Wiki Loves Pride – supporting LGBT* content across Wikimedia projects

Wiki Loves Pride!

The vision of Wikimedia is a world where every single person can free share in the sum of all  knowledge. To represent and share the world’s knowledge, Wikimedia projects must be open to all. “Knowledge” here means the knowledge of those who are discriminated against because of their sexuality and also because of their gender, ethnicity, nationality, social status, disability, etc. In these constellations knowledge is often related to power, privilege and access.

“For Wikimedia Germany, diversity and inclusion are important anchor points and central issues on the way to realising our vision. At the same time, we know that much joint work still lies ahead of us,” says Abraham Taherivand, Managing Director of Wikimedia Germany. 

In July, Wikimedia Germany will join in this Pride season’s celebrations and calls for the presence of LGBT* issues and people to be strengthened in all projects. Due to the Corona crisis, most German Pride Weeks and Christopher Street Day Parades have been cancelled, postponed or – as in Berlin – will be turned into a virtual event. 

We invite you to join us: Take some of your time and contribute LGBT* content to Wikipedia, correct articles or add to them, upload images to Wikimedia Commons or help out at Wikidata! Make the queer and LGBT* culture visible! 

Ongoing projects

Some Wikimedia projects are already on the way and might be worth looking into: Together with the international Wikimedia community, we recently defined our Strategy 2030 and as a result developed explicit standards for inclusive structures and communication, which also protect the active LGBT* community against harassment, e.g. when editing Wikipedia. We look forward to working with the new Wikimedia Germany board, in which, for the first time in the association’s history, a majority of four out of seven people identify as female. In addition, the English-language Wikipedia has a Wikipedia User Group for LGBT+ for years, and Wikimedia Austria will hold an international conference on the topic next year with Queering Wikipedia. The global campaign Wiki Loves Pride has the goal to expand content in Wikimedia projects and is looking forward to committed participants.