Event talk:Celebrate Women

Discussion from 2023 and before
Discussion from 2024
Discussion from 2025

2026 Events

Celebrate Women page with Event Registration

Hello!

This year, I was asked to organize the Celebrate Women engagement from the Wikimedia Foundation side.

One of the things I thought could help the campaign is having the main page here use an Event Registration header (like in this campaign), so that we can ask people to register. This idea could be good for the following reasons:

1. It would allow the campaign to retain participants year by year and communicate with them via the Event Registration's message feature.
2. During this year's campaign (and probably in the future too), use the Event Registration to send weekly reminders to participants, talking about all community events of the week and directing them with logistical information (date, time, registration link, etc.).
3. This would allow us (WMF) to directly help “elevate” the campaign without getting the stage.

The idea is that the organizers for the page would be several people, including @Anthere (as the creator of the page), me as a Wikimedia Foundation representative, but also other women organizers here.

For context, using this page every year is technically possible. We can "refresh" the page every year, editing the logistical details, like date and time, and still have the contributions data.

Please let me know if you have questions and/or suggestions! Also, let us know if you are an experienced organizer and want to be added as the campaign's organizer too.

Thank you! GFontenelle (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, everyone! Oi, Giovanna, it's great to hear that the Wikimedia gender gap-focused communities and organizers will have your support to run Celebrate Women 2026!

To get straight to the point, deciding whether to activate the event registration tool on the Celebrate Women meta page depends on what we want to achieve with that page. Historically, this page has served as a landing page where organizers from across the globe add their International Women's Day campaigns/events (which often already use the event registration tool). So until now, it has worked as a comms page where people interested in the gender-gap topic can find IWD campaigns to join (and resources to edit individually, if they like).

In 2024, for example, the Celebrate Women landing page was promoted by WMF within their gender-gap-focused comms campaign Wikipedia Needs More Women (led by Olga Spingou), ensuring that audiences targeted by the campaign could learn about and join gender-gap initiatives organized by the Wikimedia movement in their languages and locations.

Finally, my understanding is that the Celebrate Women page was created to solve a major challenge: the many concurrent Central Notice banner requests received for gender gap initiatives in March (here, Ciell and Anthere can give more context, if needed).

So, while I find the event registration tool super useful, converting Celebrate Women into an event page at this moment doesn't make much sense to me. Unless we decide, for example, that going forward Celebrate Women will no longer focus on showcasing the many IWD gender-gap events for potential editors to join. Instead, it would focus on gender organizers and be used to host movement-focused calls (e.g., conversation hours) where organizers can convene to discuss strategic aspects of IWD celebrations within the Wikimedia movement.

However, reflecting on this focus shift idea, it’s clear for me that for it to succeed, Wikimedia gender-gap organizers would require far more strategic support than is currently available. Most of us have very limited bandwidth for global movement-building initiatives and usually only have enough capacity to activate our closest communities. Also, if done, the movement would "lose" this landing page to showcase all IWD Wikimedia campaigns across the globe -- unless WMF creates a permanent editable space on their website for that purpose, such as Art+Feminism's, which has actually also been discussed in the past.

That said, I would love to hear others' opinions and ideas, and I'm available to support wherever I can!

Warmly, Contaminadas (talk) 15:26, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi everyone,

As someone who has helped coordinate community campaigns before, I think the decision really comes down to clarity of purpose. If Celebrate Women is meant to remain a global landing page that aggregates multiple IWD initiatives, converting it fully into an Event Registration page could limit its flexibility. However, using Event Registration as a complementary tool for organizer coordination and participant follow-up could be a strong middle ground.

Retention and structured communication are definitely valuable, but preserving the page’s visibility function for diverse local campaigns is just as important. A hybrid model might offer the best of both worlds.

On a side note, when working on digital campaign visibility and outreach strategies, I often explore different platform tools and growth insights through resources like TopFollow, which helps me stay informed about engagement tools and online promotion approaches.

Looking forward to seeing how this evolves—happy to support where helpful. Intashaimtiaz (talk) 16:53, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello

I must confess that I am rather in the same mindset than Tila on the topic.

As Tila mentionned it, we created this page to avoid the multiplication of banners that would then enter into competition. This helped to "funnel" all interested parties to this page. Which mean that contrariwise to many banners... the unique banner is meant to address to people in ALL languages (or as many as possible...)

