The 12th edition of the Wikimedia Hackathon in Istanbul, Türkiye was not your average technical event! It was a 3 day convening of our movement’s builders, coders, dreamers and nerds! Held in collaboration with Wikimedia Türkiye, the Hackathon brought together 200+ participants from 30+ countries who were all united to build a more connected technical movement and bring good code to our ecosystem!
From the beginning of the Hackathon we saw energy, collaboration and excitement in the room along with endless cups of Turkish coffee and Baklawa!
A True Turkish Delight: Merging Code, Cultures & Continents
Attending these events lets you gauge the intensity of passion, knowledge, and tireless dedication that goes into making the Wikimedia movement successful.- TheProtonade
From Argentina to Azerbaijan, Finland to the Philippines, Nigeria to Bangladesh—the diversity wasn’t just geographical; it showed up in conversations about challenges, solutions, achievements and broken code!
We saw 45 showcase projects ranging from quick fixes to long term solutions, from fixing broken tools to creating a game based on Wikidata- . Here are a few examples of our showcase projects ( all the projects can be seen here)
- Subtle gendered language flagging tool for Wikipedia articles: Create a minimal browser extension (MVP) that passively scans the content of English Wikipedia articles for subtle gendered or outdated language patterns and flags them in a non-invasive UI for human review.
- Zelph: – A sophisticated semantic network system capable of encoding inference rules within the network itself, zelph can process the entire Wikidata knowledge graph (1.4TB) to detect contradictions and make logical deductions.
- Springboard: A tool for installing extensions and skins in MediaWiki from the web interface
- TranslateTagger: TranslateTagger is a tool to automatically insert <translate> tags to any untranslated text.
And many more—from performance enhancements to new gadgets, the quality and creativity on display were incredible. Check out Lucas Werkmeister’s post for more including Redactle for Wikidata.
Boosting Shared Knowledge
We hosted nearly 30 sessions (a first!) on a diverse range of topics from a workshop on Toolforge, to regional meet-ups like the South Asian meet up or a jampacked session on Responsible use of infrastructure (see the entire program schedule here). Whether this was your first hackathon or you’re a seasoned nerd, we had something for everyone!
The environment was different from any hackathon I’d seen. There was no rush to be the first or the best. Instead, it was about sharing knowledge, growing ideas, and building things that mattered to the Wikimedia mission. – Formasit-chijoh
More Than Code
While our goal was “more good code,” the real magic happened in the connections: teams forming on the fly, mentors stepping in, introductions that made collaboration possible, and laughter over long-forgotten tools heard in the halls till way past bedtime!
I spend most of my coding life on my own, not talking to all that many people, and so to be able to come together every year like this is very special, and more and more it feels like a really great way to progress things in good ways. – Sam Wilson
A çay-ful of thanks!
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This year, we had the opportunity to work with Wikimedia Türkiye and we could not be more grateful. The collaboration felt seamless and their participation was key for the success of the event, they were always hands-on and managed all tasks with warmth and care.
We have miles to code before we sleep!
Until next year, let’s keep writing more good code, keep the connections brewing and imagining the future of our movement! Don’t forget to look at the Hackathon 2025 documentation for more reports, photos, slides, and blog posts.
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