Dear all,
I will be leaving Wikimedia UK this week, taking redundancy.
I'd like to thank everyone I have worked with, staff and volunteer-alike,
and especially those in my immediate team. I wish Wikimedia UK ongoing
success.
I have learnt a lot over the years, helping run some large conferences,
becoming a contributor myself across the projects, a trainer for many
others, and meeting the often impressive people that are behind these great
works. And with the friends I've made through Wikimedia, I've received far
more than I've given the movement.
It's hard to know what I'll miss most right now, because Wikimedia has been
such a key part of my life for the past decade it will be like a fish taken
out of water.
But I will remain a part of the projects in a volunteer capacity, mostly
Wikidata I imagine, but also as a trainer, and as someone with a continuing
interest in the healt of the projects and the movement.
If you want to stay in touch, you can get me at prior_stuart(a)me.com,
User:Battleofalma, LinkedIn, read my awful jokes on bsky
<http://@stuartp.bsky.social>, or if you have already shared your data with
Meta, Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/pr1stu/>, and I'm in a fair few
wiki Telegram groups.
Best
Stuart
--
*Stuart Prior*
*Project Coordinator*
*Wikimedia UK*
+44 203 372 0769
+44 7879 015 385
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia? https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office c/o British Library, Euston Road, London
Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The
Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
Join the webinar “How to use Wikipedia offline”!
In many parts of the world, access to the internet remains limited or
unreliable, but that doesn’t mean access to knowledge should be. Join us
for an insightful webinar, organised by Wikimedia Ukraine, that will
introduce practical ways to use Wikipedia offline.
>What you will learn:
- Why offline access to Wikipedia matters
- Tools and technologies that make it possible (e.g., Kiwix, OfflinePedia,
and more)
- Real-world use cases and success stories
- How you can support and promote offline access in your community
>Speakers:
Kate Kifa and Joshua Salazar, experienced Wikimedia contributors and
advocates for open knowledge, will guide you through the session. They’ll
share their expertise, real cases, and tips for getting the most out of
offline resources.
>When and where?
- Thursday, 8th May 2025 at 14:00 UTC
- Check your local timezone here: https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1746712800
- Online on Zoom
>Registration:
This webinar is free and open to all, but registration is required:
https://forms.gle/uGjNjAG8iLnpa6R48
By attending, you’ll be taking a step toward making knowledge truly
accessible — anytime, anywhere!
Hello everyone,
As part of Wikimedia Deutschland’s 2030 Strategic Direction and in close
collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the Wikidata team has
set its priorities for 2025 around 4 core themes: ensuring Wikidata can
continue to grow sustainably, strengthening the diverse community of
editors, increasing reuse our data, and refining the underlying platform
services that power everything we build together.
We chose these focuses because, first, as Wikidata’s size and impact
expand, it’s crucial that we build systems and policies that keep our
infrastructure healthy and our data dependable. Second, our community
remains at the heart of everything we do -- whether someone contributes the
first statement to a brand new Item or runs complex queries that power
research and apps. Finally, by refining data access methods “as a service”
across our ecosystem, we’ll open the door for all our product teams and
third-party developers to build meaningful services and applications that
create positive impact.
Supporting sustainable growth means two things this year.
We’ll partner with the Wikibase teams to improve federated SPARQL queries.
This would allow you pull data seamlessly from multiple Wikibase instances
lowering the barrier to hosting some data in other parts of the Wikibase
Ecosystem, ensuring everyone can continue to access and edit data reliably.
At the same time, we’ll have conversations about data governance guidelines
together with the Cloud and Suite teams and the wider Wikidata community.
This way it's always obvious where different kinds of data belong. That
clarity helps editors make confident decisions, reduces duplicate work, and
lays the foundation for new projects that can flourish alongside Wikidata
itself.
Strengthening the Wikidata community means making every step of
contribution easier and more rewarding.
Mobile editing has grown in recent years, yet adding or updating statements
on a phone still forces many users into “desktop view.” We’ll roll out a
prototype that will make editing statements on mobile phones easier. To
help more advanced editors and tool builders, we’ll continue growing the
visibility and documentation around EntitySchemas, so that editors
everywhere can adopt these powerful templates and can integrate them out of
the box. And of course, we’ll bring people together through online and
in-person events such as WikidataCon, regional capacity‑building campaigns
in Africa, meetups at Wikimania and other conferences, XXX Days events like
Data Reuse Days and Lexico Days, and more. By connecting newcomers with
experienced mentors, by highlighting local hubs where editors can support
each other, and by linking each Item back to its relevant WikiProjects,
we’ll nurture more active, diverse, and resilient communities.
Our third focus area is Increasing mission-aligned data reuse
The Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_For_Wikimedia_Projects> team will
improve the editing experience and increase productivity of Wikipedia
contributors by making it easier for editors to monitor, understand, and
act on changes to their watchlisted articles when the edit comes from
Wikidata. Displaying Wikidata edits in Watchlist and Recent Changes pages
is an opt-in feature of the user preferences; our aim is to increase
awareness, adoption, and utility of this function by summer 2026.