We then tried to keep it as simple and similar year after year, because this permitted to have it translated in MANY languages and not to worry that it would be constantly be very outdated. No one is very excited at the idea of having to update wiki pages all the time. We do not have the bandwith for this.

Then we propose a table page, which could certainly be improved I guess... but to which organizers can add their programmes. And then visitors find the initiatives relevant to them quickly as well, in particular searching per language and geography.

Once visitors find what they are interested in, they usually land on the Event page, where they can read the details AND register to this specific event.

In your proposition, the main positive I see is that it will be easier to "re-activate" formely interested parties... which is usually way easier than to "activate" new parties. Last year was a bit floppy, so it would certainly be good to have someone to shake the crowd

But the main drawbacks I see are the following

1. There might be confusion between the different registrations. People are rather used by now to register for a "time limited" event. Not for a ... unlimited event. Some might find it a bit weird
2. The registered people will then receive weekly emails during several weeks, and more next year, and more in two years etc. and I guess that those emails will be by default... in English. Most registered folks will thus find themselves repeatedly receiving emails that they did not really ask for... in a language they do not understand, email from which they may not fully comprehend how to opt out from, to tell them about a whole collection of events that will take place thousands of kilometers away... in languages they do not comprehend either... OUCH. This is in fact... spam !
3. the elements to announce would be in the Event system. We can not give access to dozen and dozen of people, to prepare their own messages and send them to the entire list. That could spiral out of control. So we would have to limit those we would give access to. Not so cool... OUCH again.

So I can see the benefits to communicate more efficiently. BUT I'd say that... if we were to do that... you would have to be LIGHT on the communication to the registered participants. Not TOO frequent. Make sure that the language is as simple as possible to understand AND short. Provide elements to explain how to opt out if they do not want it anymore. But generally... I am too fan. Which is why I would REALLY appreciate other feedback before activating. We can give it a try of course.

BUT... I think you need to realize that it is unlikely organizers will chat with you every week to give you crunchy messages to promote their event. Some might have the will and time... but it is likely you will always have to prepare the messages ;)

Tila is hypothetizing that the concept could be to move away from giving visibility to community event, and instead move to visibility to event organizers. I am not sure it was the idea Giovanna was thinking of. BUT if this is the idea... it would also mean that... then landing page would regularly change to reflect the different "conversations". This would imply

1. In most likelyhood, only a few of those conversations would be in the participants language (we do not have the bandwith to propose translations of such conversations in dozen of languages)
2. the landing page would change regularly, hence creating tensions regarding the translation operations

I like the idea of conversations. Why not. But then... they should be simply added in the big table with the online activities. Some people love conversations. Some people love editing. Some people love lectures. There is no "best" activity. The diversity makes sense.

Cheers

Anthere (talk) 00:09, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416031 Anthere (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi everyone!

The conversation here was also taking place via email, with dozens of Gender organizers in copy. We exchanged the same messages here that we exchanged there, but the conversation there ended up going ahead. As you can see, the Event Registration header is already enabled on the page.

I'm copying below my two emails addressing concerns shared by Anthere and Contaminadas. After the emails, the organizers agreed to use Event Registration, and Anthere moved the page to the "Event" namespace using the Phabricator ticket she provided above.

It was agreed that we will use this as an experiment and test it this year. Here are the following messages, for transparency:

FIRST MESSAGE

Dear @Contaminadas, dear @Anthere,

Thanks so much for your answers. I will directly respond to some sections to better explain some of the points and what we want to achieve. From reading both emails, I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding about the goal/purpose. I also apologize for the size of my answer here in advance! 😅 Please forgive me!

From @Contaminadas: "Historically, this page has served as a landing page where organizers from across the globe add their International Women's Day campaigns/events."

A: Yes, and my suggestion would not change the purpose of the page, nor would it change what you (community members) want to achieve with it.

From @Contaminadas: "Celebrate Women page was created to solve a major challenge: the many concurrent Central Notice banner requests received for gender gap initiatives in March."

A: Yes, and this would continue to be the case.

From @Anthere: "Contaminadas is hypothetizing that the concept could be to move away from giving visibility to community event, and instead move to visibility to event organizers. I am not sure it was the idea Giovanna was thinking of."

