down to learn more about the other top articles, and you can find the full list featured at the bottom.

¹ While Wikipedia’s strict privacy policy means that we don’t have the number of repeat visitors to the “Deaths in 2024” page, our assumption is that a good portion of these views are regular and returning readers that come to read those updates. At the end of each month, Wikipedia’s volunteers split the article into smaller month-by-month lists, which keeps its length to a readable size. As of publishing time, the page covers December 2024—but if you’re reading it in January 2025, the page will be redirected to Wikipedia’s “Lists of deaths by year.”

• #2: 2024 United States presidential election
• #3: Kamala Harris
• #4: Donald Trump
• #7: JD Vance
• #9: Project 2025
• #11: Elon Musk
• #12: 2024 Indian general election
• #14: 2020 United States presidential election
• #18: Joe Biden
• #24: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Comprising 10 of the top 25 articles, the primary theme of this year’s most-popular Wikipedia articles is politics in the US and India. Views from these two countries made up nearly half of English Wikipedia’s total pageviews this year. 

In the US, the federal election was held early last month. The candidates included the Republican Party’s Donald Trump and JD Vance for president and vice president, respectively, and the Democratic Party’s Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Three of the four appear on this list.

Data from the Wikimedia Foundation showed a surge of views going to articles about US politics around Election Day (5 November): about 4.2 million viewed the 2024 presidential election article on that specific day, and the 2020 presidential election article more than doubled its views in November.

Meanwhile, India’s general election was held from April to June. Narendra Modi was reelected as prime minister for a third term. Wikipedia’s article about the election is the work of nearly 900 individual volunteers making over 6,700 edits. It saw a peak of 1.2 million views on 4 June, the day the results were announced, as people rushed to look up who had won.

• #5: Lyle and Erik Menendez
• #8: Deadpool & Wolverine
• #13: Taylor Swift
• #19: Kalki 2898 AD
• #22: Pushpa 2: The Rule
• #23: Griselda Blanco
• #25: Dune: Part Two

People love to use Wikipedia to search for background information of the film and television that has either just been released or that they are consuming at the time. This behavior even has a name: the second screen.

This effect is most obvious when it involves real-life topics depicted on TV, and 2024 is no different. Over 26 million views came to Wikipedia’s article on Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who were convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents. Their story was the subject of a nine-episode crime drama series and an associated documentary film released on Netflix. Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug lord with a prominent role in Miami’s 1980s drug war, also found a place on the list. Her life was spotlighted in a well-reviewed Netflix miniseries this year, and views to her article peaked to over one million shortly after its release.

Over in Hollywood, this year’s star is Deadpool & Wolverine, the comedy-action flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. The film appears to have connected strongly with audiences, particularly for its heavy use of nostalgia inspired by past superhero films and comic books. It would not surprise us if part of this Wikipedia article’s popularity came from people looking up actor and character names for Deadpool & Wolverine‘s flood of resurrected characters and cameo appearances. 

In pop culture, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is #13 on the list; her Eras Tour has its 149th and final show on 8 December. The tour is the highest-grossing of all time and has had cultural, economic and sociopolitical impacts on many of the countries it has journeyed to. Also appearing on the list is Kalki 2898 AD, the first installment of a new Bollywood cinematic universe that is also the most expensive Indian film ever made; and Dune: Part Two, the conclusion of Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation of an acclaimed science-fiction novel.

Editor’s note: Pushpa 2: The Rule, another Bollywood film, vaulted into the list when we updated it for the final time after the end of the year. It was released on 5 December.

• #6: Indian Premier League
• #16: 2024 Summer Olympics
• #17: UEFA Euro 2024
• #20: Cristiano Ronaldo

Cricket and football—or “soccer” for the US-based folks reading this—fill out most of the sporting articles in this year’s top 25. 

In cricket, we are looking at the Indian Premier League. The article received the majority of its views during the 2024 season, which concluded with the Kolkata Knight Riders winning their third title in front of a crowd of 38,000 people. Cricket articles about the Premier League appeared on the list of most-popular Wikipedia articles for the first time last year.

On the football (soccer) side of things, megastar Cristiano Ronaldo makes his fifth appearance in the top 25. Competitor Lionel Messi would have appeared only if we extended this list to 48 entries.

The famed 2024 UEFA European Football Championship, better known as UEFA Euro 2024, also appears after a final that saw Spain fend off England. The victory gave Spain its fourth-ever European Championship, making it the most successful team of all time in that tournament. This article is #17 across the globe this year, but in the UK alone it features in the top five.

Finally, the quadrennial Summer Olympics were held in Paris this year. The sporting tournament featured nearly 10,000 athletes from 204 nations, and their competitions were broadcast around the world. Gymnast Simone Biles was the most-read-about individual Olympic athlete on Wikipedia with an article that garnered over 10 million views.

The full top 25

For a more in-depth look across a planet’s worth of Wikipedia reading over 2024, please see our dedicated webpage.

1. Deaths in 2024, 49,937,590 pageviews
2. 2024 United States presidential election, 31,017,620
3. Kamala Harris, 29,477,367
4. Donald Trump, 27,503,458
5. Lyle and Erik Menendez, 27,015,032
6. Indian Premier League, 24,801,366
7. JD Vance, 23,985,531
8. Deadpool & Wolverine, 22,388,922
9. Project 2025, 20,215,406
10. ChatGPT, 18,869,283
11. Elon Musk, 18,719,390
12. 2024 Indian general election, 18,499,431
13. Taylor Swift, 18,338,133
14. 2020 United States presidential election, 17,413,241
15. United States, 16,497,850
16. 2024 Summer Olympics, 16,258,961
17. UEFA Euro 2024, 15,817,710
18. Joe Biden, 15,467,504
19. Kalki 2898 AD, 15,082,514
20. Cristiano Ronaldo, 15,073,701
21. Sean Combs, 14,146,031
22. Pushpa 2: The Rule, 13,742,110
23. Griselda Blanco, 13,675,099
24. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 13,390,576
25. Dune: Part Two, 13,311,020
    

Wikipedia allows anyone who wants to learn about the world to consult a free online encyclopedia built from reliable sources—news, research, books—and presented from a neutral point of view. Every Wikipedia article is created, curated, and maintained by a global community of nearly 260,000 volunteers—people just like you. It is their work and time that has made Wikipedia into the reliable, trusted resource we all rely on.

