Israeli project awarded 3rd place at 2017 Wikimania conference

On Sunday evening, a project launched by Israel’s Channel 2 News and Wikipedia Israel, which was the first collaboration of its kind in the world between Wikimedia and a TV news network, was chosen as one of the three most unique and creative initiatives in the past year. As part of the project, which was launched in July 2016, dozens of videos were incorporated in popular Wikipedia entries for the public’s use.

At Wikimania, the annual international conference of Wikipedia and its free knowledge projects that is attended by about 1,000 volunteers from all over the world, the project from Israel was announced as the third place winner of the top 15 innovative projects in the field of technological knowledge in Wikimedia.

Among the videos that were added to various Wikipedia entries were documentations of historic moments and famous people from the past 23 years in Israel and the Middle East such as the Oslo Accords, the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli President Shimon Peres and internationally-known Israeli model Bar Refaeli.

Becca Noy