We are excited to announce the beginning of the Dhaka Wikimedia Community, a newly approved regional part of Wikimedia Bangladesh, which aims to foster collaboration and engagement among Wikimedians based in Dhaka and nearby regions. The community was officially approved on 6 April 2025—a significant milestone that reflects the growing enthusiasm for Wikimedia projects in the capital city.
You can find the approval resolution here: https://w.wiki/DjE5.
A Grassroots Beginning for a Vibrant City
Dhaka is home to a significant number of Wikimedians who have contributed to the Bangla Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and other projects over the years. With the formation of the Dhaka Wikimedia Community, contributors now have a shared space to connect offline, build capacity, and focus on region-specific outreach and activities—while staying aligned with the mission and goals of Wikimedia movement.
To mark the beginning of this journey, the community hosted its first offline edit-a-thon and photowalk on 18 April 2025 at the Wikimedia Bangladesh office in Dhaka.
Strengthening Policy Pages on Bangla Wikipedia
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The edit-a-thon was attended by eight dedicated Wikimedians, who focused on improving the long-overdue Bangla Wikipedia policy pages. These crucial pages guide the community’s practices, but many had remained incomplete or outdated for years.
During the session, participants worked on:
- Translating key policy documents from English,
- Localizing the content to better reflect the local Wikipedia context and
- Resolving inconsistencies and outdated phrasing.
This work represents an important step toward making the Bangla Wikipedia more robust and user-friendly for future editors and readers.
Photowalk: Celebrating Local Heritage Through Imagery
In addition to the edit-a-thon, a photowalk was organized as a side event to document scenes from Dhaka. The walk aimed to capture the city’s vibrant culture, public spaces, and underrepresented landmarks.
The result? Over 50 freely licensed images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, helping enhance the visual content related to Dhaka and Bangladesh as a whole. These contributions add to the growing effort to represent the diversity and richness of South Asian urban life on Wikimedia platforms.
What’s Next?
With its first successful activities completed, the Dhaka Wikimedia Community is already setting its sights on what comes next: more offline meetups, skill-sharing workshops, outreach to educational institutions, and collaborative editing projects.
As a local extension of Wikimedia Bangladesh, the community remains committed to the broader mission of the Wikimedia movement—empowering people to share in the sum of all knowledge. And now, Dhaka has a more active, organized role in that mission.
If you’re based in or near Dhaka and interested in contributing to Wikimedia projects, the Dhaka Wikimedia Community welcomes you!
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