Moreover, Wikipedia is the only top global website run by a nonprofit, the Wikimedia Foundation. It is primarily funded by millions of readers, which supports its independent model. Wikipedia content embraces standards of verifiability, neutrality and transparency. Its mission is to sustain free knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, ensuring these resources remain accessible and valuable for billions of people around the world.

If you’re curious to learn more about how Wikipedia works, check out the video below.

Written by Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Appendix

• This list was originally published using English Wikipedia data pulled by the Wikimedia Foundation on 22 November 2024. We updated the list on 15 January 2025 to add data from the remaining days of the year. One new article entered the list (Pushpa 2: The Rule), and one article was removed (Liam Payne, now at #26) All of the pageviews include direct and indirect navigations to the pages in question.
• This list has been screened for false positives with methods including:
  • Cross-referencing the pageviews against the percentage of views they received from desktop devices, as extreme values of less than 2% or more than 80% correlates strongly with spam, botnets, or other concerns. This affected articles like Cleopatra, a long-time false positive that @depthsofwiki reported is a default voice search on Google devices; XXXTentacion; and .xxx.
  • Looking at the number of pageviews that did not have a referrer and removing articles with extremely high values. This impacted a number of articles about large websites, such as Facebook. We suspect that a significant number of the pageviews without referrers are mistakes that occur when viewers are trying to access those websites.

• Previous lists of most-popular English Wikipedia articles are available for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

The post Announcing English Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2024 appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Receiving immediate responses is a huge benefit of how this technology has improved our lives. But it has also made it harder to sort through a flood of information to make sure we are getting the most accurate and reliable answers. The overwhelming speed of change in today’s online information ecosystem makes it more urgent to have a place for trustworthy and verified facts. 

Wikipedia was created more than 20 years ago with that goal in mind. Edited by nearly 260,000 volunteers globally, it now receives more than 15 billion visits each month. Wikipedia sees the same (if not higher) levels of global traffic as well-known, for-profit internet companies at a fraction of the budget and staffing. It’s the only top ten most visited website hosted by a nonprofit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation. 

Since becoming CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2022, I’ve asked hundreds of people all over the world how they think Wikipedia works. This usually leads to a conversation where someone says: 

“I sometimes see that message asking for donations, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that there are no ads until now.” 

“I had no idea Wikipedia was supported by a non-profit.”

“I use Wikipedia every day. I can’t imagine a world in which it doesn’t exist.”

They usually leave the conversation understanding why the Wikimedia Foundation’s work is vitally important for ‘the encyclopedia that anyone can edit’ to remain freely available to people everywhere.

The Wikimedia Foundation does four critical things to make sure Wikipedia can get closer to its vision of representing the sum of all knowledge. (1) We provide a highly sophisticated technology backbone that keeps Wikipedia secure, fast, and accessible all over the world; (2) we innovate in the latest technologies to deliver accurate, up-to-date Wikipedia content to you, even when you are using other sites online; (3) we help fight misinformation, disinformation, censorship, and other threats; and most importantly, (4) we support volunteers in all regions of the world to build thriving communities of editors and contributors. These people brought Wikipedia to the world more than 20 years ago with a radical belief that humans remain at the core of realizing technology’s promise.

What does all of this take?

1. A sophisticated technology backbone to keep Wikipedia secure, fast, and accessible

It may surprise you to learn that Wikipedia is recognized as one of the fastest sites in the United States. Fast and reliable access to Wikipedia’s website should not have to depend on where you live. The Wikimedia Foundation continues to grow this technology backbone to deliver a similar experience to users across the Middle East, Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe. 

This essential infrastructure has expanded over the years to handle extreme spikes in global traffic. These spikes can happen when there is a significant newsworthy event, such as when a famous person dies. In these moments, we see countless other sites begin to simultaneously pull up-to-the-second information from Wikipedia because it is the source they trust. This in turn creates increased pressure on our technology backbone to keep the site up and running when people need it most. Our engineers pride themselves on making sure Wikipedia doesn’t go down.

We manage to do this with two data centers, five caching centers, and over 30 internet peering and transit connections, all supported by about two thousand servers (we run our own servers for lots of reasons, but especially to protect user privacy). This supports the website and also other digital properties like mobile apps.

But the real investment is in supporting our hundreds of engineers. They write complex code in the open, make hard trade-offs to balance spikes in incoming traffic, and add new databases when needed. They handle the often invisible but critical maintenance of software from reducing memory consumption to fixing bugs to removing code that threatens the security and safety of our systems. 

The Wikimedia Foundation must continue to invest in the security, speed, and reliability of Wikipedia. This lean and highly sophisticated backbone is operated by mission-driven technologists who are utterly dedicated to making sure Wikipedia is always up and running for the billions of visitors that have come to depend on it as always being a click away.

2. Making Wikipedia content available anywhere on the internet

Most people I meet don’t know that the content they use all over the internet comes from Wikipedia, even if they never visit our website. Where does Google get the link to answer your query? Have you ever asked Siri or Alexa where they found the answer? Do you know that ChatGPT and similar tools are all trained on Wikipedia’s data? 

This phenomenon was captured well in a New York Times Magazine story that described Wikipedia as “a kind of factual netting that holds the whole digital world together.” Search engines depend heavily on Wikipedia’s up-to-date articles; video sites point users to Wikipedia to learn more information; and AI chatbots regularly pull from Wikipedia in generating their responses. How does Wikipedia keep up, while staying true to our purpose and values? 

