Growing a community: Chicago’s Wikipedia 25 celebration

This weekend, over 100 people from around Chicago and the Chicago metro area came together to celebrate 25 years of Wikipedia. The event was organized and hosted by User:Luiysia, with help from the Wikimedians of Chicago User Group team.

Over 150 attendees arrived at the Hairpin Art Center at 1 pm. Nametags were available, with an option to share your favorite Wikipedia page or topic, which helped serve as an icebreaker. We enjoyed light refreshments and birthday cake while learning about the history of Wikipedia. We also had a talk about the basics of editing. During signups, over half said they had never contributed to Wikipedia before, but everyone was excited to learn.

Later, we all learned some trivia about Wikipedia through a Jeopardy game. The winners of Jeopardy received pinback buttons with the Wikipedia logo. After Jeopardy, we set the stage for lightning talks. 11 people signed up to give talks about pages they found interesting, or contributions they made that they were excited about. This included one user (User:Shotgunheist) who shared a page he made about the smallest park in Chicago, another (User:Chromecopper) who shared a page that assuaged a concern he had, and another (User:Kalmondczar) who gave a tribute to a missing Wikipedian. Lightning talk speakers also received pinback buttons as a thank you for sharing.

After the lightning talks, we gave away some fun merch items like water bottles and socks. Pizza arrived and attendees were able to mingle and chat about Wikipedia, which was a good way to share niche interests and interesting facts. The event ended at 4 pm, but a number stayed to chat and help clean up.

Overall, the event was a resounding success.

The turnout was nearly ten times as much as the previous year. Last year, we held a similar event but despite receiving a lot of interest, we were forced to stop accepting signups and even turn some people away due to limitations on the size of the venue. A banner was posted on Wikipedia via CentralNotice, but we had to take it down as we had reached capacity. This year, we promoted the event for two weeks via CentralNotice in addition to Instagram and through real-life flyers in cafes and bookstores around the city. We also received interest from a local publication, Block Club Chicago, and journalist Ariel Parrella-Aureli wrote a wonderful article about the event a few days before. On the day of the event, roughly 140 people turned out and we saw many, many new and old faces that were excited to learn more about Wikipedia and start editing.

We hope that this will bring many more people to future Wikimedians of Chicago events as well as many more new editors onto Wikipedia as a whole. Here’s to a great 2026!