The WikiCollection Competition is a large-scale, organized effort on Arabic Wikipedia, led by the Wikimedians of the UAE User Group and sponsored by the Million Wiki Project. The contest aims to improve and expand content related to collectible items such as coins, stamps, banknotes, and medals across Arabic Wikipedia.
By connecting Arabic Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons, the contest enhances the use of structured knowledge through strategic meta-linking across projects. This approach not only enriches content but also ensures better accessibility and integration.
Launched in 2024, WikiCollection is recognized as one of the longest-running competitions on Arabic Wikipedia, reflecting its depth, community engagement, and lasting impact. Notably, the competition was built on a team-based model, where participants were required to form teams to join, encouraging collaboration, peer learning, and collective contributions.
Now in its second phase, the focus has shifted toward organizing contributions and linking data effectively. This phase emphasizes minimizing duplication across Wikimedia projects and making information more accessible and reusable across the Wikimedia projects.
Progress and Goals
The WikiCollection competition has already made significant progress. Participants have written hundreds of new articles in Arabic Wikipedia and uploaded hundreds of images to Wikimedia Commons. These contributions highlight a diverse range of collectible items, including rare coins, vintage stamps, and historic banknotes.
The current focus is on the next strategic step: linking all this content through Wikidata. By connecting articles, images, and data, the project aims to create a more structured and interconnected knowledge base. For instance, a coin that has an article on Arabic Wikipedia and an image on Wikimedia Commons will also have a corresponding Wikidata item, bringing all the information together in one central hub, which allows the content to easily be reused across all Wikimedia projects.
Help Page Creation
To support this work, a dedicated help page has been created: Indexing coins, bank notes, and stamps in Wikidata. This page offers clear, step-by-step guidance on how to systematically index collectible items in Wikidata, complete with practical examples. It is designed to assist both newcomers and experienced editors, making it easier for everyone to contribute accurately.
The page also includes links to the legally uploaded catalogs on Archive.org, allowing participants to cite reliable sources when adding data and ensuring that the content remains verifiable and trustworthy.
We warmly invite the global Wikimedia community to help translate this page into their local languages, so that more people can benefit from the guidance and join the effort to enrich Wikimedia projects with structured information about collectibles.
Commons Templates
To further streamline contributions, we have created a specialized template for Wikimedia Commons. These templates automatically pull data from Wikidata, meaning users no longer need to enter the same information multiple times (saving time and reducing errors).
The templates include:
- Template:coin – for coins
- Template:banknote – for paper money
- Template:stamp – for postal stamps
Each template is fully integrated with Wikidata and offers multilingual support automatically displaying the layout and information in the user’s preferred language; which enhances the user experience and also ensures that the displayed content is accurate, consistent, and always up to date.
By using these templates, contributors can focus on quality content creation while relying on a system that maintains data accuracy across Wikimedia projects.
Future Outlook
With more than 340 articles, +3114 files on Commons, +11900 Wikidata items in the first round of the competition and more are being made on the second round, which is currently running. We are proud of the progress made so far and excited about what lies ahead. The WikiCollection competition is a shining example of how Wikimedians can collaborate across languages, projects, and borders to create meaningful, structured knowledge.
We invite volunteers from around the world to join us; there’s always something to contribute! A great way to get started is by translating the help page into your local language, or by using the Commons templates to better link data and enrich the Wikimedia projects.
✨ Exciting news! The organizing team will be attending Wikimania 2025, and we’re planning a special WikiCollection meetup. We invite all collectors, enthusiasts, and interested Wikimedians to join us, connect, and share ideas. More details will be announced very soon!
🌍 With the success of the competition, we’re now working on transforming WikiCollection into a global campaign. We will soon be opening a call for interested Wikimedians to join the international organizing committee, so we can build this dream together and celebrate collectibles, cultures, and collaboration across the Wikimedia movement.
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