It’s not easy, and this drives a lot of the growing investments we are making now at the Wikimedia Foundation. We are doubling down on protecting user data and privacy, bucking many industry trends. We are doubling down on keeping our content available at no cost to everyone, everywhere, under what is known as a free license. And most importantly, we are doubling down on a belief that high-quality, human-generated content is going to be irreplaceable for generative AI tools like ChatGPT. 

We’ve been reflecting a lot on this last topic. As longtime Wikipedia watcher and Slate reporter Stephen Harrison put it: “the implementation of A.I. technology will undoubtedly alter how Wikipedia is used and transform the user experience. At the same time, the features and bugs of large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT intersect with human interests in ways that support Wikipedia rather than threaten it.”  At the Wikimedia Foundation, this has meant continuously investing in AI and machine learning, while always making sure that humans remain a central part of the equation.

Another area for increased investment is in tools that the Foundation created to help volunteer editors translate articles across languages. As the most multilingual digital enterprise in the world, Wikipedia and its sister projects support content creation in more than 300 languages. 

Meeting Wikimedia’s global mission requires ongoing creativity and innovation in translation across languages and cultural contexts. This started years ago with a content translation tool that is regularly maintained and improved; it has been used to translate more than 2 million of the nearly 64 million Wikipedia articles so far. We added resources last year to launch this into a translation service called MinT (“Machine in Translation”) that is designed to support underserved languages that are using machine translation for the first time. MinT adds bi-directional translation between 155 languages to Wikipedia using an open source language translation model, greatly simplifying the process for editors who translate content to and from these languages. This includes supporting machine translation in Fula for the first time, a language spoken by around 35 million people in West and Central Africa.

Alongside all of this, we have year-in-year-out costs that are required to keep Wikipedia’s ‘factual netting’ healthy and strong. Recently, this has meant making user-guided improvements to the usability of our website for readers. And prioritizing the needs of volunteer editors and technical contributors globally — ranging from customized software, personalized tools, specific bug fixes, and sometimes individualized patches across 300+ languages and in all regions of the world! 

This is why we readily spend most of our roughly $189 million budget on growing teams of world-class engineers, designers, product managers, researchers, and analysts who are up to this monumental task: building a world in which every human being can share in the sum of all knowledge.

3. Fighting mis/disinformation, censorship, and other threats

Most of us have seen or experienced first-hand the negative consequences of misinformation, polarization, and censorship online. These harmful realities, along with threats to our personal data and privacy, often leave us to fend for ourselves. For me, that’s why Wikipedia’s goal to provide evidence-based, unbiased, and free information for everyone has never been more urgent. 

Wikipedia’s volunteers are the world’s first line of defense. Last year, I told government leaders that the day-to-day process of building and improving Wikipedia requires these contributors to collaborate, debate, and discuss their edits in order to write thoughtful, informative articles. They hold themselves to high standards of reliability, verifiability, and neutrality by providing citations and sources. On the “Talk” page of every Wikipedia article, they weigh multiple perspectives in the open so that they can make good faith decisions about content together. And they set and enforce rules for what does and doesn’t belong on the Wikimedia projects, guided by a Universal Code of Conduct and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to human rights standards.

This requires expanding our legal, policy, and advocacy strategies to push back against a trend of increasing authoritarianism and government censorship (including blocks of Wikipedia itself, which we helped overturn in Turkey); promoting responsible regulations to support open access to knowledge in legislation like the Digital Services Act; and when necessary, defending volunteers in countries where contributing to Wikipedia remains an act of bravery. 

In today’s world, we see that it is getting harder to ensure that technology serves people, not the other way around. 

I believe that this work of the Wikimedia Foundation — promoting the values of open and equitable access to knowledge to people and societies everywhere — must be supported now more than ever before.

4. Supporting volunteers to build thriving communities of contributors

The Wikimedia Foundation is part of an extensive ecosystem of communities that also includes local chapters representing countries, user groups of volunteers with common interests, allied partners who advocate for open knowledge, and individuals editing Wikipedia who often have no idea that any of this even exists behind the online platform.

One of the most important tasks of the Wikimedia Foundation is to share the financial support we receive with these individuals, groups, and organizations around the world to collectively build thriving communities of contributors. This requires operating a very complex administrative and financial infrastructure that can fund 90+ countries – one that is annually given the highest possible ratings from independent watchdogs like Charity Navigator.

With the guidance of volunteer committees, we balance funding priorities between deeper innovations in more established regions with high-scale growth efforts in newer communities like Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, closing what we call ‘knowledge gaps’ is a strategic goal of our movement; just one example of this is the collective efforts of countless individuals and organizations to increase the representation of women’s biographies on Wikipedia.

The goal of this work is to invite anyone who shares our vision and values to join us. This extends from welcoming newcomers to supporting more established editors; it can take the form of a small donation to an individual to a large, multi-year grant enabling a chapter to grow its local activities; and it can support partnerships with hundreds of educational and cultural institutions around the world. 

It means meeting people where they are, and not expecting them to find us. I think about recent grants that have supported co-creating open knowledge projects with the Atikamekw First Nation in Canada; addressing gender gaps with US-based Art+Feminism; edit-a-thons in Japan; the development of Kyrgyz Wikipedia in Central Europe; building the base of Wikimedia contributors in Nigeria; and helping teachers use Wikipedia in the classroom in Morocco.

The people who do all this can’t be seen on your computer screen, but they power the human world of Wikipedia, one that makes everything else I’ve talked about here possible.

… 

I hope this explanation helps you to better understand what the Wikimedia Foundation does, especially when we ask you to donate. 

By design, we don’t only ask a privileged few to write us big checks. That’s because Wikipedia belongs to everyone, and why people are asked to contribute what they can if they’ve found it useful. This funding, given by only 2% of readers, helps keep the site ad-free and independent. 