A: Anthere is correct. This is not what I'm proposing.

From @Contaminadas: "Unless we decide, for example, that going forward Celebrate Women will no longer focus on showcasing the many IWD gender-gap events for potential editors to join. Instead, it would focus on gender organizers and be used to host movement-focused calls (e.g., conversation hours) where organizers can convene to discuss strategic aspects of IWD celebrations within the Wikimedia movement."

A: This is not what we are proposing. I agree that this would increase the amount of work for organizers, and it's not what we wanted to do/achieve.

Here's what we have in mind. The idea would be to continue to use this page to showcase the many IWD gender-gap events for potential editors to join. This is the one and only goal of this page -- and in my own gender volunteer/organizer opinion/hat, it should continue to be only for that. However, adding an event header would allow us to help do exactly that: showcase the events on the page by communicating with people who might be interested.

I want to highlight again that the idea is not to change the page, its content, or its purpose. It's only to add the header and allow us to message people interested with some (very limited) reminders.

A good comparison would be to treat this page as an Outreach Dashboard campaign page that "holds" event dashboards, but it's not itself an event page. For example, the relation of the Campaign: Art+Feminism 2020, which holds all the A+F events in 2020, like the events "Art and Feminism Armenia 2020" or "Caryatid Collective 2020", but it's not an event dashboard itself.

Note that, by adding the Event Registration header to the page, it won't change its name, won't even add the namespace "Event:" (see this example) to it, and we wouldn't add logistical information, only the dates (March 1-31st).

From @Anthere: "We then tried to keep it as simple and similar year after year, because this permitted to have it translated in MANY languages and not to worry that it would be constantly be very outdated. No one is very excited at the idea of having to update wiki pages all the time. We do not have the bandwith for this."

A: I want to highlight that adding the Event Registration header would not change the content of the page and would not require the page to be translated again or constantly updated. The header is already translated automatically. The only thing we would have to do every year is to change the dates in the header (which is already updated every year anyway).

From @Anthere: "In your proposition, the main positive I see is that it will be easier to "re-activate" formely interested parties... which is usually way easier than to "activate" new parties. Last year was a bit floppy, so it would certainly be good to have someone to shake the crowd"

A: Yes, this is one of our main concerns in the current state of the internet: retention and engagement. It's important to reactivate and maintain people we already know are interested, especially in a campaign like this one.

From @Anthere: "There might be confusion between the different registrations."

A: I understand this concern. However, it could also help someone who is only thinking about attending one specific event to find and maybe participate in others.

From @Anthere: "The registered people will then receive weekly emails during several weeks, and more next year, and more in two years etc. and I guess that those emails will be by default... in English. Most registered folks will thus find themselves repeatedly receiving emails that they did not really ask for... in a language they do not understand, email from which they may not fully comprehend how to opt out from, to tell them about a whole collection of events that will take place thousands of kilometers away... in languages they do not comprehend either."

A: This is a concern that I have as well. However, my idea would be to keep the messages to a minimum: one per week in March and, maybe, one on March 7 to remind/highlight to people the events on March 8.

Indeed, it would be in English. We could translate into a few languages, but I'm afraid this would make the potential message too big or too many messages. I don't have a solution for this.

To opt out, we could add a line to the end of the message asking them to reply back (which would only arrive in the inbox of the person who sent the message) if they want to opt out, and we would remove them from the list.

From @Anthere: "the elements to announce would be in the Event system. We can not give access to dozen and dozen of people, to prepare their own messages and send them to the entire list. That could spiral out of control. So we would have to limit those we would give access to."'

A:The idea would be to just send one general message once per week (and maybe one on March 7) as I mentioned. It wouldn't require organizers to prepare their own messages and send them to the entire list.

Here's a suggestion of what it could look like:

"Welcome to the Celebrate Women campaign! We have events in many countries, dates, and platforms. This week, we have the following events:

March 13:

- Persistence & Progress: Confronting Wikipedia’s gender imbalance (Wiki Education Speaker Series). TIME: 17:00 UTC. REGISTER HERE: [Zoom link].

March 19:

- Wikimedia Research Showcase focused on Gender Gap. TIME: 16:30 UTC. REGISTER HERE: [LINK]

...

Find more events here: Celebrate_Women.