In parallel, we will raise awareness and contributors’ understanding of the
Wikidata integrations currently being used in the Wikimedia Projects
through a community outreach project by hosting an online conference, Wikidata
and Sister Projects
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Event:Wikidata_and_Sister_Projects>,
dedicated to celebrating and informing Wikimedians of the many ways
Wikidata currently supports the Wikimedia Projects. Additionally, we are
reviewing the available documentation on Wikidata integrations to ensure it
is updated, comprehensive, and available in multiple core languages.
Refining platform services “as a service” is our fourth focus area.
We’ll refine data access methods so Wikidata's data can be reused to build
meaningful services and applications. Specifically, we'll build out search
capabilities in the REST API so developers can discover and query data more
easily. We’ll ensure the Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is optimized for its
core strength of supporting queries that need the graph -- keeping it fast
and reliable under complex workloads. Finally, we’ll improve our data dumps
to provide more accessible snapshots and subsets of Wikidata’s data.
What does this mean for you?
If you’re a mobile‑first contributor, editing from your phone will become
smooth and straightforward. If you’re a developer or researcher, you’ll
gain powerful new search endpoints in the REST API, a finely tuned Wikidata
Query Service for graph-centric queries, and cleaner, more timely data
dumps to build on. If you organize or participate in events, you’ll find
more support and clearer pathways to grow local hubs and share best
practices. If you’re leveraging Wikidata’s data to support your workflows
and content in other Wikimedia projects, you’ll have access to current
use-cases, examples and better documentation to refer to. Ultimately, every
update we make in this period is designed to give you more confidence, more
choice, and more impact as you add, improve, and reuse the world’s free
structured knowledge.
We’ll keep you posted on progress throughout the year and as always,
welcome your questions and feedback on [talk page].
Thank you for your efforts to drive Wikidata forward.
Best regards,
The Wikidata Team
Wikimedia Deutschland
--
*Danny Benjafield*
Community Communications Manager
Wikidata For Wikimedia Projects
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0
https://wikimedia.de
Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia,
Wikipedia and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe now.
<https://www.wikimedia.de/newsletter/>
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our vision!
https://spenden.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR 23855 B.
Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende Vorstände: Franziska Heine
Hello | مرحباً بكم | Olá | Bonjour | Hola Wikimedia-L,
Let's Connect monthly Connectathon happens every first Friday of the month.
It's an opportunity for all Let's Connect participants to meet and mingle
in a relaxed environment, discussing more casual topics of interest. However,
this month's Connectathon is open only to women Wikimedians.
This session, Skills Connectathon: Gulf Wikimedians in the Knowledge Space
ملتقى المعرفة: ويكيميديات الخليج في ساحة المعرفة, aims to celebrate women,
their voices, and the beautiful skills they bring to the Wikimedia Movement
and the world beyond Wiki projects. We’re gathering Wikimedian women from
the Arabic-speaking MENA region, mainly from the Gulf, to share one simple
skill each - something small but meaningful - in a space designed for
learning, connecting, and lifting each other. It’s not about formal
training, it’s about coming together, sharing what we know, and leaving
with new ideas, inspiration, and maybe even a new connection or two.
Session date: Friday, May 2nd, 2025, from 3:00 - 4:30 UTC
Location(zoom): Register here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1NAlQT2iUhNHH602dNeuD26yr0FYRbfSLLnoUzsLcLV…>
to be part of this month's women-only connectathon.
[image: 👉] Do you have a skills profile with Let’s Connect? Would you like
one? If you want to join the Let’s Connect community, please register here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdiea87tSYmB2-1XHn_u8RLe7efMJifJBz…>.
With your skills profile, we can connect you to our mailing list and
learning clinics that happen every month with speakers from the Wikimedia
Movement.
NB: All Lets Connect participants will be sent Google calendar invites to
RSVP for this Connectathon. Please accept our Let's Connect Google Calendar
invites so we can add you. This session will be in Arabic with translations
into English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
--
*Regards*
*Justice Okai-Allotey*
*Board Chair Wikimedia Ghana User Group <https://wmgh.org/>*
*Working Group Member* Lets Connect
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Knowledge_Sharing/Connect/Team>
*Communications Officer *Humanists Association of Ghana
<http://www.ghanahumanists.org>
*Africa Coordinator Young Humanist International
<https://humanists.international/about/young-humanists-international/>*
*Freelance Digital Marketer*
*Freelance Visual Storyteller*
*(WSET Level 1
<https://www.wsetglobal.com/qualifications/wset-level-1-award-in-wines/> in
Wine Certificate)*
Mobile: +233 (054) 039 4970 Skype: okai_allotey
|Linkedin: Justice Okai-Allotey
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/justice-okai-allotey-306b6354?trk=hp-identity-n…>
| Facebook: Justice Okai-Allotey <https://www.facebook.com/wyzzlewany> |
Twitter: @Owula_Kpakpo <https://twitter.com/Owula_Kpakpo> |
|Website: *https://about.me/okai-allotey <https://about.me/okai-allotey>*|
|Schedule A Meeting:meet with Justice Okai-Allotey
<https://calendly.com/owulakpakpo/meet-with-justice-okai-allotey>|
*"Our lives begin to the end the day we become silent about things that
matter" - Unknown.*