Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-02-07/Community view

Over 350 Wikimedians and newbies celebrated 24 years of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, at Wikimedia New York City's

Every year, on or around January 15th, Wikimedians around the world host in-person meetups to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the online encyclopedia. Typical at these events are birthday cakes, Wikipedia globes, and short presentations called "lightning talks". Fifteen years have passed since Wikimedia NYC 2010, the first Wikipedia Day celebration in NYC.

The first half of Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 was spent in the atrium of the Central Library, with informational tables run by partner organizations, including AfroCrowd, Wikitongues, BetaNYC, Cybernetics Library, and Farming Concrete. The atrium also featured a photo booth backdrop, an art presentation by the Interactive Telecommunications program at NYU, a vinyl shirt pressing station, and more. Meanwhile, in the nearby Info Commons Training Room, talks included Intro to Wikipedia, Your Neighborhood on Wikipedia, and the first group of lightning talks.

Lightning talks included a wide variety of presentations.

Lane Rasberry, a University of Virginia School of Data Science Wikipedian-in-residence, highlighted the unprecedented suppression of an English Wikipedia article by an Indian High Court. Rasberry previously wrote about it back in November for The Signpost. His motto? "Editing Wikipedia is not a crime." Sharon Park showed her beautifully-created, Wikipedia-inspired, animated illustrations she made for 2024's "Wikipedia in Review". Dorothy Howard presented on contributing concert photos to Wikimedia Commons. James Hare dove deep into explaining "Infrastructure and Tools for Source Reliability," preceded by a related talk on "reference parsing" by Wikimedia Enterprise employee Francisco Navas. RoySmith shared insight on "Sourcing the Big Apple". Rosiestep updated the crowd on ongoing research into Wikimedia's Gender Gap. Several others also contributed lightning talks, some of which were not taped.

Attendees spent the second half of the Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 celebration downstairs in the Dweck Cultural Center, where Rhododendrites kicked off the presentations with a micro-keynote on community and thinking locally.

Wikipedia Day NYC 2025 was the first Wikipedia Day event with the first executive director of Wikimedia NYC, Pacita Rudder, who joined the organization in May of 2024. "We're really excited for this particular event because it's not often that we celebrate all of the work that we do, and all of the contributors like yourselves who are making a difference to the world's largest encyclopedia," Rudder told attendees.

2025 is also roughly the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York City. Depending on how you define "founded", there is disagreement on which year the city was established, but the official Seal of New York City was changed in 1977 to date it at 1625. Rudder, with Wikimedia New York City founder Pharos, introduced a new initiative celebrating the quadricentennial anniversary of the city establishment. This initiative seeks to improve 400 articles on neighborhoods in New York City with a website, 400nyc.org, soliciting suggestions for neighborhoods and New Yorkers to improve/create articles for.

Supporting this endeavor is Craig Newmark's Newmark Philanthropies, founder of Craigslist, who appeared in a prerecorded message at the event. In his message, Newmark reiterated his support for Wikipedia: "I'm a passionate believer in what Wikipedia does. I tell people over and over again, Wikipedia is where facts are going to live. Wikipedia is a critically important platform, because it's built on lifting up reliable sources, something which is getting harder and harder to find."

Energetically introduced by

Following the conversation was Depths of Wikipedia creator Annie Rauwerda, quizzing the audience with obscure Wikipedia lore. Two volunteers won copies of Harrison's new book, The Editors. Finally, before the cakes were served, another round of lightning talks had been delivered.

Information about last year's Wikipedia Day in New York City was published on Wikimedia's blog, Diff. A recording of part of this year's event is available on YouTube. Photos from the event are posted on Wikimedia Commons.

With contributions from Wil540 art.