Mayan Wikipedia (Wikipedia ich maaya) is a Wikimedia Mexico and Yucatan’s Mayan speaker community project that aims towards the creation of a collective and open encyclopedia in Yucatec Maya as well as the creation of other Wikimedia projects like Wiktionary and Wikibooks, amongst others, in this language. It is part of the Programa de Comunidades Indígenas y Pueblos Originarios (Indigenous Communities and Native Peoples Program).

After several efforts, in 2025, an alliance was created with the Dirección de Educación Indígena de la Secretaría de Educación del Gobierno del Estado de Yucatán (Department of Indigenous Education of the Secretary of Education of the Government of the State of Yucatan). Through Vicente Canché Moo’s management, head of the Departamento de Diseño de Materiales en Lengua Maya (Department of Material Design in the Mayan Language), a workspace was assigned within the program Ko’one’ex Kanik with the purpose of reducing the content gap and the lack of representation of diverse linguistic and cultural groups within the internet’s biggest encyclopedia.

This partnership was developed with 101 bilingual Mayan-speaking teachers. Through 4-hour in-person sessions, Wikimedia Mexico’s team led workshops on interface translation, article creation, and the importance of building an active editing community, with the ultimate goal of driving the Mayan Wikipedia out of the incubator and getting its own domain.

In 2025, workshops were held throughout May, August, September, and November, which have enabled us to make significant progress. We have translated 99.6% of the most important interface messages, and 17% of the main MediaWiki messages are now in Mayan.

Notwithstanding, we have faced several challenges. The first being the Yucatec Mayans’ own discussions and conventions, like in many other languages, on contemporary ways of creating and thinking. Mayan speakers, their communities, and linguistic institutions work daily within their language’s drive, preserving their millennial legacy. Bringing together these complex processes during the work sessions produces very in-depth and interesting discussions, which are now taking more time than we anticipated.

Specifically, some educators involved have interesting divergences when it comes to creating knowledge related to how Mayan speakers should express a specific concept. On one hand, some participants are more inclined to use neologisms, but on the other, there are people who would rather work with more antique Mayan conventions –or, Mayanization– of words for foreign concepts that are not as alien due to them being part of daily Spanish and more common on the 21st-century internet.

Then, there is the technological gap in Mexico, which reflects a lack of infrastructure, economic resources, and proper digital tools suited for Mexican languages that are not Spanish. In 2025, UNESCO pointed out that the digital gap in the country is more significant in rural areas and amongst indigenous people.

After decades of contempt, exclusion, and neglect policies by the Mexican Government towards national indigenous people, the results manifested as a deeper gap in the lack of specialised institutions regarding Mayan education and the digital promotion of the language. Thus, the Mayan Wikipedia has historically faced material, infrastructural, and community shortages. For example, a stable Wi-Fi connection, the lack of computer equipment, and sometimes even a reduced number of furniture items. Quite recently, these conditions have started to revert, which is the reason this agreement has been made possible.

Even though there are still challenges to be faced and solved, the Mayan-speaking community has welcomed us with great disposition and enthusiasm. We can claim we’re currently building an active community, since the eagerness of participants to become group leaders who support and walk along with their colleagues is evident. This way, it is easier to find an activity each person can contribute to.

Finally, we’re excited to share that, by the end of 2025, we got the news of the Mayan Wikipedia being selected to be part of the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub via the Mentoring Program for 2025-2026, which guarantees further progress to reach the target: publishing, spreading, and keeping alive an encyclopedia in Mayan.