What is your Wikipedia origin story? (WikiWednesday Salon, July 29)
It All Begins Here
At least 25 people joined us in-person, with others Zooming in, for our July WikiWednesday Salon, led by Wikimedia NYC board member Molly Stark Dean and Richard Knipel, our board chair.
Attendees shared their “Wikipedia origin stories,” in particular what made each want to be more involved with the chapter in the future.
There were also live lightning talks, and our headliner was our friend Annie Rauwerda, aka "Depths of Wikipedia."
Sounds like fun? Join us for our next WikiWednesday Salon on August 26, 2026, at Prime Produce.
More than 1,200 attend Wikimania 2026 in Paris
Image By Rulwarih - Own work, CC BY 4.0.
Wikimania 2026, the global Wikimedia community's annual conference and meetup, took place July 21–25 in Paris. As France hosted the event for the very first time, an estimated 1,200 attendees gathered in Paris under the theme "Liberté, Équité, Fiabilité" (Freedom, Equity, Reliability). Wikimedia NYC board chair Richard Knipel and executive director Pacita Rudder joined them.
Coinciding with Wikipedia's 25th birthday, the five-day program featured keynotes, workshops, a Wikimania Hackathon, the Wikimedian of the Year Awards presented by Jimmy Wales, and discussions on free knowledge in the age of AI.
The 2026 Wikimedian of the Year winners were also announced in Paris: French Wikipedia's Jules* (top honor), Laureates Dreamyshade & Barkeep49, Community Connector Chlod Alejandro, plus honorees Mari Avetisyan and Hijiri Umemoto.
Our Wiki Loves Fútbol watch party was covered by The Athletic!
Image By Wikimedia NYC, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.
The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for the perfect moment; it’s starting with what you have, where you are. Big goals can feel overwhelming when viewed all at once, but momentum builds through small, consistent action. Whether you’re working toward a personal milestone or a professional dream, progress comes from showing up — not perfectly, but persistently. Action creates clarity, and over time, those steps forward add up to something real.
You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.
WikiTakesPhotos: Exploring Staten Island, Long Island City, Harlem and Prospect Park
Image: Members of Girl Scouts of Greater New York attending WikiTakesPhotos at Prospect Park. By SkaterbyAssociation - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
In early June, with the support of Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Wikimedia NYC hosted a fun WikiTakesPhotos event at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, bringing together Girl Scouts of Greater New York and Take9 for an afternoon of free knowledge, photography and pizza.
We kicked off with a picnic and a quick intro to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons before handing cameras over to the Girl Scouts for a walk through Prospect Park — documenting things that should be accessible to everyone.
Starting near the Lincoln Statue by the Concert Grove Pavilion, we made our way through the park capturing images destined for Wikimedia Commons, the free image library.
A highlight of the afternoon was a stop at the historic Lefferts House, where curators gave us a tour through the history of what was once a 300-acre plantation that relied on the forced labor of enslaved Africans, whose stories belong in the public record.
After the event, every participant went home with instructions for uploading their photos to Wikimedia Commons.
A huge thank you to Amira Dhalla from Take9 for joining us and handing out swag.
Recap: WikiWednesday Salon - June 2026 Pride Month Edition
Image: A 2018 pride parade in San Francisco
On Wednesday, June 24, Wikimedia NYC held a special Pride Month WikiWednesday... and it was awesome!
The evening's feature presentation, "The Web of Queer Data" by Superraptor123, offered a fascinating look at the infrastructure supporting LGBTQIA+ knowledge online — from active WikiProjects and Wikidata pipelines fed by lgbtDB, to the broader ecosystem of queer resources on the internet, including health data, subject headings, film databases, and biographical archives.
We also had a full roster of lightning talks:
Bklibcat67 walked through Lez Wiki edit-a-thons and the Lesbian Herstory Archives
Aude demoed proof-of-concept tools at wiki-explore.toolforge.org
Eloquence introduced agpedia.org, an encyclopedia being built using AI agents
Mxn gave a demo of OpenHistoricalMap
Events like this are a reminder that free knowledge infrastructure takes active, intentional work to make it representative.
If you're interested in contributing, keep an eye out for the upcoming Queering Wiki 2026 conference in Montreal in October and Wiki-Play Fridays continuing this summer.
One day at the United Nations: 34 editors, 5 new articles, and 6,500 words
Image: Wikimedia NYC chair Richard Knipel at the Wikimedia NYC Edit A Thon at United Nations Open Source Week, June 22, 2026, NYC. By Hari Adivarekar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
On Monday, June 22, Wikimedia NYC joined the United Nations Tech Over for our second annual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at UN Headquarters in New York City.
This year's event organized editing around two key themes: the impact of AI and other emerging technologies on the Wikimedia platform, and how editing Wikipedia contributes to the UN Global Digital Compact's goal of developing shared principles for an open, free, and secure digital future for all.
