Lydia Pintscher wins European Open Source Award 2023

Lydia Pintscher has been honoured with the European Open Source Award for her work as Wikidata Portfolio Manager at Wikimedia Deutschland.

The award was presented to Pintscher in Brussels, recognising her significant contributions to Wikidata, an open knowledge graph, in the Advocacy and Awareness category. Wikidata, which started in 2012, facilitates the linking of different language versions of Wikipedia articles and has grown into a widely used global data source with over 115 million entries. It serves as a resource for both human readers and software applications.

Pintscher expressed appreciation for the collaborative efforts behind Wikidata, highlighting the contributions of the over 12,000 volunteers engaged with the platform. "Thanks to its multilingualism, Wikidata also makes it possible to integrate knowledge from underrepresented regions and groups and thus reflect the diversity of global perspectives. This gradually creates more knowledge equity," she stated. "The Open Source Award is an important recognition of our work and, above all, that of the volunteers, without whom the project with its large amount of hand-picked, accurate data would not be possible."

In addition to this recognition, Wikimedia Deutschland continues to explore new pathways to position Wikidata as a reliable source for open source AI applications. A project launched in 2024 aims to grant developers in the field of generative AI improved access to Wikidata's comprehensive dataset.

Franziska Heine, Director of Wikimedia Deutschland, commented on the broader impact of these initiatives. "With projects like Wikidata, we are creating an open, transparent data structure that makes reliable information accessible and thus counteracts disinformation. Through open source projects such as Wikidata, we can prevent knowledge monopolies and ensure that knowledge benefits everyone equally as a common good," she explained.

The European Open Source Award, conferred by the European Open Source Academy, is in its inaugural year. It aims to annually acknowledge exceptional contributions to technological innovation within Europe.