As you’ve read, the Wikimedia Foundation has grown to meet technical, geographic, and social changes that are only accelerating their pace of change. Alongside today’s investments, we are also planning for the future – by doing things like growing an endowment to accelerate technical innovation and making big bets to reimagine the role of language on the internet. If you agree that this work is important, please consider supporting the Wikimedia Foundation. 

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, representing the best of human knowledge. It is not a social media platform or an opinion page. Nothing quite like it exists anywhere. And it belongs to all of us.

… 

Maryana Iskander is Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation.

If you’d like to support our work, you can make a donation at donate.wikimedia.org.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on 30 October 2023. It was updated with more recent information in November 2024.

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The post Love Wikipedia? Get to know the nonprofit behind it appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

People give to Wikipedia for many different reasons. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, ensures that every donation we receive is invested back into serving Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and our free knowledge mission.

While many visit Wikipedia on a daily basis, it’s not always obvious what it takes to make that visit possible. Here are 7 reasons to donate to the Foundation that also clarify who we are, what we do, and why your donations matter: 

1. We’re a nonprofit, and readers and donors around the world keep us independent.

Many people are surprised to learn that Wikipedia is hosted by a nonprofit organization. It is actually the only website in the top-ten most-visited global websites to be run by a nonprofit. That’s important because we are not funded by advertising, we don’t charge a subscription fee, and we don’t sell your data. The majority of our funding comes from donations ($11 is the average) from people who read Wikipedia. Many see fundraising messages on Wikipedia and give through those. This model preserves our independence by reducing the ability of any one organization or person to influence the content on Wikipedia.

We’ve long-followed industry best practices for nonprofits and have consistently received the highest ratings by nonprofit groups like Charity Navigator for financial efficiency and transparency. We also publish annual reports about our finances and fundraising that are open for anyone to review.

2.  Wikipedia serves millions of readers and runs at a fraction of the cost of other top websites. 

Wikipedia is viewed more than 15 billion times every month. We have the same (if not higher) levels of global traffic as many other for-profit internet companies at a fraction of the budget and staffing. 

Nearly 650 people work at the Wikimedia Foundation. The majority work in product and technology ensuring quick load times, secure connections, and better reading and editing experiences on our sites. They maintain the software and infrastructure on which we operate some of the world’s most multilingual sites with knowledge available in over 300 languages. While our mission and work are unique, by comparison, Google’s translation tool currently supports 243 languages; Meta has more than 70,000 employees; and Reddit has about 2,000 employees.

3. Reader donations support the technology that makes Wikipedia possible and improvements to how people read, edit, and share knowledge on Wikipedia.

Around half of our budget goes directly towards maintaining Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This supports the technical infrastructure that allows billions of visits to Wikipedia monthly, including a new data center in Brazil that decreased loading times across Latin America. It also supports the staff who play a vital role in contributing to the maintenance of our systems, including site reliability engineering, software engineering, security, and other roles.

Because Wikipedia is available in over 300 languages, it needs top-notch multilingual technology to ensure readers and editors can view and contribute knowledge in their preferred language. Funding also helps with improvements to the user experience on Wikipedia and supporting the growth of global volunteer editor communities to increase knowledge on the site, so that it remains relevant, accurate, and useful.

4. We’re evolving to meet new needs in a changing technology landscape and respond to new global threats.

If you regularly visited Wikipedia in our first decade, there was a good chance you’d get an error message at some point. Because of our steady investments in technology, that’s no longer the case—Wikipedia now handles record-breaking spikes in traffic with ease, preventing any disruption to the reading or editing experience. 

We’re also adapting to meet new challenges, including sophisticated disinformation tactics and threats of government censorship, as well as cybersecurity attacks and changes to how the internet is governed. New security protocols limit the potential for attackers to take advantage of our sites, while our legal staff help to protect our free knowledge mission.

More than half of our traffic now comes from mobile devices. AI training models, voice-activated devices, and websites increasingly leverage Wikipedia to serve their users’ knowledge needs. We’re continuing to evolve to meet these preferences, including developing new experiments to learn more about how to reach new generations of readers and contributors in a changing internet.

5. We manage our finances responsibly and balance Wikipedia’s immediate needs with long-term sustainability.

You probably don’t use your checking account in the same way you use a savings account. One is probably for more day-to-day expenses and the other is likely for emergencies, like if your car suddenly breaks down, or for long-term financial goals, like retirement.  

It’s similar for nonprofits. We have two accounts that act like savings accounts for us. Our reserve is like a rainy day fund for emergencies, such as an economic crisis. 

Our endowment is a long-term permanent fund. The investment income from the endowment supports the future of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. These funds are set aside for particular long-term purposes. However, we use the vast majority of the donations we receive from Wikipedia readers to support the current work we are doing that year.

Sustaining healthy financial reserves and having a working capital policy is considered a best practice for organizations of all types. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors defined our working capital policy to sustain our work and provide support to volunteers and Wikimedia affiliates—a global network of groups that support Wikipedia, Wikimedia projects, and the mission globally. It is also designed to cover unplanned expenses, emergencies, or revenue shortfalls. The policy enables us to have sufficient cashflow to cover our expenses throughout the year.

6. Supporting Wikipedia means you’re helping it become more representative of all the world’s knowledge.

The Wikimedia Foundation supports individuals and organizations around the world with funding to increase the diversity, reach, quality, and quantity of free knowledge on Wikipedia. Over the last four years, we have given over $55 million to members of the volunteer Wikimedia community in over 90 countries. 

While we recognize there are still big gaps to fill, the knowledge on Wikipedia has become more globally representative of the world, as have the editors that contribute to the site. For example, the community of volunteer editors in Sub-Saharan Africa has grown by 44% percent since 2020. This is because of steady programmatic efforts led by Wikimedia volunteers, affiliates, and others—many of whom have received funding, training, and other support from the Foundation.

Why does global representation of Wikipedia volunteer editors matter? It matters because Wikipedia is a reflection of the people who contribute to it. Diverse perspectives create higher quality, more representative, and relevant knowledge for all of us.  

