Digital Hygiene in Wikimedia Spaces: Legal, Social, and Community Strategies for Sustainable Participation
🎥 Session recording: [https://youtu.be/x2TWgWM3NvE?t=18663](https://youtu.be/x2TWgWM3NvE?t=18663)
**Wikipedia’s future depends not only on content quality, but on whether contributors feel safe, respected, and supported while participating.**
“Digital hygiene” in Wikimedia spaces goes beyond cybersecurity. It also includes how we manage conflict, prevent harassment, support moderators, protect contributor privacy, and create conditions where diverse communities can thrive. When contributors burn out, withdraw, or feel unsafe, our movement’s freedom, equity, and reliability are directly affected.
This panel explores digital hygiene as a structural question for the movement: How do we balance openness with protection? How do we ensure equity when safety is experienced differently across communities? How do we sustain reliable governance without overburdening volunteers?
The session will combine short interventions, structured dialogue around key tensions (openness vs. safety, transparency vs. privacy, volunteerism vs. sustainability), and audience participation. Instead of prescribing solutions, we will propose a Digital Hygiene Experiment Canvas, to help communities identify risks, test small-scale initiatives and share learnings with the intent of strengthening sustainable participation across projects and languages.
If Wikimedia is to remain free, equitable, and reliable, contributor well-being must be treated as core infrastructure.
The panelists currently confirmed are
\* Florence Devouard (host). Co-ED of Wiki in Africa. Expert on the Community Care Programme at Wikimedia CH. Former chairwomen of the Wikimedia Foundation.
\* Sanda Sandu. Senior Human Rights Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation
\* Owen Blacker. Chair of Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group
\* Rémy Gerbet. ED of Wikimédia France
\* Delphine Ménard. Global Ressources Distribution Committee
