Commons:Event Registration

The Content Enablement and Connection teams at the Wikimedia Foundation have been collaborating to understand the usage of the CampaignEvents features, particularly Event Registration, and engaging with the communities to encourage their use. Since July 2025, we have been working to accomplish this with Wikimedia Commons.

Event Registration is a header that users see on certain Wiki pages with the namespace “Event:” and that they use to organize events and other community engagements. Initially, this feature was only available on Meta-Wiki; however, as of 2025, it's now also available in all Wikipedia languages. This year, it was also added to sister projects, and on September 18, it was launched on Wikimedia Commons.

In addition to Event Registration, the CampaignEvents extension also includes several other features. The complete list is the following:

Dedicated event page with an information header and a 'register' button. It helps organizers and participants manage event registrations. It's available on any project by adding Special:EnableEventRegistration to the search bar.

A global and automated list of events on all Wikimedia projects that can be filtered. It's available on any project by adding Special:AllEvents to the search bar.

A list of editors who might be interested in joining an event based on a list of articles. Organizers can invite them to their event. It's available on any project by adding Special:GenerateInvitationList to the search bar.

It offers collaborative contribution data (metrics) for organizers and participants. This is a new feature and testing is still ongoing.

From the CampaignEvents features, Event Registration and Invitation List require additional user rights, as they include the ability to mass message editors. Additionally, on Commons, Invitation List and Collaborative Contributions are available, but not completely functional yet. Collaborative Contributions tracks edits to the file as wikitext, such as changes to descriptions and categories, but not structure data or image uploads.

For the launch on Wikimedia Commons, we worked to first understand the types of community engagement held in the project. To achieve this, we conducted an internal research, with a focus on Wiki Loves campaigns. We also examined the events already utilizing the Event Registration feature that had Commons as a target Wiki.

After that, we also announced the launch to the communities on Commons by posting to several pages, including the Wikimedia Commons Village Pump, as well as on mailing lists and Telegram groups. Before the announcement, we also received some expressions of interest from community members, which confirmed our assumption that this was something the Commons community would want and benefit from.

To prepare the user rights on Commons and to inform the community that these features were coming, we reached out to Commons administrators. From this interaction, we got the new Event organizers user right on Commons.

To receive this user right for yourself, please take into consideration that this is the criterion established by the Commons’ administrators:

• You are active enough on Wikimedia Commons. 500 recent edits would be advisable.
• You are a volunteer with or a staff member of a Wikimedia affiliate.
• You have received a Wikimedia grant for an event, or that you plan to organize an event.
• You are part of Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Africa, or similar initiatives.

To request this user right, you should go to the Requests for rights page and look for the Event organizer section.

Two months after the launch, we already have 29 users with the Event organizer right. We also have 9 events: Wiki Loves Monuments 2025 in Uruguay, Wiki Loves Monuments 2025 in the United States, Wiki Loves Sudan 2025, Foto.Física 2025, Wiki Loves Cemeteries in Surabaya – Ziarah Makam Pahlawan, Wiki Science Competition 2025 in Malaysia, Bienes comunes de Chubut, and, finally, Wiki Loves Folklore 2026 and their Event Registration on Wikimedia Commons (WLF Office Hour).

After researching and launching, we wanted to engage and understand how the Commons community would use Event Registration, as well as how the feature would benefit them.

This slide shows some of your thoughts and how this piece of work and Event Registration can help value Wikimedia Commons as a platform:

For that, we got in touch with Wiki Loves Folklore to test this feature on Commons as a big Wiki Loves campaign. The WLF organizers agreed to engage this feature with their local organizers and have already created a Commons event page for the global campaign: Wiki Loves Folklore 2026, which is under construction.

Thanks to the work of WLF, especially Tiven2240 and Joris Darlington Quarshie, we were able to hold one office hour for their national organizers to demonstrate the CampaignEvents extension and how Event Registration can be useful for them, making it easier to connect with participants during and after their WLF campaign. Creating an event on Wikimedia Commons, where the campaign operates, enables organizers to work on the campaign's retention and continuation, and additionally, contributes to a better sense of community on Wikimedia Commons.

After the session, we already had four WLF organizers requesting the Event organizer user right: Carlos WMPT, Dappasolomon001, Mr. Snatch, and Atibrarian.

If you are a Wiki Loves Folklore organizer and want to have an Event Registration page, you have two possibilities:

1. Creating a page such as Event:Wiki Loves Folklore 2026 in COUNTRY; or
2. Adding your already existing Commons:Wiki Loves Folklore 2026 in COUNTRY page to the Special:EnableEventRegistration page. This second option would allow you, the organizer, to keep your page with the 'Commons:' namespace.

After publishing the page, you should enable the Event Registration feature and continue with your edits. One possibility is adding the '{{Commons:Wiki Loves Folklore 2026}}' campaign template to your event.

Here are the slides and the recording from the office hour session, where you can watch how to accomplish this process:

We aim to have five WLF local or national events created before the end of the year, which would respond to the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual plan.

For the work on Wikimedia Commons, the two teams collaborated via two hypotheses on the Wikimedia Foundation's 2025-2026 annual plan. This is where the hypothesis lives in the annual plan structure:

Wiki Experiences (WE) 1: Contributor Experiences

• Objective: Contributions increase because volunteers are offered compelling opportunities and understand their impact.
  • WE1.2 Collaboration impact
    • Key result: Increase in the number of collaborations on the wikis by 55% YoY by the end of Q4.
      • [Hypothesis] WE1.2.2 Engagement on Wikimedia Commons (during Q1, from July to September)
        • “If we enable the CampaignEvents extension on Commons and research the types of events and community engagement accomplished via Wikimedia Commons, we will be able to set one adoption strategy for Event Registration on Wikimedia Commons in Q2.”
      • [Hypothesis] WE1.2.5 Adoption strategy for event registration on Commons (during Q2, from October to December)
        • “If we set one adoption strategy for Event Registration on Wikimedia Commons in early Q2, we will be able to test it with organizers of at least 1 large campaign and enable 5 local organizers to use the feature.”

For more information about the CampaignEvents extension and its features, please read these materials or watch the video guide series in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, or Swahili.

If you want to get involved or know more, please reach out to gfontenellewikimedia.org or join the Event Organizers Telegram group: https://t.me/+mGTdbC0wchcyMWE0