2025:Program/Unpopular Opinions: Bold Lightning Talks to Shake Up Wikimedia

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Session title: Unpopular Opinions: Bold Lightning Talks to Shake Up Wikimedia

Session type: Meet-up, exhibition space, social event

Track: Wild Ideas

Language: en

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB76LpwRYYI

Wikimania celebrates collaboration, but what if we made space for the bold, the unfiltered, the provocative—with WikiLove? This lightning talk session invites Wikimedians to share “unpopular takes” or “wild ideas” about improving the movement. Whether it's appointing admins by lottery, questioning sacred cows, or challenging beloved slogans, the goal is to stir the pot without spilling it.

LINK to sign up: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2025:Unpopular_Opinions:_Bold_Lightning_Talks_to_Shake_Up_Wikimedia

Each speaker gets 5 minutes to present. The only rule: be bold, be constructive, and don’t be mean. This session encourages respectful disruption, creative thinking, and a little bit of irreverence to spark deeper conversations. Come to laugh, cringe, cheer, or quietly nod in agreement. You might not agree with every idea, but you’ll leave thinking differently.

This could be done within the conference, or as a social activity in the evening, or some other slot.

Description

This is your chance to hear (or share) ideas that don't usually make it past the Talk page. This tightly curated session invites Wikimedians to step outside their comfort zone and propose unconventional, provocative, or wildly idealistic changes to how our projects and communities work.

LINK to sign up: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2025:Unpopular_Opinions:_Bold_Lightning_Talks_to_Shake_Up_Wikimedia

Every speaker gets just 5 minutes. The format is fast, punchy, and thought-provoking.

Think: “what if we appointed admins by lottery to fix burnout and gatekeeping?” or “stop calling us ‘volunteers’—it’s inaccurate and exclusionary,” or “maybe every wiki should have an expiration date unless it justifies its existence.” No proposal is too strange, as long as it’s presented in good faith, with a dash of humor and a lot of heart.

We want to create a space for:

• Ideas that are too bold for an RfC
• Critiques that come with solutions
• Satire with a serious point
• Conversation starters, not flamewars

This isn’t a free-for-all rant session. Talks must be respectful, constructive, and rooted in a desire to improve Wikimedia—even if the idea sounds a little crazy. It’s okay to question assumptions, challenge sacred cows, or poke at deeply held norms, but we expect speakers to be thoughtful and kind, even when they’re bold.

Why this format? The Wikimedia movement thrives on consensus, but that can sometimes stifle out-of-the-box thinking. Many of us have had ideas we were too hesitant to share, fearing backlash or misunderstanding. This session permits people to speak up in a fun, safe, and intellectually playful format.

Who can participate? Anyone with an idea and a willingness to share it in a short talk. We’ll do a public call for submissions and select a diverse mix of speakers, from longtime contributors to fresh voices. Ideas don’t have to be perfectly fleshed out—just provocative enough to start a conversation.

Expect to be surprised. You may find yourself agreeing with something you never thought you would. Or you might hear a take that makes you furious, but also makes you think.

This is your invitation to the boldest, most thoughtful session at Wikimania. Sometimes, shaking things up is exactly what we need.

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

This session embodies the Inclusivity theme by creating space for underheard, unconventional, or marginalized perspectives within the Wikimedia movement. Often, bold or unpopular ideas are filtered out of community discussions—not because they lack merit, but because they don’t fit the expected norms. By explicitly inviting these perspectives in a safe, respectful format, we open the floor to a wider range of contributors and make room for more diverse voices and experiences.

It aligns with Impact by fostering a culture of creative problem-solving. Sometimes, the ideas that sound the most radical at first are the ones that catalyze real change. By challenging assumptions and questioning the status quo, this session encourages forward-thinking solutions that could improve governance, participation, equity, and user experience across the movement.

Finally, it supports Sustainability by promoting honest reflection and innovation. If we want Wikimedia to thrive for the next 20 years, we must be willing to rethink—and occasionally reinvent—how we work. This session offers a lighthearted but meaningful space to do just that.

