What's Wiikimadnia 2022?

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NadirAli
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What's Wiikimadnia 2022?

Post by NadirAli » Wed Aug 24, 2022 7:00 pm


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Re: What's Wiikimadnia 2022?

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Aug 24, 2022 10:17 pm

Easy answers:

1) LIke the 2021 meeting it was held ONLINE ONLY. Covid being the "excuse". 2020 Wikimania wasn't held at all--Maher canceled it instantly in March when Covid travel restrictions started to appear.

2) for years Wikimania has NOT allowed "outsiders" to attend. You would not have been allowed access. Press badges are "available" but extremely difficult to get. The common rumor is that any journalist requesting access to a WMF "public" meeting is carefully vetted for being "Wikipedia Friendly". And they probably love having it online, because then they can reliably keep out anyone other than card carrying "cult members" and "reliable supporters".

3) And they can also post whatever figures they want for "attendance", because only high ranking "cult members" would have any idea of the real figures. Back when it was an in-person conference, attendance was ALLEGEDLY anywhere between 300 and 1700 people, with the best attendance for meetings held in the US, UK or Italy. Many of the attendees got financial aid from the WMF for travel and lodging. I also suspect they love doing it all online, because then the WMF SAVES MONEY.

4) if you dig around on the WIkimania wiki, you will find almost NO background information, attendance figures, or much of anything else. And various pages tagged as being in other languages (French, Catalan, Arabic, whatever) are usually in English anyway. This is all classic WMF incompetence/laziness/dishonesty. To be expected from them. You can learn more about Wikimania from the Wikipedia article (which is tightly controlled by insiders, and therefore pure propaganda) than you can from any other WMF site. Even the Wikimania site.

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