7. Contributions from readers keep us going.

The humans who give back to Wikipedia—whether through donations, words of support, edits, or through the many other ways people contribute—inspire us every day. All of us here at the Wikimedia Foundation want to take this opportunity to thank them. We’d like to share some of our favorite messages from donors over the years. We hope they move you as much as they have moved us:

“Wikipedia has been an endless sea of adventure for my curious soul. Where I had been admonished throughout my childhood for asking ‘stupid questions’, what you do has been a safe space for me to satisfy all curiosity and to foster a skill for learning my entire life now.

What stories will be told of you hundreds of years from now I cannot imagine. An endless Alexandria, every one of you a part of something that is sure to be treasured for as long as humanity draws breath.”

Donor from Ireland

“Thank you so much. Because what I am today in my life, it is only possible because of knowledge I have got from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is part of our life. It is emotion. Internet without Wikipedia is like a body without [a] soul. Thank you for being with us and keep enlighten[ing] our minds.”

Donor from India

We hope that we helped to deepen your understanding about how important reader donations are to Wikipedia. If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ.

If you are in a position to give, you can make a donation to Wikipedia at donate.wikimedia.org.

Lisa Seitz-Gruwell is the Chief Advancement Officer and Deputy to the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on 3 November 2022. Several data points, figures, and links were updated on 23 October 2023 and again in November 2024.

Related resources

Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI

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Wikipedia is an indispensable part of the internet — no matter if you’re searching for a fact to win a round of trivia or doing a deep dive on what’s happening in the world around you.

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Wikipedia’s new sound logo: Winner of The Sound of All Human Knowledge contest announced

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Wikimedia Foundation calls for protection and fair treatment of Wikipedia as UK Online Safety Bill becomes law

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The post 7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

Minha resposta a essa pergunta é simples: não, não seria a mesma coisa.

O processo de criar conhecimento de forma livre, compartilhá-lo e aperfeiçoá-lo ao longo do tempo, publicamente e com a ajuda de centenas de milhares de pessoas voluntárias, é o que, há 20 anos, tem definido a Wikipédia e os diversos outros projetos da Wikimedia. A Wikipédia contém conhecimento confiável e de fontes seguras justamente porque esses conteúdos são criados, debatidos e selecionados por pessoas. Ela também se baseia em um modelo aberto e não comercial, o que significa que a Wikipédia é livre para acessar e compartilhar, e sempre será. E em uma internet inundada de conteúdos gerados por máquinas, isso significa que a Wikipédia tem ainda mais valor.

Nos últimos seis meses, dezenas de LLMs foram lançados ao público, treinados com base em amplos conjuntos de dados capazes de ler, resumir e gerar textos. A Wikipédia é uma das maiores bases abertas de informação da internet, com versões em mais de 300 idiomas. Até o momento, todos os LLMs são treinados com base nos conteúdos da Wikipédia, e ela é quase sempre a maior fonte de dados de treinamento nos conjuntos de dados desses LLMs.

Uma coisa óbvia a se fazer com alguma  desses novos sistemas é tentar gerar artigos da Wikipédia. É claro que as pessoas já tentaram. E, tenho certeza de que muitos leitores já perceberam isso em primeira mão, essas tentativas mostram muitos desafios no uso de LLMs para produzir o que wikipedistas chamam de conhecimento, ou seja, textos e imagens confiáveis, em formato enciclopédico, com fontes seguras. Algumas dessas limitações incluem as seguintes:

• Atualmente, os resultados dos LLMs não passam por uma checagem de fatos, e já há muitos casos conhecidos de pessoas que usam a IA generativa para tentar realizar seus trabalhos. Há inúmeras situações de baixo risco em que os resultados podem ser úteis sem causar nenhum risco, como prompts para criar textos de agradecimento, planos para férias divertidas ou um roteiro para dar início a uma redação. No entanto, em outras situações, os resultados não são tão bons, como no caso em que um LLM fabricou processos judiciais, e o advogado que usou esses resultados em um tribunal acabou sendo multado. Em outra situação, um médico demonstrou que um sistema de IA generativa apresentava diagnósticos inadequados ao analisar sintomas de pacientes atendidos no pronto-socorro. Com o tempo, acredito que esses sistemas ficarão muito melhores e se tornarão mais confiáveis em uma variedade de contextos. Uma possibilidade interessante é que a demanda por melhores fontes melhorará o acesso a pesquisas e livros on-line. Mas será preciso tempo para chegar lá e, provavelmente, uma pressão significativa por parte dos órgãos reguladores e do público para que haja melhorias que beneficiem todas as pessoas.
• Os LLMs não podem contar com informações que não foram usadas em seu treinamento para responder aos prompts. Isso significa que todos os livros do mundo que não estão disponíveis na íntegra on-line, conteúdos de pesquisas anteriores ao advento da internet e informações em outros idiomas que não o inglês não fazem parte daquilo que um LLM típico “sabe”. Consequentemente, os conjuntos de dados usados para treinar LLMs atualmente podem ampliar as desigualdades e os vieses existentes em muitas áreas – como nas contratações, na medicina e em sentenças criminais. Talvez um dia isso mude, mas estamos muito longe de poder acessar livremente e treinar LLMs em todos os diferentes tipos de informações que as pessoas em todos os idiomas usam atualmente para criar conteúdo para a Wikipédia. E, mesmo então, será necessário mais trabalho para mitigar os vieses.
• Por fim, já foi demonstrado que LLMs treinados a partir dos resultados de LLMs têm um desempenho comprovadamente pior, e chegam até mesmo a esquecer de coisas que eles já “sabiam”, uma condição chamada de “colapso do modelo”. Isso significa que, para que os LLMs tenham bons resultados e continuem melhorando, eles precisarão de um abastecimento constante de conteúdos originais, escritos por humanos, o que torna a Wikipédia e outras fontes de conteúdos gerados por humanos ainda mais valiosas. Também significa que as empresas de IA generativa de todo o mundo precisam descobrir como manter as fontes de conteúdos humanos originais, o elemento mais importante do nosso ecossistema de informações, sustentável e crescendo com o tempo.

