2025:Program/Preconference event: Users with Extended Rights Day

Session title: Preconference event: Users with Extended Rights Day

Session type: Pre-conference event

Track: Community Health

Language: en

A day of workshops, trainings, problem solving and networking for Wikimedia users with extended rights across projects.

Description

Spread across the globe, Wikimedia’s users with extended rights serve Wikimedia communities, acting as frontline defenders working behind the scenes to safeguard the integrity, quality, and security of the projects. Through their actions in their roles and higher standard of behavior, they positively shape community culture and set the norms that affect new and existing users. Anyone who has spent time on the wikis has seen them in action–stepping in to defuse heated debates, reverting bad edits, implementing community consensus, enforcing conduct policies, and handling countless other responsibilities.

This year’s Wikimania will experiment with a one-off pre-conference event dedicated to users with extended rights. This event will be a place for users with extended rights to connect with one another–to workshop problems together, discuss areas of emphasis for new collaborative work, to build capacity by learning from each other, and create a network for support into the future. Topics will include safety, privacy, policy tooling, and cross-wiki experience exchange.

The request is for a room during the pre-conference day on August 5 that can accommodate around 70 people.

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

Users with extended rights are the backbones of the Wikimedia projects, contributing to an inclusive, impactful and sustainable editing environment for other users. This event will aim to bring users with extended rights from around the world, building capacity both locally and globally across different language projects. This mutual strengthening will contribute to the long-term sustainability of our movement.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

This session is for an experienced audience

Speakers

• Elena Lappen (WMF)

Elena Lappen is a Movement Communications Manager, working for the Foundation since 2018. She is part of the Core Organizing Team of Wikimania and also contributes to a number of other projects including Diff, Conversations with the Trustees, improving the Foundation's presence on Meta-Wiki, and communications support for other Foundation teams in their collaborative work with Wikimedia communities.

• Natalia Szafran
• Rae Adimer

Movement Communications Specialist, Wikimedia Foundation