The Wikimedia movement

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In the shadow of the Wikipedia project, and for a little over twenty years now, a social movement has been developing that is virtually unknown to the public, known as the Wikimedia movement. Its vision of the future is of a world in which every human being can freely take part in the sharing of knowledge. Responsible for almost a thousand websites, the best-known of which are the different language versions of Wikipedia, the movement also brings together hundreds of user groups, regional, state or thematic associations, scattered around the world.

Wikimedia is also the only non-profit player in the top 50 most visited sites on the Web. A simple fact that allows us to affirm, to this day and in the Webspace, that this movement has become the most visible expression of the values of freedom and sharing perpetuated during the digital revolution, following the influence of the Counterculture of the 1960s.

After presenting the origins of the movement and its quest for the free sharing of knowledge, this book provides a comprehensive overview of its organization. We discover how hundreds of bodies, mostly made up of volunteers, developed while retaining a large measure of autonomy. A new specificity of the movement, which ultimately inspires the desire to imagine differently, a humanity confronted with the challenges of an ever-changing world.

Lionel holds a doctorate in political and social sciences, is a free-culture activist and is a lecturer in anthropology at UCLouvain University. He holds several administrative positions within the Wikimedia movement, which he has been observing in a participatory way since 2011. Before writing his doctoral thesis on the Wikimedia movement, he was the author of a master's thesis entitled Culture fr Wikipedia, in which he describes the organization of the free encyclopedia in French.