Esses são apenas alguns dos problemas que precisam ser resolvidos enquanto internautas exploram como os LLMs podem ser usados. Acreditamos que internautas darão cada vez mais valor a fontes confiáveis de informações que tenham sido validadas por pessoas. As políticas da Wikipédia e nossa experiência de mais de uma década no uso do aprendizado de máquina para apoiar voluntários humanos oferecem lições valiosas sobre esse futuro.

Princípios para uso da IA generativa

O conteúdo gerado por máquina e as ferramentas de aprendizado de máquina não são novidade na Wikipédia e nos demais projetos da Wikimedia. Na Wikimedia Foundation, desenvolvemos ferramentas de aprendizado de máquina e IA com base nos mesmos princípios que tornaram a Wikipédia um recurso tão útil para tantas pessoas: dando centralidade à moderação de conteúdo e à governança humana. Continuamos a experimentar novas maneiras de atender às necessidades das pessoas por conhecimento de forma responsável, inclusive com plataformas de IA generativa, com o objetivo de colocar a contribuição humana e a reciprocidade em primeiro plano. As pessoas editoras da Wikipédia têm controle sobre todo o conteúdo gerado por máquina – elas editam, aprimoram e auditam qualquer trabalho feito por IA – e criam políticas e estruturas para controlar as ferramentas de aprendizado de máquina usadas para gerar conteúdo para a Wikipédia.

Esses princípios podem ser um bom ponto de partida para o uso dos LLMs atuais e em desenvolvimento. Para começar, os LLMs devem considerar como seus modelos auxiliam as pessoas de três maneiras principais:

1. Sustentabilidade. A tecnologia de IA generativa tem o potencial de afetar negativamente a motivação humana para criar conteúdo. Para preservar e incentivar mais pessoas a contribuir com seu conhecimento para o bem comum, os LLMs devem procurar aumentar e apoiar a participação humana no cultivo e na criação de conhecimento. Eles não devem jamais impedir ou substituir a criação humana de conhecimento. Isso pode ser alcançado mantendo sempre os humanos no processo e dando o devido crédito às suas contribuições. Continuar a apoiar os seres humanos no compartilhamento de seus conhecimentos não só é algo que está alinhado à missão estratégica do movimento Wikimedia, como também será necessário para continuar a expandir nosso ecossistema geral de informações, que é o que cria os dados de treinamento atualizados dos quais os LLMs dependem.
2. Equidade. Na melhor das hipóteses, os LLMs podem ampliar o acesso às informações e oferecer formas inovadoras de fornecer informações a quem busca conhecimento. Para isso, essas plataformas precisam incorporar verificações e contrapesos que não reproduzam os vieses de informação, não ampliem as lacunas de conhecimento, não perpetuem o apagamento de histórias e perspectivas tradicionalmente excluídas nem contribuam com danos aos direitos humanos. Os LLMs também devem considerar como identificar, tratar e corrigir vieses nos dados de treinamento que podem produzir resultados imprecisos e extremamente injustos.
3. Transparência. Os LLMs e suas interfaces devem permitir que os humanos entendam a origem dos resultados do modelo, verifiquem e corrijam esses resultados. Uma maior transparência na forma como os resultados são gerados pode nos ajudar a entender e, então, mitigar vieses sistêmicos nocivos. Ao permitir que os usuários desses sistemas avaliem as causas e as consequências dos vieses que podem estar presentes nos dados de treinamento ou nos resultados, pessoas criadoras e usuárias poderão contribuir para uma maior compreensão e a aplicação criteriosa dessas ferramentas.

Visão para um futuro confiável

A contribuição humana é parte essencial da internet. As pessoas são o motor que impulsionou o crescimento e a expansão da web, criando um espaço incrível para o aprendizado, os negócios e a conexão com outras pessoas.

A IA generativa pode substituir a Wikipédia? Ela pode tentar, mas essa é uma substituição que ninguém realmente deseja. Não há nada de inevitável nas novas tecnologias. Em vez disso, cabe a todos nós escolher o que é mais importante. Podemos priorizar a compreensão humana e sua contribuição com o conhecimento no mundo – de forma sustentável, equitativa e transparente – como um dos principais objetivos dos sistemas de IA generativa, e não como algo secundário. Isso ajudaria a mitigar o aumento da desinformação e das alucinações dos LLMs; garantiria que a criatividade humana fosse reconhecida pelo conhecimento criado; e, o mais importante, assegurará que os LLMs e as pessoas possam continuar a contar com um ecossistema de informações atualizado, em evolução e confiável a longo prazo.

Selena Deckelmann é Diretora de Produtos e Tecnologia na Wikimedia Foundation.

The post O valor da Wikipédia na era da IA generativa appeared first on Wikimedia Foundation.

For the first time, the UN General Assembly is accompanied by the Summit of the Future and Action Days, which are bringing together civil society, companies, academics, and activists to share their perspectives about how the UN can better address the needs of the global community. These four days of special meetings are expected to include approval of the Global Digital Compact, a guiding document for the future of digital governance, which includes the commitment to support Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital Public Goods, freely and openly accessible digital infrastructure, software, and content that contribute to sustainable development. 

On Saturday, 21 September, the Foundation co-hosted the event, The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World, at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters, together with the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology; UN Member State Delegations of Mexico, Poland, and Germany; as well as the organizations Access Now, TUM Think Tank, Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Europe, Wikimedia Czech Republic, and Wikimedia Polska.   High-level speakers included Amandeep Singh Gill, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology; Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia; and Eileen Donahoe, Coordinator of Digital Freedom in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, amongst others. 