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

Everyone can participate in this session

Resources

Video

• Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB76LpwRYYI

Summary

After uploading to Youtube, this is the AI-generated summary and rundown with some human editing.

This video from Wikimania 2025 features a series of "Unpopular Opinions" lightning talks, challenging participants to share unconventional or provocative ideas for improving the Wikimedia movement.

• Hosts, Andrew Lih and Sam Klein, emphasize a hands-off curatorial approach, encouraging free-flowing ideas within a respectful and constructive framework (0:02-2:04). People signed up to give their talks, and added their slides to a master Google Slides deck. Last minute additions were accepted, including those who showed up in the room. After each person was given a chance to speak once, and as time allowed the session gave folks a second round to speak.

The "Unpopular Opinions" presented included:

• Wikipedia's media policy (3:24-8:07): Galder Gonzalez challenges the long-standing guideline "Wikipedia is not YouTube," arguing that video is not inherently "worse" than text and that Wikipedia should embrace diverse media formats like images, audio, and video to enhance its content and reach, especially in education.
• Abolishing notability criteria (8:30-11:47): User:MB-one. This proposal suggests removing the notability requirement for articles across all Wiki projects. The speaker argues that notability creates frustration for new users and that existing policies like neutral point of view, reliable sourcing, and encyclopedic content already address the concerns notability aims to regulate.
• Rethinking article leads (12:20-15:11): Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight. A long-time editor with over 6,400 new articles proposes reviewing and improving the introductory paragraphs of their existing articles, which are often short, using AI.
• Integrating audio versions of articles (15:28-20:00): Anton Protsiuk. A speaker advocates for incorporating audio versions of Wikipedia articles to improve accessibility and cater to different learning styles. They address potential objections such as the challenge of visual content (charts) in audio and the difficulty for users to edit audio formats.
• Wikipedia Should Be a Social Network (20:28): C. Scott Ananian proposes that Wikipedia should adopt social networking features like customized user feeds and profiles to better motivate editors through peer interaction. He suggests replacing the current talk page system with Slack-style task-oriented discussions and IRC channels for real-time, unlogged communication. Additionally, he argues for a real-time collaborative editing interface similar to Google Docs to modernize the user experience.
• Open Movement Global (24:47): Iolanda Pensa proposes a massive, unified gathering in 2029 that brings together all branches of the "open" movement, including Open Science, Open Education, and Creative Commons. She argues that large-scale events create a productive "state of emergency" that forces radical collaboration and helps the movement assert its mainstream importance. The plan involves partnering with FOSDEM in Brussels to bridge fragmented communities and create a shared strategic vision.
• Bigger Than Big Tech (30:17): User:Pharos argues that Wikipedia should boldly position itself as the leading non-profit alternative to Big Tech corporations that profit from misinformation and social division. He encourages the movement to move away from its conservative approach to formats and experiment with new ideas, such as turning Wikinews into a mission-driven social media platform. By embracing its unique status, he believes Wikipedia can lead the way in creating a more responsible and less commercialized digital ecosystem.
• Moving categories to Wikidata (34:40-37:25): Ad Huikeshoven. This idea suggests centralizing article categories within Wikidata, arguing that current categories are underutilized by readers (less than 1% interaction) and that Wikidata could offer a more dynamic and interactive tagging system for articles.
• Introducing Wiki AI (38:08-41:29): Sam Klein proposes the creation of a "Wiki AI" project. He advocates for a large language model fine-tuned on Wikidata and Wikipedia that would excel in citation precision and understand markdown and template syntax. This specialized AI would prioritize information security, run on a private cloud to protect user data, and be trained to be "skeptical" of its own input to ensure high-quality, balanced content. He argues that this tool would better serve the community's specific needs for nuance and detail than existing proprietary models.
