A collaborative Wikipedia edit-a-thon inside the ECOSOC chamber kicked off UN Open Source Week 2026, tackling the future of the open internet and global AI governance.
The United Nations’ second-ever Wikipedia “edit-a-thon” took place inside the UN Headquarters in New York City. Held on 22 June 2026, inside the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) chamber, the initiative was organised through a collaboration between the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia NYC, the United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies (UN-ODET), and the United Nations Office of Information and Communication Technology (UN-OICT). Many of the global attendees participating in the ECOSOC chamber were editing the encyclopedia for the very first time.
The edit-a-thon served as the kickoff to UN Open Source Week 2026 and took place alongside parallel collaborative events, including the UN Tech Over hack-a-thon and a dedicated maintain-a-thon. Volunteers utilised official on-site UN archives, dataset logs, reports, and trusted news sources to expand open knowledge online. This resulted in over 60 new Wikipedia articles being created, nearly 700 edits successfully processed across 129 existing articles, 16,600 words added to the platform, and 120 citations linked to reliable reference materials.
The editing sprint focused on systematically improving Wikipedia’s coverage of key global digital governance and open-source topics. The entries specifically covered the Global Digital Compact, digital public goods, artificial intelligence (AI) regulation frameworks, and overall United Nations history.
Tajh Taylor, Special Advisor to the Chief Product and Technology Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, noted in closing remarks that these minor, meaningful community changes continuously pay dividends to billions of curious people worldwide. According to Omar Mohsine, Open Source Coordinator at UN-ODET, the week-long discussions and panels aimed to directly address the future of the open internet and the complex intersection of open-source technology and AI governance—emphasising that these critical policy conversations must happen now rather than years into the future.
