The Wikitongues User Group was recognized as a Wikimedia user group in May 10, 2018. This report outlines our accomplishments and activities between May 3rd, 2021 and May 2nd, 2022.

Overview

Wikitongues is a not-for-profit organization and volunteer community that educates the public about linguistic diversity and how to sustain it. In particular, we help people around the world create and archive documentation in their languages, especially video oral histories and distribute guides for getting involved with language preservation, revitalization, and sustainability.

Our user group was founded with two objectives:

Facilitate Wikitongues contribution to Wikimedia projects, especially in the form of language content on the Wikimedia Commons.
Promote linguistic diversity in the Wikimedia movement through language-centered events and campaigns.

Content

Wikitongues began contributing to the Wikimedia Commons on June 24th, 2016, about two years before our user group was recognized. As of this report, we have contributed 352 language videos to the Wikimedia Commons, representing 274 unique languages. A lifetime index of videos contributed to the Wikimedia Commons may be found here. Between May 3rd, 2021 and May 2nd, 2022, Wikitongues volunteers recorded 41 CC-by-SA 4.0 videos, representing 15 unique languages. These 41 videos have not yet been added to the Wikimedia Commons yet.

Events

To promote multilingualism on Wikipedia projects, we organize translate-a-thons and record-a-thons, the latter of which is an event format for contributing oral histories—representing oral and traditional knowledge—to Wikimedia projects.

Translate-a-thons

Wikitongues organized no translate-a-thons during this period.

Record-a-thons

Wikitongues organized no record-a-thons during this period.

Listening Tour

Wikitongues organized a Language Diversity Meeting on 10 November 2021, as part of Maryana Iskander's Listening Tour.

Cross-Collaboration

Oral Culture Transcription Toolkit/Interview Questions

Amrit Sufi invited Wikitongues to be consultants for the Oral Cultural Transcription Toolkit rapid grant. The output of this grant was a toolkit to help Wikimedians transcribe oral knowledge on Wikimedia platforms, with the interview questions based on Wikitongues's Oral History Elicitation Protocol.

Presentations

Wikitongues did not attend or present at any Wikimedia events during this period.

Finances

Wikitongues is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation registered in the U.S. state of New York since 2014. Our fiscal year runs from January to December. During our User Group's fourth year, which ran from May 3rd, 2021 to May 2nd, 2022, we allocated our budget exclusively to programs outside Wikimedia and, as such, all Wikitongues contributions to Wikimedia were entirely volunteer-driven without supporting expenses. Our goal for our user group's fifth year, 2022-2023, is to hire a Wikimedian in Residence and ensure that our Wikimedia user group is part of our funded programming. We already have an archival budget developed for the role and related programming.

Reflections

Due to the realities of COVID and budget cuts, we were unable to be as engaged with Wikimedia over the past year as we would have liked. Our past year focused on our core programming: language documentation and revitalization.

Going forward, we will:

Fund an archival budget, so that we can expand our archival branch into a core Wikitongues program.
Hire a Wikimedian in Residence to continue cultivating our user group and our content curation within the Commons