• Wikimedia Foundation having a Wikipedian in Residence (41:56-45:15): Andrew Lih suggests that the Wikimedia Foundation itself should host a Wikipedian in Residence to act as a crucial bridge and ambassador between the community and the foundation's management, fostering better communication and understanding.
• How I Would Change Wikimania (45:49-48:54): A speaker proposes several radical changes for Wikimania, including limiting attendance for repeat attendees, requiring all participants to give a talk (preferably lightning talks), reducing the number of program tracks to two, and implementing anonymous scholarships.
• Accepting NC (Non-Commercial) licenses (48:54-50:31): James Heilman. This opinion challenges the Wikimedia movement's strict adherence to fully open licenses, suggesting that accepting non-commercial licenses would broaden participation and allow collaboration with more institutions.
• Renaming "Wiki Loves" initiatives (50:57-52:00): A speaker from Romanian Wikipedia community suggests dropping the "Wiki Loves" phrase from initiatives like "Wiki Loves Monuments" because "love" is a strong word and hard to translate catchily, proposing more neutral or descriptive alternatives: Wiki Moderately Approves of Science, Wiki Reluctantly Co-habitates with Folklore, or Wiki Digs Earth.
• Restricting image sizing in articles (52:22-53:11): This proposal advocates for removing the ability for users to set specific image sizes (e.g., exact pixel dimensions) for thumbnails in articles, arguing for standardized sizing managed at a foundation level.
• Removing Sister Projects by Vote (53:37): Andrew (User:OhanaUnited) addresses the recurring disputes regarding the future of inactive or controversial sister projects within the Wikimedia movement. He proposes a democratic solution where the community can initiate an RFC to vote on the deletion of specific projects or language editions. To ensure stability, he suggests that any project surviving such a vote would receive two years of "immunity" from further deletion proposals. This approach aims to settle long-standing arguments through a clear, majority-based decision-making process.
• Questioning "anyone can edit" and "volunteers" (AI-generated talk) (55:37-58:15): An AI-generated talk explores the shift in language from "anyone can edit" to focusing on "volunteers," arguing that the term "volunteer" implies privilege (free time, financial stability) and might inadvertently exclude potential contributors from under-resourced communities, thus skewing neutrality.
• AI Generated Korean Wikipedia Content (59:33): A contributor from the Korean Wikipedia warns against over-relying on AI for visual content, citing an AI-generated poster that featured an anatomically incorrect twelve-winged insect. He also discusses administrative challenges regarding block evasion, where users bypass restrictions by clearing browser cookies and changing mobile IP addresses. The rapid creation of new temporary accounts undermines community moderation efforts. The speaker says these evasion tactics will become a broader problem as Wikipedia transitions to new account systems. His talk serves as a cautionary message about both the reliability of AI and the evolving threats to platform security.
• Accepting edits from Tor (1:04:14-1:07:18): C. Scott Ananian. The talk suggests accepting edits from Tor users, highlighting the importance of anonymity and pseudonymity for many contributors, especially those in restrictive environments.
• Abolishing "Wikipedian of the Year" award (1:08:30-1:09:44): The speaker argues that the award has become too large and competitive, leading to negative feelings among those not recognized, and proposes replacing it with a "barn star" sticker system for peer-to-peer recognition.

Speakers

• Andrew Lih

Andrew Lih has been a Wikipedia editor since 2003 and is an administrator on English Wikipedia and Wikidata. He is the author of the 2009 book The Wikipedia Revolution: How a bunch of nobodies created the world’s greatest encyclopedia. He is a passionate advocate of collaborative efforts between the cultural and heritage sector and the Wikimedia community. In the United States, he serves as Wikimedian at Large at the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum, education, and research complex. In 2022, he was named one of the first Wikimedia Laureate for his lifetime of work with the Wikimedia movement.

• SJ

Wikimaniac, Wikidata editor, co-organizer of the first Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge.

Built the first multilingual offline Wikipedia snapshots, and custom Wikislices, for One Laptop per Child.

A founder of the Public AI Network.