The event explored why civil society must have a voice in how technology is shaped and governed, and how communities can play a leading role in the creation and governance of digital public goods such as Wikipedia. Speakers discussed how open and inclusive digital systems are already advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and supporting social and economic development. Speakers from the Wikimedia Foundation shared their positive vision of the internet’s future, in which everyone, everywhere, can access and share diverse and verifiable knowledge about the world, in their own languages. In order for such a vision to be realized, communities everywhere must be able build and govern knowledge-sharing platforms freely and safely; they must also have easy access to a multilingual digital commons and be protected through a commitment to uphold human rights online.

The following remarks were delivered during the event:

“Well-governed commons are the foundations of human civilization. Digital is no exception, and today, more than ever, digital commons are vital to our interconnected world. … The GDC can play a crucial role in democratizing access to knowledge and technological resources, ensuring that everyone, everywhere, regardless of their socioeconomic status, has the opportunity to participate and benefit from the digital economy.”

Amandeep Singh Gill, United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology

“My call to action for everyone, and to governments in particular, is let’s begin to adopt what I would call ‘the Wikipedia test.’ If you’re about to pass some rule, think about ‘is this going to wreck Wikipedia?’ and, if it is, it might not be a great rule. We need to protect these open communities.”

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder and Trustee, The Wikimedia Foundation

“I am more than happy to see involvement of many stakeholders from outside of governments, like the lead organizer of this event, Wikimedia, in our discussions. It is only with their active participation, on equal footing, that we can fully tap the potential of digital public goods and digital public infrastructure for realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

H.E. Mr. Krzysztof Szczerski, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland to the United Nations in New York

“By investing in Digital Public Goods and Digital Public Infrastructure, and by collaborating and building on the principles, objectives, commitments, and actions outlined in the Global Digital Compact, we can consolidate the construction of a global digital environment that is inclusive, equitable, and sustainable.”

H.E. Alicia Buenrostro Massieu, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Mexican United States to the United Nations in New York

You can watch a recording of the event at this link.

The Wikimedia Foundation advocates for an internet that respects and protects community-led platforms and the online communities responsible for making them flourish in the public interest. We also strive to represent the interests of the volunteer editor communities who make Wikimedia projects possible in large multistakeholder conversations about how the internet and digital technologies will be governed in the future. An internet that does not promote equal access online — and that is not open, interoperable, and respectful of human rights — is an internet in which community-led projects would face existential challenges, and in which Wikipedia might not exist.  

Over the past year, the Wikimedia Foundation has collaborated with allies and affiliated organizations to influence government negotiations over the text of the Global Digital Compact.  Set to be agreed at the Summit of the Future, the Compact aims to be one of the most comprehensive attempts at creating a vision, agreed among UN Member States, for a shared approach to governing digital technologies and online spaces. It is intended to be used to guide the future of digital cooperation and regulation for many countries around the world. Through close collaboration and participation in the consultation process and an open letter signed by over 650 individuals and 28 organizations, Wikimedia has advocated for a vision of internet governance that directly recognizes and protects community-led models of the internet; promotes and protects digital public goods; and envisions a use of AI that supports and empowers, not replaces, people who create content and make decisions in the public interest.

“The Global Digital Compact should be implemented through a multistakeholder process so that everyone, everywhere can thrive in the age of AI,” said Maryana Iskander, Chief Executive Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Governments must protect and support the people who build and govern digital public goods — like Wikipedia — which is run by volunteers who share knowledge in over 300 languages.” 

Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation, added: “Ultimately, the final draft of the Compact, if passed, will provide a starting point from which we can further engage with the UN and its Member States about how digital technologies should be developed and governed. If the broad, high-level commitments that governments have made in the Compact are to fully advance sustainable development and human flourishing everywhere, their implementation must be carried out through genuine partnership and cooperation with a wide variety of stakeholders, and in particular civil society. The first steps toward interpretation and implementation of the Compact will be critical. We are committed to work with the United Nations, UN Member States, the private sector, and allied organizations to design a more inclusive, accessible, human rights-respecting, and open digital future that enables projects like Wikipedia to thrive.”    

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects; build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content; support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

For media inquiries, please contact press@wikimedia.org.

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Katowice, Poland — Taking place in Katowice, Poland, from 7 – 10 August, Wikimania 2024 is the nineteenth edition of the flagship annual conference that celebrates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia  projects, and the volunteers (Wikimedians) who make them possible.  Hosted in partnership with the Wikimedians of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region and the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that hosts Wikimedia projects, the conference will this year be held at the International Congress Centre in Katowice, bringing together over 2,000 Wikimedians and leaders in the digital space from more than 130 countries.

Nearly 300,000 volunteers are behind creating the information on Wikimedia projects, which are viewed more than 22 billion times every month. Through a process of open collaboration, these volunteers help to power the backbone of the internet with reliable information for all. Wikipedia alone is edited in over 300 languages by more than 265,000 volunteers every month around the world. Together, they compile and share information on notable subjects, according to editorial policies and guidelines that ensure knowledge remains neutral, reliable, and fact-based. Volunteers discuss, debate, and often disagree until a shared consensus can be reached on what content to include. This process is done entirely out in the open for all to see. The Wikimedia projects demonstrate how hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life can effectively reach consensus based on facts.

The theme of Wikimania 2024 is Collaboration of the Open, underscoring the importance of the open, collaborative work undertaken by volunteers in building and maintaining the world’s largest repository of human knowledge online. 

