Open Knowledge Association (OKA)
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Mission Statement
We are a non-profit organization dedicated to improving Wikipedia and other open platforms. We do so by providing monthly stipends to full-time contributors and translators. We pragmatically prioritize work that generates the most impact. To maximize returns on our donors’ funds and decrease systematic bias, we hire content writers from countries underrepresented among Wikipedia editors. Our processes are public. Our work is transparent. Our freelancers have a high-level of autonomy. We are based in Switzerland and recognized as a tax-exempt organization with a public utility purpose.
About This Cause
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT Wikipedia relies entirely on volunteers to create and maintain its content. That often works well, but there are tasks that volunteers don’t enjoy doing, and topics where volunteers are missing. For example, articles in topics such as Science, technology, engineering, and Finance are lacking compared to topics such as History, Geography, and Humanities. Content from non-anglophone countries is underrepresented. Hundreds of thousands of high-quality articles are not translated. Additionally, while the English version contains >6.7m articles, other languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, spoken by hundreds of millions, have less than a third of that amount, with an often much lower quality. There are tens of thousands of such articles in our backlog that are waiting for be translated. With targeted funding, these opportunities can be addressed for high impact with very limited costs. With as little as $400, we can hire a full-time (40h per week) university educated translator in Latin America, translating dozen of new Wikipedia articles per month. But even when paid, Wikipedia editors need to enjoy what they do. Otherwise quality suffers. That’s why we strive to provide as much autonomy and ownership to our freelancers as possible, just like regular volunteers. They use their own account for all edits, and are responsible to maintain the articles they create. We currently have a team of 10 full-time translators. But we have lots of room to grow -- for every additional ~$4500 of donation, we can hire one extra translator for a full year, which helps us publish several hundreds more Wikipedia pages. --------------------- WHERE WE FOCUS It’s still early days for us, so we need to focus our efforts in selected areas. We prioritize translations over new content, which requires significantly less time to achieve similar results. We leverage Machine Learning tools for initial drafts to minimize manual work. We concentrate on the English, Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedia to reach larger audiences. We prioritize high-quality articles in topics for which content ages well, so that they remain up-to-date. Currently, our team consists of 10 full-time translators covers English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. We are currently hiring translators for other languages. --------------------- LEARN MORE - Our process: https://oka.wiki/our-process/ - Articles we published: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:OKA&limit=500 - List of current grant recipients: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_paid_editing_companies#Open_Knowledge_Association_(OKA)