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By Bluerasberry, Bri, Tilman Bayer, Andreas Kolbe and Oltrepier

January 2025 update from the Wikimedia Foundation

TKTK
The CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, Maryana Iskander, wants your feedback!

The executive team at the Wikimedia Foundation, led by CEO Maryana Iskander, presents periodic updates about the states of their projects. The January 2025 update presents and links to narratives categorized as technological developments, legal challenges, the state of Wikimedia Movement fundraising, the budget for spending those funds, staff-organized communication into Wikimedia audiences, and the Wikimedia Foundation-developed pilot projects which are the alternative direction from the now deprecated Wikimedia Community Movement Charter.

The Wikimedia Movement has always aspired to community governance and oversight. As such, letters such as this one are Wikimedia Foundation staff responses to Wikimedia user community requests, petitions, and calls for action. As is usual for these things, the letter is rich with links to even more documentation, and that documentation is often the present culmination of hundreds of Wikimedia user community discussions over years. Aspects of this kind of shared governance which work well include mutual good will, the intent of transparency, invitations for community inclusion, and the Wikimedia platform's history of success in inviting and collecting community conversations which often satisfy the volunteers who participate and the Wikimedia community organizations which promote and observe them.

Any Wikimedian who has participated in these process will be able to offer either criticism or suggestions for improvement, but whatever anyone says, they will want to know that the Wikimedia Movement empowers staff, volunteers, and allies of all backgrounds to grow their ability to advance Wikimedia project goals and to distribute power and resources appropriately.

Interested readers should check out the update, and are invited to post questions on the talk pages of various projects. Those with lots of questions are invited to interview Wikimedia Foundation staff for upcoming articles in The Signpost, and outspoken commentators are invited to submit opinion pieces for publication here. – Br

EU policy report: Is age verification coming?

In its European Policy Monitoring Report for January 2025, Wikimedia Europe shared smaller updates on several legal developments in the European Union, including regarding AI liability rules, geoblocking, ANTI-SLAPP measures, and obligations for online platforms, including Wikipedia, under the Digital Services Act (DSA) – see prior Signpost coverage here and here.

Concerning child protection, the chapter highlights recent comments by a representative of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNCT):

- Age verification is a central issue, and we [the EU] need to work towards a European solution by mid-2025.

- Other ideas than age verification can be implemented, and it's a work in progress. We want to have a public consultation on the DSA guidelines soon.

- We are in close contact with the Australian authorities [these might include the Ministers for Communications, Cyber Security and Social Services] and with Ofcom in the UK [both countries have seen extended debates about mandatory age verification systems in recent years]. Banning seems effective, but it's excluding minors from useful areas. There are other means that are less intrusive. Different platforms pose different issues. Age verification is essential for adult content, but it isn't the answer for social media.

– TB, O

German Wikipedia deletes 20-year-old WP:Café

In a controversial decision, the German Wikipedia's Café (archive) was recently deleted. Unlike the English Wikipedia's Teahouse, the Café, opened in 2005, was a place for off-topic discussion and socialising. Controversial IP contributions were part of the chain of events that led to the decision to delete – subsequently reviewed and upheld, but still the subject of ongoing discussion as many lament the venue's loss.

– A.K.

Brief notes

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On the deletion of the german WP:Café.

We are experiencing strange times in german Wikipedia. The political mood is heated. The deletion of the cafe can be considered as part of a cultural revolution in de:WP. For the edification of colleagues who might read this story with mythical creatures written and and published in the WP:Kurier by User:Matthiasb:

„ Raid on the café

The raiding party arrived early on Sunday morning. First, men dressed in black and wearing combat boots stormed the café. They smashed the china and all the glasses. Then they filled their pockets with silver cutlery. When they left the bar, they took mainly high-quality alcoholic drinks with them. They left a beer barrel behind because they obviously couldn't carry it. The leader of the group, a man in a leather coat and floppy hat, who said he was a certain Don T. Rump, explained that the swamp had now been drained. The administration would never again accept free citizens meeting in the café and opposing the administration. The café was closed with immediate effect. Our special reporter reported all this, citing Matthias, one of the bartenders who was still on duty when the operation began. The administration was ruthless and did not accept any of the arguments. Some onlookers are said to have applauded and started chanting insults.

A man from Eichstätt, who has been a regular for almost 20 years, expressed his incomprehension. Once or twice a year, guests misbehave, but over a quarter of a million guests have visited the café over the years and ensured a good atmosphere. The tips in particular have been plentiful, barkeeper Matthias told our reporter. That's why he enjoyed his work, even when a guest misbehaved.

The café opened on May 5, 2005. Its first landlord was a certain Mr. Simplicius, but another team soon took over and secured the business.

The regulars are showing a fighting spirit. They already have their eye on replacement rooms and will reopen better and nicer, said one of the regulars on condition of anonymity. He explained his motives by saying that he was afraid of being bullied by the administration and did not want to be recognized. A regular with the nom de guerre Proofreader was less anxious. He said that they would not let themselves be defeated, adding that some people were meeting at the information desk to discuss their next steps against the authorities. MaB, 03.02.“

Happy readings Ｔｏｍ (talk) 08:24, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural revolution? I don't agree with the closure of the Café but this is absurd. The point is simply that from the beginnings of the German Wikipedia, exchange forums without a close connection to the article namespace were seen as suspicious and sometimes deleted (as unrelated to "encyclopedic work"). This is not a revolution but simply a new appearance of this tendency. An experienced user compared the motives for closure to a "protestant work ethos", not the worst description for Wikipedia as a whole. I don't like it but it's only a minor disruption at the margins of Wikipedia, nothing "revolutionary". Mautpreller (talk) 09:16, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let's give a third explanation: A place, that was invented for relaxative talks of Wikipedia contributors changed itself over the years to a place of very heated and sometimes aggressive political discussions. Which may be seen as part of a political swing and cultural revolution in Germany and worldwide in the last couple of years, but surely not one, that was launched from the German wikipedia. A growing number of Wikipedia contributors did not feel at ease in the climate of the Café anymore and a growing number of users of the Café were not contributing to the articles at all. So the site got more and more disconnected from its initial purpose, to be a chill-out zone for all contributors. After another violation of UCoC in the Café discussions, the argument was gaining strength: Why spend ressources on moderation to a platform, that was doing more harm than good for Wikipedia at all. Of course, the regulars of the Café see it the other way around. Some want to hold up Free Speech and weighten it more than the first pillar ("Wikipedia is an encyclopedia"). And the ones, that feel suppressed in Wikipedia or the society anyway see it as another sign of that suppression. Magiers (talk) 11:08, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In part this is a reflection of the global political situation – as tensions flare up, opinions become more extreme; discussion spaces become more contested; and the social climate becomes increasingly authoritarian. Last year's ruwiki fork, the Heritage Foundation's targeting of individual editors in the English Wikipedia and the current allegations of a nationalist takeover in the Hebrew Wikipedia are all indicative of this. With Trump's anti-woke authoritarianism in Wikimedia's home country and Musk gunning for Wikipedia and Wikimedia, it looks like the next four years may present the Wikipedia movement, and the very idea of a volunteer-run global encyclopedia that isn't controlled by the powers that be, with its most significant test to date. --Andreas JN466 13:46, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was admin-adjacent to an ongoing dispute that had its roots in the Hebrew Wikipedia and when I was examining the situation on that project it seemed like politics played a role on there. Politics are present to some degree on all language Wikipedia but it seemed much more complicated there. Liz Read! Talk! 00:09, 9 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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