2025:Program/Wikitongues and the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub: together for language revitalization, support and success.

Session title: Wikitongues and the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub: together for language revitalization, support and success.

Session type: Demonstration

Track: Pre-Conference event: WikiTongues

Language: en

With Wikitongues as the new fiscal sponsor and a movement strategy grant, the Language Diversity Hub got the opportunity to further develop and test potential services to support the new/small/underrepresented language communities in our movement during 2024/2025. In this session we will sum up the experiences, share our learnings and present the next steps for the Hub. We will be interested in ideas and comments to further improve on the services we have offered.

Description

The Language Diversity Hub’s focus has always been the challenge described by many: how can the movement best support new languages joining the movement. The challenges they experience are many, as we documented in the first research project of the hub. In this period we have tried out a couple of services we believed could serve those communities, while we have also been working on a governance structure of a hub that is able to accommodate a range of stakeholders, from individual volunteers from new communities, to well established affiliates wanting to support newcomers. This includes young affiliates as well as WMF employees with a passion for language, language technology and new language communities. In the first part of the session we will present how we envision the services the hub will provide in the coming period, based on our experiences with the community calls organized together with the Language team of the WMF and the on-demand-helpdesk that we have been running. We are interested in sharing this to bring more attention to these services. We are also interested in getting feedback from the audience on what services they would be interested in. The Hub were able to access the last grants thanks to the fiscal sponsorship of Wikitongues. Wikitongues has handled the transactions related to the grant, which has been essential. However, the chance to work closer with Wikitongues has also given us the advantage of exploring how to collaborate closer, and one of the things we will be working on for the coming period is a conference for language diversity. The conference is led by Wikitongues, and supported by the Language Diversity Hub, and will be an important meeting space for the members of this hub. In the second part of the session we will present the governance model of the Hub. In this part of the session we wish to show people the channels which they can use to shape the future of the Hub, what it means to be a member of the hub and what role affiliates can play. The goal of the governance model of this hub is that it is lean enough for the steering committee and project managers to drive it forward, while also open and transparent enough for all stakeholders to understand how they can influence on important decisions. With this part the aim is that people will understand the different roles in the hub, and they know how they can position themselves and their community.

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

This session relates strongly to Inclusivity, as the goal is to support the new and small language communities. It relates to impact, as through this support we provide shoulders for the new language communities to stand on to faster achieve digital presence. This strongly relates to the sustainability of the movement.

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

Everyone can participate in this session

Speakers

• Tochi Precious

Tochi Precious is an experienced language advocate, open knowledge strategist, and community leader dedicated to linguistic diversity and digital inclusion. With a background in languages and project management, she has played a key role in promoting language documentation, revitalization, and multilingual content creation within the Wikimedia movement.

• Mali KB

I have been a part of the Wikimedia movement since 2021, when I was so lucky to join Wikimedia Norway. Together with my colleagues there, and other language enthusiats around the world I got to take part in building the Language Diversity Hub, which has been my main Wikimedia activity the last year. I am currently a PhD student at the Univeristy of Oslo, and my field of research is also related to Wikimedia.