To opt out of these messages, reply to this message or contact <gfontenellewikimedia.org>."

Something along these lines. It would be something very simple, direct, and I would be the one responsible for that this year, with no additional work for any organizer. That said, the work would be with me, the stage for organizers and events 🩷

My goal is really to help more people to find more events and remember those events, without creating additional work for the community. Next year, the Foundation would have to dedicate someone to do the same again (if it works, of course).

I hope with my (very long, I'm sorry!) message, I was able to clarify the idea and objectives. However, if the group here still disagrees that this is a good option, it's completely ok, and we can continue to leave it as it is. If that's the case, I also want to share that I would love to hear about other suggestions of how I could help you this year. It would be of personal importance for me, and a pleasure to hear and help somehow.

SECOND MESSAGE

From @Contaminadas: I'm still curious to know if there will be any plans to promote Celebrate Women this year (besides the Central notice banner), as this would be ideal to test this experiment.

A: The orientation I received internally (at the end of 2025) is that we won't have an extended comms campaign to promote Celebrate Women 2026, like it was done last year, due to Wikipedia 25. We would have to start (had started it!) communications in January, with preparation starting even before that, and the Wikipedia 25 campaign had to be a priority. No other communications would have happened during this time.

However, I'm checking with Comms to follow up with some social media posts, and we are publishing a "Media press" page to the campaign's portal in the next few days. This page will be a guide resource for organizers to use.

From @Contaminadas: my recommendation is that we adapt the wording to make sure that people landing there understand quickly what they will be registering for:

1. Registering to receive messages around Wikimedia IWD campaigns across the globe

2.Registering again to contribute to specific language/project/geographic campaigns.

A: I will add these points to the page if we are able to have the Event Registration header in the end! Thank you so much, @Contaminadas ❤️

From @Rosiestep: I know that even with clear instructions, some subset will not understand they registered for messaging, not participation. So each message must gently remind the recipient of the next steps.'

A: Good point! I will make sure to highlight this in the messages.

From @Rosiestep: Ergo, will there be an easy way for a person to opt-out of further messaging?

A: In my last email here, I wrote a draft/preview of the message I would send, and I added a phrase about that at the end. It would be something like:

>>> "To opt out of these messages, reply to this message or contact <gfontenelle@wikimedia.org>."

I believe I would be the only one receiving the reply back, so that wouldn't bother other organizers with many messages.

And also what @Ciell mentioned: "to unsubscribe a user can go to the event-page again, and click the same button. After registration this button will say 'cancel registration', or something like that."

From @Ciell:

* Who, or how many people, do you suggest will be added as event organizer for this event? (and therefore have access to more information, like for instance the participants that chose to be hidden from being listed on the event page)

* Who will compose these messages?

* Who will proofread them?

* Who will send them?

* Who will respond to the email replies that people may send?

A: * This is the first time I would do something like this, but I would say maybe one person from each major group/project here? For example, Rosie as WiR, Contaminadas as Wiki Editoras Lx, etc...

If you would like to be one of those people, to represent your group, please reply to this email.

A: * I will!

A: * I will write and share it with all of you beforehand.

A: * I will send them.

A: * I will respond to them.

A: After each week, I can also send you all here a kind of small report of how it went, so that you are all aware of everything. And then, when the campaign is over, we can review the experiment collectively. If it works out, we may use it next year. If not, that's a learning, and we know this is not the correct approach. That's why I prefer this to be something I do, so as not to give you all more work if it's something that might not work.

From @Anthere:

A: @Anthere, I understand you already opened a Phabricator ticket about this in the meantime. Thank you so much!

I shared your problem with the Connection team and here's the summary of their answer: For Meta, it might make sense to allow event registration in the mainspace. That's something the Meta community should decide, though, and an admin would implement it at Special:CommunityConfiguration/CampaignEvents. If for some reason the mainspace cannot be allowed, then there's no other way than to move the page to an allowed namespace. There's a page here about Event Registration's permitted namespaces.

If you want to try this option, let me know. In the meantime, I'm trying to find someone to prioritize your Phabricator ticket as soon as possible, so we can have the header enabled. Again, thank you so much for the help with this. I really appreciate it!