Wikimedia NYC brought together 34 participants at the UN, some of whom were editing Wikipedia for the very first time.
Hackathon participants collaborated alongside UN experts and staff, open-source advocates, and experienced editors from the NYC Wikipedia community. Together they improved public knowledge on topics including the UN eTIR, artificial intelligence, open source software, and digital public infrastructure.
In a single day, hackathon participants:
Created 5 new Wikipedia articles
Improved 27 existing articles
Added more than 6,500 words to Wikimedia projects
The hackathon was part of UN Open Source Week 2026, an annual event that showcases how open, collaborative technology can advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The series brings together governments, developers, and civil society to co-create practical solutions and promote inclusive, transparent approaches to digital innovation.
Thank you to our volunteer trainers, to the United Nations for hosting, and to the Wikimedia Foundation for their partnership.
And thanks as well to our friend Hari Adivarekar for capturing the event!
Introducing the Wiki Kiosk (Wiki-Play Friday at the Oculus)
Image: By Profhotchkiss - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
On Friday, May 29th, Wikimedia NYC held another fun monthlly Wiki-Play Fridays pop-up at the World Trade Center Oculus in Lower Manhattan.
May’s meetup showcased an early prototype of the Wiki Kiosk — a tool designed for public libraries that lets people scan books and add citations from them to Wikipedia.
The event was hosted at the NYC PIT Pop Up storefront for public interest technology and featured demos and playtesting of wiki-games and novel modes of interaction, both digital and tactile.
Explore Upcoming Events →
WikiTakesPhotos: Exploring Staten Island, Long Island City, Harlem and Prospect Park
Image: Wikimedia NYC chair Richard Knipel at the Wikimedia NYC Edit A Thon at United Nations Open Source Week, June 22, 2026, NYC. By Hari Adivarekar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
In May, Richard Knipel — CUNY Wikimedian-in-Residence and Wikimedia NYC chair — led a series of events across New York City bringing communities together to document and share local history on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
The series kicked off on May 5th at the College of Staten Island Library, where participants gathered for the Undercovered History of Staten Island Wiki Workshop. The hands-on editing event invited history buffs and curious newcomers alike to dig into overlooked local stories and contribute them to Wikipedia, helping surface the hidden gems of one of New York City's most underrepresented boroughs.
Later in May, Richard joined CUNY librarians and Queens Public Library staff for a WikiTakesPhotos walking tour of Long Island City. Guided by local historian Alan Archivala (Instagram: @bygone_newyork), participants photographed the neighborhood's landmarks — including the iconic Pepsi-Cola sign and the Long Island City Courthouse — adding them to Wikimedia Commons for the world to access freely.
The series also included a WikiTakesPhotos tour of Harlem, centred on the campus of the City College of New York. Participants documented architectural details including CCNY's Gothic archways and a collection of salvaged architectural grotesques — carved stone fragments from demolished buildings — all now preserved on Wikimedia Commons. CUNY's Office of Library Services further collaborated with CCNY archivists Renae Rapp and Sydney Van Nort to bring archival photographs from the college's own collections to the platform.
Across all three events — plus a follow-up event at Prospect Park in June — the goal was the same: connect communities with the tools and knowledge to share their local history with the world. Read more about the WikiTakesPhotos tours on the CUNY WIR blog: wircuny.commons.gc.cuny.edu
Explore Upcoming Events →
Archives + CUNY + Wikipedia Edit-a-thon (April 16)
Image: By Aude - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=187667280
On April 16, Wikimedia NYC hosted an edit-a-thon at City Tech Library, drawing on the richness of CUNY's digitized archival collections to improve Wikipedia. Participants worked with primary sources from City Tech and other CUNY institutions to expand and create articles about people and events connected to CUNY's history.
Participants made improvements to articles on New York City College of Technology, Medgar Evers College and Hunter College, as well as on the artist Michelle Stuart and even on California's Box Canyon Dam.
We launched Wiki-Play Fridays at the Oculus in April. Join us in May!
Image: By Aude - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=187667280
Last Friday, April 10th, the CUNY Newmark Wikimedian-in-Residence and the CUNY PIT Lab hosted the first Wiki-Play Friday at the NYC PIT Pop Up in the World Trade Center Oculus in Lower Manhattan.
A new monthly event series, Wiki-Play Fridays are a pop-up exhibition and laboratory of Wiki-based immersive design with demos and playtesting of wiki-games and novel modes of interaction, both digital and tactile.
The April Friday meetup was a follow-up to a workshop held the previous week with NYU ITP/IMA (a creative technologist program) faculty and students, some of whom joined on Friday, and at the April CUNY Archives edit-a-thon (more details below) as well.
The event included an updated version of the WikiReceipts Machine, as well as a Wikidata tactile exercise. Participants also worked on a generalized game engine to develop a variety of possible wiki-games. We had guests from CUNY Centro, the NYU ITP / IMA program, and the Cybernetics Library.
