The Power of Wikimedia Conferences

Earlier this month, I attended my tenth international Wikimedia conference, marking a milestone in my journey as a Wikimedian. This fall also brings the celebration of 15 years since I first joined the Wikimedia movement. As I reflect on the past decade and a half, one thing stands out – the irreplaceable value of in-person conferences. Beyond the exchange of ideas and learning, they’ve been spaces where challenges are met with solutions, often in the most unexpected ways.

Take my very first Wikimania in 2012, for instance, where I gave a presentation about the censorship of Wikipedia in Uzbekistan. There, I met Belgian Wikimedian User:SPQRobin, and over lunch we developed the idea of a Latin-to-Cyrillic converter for the Uzbek Wikipedia. A month later, the converter was up and running, enabling users to view Uzbek Wikipedia in both scripts. This was particularly significant for Uzbeks like me, who grew up using Cyrillic but now navigate between both alphabets. Sure, we could have collaborated online to build the converter, but I doubt I would have been as motivated without that in-person discussion at Wikimania. It’s moments like these – spontaneous, creative, and collaborative – that make these conferences special.

Fast forward to my most recent conference, WikiConference North America 2024 held in Indianapolis. There, I presented on WikiStipendiya, a collaborative project led by the Youth Affairs Agency of Uzbekistan in cooperation with the Wikimedians of the Uzbek Language User Group. The initiative has brought unprecedented attention to WMF projects in Uzbekistan, inspiring a new generation of Wikimedians. However, the project has also faced challenges, including the proliferation of extremely poor-quality machine-translated content. After the presentation, US-based Wikimedians User:Legoktm and User:Mathnerd314159 showed me how, with community consensus, poorly translated pages can be mass-deleted with the help of bots. This was a game-changer for us, as over a hundred users had created a large amount of subpar content using machine translation before the Content Translation tool was disabled in July 2024. Once again, it was an in-person discussion that unlocked a practical solution.

Each Wikimedia conference I’ve attended has left me with new skills, connections, and ideas. Wikimania 2014 in London was my introduction to hack-a-thons, where I discovered the fascinating technical work that happens behind the scenes of WMF projects. At Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, I not only received feedback on my presentation about the censorship of Wikipedia in Uzbekistan – comments from Jimmy Wales included – but also became deeply interested in Wikidata, which I began actively contributing to soon after. In Cape Town, at Wikimania 2018, I recorded what I believe to be the first-ever Wikitongues video in Uzbek and signed up for the Wikipedia Library for the first time. Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm introduced me to the intricacies of establishing affiliates, and by 2020, the Wikimedians of the Uzbek Language User Group was founded. At Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, User:Nataeva and I gave another presentation on WikiStipendiya and received invaluable feedback on addressing editor burnout and managing the influx of low-quality machine-translated content on the Uzbek Wikipedia through WikiStipendiya.

Regional conferences have also had a profound impact. At Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2022 in North Macedonia, I finally met User:Malikxan, a fellow Uzbek Wikimedian I’d been collaborating with online for years. The same year, at Wikidata Trainings for Turkic Wikimedians in Istanbul, I gained new skills in data analysis and learned about the power of Wikidata, broadening my contribution toolkit. At Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2024, also in Istanbul, history was made with the first-ever gathering of Central Asian Wikimedians, bringing together representatives of the Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek communities to discuss cooperation.

Beyond the knowledge and skills I’ve gained, Wikimedia conferences are just plain fun. There’s one tradition I particularly cherish: coin exchange. It’s become an established activity, especially at Wikimania, and every time I attend a conference, I return home with a heavier wallet – literally. The bumps on my Numista collection graph align perfectly with the conferences I’ve attended, a testament to my growing numismatic collection.

Finally, these conferences have offered me the chance to explore host cities I might never have visited otherwise. Without them, I’m certain I wouldn’t have seen Buckingham Palace, Milan Cathedral, Table Mountain, the Nobel Prize Museum, the Basilica Cistern, Lake Ohrid, Gardens by the Bay, Monument Circle and countless other remarkable sites. I look forward to attending many more conferences in the future, where I hope to continue learning, meeting inspiring people, and discovering new places along the way.