Languages

Hi, I will use this list on this page to set the targeting of the CentralNotice banner, which is going live tomorrow. When you mention the languages with the event, I can included them in the banner. If you don't list them on this page or just mention 'all languages in <region>' or 'multiple languages', I don't know which languages to include in my settings to promote your event! Ciell (talk) 11:35, 1 March 2026 (UTC) (courtesy ping for @Lvova, Stella, Tiven, Joris)

@Ciell, Please go by these Wikipedia language wikis currently organising Feminism and Folklore 2026 campaign; as,awa,ba,bn,bs,ce,cv,dag,dga,en,fat,ff,ga,gu,gur,ha,hi,hif,id,igl,kaa,kn,kus,mad,mni,mai,mos,mr,ne,nl,or,pcm,sah,sat,simple,sd,sr,sw,ta,tcy,tl,tn,tt,tyv,uz,abr (Incubator),wlx (Incubator),gpe,bcl,kcg. Joris Darlington Quarshie (talk) 12:07, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Okay. Note as fyi: CN banners can't target projects in incubator. Ciell (talk) 14:25, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

To double check: all these mentioned languages have local events/initiatives? Because I recognize some languages that were excluded from the WLF banner campaigns. Are you in contact with all these local communities, in a public discussion page on their wiki? And have the events been announced there...? Ciell (talk) 14:34, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

@Ciell, So there are local organisers who only organise Feminism and Folklore and do not organise Wiki Loves Folklore so that's why you noticed that. For communication with the language wikis listed, they have already started their campaign for this year. Please check the table for reference: Project Page. Its also a campaign that runs throughout from Feb 1st to March 31st.

And thank you very much for informing me about the language wikis in incubator. I will communicate that to the organisers of those campaigns in incubator. Joris Darlington Quarshie (talk) 11:01, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I added these languages to the campaign. Ciell (talk) 15:53, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, for the CEE Spring: all languages in Central and Eastern Europe + Central Asia + Farsi + Esperanto (languages of the CEE Hub) + English + Italian (as they are listed as guest communities). Thank you! Lvova (talk) 14:45, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Lvova! I have a very limited idea which languages are spoken in the mentioned regions. CentralNotice is quite an old software system and the backend work is very basic and a lot of manual work. Same as we for instance can't target a continent as a whole, but have to manually assign all countries on that continent to a campaign, the system has no setting for all languages in CEE. We have to manually assign all of them them. And I am sure Wikipedia will have a List of languages spoken in CCE, but I have trust in you as organizer to know best - better than Wikipedia even!

English, Farsi and Italian were already running, but I added Esparanto now as well. Ciell (talk) 11:10, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Let's use this list as a base: if my ChatGPT didn't forgot someone, it should be ar, av, az, ba, be, bg, bs, ce, cnr, crh, cs, cv, dar, de, el, eo, et, fa, hr, hsb, hu, hy, hyw, inh, jct, ka, kk, krc, ky, lez, lt, lv, mk, mt, myv, os, pl, ro, rom, ru, rup, sah, sk, sl, sq, sr, tg, tr, tt, tyv, udm, uk, uz, vro (pls recheck and it's possible to use the list from the template for territories). Lvova (talk) 11:55, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

These languages were added when available in our CN system, thanks Lvova! Ciell (talk) 16:05, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Ahh vraiment t'as raison merci bcp lvova. Hafssatou (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

How do I add my edit a thon to the Celebrate Women program dashboard?

Hi, I'd like to add this editathon dashboard to the Celebrate Women program. However I cannot find any way to do so. How do I add it? Luiysia (talk) 22:43, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello @Luiysia. The dashboard has already been added to the Celebrate Women Campaign.- ❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee ❚❙❚❙❙ ✉ 04:59, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Dear @Luiysia, thank you for organizing during Celebrate Women! As @Gnoeee mentioned, I already added your edit-a-thon to the campaign because I'm an admin over there. However, next time, the way to do it is to go to the "Edit details" button in your program and scroll to the bottom, where you can see "Campaigns".

Usually, when someone creates a new program without selecting a campaign in advance, it is added automatically to "Miscellanea". What you should do is click the plus (+) sign and add the campaign you want to be part of. It can be several campaigns at once if you wish. You should also delete the "Miscellanea" one. After that, just click "Save" and it's done.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need anything else. ⭐️ GFontenelle (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 5 March 2026 (UTC)