Event highlights include:

• The Wikimedian of the Year Awards, presented by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, which recognize exceptional volunteers contributing to Wikimedia projects around the world. 
• Keynotes and speeches, including a presentation from Polish futurist Aleksandra Przegalińska exploring the benefits and challenges of using Large Language Models (LLMs) for preserving and promoting language diversity; a discussion with Dr Maciej Bisaga (University of Silesia) and Dariusz Jemielniak (Kozminski University, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and Polish Academy of Sciences) on making scientific knowledge more open and accessible; a panel with Alicja Knast (Czech National Gallery), Dr. Agnieszka Turska-Kawas (Silesian University), and Dr. Andrzej Szczerski (National Museum in Krakow) on shaping the concept of open knowledge in museums and other cultural institutions. 
• Celebrating Katowice as the 2024 European City of Science, Wikimania will include a keynote presentation from Polish philosopher and journalist Łukasz Lamża on the “Future of Science Observatory,” an open initiative to bring the cutting edge of science closer to anyone interested. Additionally, in partnership with the European City of Science, a “Wiki Science” photo competition exhibit will be held in the center of the city for the month of August.
• Participants can also participate in workshops such as how to use images to address gender gaps on Wikipedia; how to encourage more young people to volunteer on Wikimedia projects; and more.
• Other sessions focus on trending topics and current events, such as a discussion on how Wikipedia’s human-led content moderation systems work to effectively address misinformation and disinformation during elections happening around the world; a workshop on how volunteers can use generative AI to support their work on Wikimedia projects; and a session on the impact of ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies on Wikimedia projects.  
• The WikiWomen Summit, a series of events centered on advancing gender equity and inclusion across Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. 
• The Wikimania Hackathon invites attendees of all experience levels to collaborate on software and database projects related to Wikimedia projects.

“Wikimania is an annual celebration of the humans who power the knowledge behind Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. It is a chance to connect and learn from Wikimedians about the power of collaboration in building the world’s largest online collection of human knowledge,” said Maryana Iskander, Wikimedia Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer. “Volunteers in the Central and Eastern Europe region have worked to grow the knowledge on numerous Wikimedia projects across languages over the years, and so it feels only natural to bring Wikimania here once again. Together, we can recognize the remarkable work that can be achieved when like-minded communities of people come together to achieve a common goal.”

To ensure the participation of diverse people from various countries, conference sessions will be translated into multiple languages, including English, French, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian. 

Maciej Nadzikiewicz, Lead of the Wikimania 2024 Core Organising Team said, “This year Wikimania will happen in Katowice,  and we will show everyone the culture of Central and Eastern Europe. Attendees will experience local music, cuisine, customs and learn about Polish history. With over 280 programme points, there is something for everyone,  and we hope Wikimedians leave Katowice with warm feelings and share what they learned with their local communities!”

The conference will also be available to watch live on virtual streaming platforms. For more information and to register as press for Wikimania 2024, please email press@wikimedia.org.  The full programme for Wikimania 2024 is available online. Follow the event on social media using #Wikimania2024.

Media contact

press@wikimedia.org 

About Wikimania

Wikimania is the annual gathering bringing together Wikimedians around the world to connect with one another, share new projects, and shape the future of Wikimedia projects. Everyone is invited to join and learn more about the humans that make Wikipedia possible for free. The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt, Germany, from 4 to 8 August 2005. It has been an annual event ever since.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects; build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content; support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

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The Wikimedia Foundation will monitor the laws as the lower courts take action, and continue to advocate the right to freedom of expression. Learn more about the decision in this blog post.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, submitted an amicus brief today urging the US Supreme Court to rule in favor of NetChoice in the upcoming cases of NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC in order to protect community-governed free knowledge projects like Wikipedia. 

An amicus brief, also known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief, is a document filed by individuals or organizations who are not part of a lawsuit, but who have an interest in the outcome of the case and want to raise awareness about their concerns. The Wikimedia Foundation’s amicus brief calls upon the Supreme Court to strike down laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question.

These laws have prompted NetChoice, a trade organization representing many of the largest multinational technology firms, as well as the Computer and Communications Industry Association, to sue the attorneys general of Texas and Florida (Paxton and Moody, respectively), citing violations of the First Amendment and other elements of the US Constitution. 

As the US Supreme Court prepares to consider these cases in 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation calls on the Court to strike down both laws, as they present a significant risk to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

In its amicus brief, the Foundation argued that the laws are unconstitutionally vague: while the drafters may have intended to target large, commercially-run social media platforms, the laws are written so broadly that they could potentially be applied to volunteer-run projects like Wikipedia. Wikipedia and other related free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation have long-standing volunteer-led systems of content moderation. Yet the laws define “social media platforms” so broadly that they could potentially be applied to any website or service that allows people to exchange information over the internet. 

The Foundation also argued that, should these laws be applied to Wikimedia projects, they would violate the constitutional First Amendment rights of volunteer contributors by restricting them from editing and improving information on the platform. This would diminish the quality and useability of Wikipedia for billions of readers and users worldwide.

“These laws expose residents of Florida and Texas who edit Wikipedia to lawsuits by people who disagree with their work,” said Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. “For over twenty years, a community of volunteers from around the world have designed, debated, and deployed a range of content moderation policies to ensure the information on Wikipedia is reliable and neutral. We urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of NetChoice to protect Wikipedia’s unique model of community-led governance, as well as the free expression rights of the encyclopedia’s dedicated editors.” 

“The quality of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia depends entirely on the ability of volunteers to develop and enforce nuanced rules for well-sourced, encyclopedic content,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. “Without the discretion to make editorial decisions in line with established policies around verifiability and neutrality, Wikipedia would be overwhelmed with opinions, conspiracies, and irrelevant information that would jeopardize the project’s reason for existing.” 

The Paxton and Moody cases, which will be heard by the Supreme Court in 2024, reflect a growing global trend of laws designed to regulate internet content, often in response to concerns about the perceived societal harms spread through large, for-profit social media platforms. In many cases, such laws inadvertently put projects like Wikipedia at risk. The Wikimedia Foundation encourages lawmakers around the world to consider the diverse internet ecosystem and to protect public interest projects like Wikipedia that host reliable, neutral, and well-sourced free knowledge. 

Learn more about the Wikimedia Foundation’s position on NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC in its amicus brief and this blog post. For email updates from the Foundation on public policy topics, sign up for this quarterly newsletter.

The Wikimedia Foundation extends its gratitude to Cooley LLP for their pro bono representation in this matter.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects; build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content; support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

For media inquiries, please contact press@wikimedia.org.

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