Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-05-01/News and notes

On 9 April 2025, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) announced a halt to its longstanding "Access to Knowledge" (A2K) program in India, caused by the country's restrictions on foreign funds for non-profit organizations.

In some ways, CIS is unlike a Wikimedia regional chapter, for reasons such as being a tech-oriented nonprofit with programs that are independent of the Wikimedia movement. In other ways, it performed some of the typical functions of a Wikimedia chapter, given the fact that its staff coordinated activities like Wikimedia training programs and fulfilled community requests for Wikimedia support throughout India – Wikimedia India, a separate organization, was approved as an official chapter in 2010, but was then de-recognized in 2019. The A2K program was the Wikimedia program of CIS. Following its shutdown, the Wikimedia movement no longer has any ongoing major Wikimedia programs in India, although the April 9 announcement mentioned that the CIS-A2K team "is actively exploring possible solutions".

The reason for the halt in the program is that NGOs in India who receive foreign money must regularly renew their certificate of compliance with the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010. CIS recently lost its FCRA certificate, so it can no longer receive the grants from the US-based Wikimedia Foundation that have supported the A2K program so far. A separate grant to CIS in support of the 2025 edition of WikiConference India – which was set to be held in Kochi next September – was canceled too, according to an April 7 WMF statement that cited "recent regulatory changes in India".

There is no public information about why CIS' FCRA renewal application was rejected. The Wikipedia article for FCRA lists numerous cases where organizations in India lost their certificate, and were therefore shut off from receiving foreign funds. As the Wikipedia page notes, Western organizations affected by this tend to complain, while India's Ministry of Home Affairs argues that compliance is a reasonable expectation.

The loss of certificate occurs in the context of other Wikimedia conflicts in India, including the ongoing Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation court case and the February 2025 accusation of disparaging the Hindu king Sambhaji from the Maharashtra Police.

While The Signpost last covered the CIS A2K program 10 years ago, the organizers themselves have continually published numerous reports and newsletters on Meta-wiki. The most recent edition of the "CIS-A2K newsletter", issued in January 2025, featured a study about how Indian contributors engage with the mobile apps for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, as well as news on the "She Leads Bootcamp 2025" (an event for fostering leadership among female Wikimedians in India), and work on developing a Wikisource reader app.

This month's announcement marks the end of an era that first began around 2010, when the Wikimedia Foundation was pursuing serious plans to itself open an office in India, as its first presence outside the US – read previous Signpost coverage at this link. By early 2011, however, these plans had been downgraded to the hiring of an India-based consultant. Later that year, the very well-attended first WikiConference India in Mumbai highlighted the country's high levels of enthusiasm for Wikipedia (apart from the various active Wikipedias in Indian languages, India still boasts the third-highest number of active editors from any country on the English Wikipedia), but also foreshadowed its current hostile legal environment. As reported in The Signpost at the time, [a] group of about a dozen protestors from the youth wing of the nationalist BJP political party demonstrated against one map on Wikipedia, whose depiction of the contested border regions surrounding Jammu and Kashmir they objected to [...] and planned to file a criminal case against "Jimmy Whales and Wikipedia's India chairman [sic]". The BJP subsequently took power in 2014 and remains India's ruling party as of today. – Br, H, O

Until 31 May, the Wikimedia Foundation is seeking community comment on and approval of their 2025–2026 Annual Plan.

Everyone is invited to form their own thoughts on the planned "objectives and key results" (OKRs), but at a glance, the WMF seems to continue to prioritize Wikipedia over other Wikimedia projects, and seek short-term increases in established programs for editor engagement and retention, rather than development of more ambitious multi-year projects and features.

As reported last November, the Wikimedia Foundation's revenue for 2023–2024 was US$185 million. The Wikimedia project values user governance and user input as fundamental to the success of the project, so how the next year's nearly $200 million will be spent is to be decided by Wikipedia editors and Signpost readers. Please give the Wikimedia Foundation board your feedback by commenting. For anyone who wants support from the Signpost in rallying attention and funding commitments to your favorite cause, please consider submitting your manifesto, petition, or other call to action in the next issue, so that you can recruit more people to support it. – Br

Wikimedia LGBT+, the Wikimedia user group which supports LGBT+ Wikimedia editors and the development of LGBT+ Wikimedia content, welcomes its first staff members Bisi Alimi as first Executive director and Vic Sfriso as Director of programmes and community engagement.

WikiProject LGBT+ studies is among the most popular WikiProjects in English Wikipedia, and it tends to be popular in all Wikimedia language versions where it exists. But it is also the case that there have been many on-Wiki LGBT-related conflicts in Wikipedia's history. Examples include discussions of transgender pronouns in biographies and how to report notions of transgender identity.

The Signpost welcomes Wikimedia LGBT+'s staff and wishes them well in this important and challenging role.

– Sb, Bluerasberry (Br)

Disclaimer: Bluerasberry (Br), one of the authors of this section, has been involved in Wikimedia LGBT+ in several capacities, including the hiring process.

