From May 2 to 4, Wikimedia Colombia participated for the first time in the Wikimedia Foundation’s Hackathon, an annual event that brings together technology enthusiasts, developers, free knowledge activists, and members of the Wikimedia community—whether technical or not, even those initially unfamiliar with Wikimedia projects—to collaborate, learn, and build tools that make free and open knowledge more accessible.
This year, the meeting place was Istanbul; a magical city, a bridge between Europe and Asia, and an ancient place where past and present coexist. Cosmopolitan, vibrant, historical: cradle of empires and an eternal city. In this diverse setting, Wikimedia Colombia brought its energy, vision, and a concrete challenge.
A Meaningful Challenge: Making Historical Memory Information in Colombia Visible and Preserved
Under the coordination of the Technologies and Communities Program (WMCO), Colombia arrived with a mission: to create at least 120 new items in Wikidata, with a specific ontology that would make the investigations of the JEP (Special Jurisdiction for Peace) on extrajudicial executions in Colombia, known as “false positives,” more understandable, accessible, and reusable.
To reach this goal, weeks of collaborative work and community preparation were behind us, thanks to the support of Nathaly Montoya, Sofía Corredor, Bernardo Caycedo, Manuel Franco, Nikolay Martínez, Mariana Lozano, and Angie Ballesteros. In the two months leading up to the event, we gathered in a space we called the Minga de datos: a meeting and collective work space where we, as members of Colombia’s Wikimedia community, sat down to review, verify, and structure information contained in the JEP’s rulings, especially for this opportunity, Ruling 128.
The Minga de datos is not just a technical meeting space: it’s an exercise in memory, listening, and responsibility. Together, we cleaned data, designed a specific ontology, and ensured that the information we were going to incorporate into Wikidata rigorously reflected the facts, with a focus on human rights and the victims’ dignity.
The goal was clear: to contribute to Project 6402+, a web memorial under construction that seeks to dignify the lives and names of victims of extrajudicial executions in Colombia. That number, 6,402, is not a statistic: they are stories of people killed and falsely presented as combat casualties by state agents. They are open wounds that deserve truth, justice, and memory.
In Istanbul, that preparation bore fruit. With the help of Wikimedia colleagues like André Barbosa (Wikimedia Portugal) and Antonin Delpeuch, we managed to incorporate key information into Wikidata, transforming Ruling 128—a fundamental document in the investigation of these crimes—into an accessible, structured, and linked source of free knowledge. A crucial step so that more people, from different disciplines, geographies, and languages, can learn about, study, and not forget this painful chapter of our recent colombian history.
Making this data visible is not just a technical act. It’s a form of symbolic justice. It’s contributing to a living memory, from a global platform, using free technology and in community.
A Community That Speaks in Many Accents
One of the great achievements of this edition was the strong Latin American presence. It was inspiring to meet colleagues from Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, among others. Each with powerful projects, brilliant ideas, and the common desire to share, build, and liberate knowledge.
We discovered tools like Paulina, which allows identifying which works are in the public domain in multiple countries through queries in Wikidata, generating accessible and multilingual lists. Or Quichwabase, a cloud-based Wikibase instance dedicated to the Quechua language and community: a clear example of how technology can be put at the service of linguistic and cultural diversity.
What Istanbul Leaves Us
We returned with more than technical learnings and new items in Wikidata. We returned with a firmer conviction: free technology, when built in community, can transform the way we understand, share, and defend knowledge. Participating in this hackathon was a first step, but also an affirmation: from Colombia, from Latin America, we have much to contribute, and we are powerful and diverse voices that deserve to be heard.
The 2025 hackathon was organized by the Wikimedia Foundation in collaboration with the local Wikimedia affiliate and the Wikimedia User Group of Turkey (WMTR).
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