The Wikimedia Foundation’s Latest Transparency Report

Transparency is the cornerstone of the Wikimedia movement. 

Twice a year, the Wikimedia Foundation releases a transparency report to provide a transparent look into the work done at the Foundation to support and protect Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Wikimedia Commons. At times, our goal to make knowledge accessible to all stands in tension with the interests of governmental and private entities, who may seek to alter or delete project information or use the projects to discover nonpublic information. In all such cases, the Foundation works to protect user privacy and freedom of expression. We also work to defend the community’s right to discuss and determine what educational content is available on the projects. 

The Foundation’s bi-annual transparency report outlines various requests received during the reporting period, their countries of origin, and other useful information. It also highlights notable requests and projects we have worked on since the last transparency report. The report does not include volunteer content moderation.

Here are the highlights from the July-December 2024 reporting period: 

• EU Digital Services Act (DSA) information: We updated our EU DSA information section based on the results of our first DSA audit. This audit was conducted in August 2023 through August 2024 with the Foundation garnering a score of “positive with comments.” The Foundation welcomes this outcome as this recognizes our efforts and affirms our longstanding commitment to transparency. We added details to the report to implement the comments we received. 
• Takedown requests (including content alteration): From July to December 2024, we received 314 requests to alter or remove project content. Seven of these requests were Right to Erasure-based requests related to user accounts. When we receive such a request, we provide the user with information on the community-driven vanishing process.
• Copyright requests: Wikimedia volunteer communities work diligently to ensure that copyrighted material is not uploaded to the projects without an appropriate free license or exception, such as fair use. When we receive Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices asking us to remove allegedly infringing material, we conduct thorough investigations to make sure the claims are valid. During this reporting period, we received 15 DMCA requests, and granted four. Some stories in the Transparency Report share more about the kinds of DMCA requests we received and how they were handled. With projects as large in scope as ours, the low number of DMCA requests we receive is due to the hard work of community volunteers who ensure that the content on the projects is properly licensed.
• Requests for user information. The Wikimedia Foundation only grants requests for user data that comply with our requests for user information procedures and guidelines (which include a provision for emergency conditions). Moreover, the Foundation collects very little nonpublic user information as part of our commitment to user privacy. Any information we do collect is retained for a short amount of time. Of the 23 user data requests we received, two resulted in the disclosure of nonpublic user information.

You can read the full transparency report here.

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This transparency report reaffirms the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to the principles of transparency, privacy, and freedom of expression. It also represents the diligent work of Wikimedia volunteers, who build Wikimedia projects and the knowledge available on them. If you are interested in learning about the requests sent to the Foundation in greater depth, please access the comprehensive July to December 2024 transparency report. You can also see past reports by viewing previous blog posts.

The transparency report would not be possible without the contributions of Julianne Alberto, Aly Marino, Amanda Jardine, Riddy Khan, Funkola Odeleye, Sara Campos, Laura Pulecio Duarte, Genelle Quarles Adrien, Shrutika Manivannan, Ellen Magallanes, Ed Erhart, Jim Buatti, Leighanna Mixter, Vicky Wong, Jeremy Bernick, and Zoe Philadelphia-Kossak.