After a recent Requests for Comment, Administrator Elections have become a permanent process. The first trial election in October 2024 was considered successful, and had 11 out of 32 candidates getting the mop. Future elections are expected to be held every five months, with the next one set to take place sometime mid-2025. Discussion and coordination for it is currently underway at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections. The elections and related RFCs were last covered by The Signpost in the 27 Feb issue. – S

After a selection process earlier last year, the Affiliations Committee (AffCom) announced the incoming members on wikimedia-l mailing list. Notably, the committee added just two Voting members, Aleksey Chalabyan and Lucas Teles, both already having prior AffCom experience. The committee also confirmed seven advisory members for a one-year term, ending in 2026. AffCom as a whole advises the Board of Trustees on Wikimedia affliates, chapters, and user groups. – S

Disclaimer: Soni, the author of this section, had applied for AffCom in the aforementioned selection process.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) has started a voting session on proposed changes to the U4C Charter and UCoC Enforcement Guidelines. – See Village pump notification for local discussions. Editors may vote on these changes until 1 May 2025.

The changes are bundled as five distinct proposals and involve minor changes to wording, changes to U4C policies for recusal and quorum, and the overall process. More notable changes include appointing up to four non-voting members and removing the "homewiki requirement". Currently, only two members with any project as their "homewiki" can sit on the U4C, making 0xDeadbeef and Barkeep49 the only members from the English Wikipedia until their terms end. If passed, other enwiki editors will be eligible for a seat in future elections.

The U4C is generally responsible for enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct, as well as resolving local conflicts in smaller projects or systemic project bias. Since it was seated mid-2024, the U4C has heard case requests for de.wiktionary, zhwiki and Commons, resulting in at least one global ban and one desysopping.

The Committee was last covered by The Signpost in the 27 Feb 25 and 24 Dec 24 issues. – S

The Wikimedia Foundation released two new Bulletins on April 4 and April 18, respectively.

The former Bulletin included a BoT Noticeboard message, co-signed by BoT Chair Nataliia Tymkiv and WMF CEO Maryana Iskander, elaborating more on the Foundation's recent announcement of new plans to strengthen global NPOV policies – see the News from Diff and In focus columns from the April 9 issue of the Signpost for more context. The report also highlighted the global deployment plan for the the CampaignEvents extension, as well as updates on the Peacock edit check tool, the appointment of a new elections committee and new additions to the Wikipedia Library.

The April 18 Bulletin shed a light on upcoming conversations on the 2025-2026 Annual Plan, the 12th Annual Wiki Workshop (set to be held online on May 21-22), the Wikimedia Hackathon taking place in Istanbul from May 2 to 4, the integration of Wikifunctions with the Dagbani Wikipedia as its first pilot project, the introduction of the Edge Uniques first-party cookie system, and finally the announcement of the Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 winners – see this issue's Gallery section for more information. – O

• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes our newest administrator, Rusalkii, who has obtained the sysop bit after the 23 April closure of her unanimous 156/0/0 !vote request for adminship. On the other hand, another RfA was not successful, following 66% of support which automatically triggered a bureaucrat chat. Finally, a third request did not meet the initial !vote bar, and therefore was not successful.
• New recall petition: An admin recall petition for user Gimmetrow was initiated, marking this as the fourth ever instance of an ADRC. The petition reached the required 25 signatures in less than a day: as a result, Gimmetrow can start an WP:RRfA within 30 days to retain their mop.
• Active administrators: The number of active administrators hit a low for this year, with 433 mop-equipped users being registered as of 23 April.
• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones in March and April 2025:
  • 1,000 articles: Ewe Wikipedia
  • 2,000 articles: Dagaare Wikipedia
  • 10,000 articles: Shilha Wikipedia
  • 20,000 articles: Ossetian Wikipedia, Saraiki Wikipedia
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Internet research (beginning 28 April), followed by Motherboard (beginning 5 May). Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
• Tariffs keep on bouncing around: To no one's surprise, daily readership of the Tariff article shot up from less than 5,000 a day to over 60,000 on 3 April, in the aftermath of the introduction of new tariffs by the Trump administration and the subsequent 2025 stock market decline – this takeoff in daily views followed a year of even crazier bouncing around. Full data is available here, even if it's still not directly available on Wiki via the Annual readership template.
• Katy Perry takes off, too: Daily pageviews on Katy Perry increased from the mid four figures in early April to 120,000 on April 14, the flight date of Blue Origin NS-31. Oddly, the page about the space mission only reached shy of 26,000 pageviews on the same day.
• Death Race for WikiLove: On April 20, user Panamitsu uploaded on Commons a short animated clip that shows the evolution of the Top 20 list of Wikipedians by total number of edits from 2002 to 2025. You can find more details about the methods adopted by Panamitsu for retrieving data in the video's description.

• Herbal (and global) collaborations: Ongoing, very recent, or upcoming editing collaborations include WikiProject Cannabis's 420 Collaboration and WikiProject Europe's European Destubathon, which have both concluded at the end of April, and WikiProject Plants's Philodendron Garden Party, active through the end of May. Other ongoing challenges can be viewed here.