Wikimedia Foundation urges Pakistan Telecommunications Authority to restore access to Wikipedia in Pakistan

Update: On February 6, 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation was made aware that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) had been directed to restore access to Wikipedia in Pakistan. Our internal traffic team has confirmed that the traffic on Wikimedia websites from Pakistan has … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 1 year ago

Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers

June 21, 2022, San Francisco, CA, USA ― Wikimedia Enterprise, a first-of-its-kind commercial product designed for companies that reuse and source Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects at a high volume, … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 2 years ago

Wikimedia Enterprise: paid commercial product for reusing Wikipedia content

October 25, 2021, San Francisco, CA, USA ―  The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, today formally launched a new commercial product, Wiki… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

China again blocks Wikimedia Foundation’s accreditation to WIPO

5 October 2021, San Francisco, CA, USA — China today blocked the Wikimedia Foundation’s bid for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for the second time after the … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

Wikimedia Foundation Announces New Vice President for Global Advocacy Rebecca MacKinnon

27 September 2021, San Francisco, California — The Wikimedia Foundation today announced that Rebecca MacKinnon has joined the Foundation as its first Vice President for Global Advocacy. Rebecca is … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

Wikimedia Foundation Appoints Maryana Iskander as Chief Executive Officer

14 September 2021, San Francisco, California — Today, the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation announced the appointment of Maryana Iskander as the organization’s new CEO. She is a globall… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

Wikimedia Foundation Careers: CEO and Executive Director

We are growing the free knowledge movement. We are looking for a Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director to join us. | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

Wikipedia introduces Universal Code of Conduct

February 2, 2021. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that administers Wikipedia, launched a first-of-its-kind Universal Code of Conduct that expands on the project’s existing policies to creat… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world

14 January 2021 — Wikipedia, the world’s largest free online encyclopedia, turns 20 years old on 15 January. This birthday commemorates two decades of global efforts to support free knowledge, open… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

Wikipedia’s 20th Birthday Website

Visit the post for more. | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 3 years ago

China blocks Wikimedia Foundation’s accreditation to WIPO

China yesterday blocked the Wikimedia Foundation’s application for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations (UN) organization that develops interna… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 4 years ago

Wikimedia enacts new standards to address harassment and promote inclusivity

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted to ratify new trust and safety standards for Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects. The standards, as outlined in a new Community Cultur… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 4 years ago

Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

Today, on Wikipedia’s 19th birthday, the Wikimedia Foundation has received reports that access to Wikipedia in Turkey is actively being restored.* This latest development follows a 26 December 2019… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 4 years ago

Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years

Today, on Wikipedia’s 19th birthday, the Wikimedia Foundation has received reports that access to Wikipedia in Turkey is actively being restored.* This latest development follows a 26 December 2019… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 4 years ago

India’s Intermediary Liability Rules Could Limit Access to Information Online

Honorable Minister Prasad: I am writing today on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation to express our concerns regarding the Ministry’s proposed changes to the intermediary liability rules and its neg… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 4 years ago

Turkish Constitutional Court Rules Block of Wikipedia Unconstitutional

Today, the Turkish Constitutional Court has held that the more than two and a half year access ban of Wikipedia in Turkey was unconstitutional. We hope that access will be restored in Turkey soon i… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 4 years ago

Offline-Pedia converts old televisions into Wikipedia readers (2018)

There are villages in the Ecuadorian Andes that are so small you cannot find them on a map. Cajas Juridica is one such place, located just 13km north of the equator. But two engineering students, J… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

For these academic journals, Wikipedia isn’t a bug–it’s a feature (2018)

Wikimedia, especially Wikipedia, hasn’t always had the best of relationships with academia. So you may be surprised to learn that there’s a trio of Wikimedia academic journals that are … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green

We at the Wikimedia Foundation strive to ensure that our work and mission support a sustainable world. Today, we are releasing a sustainability assessment that chronicles the total carbon footprint… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

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 … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Malicious attack on Wikipedia – what we know, and what we’re doing

Today, Wikipedia was hit with a malicious attack that has taken it offline in several countries for intermittent periods. The attack is ongoing and our Site Reliability Engineering team is working … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Creative Commons' Ryan Merkley Joins the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce that Ryan Merkley will be joining the organization as the new Chief of Staff to the office of the Executive Director. Ryan joins the Foundation from … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

What would ethical AI product development look like at Wikipedia?

The past few years has 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 … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Smithsonian uploads images from the history of US women's suffrage to Wikimedia

The Smithsonian—one of the leading museums and research centers in the United States—has added over 200 images of women involved in the battle for women’s suffrage in the country to Wikimedia… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Digitizing old translations and bringing the world's literary history to Punjabi

Imagine a world where you grew up in a world where the greatest literary works in history never existed. For many of the world’s language speakers, this can be their functional reality. Title… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Let’s Talk about the North Face Defacing Wikipedia

Yesterday, we were disappointed to learn that The North Face, an outdoor recreation product company, and Leo Burnett Tailor Made, an ad agency retained by The North Face, unethically manipulated Wi… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Wikimedia Foundation urges Chinese authorities to lift block of Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation has determined that Wikipedia is no longer accessible in the People’s Republic of China—impacting more than 1.3 billion readers, students, professionals, researchers, and m… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Notre Dame will live on–that won't be the case for all our cultural landmarks

Last week, I watched, completely helpless, as the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris was eaten away by a blazing fire. I lived for seven years in France’s capital. I’ve seen Notre-Dame more t… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Peter Baldwin, Lisbet Rausing Give Additional $3.5m to Wikimedia Endowment

Three years ago, we created the Wikimedia Endowment as a permanent, independent fund dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects.… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

Three months ago, a German court ruled that part of a Wikipedia article—found to be defamatory in a previous court decision—had to be removed from both the article and its associated revision track… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Using machine learning to predict why a sentence on Wikipedia needs a citation

One of the key mechanisms that allows Wikipedia to maintain its high quality is the use of inline citations. Through citations, readers and editors make sure that information in an article accurate… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

A picture of the year so unbelievable, it has its own Snopes entry

Wikimedia Commons, the repository for educational media content that hosts most of the images used on Wikipedia, has announced its photo of the year.* Jason Weingart’s Evolution—a composite t… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Four Wikipedias to ‘Black Out’ over EU Copyright Directive

Volunteer editor communities in four language Wikipedias—German, Czech, Danish, and Slovak—have decided to black out the sites on 21 March in opposition to the current version of the proposed EU Co… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

The most popular Wikipedia articles of 2018

People visited Wikipedia over 190 billion times in 2018 alone, many motivated by the encyclopedia’s wealth of in-depth articles about topics you didn’t know enough about. But in looking… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Facebook donates $1M to the Wikimedia Endowment

We are pleased to announce that Facebook, one of the world’s leading social networking platforms, has given $1 million to the Wikimedia Endowment—a permanent, independent fund dedicated to ensuring… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

How Wikipedia groups and filters words in search

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 subm… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

The anatomy of search: The root of the problem

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 subm… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Proposed copyright treaty creating global education and research exceptions

This may come as a surprise, but copyrighted works often cannot be used in educational and research materials. For example:  students in France, Italy, Luxembourg and Romania cannot legally quote a… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 5 years ago

Wikipedia is a mirror of the world’s gender biases

Dr. Donna Strickland is brilliant, accomplished, and inspiring—she is the first woman Nobel Physics laureate in 55 years. To use Wikipedia parlance, Dr. Strickland is very clearly notable. Except t… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 6 years ago

Why Didn’t Wikipedia Have an Article on Donna Strickland, Nobel Prize Winner?

Donna Strickland is an optical physicist at the University of Waterloo. She is also the winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics (as of two days ago), a former president and fellow of the Optical Society… | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 6 years ago

Can Beethoven send takedown requests?

Imagine you are a teacher at a public school, and you want to use a free recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in your classroom. As an author of music textbooks and a music theory professor, I am … | Continue reading


@wikimediafoundation.org | 6 years ago