ブログのスタッツを眺めていると、リファラに見慣れぬ「Wikipedia」の文字があった。サチコを頼りに特定した…

Group photo of the Wikipedia25 meetup in Bologna, Italy Photo by Danysan1 published under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 ## 🌞 A scorching summer This summer was marked by record-breaking heat, a far cry from the cool weather that greeted us in May at ExDynamo in Bologna, Italy, where we celebrated Wikipedia’s 25th birthday together with not one but two plushes of Baby Globes, the charming mascot of the year. This hot summer, I came up with a wild idea, perhaps the result of heatstroke (who knows?): why not mash up my current favorite hobbies, to have some fun and keep the Wikipedia25 celebrations going on? ## 🔀 The mash-up idea For those who don’t know me, I’ve been active on the Wikimedia projects for many years, and for a few years now on OpenStreetMap too. In 2026, I also (re)discovered geocaching by joining the ‘Tortellini in bro’ team, a sort of informal group of Sunday wanderers and GPS-equipped treasure hunters. (As you may have guessed, _yes_ , ‘bro’ is about ‘brotherhood’, but also ‘tortellini in broth‘, a local and traditional recipe.) In a broad sense, these hobbies (Wikimedia projects, OpenStreetMap and geocaching) are all connected, or at least they are for me. ## 🗺️ A spark for wikitrips Over the years, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons have awakened an unexpected curiosity about local history in me. When we go on wikitrips as tourists, basing our choices on places that haven’t yet been photographed for Wikimedia Commons (as we did years ago with the castles and fortified houses of the Aosta Valley, in Italy), we take geotagged photos and collect information from tourist information panels. We have also taken up the habit to consult the OsmAnd app, for example to plan what to visit along the way, to check whether there are any drinking fountains nearby, or to note down the coordinates of points of interest to add to OpenStreetMap later. Screenshot of the tool WikiShootMe with the geolocalized Wikidata items Screenshot of the app OsmAnd to edit and consult OpenStreetMap Screenshot of the official app of the geocaching Screenshot of the app c:geo to play geocaching Now, in addition to WikiShootMe and OsmAnd, we often open the official Geocaching app too, to play this big GPS-based treasure hunt, searching for hidden containers and logbooks to sign. Sometimes the idea for a trip comes from geocaching, and then finding ourselves playing in the middle of nowhere becomes an opportunity to photograph churches, town halls and historic buildings for Commons. In short, “ _tutto fa brodo_ ” for the Tortellini in bro (litterally “everything do broth”, wich means “every little bit helps”, every journey is an opportunity for cultivate my hobbies). WikiShootMe, the Geocaching app and c:geo are all excellent tour guides, if you know how to use them the right way. ## Baby Globe’s travel bugs Wikitrip after wikitrip, in geocaching containers (the geocaches themselves) we have found some swag (the small goodies you can take and trade with other players) and also a few travel bugs. These ones are trackable tags with unique codes that you can log when you find them. You can follow their journeys in the geocaching app, both through other geocachers’ logs and on an online map showing the coordinates where the travel bugs have physically been taken. Every travel bug has a goal, different for each one, and the tags are often embellished with a drawing and/or a charm that travels along with them. Baby Globe at the belvedere of San Michele in Bosco, in Bologna, ready to play geocaching Photo by Una tantum published under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 So I thought: why not create a travel bug featuring the Baby Globe illustration, with some Wikipedia-themed gadget attached? To do this while respecting the image’s license on Commons, I needed permission from the Wikimedia Foundation. Without any restraint, surely an other consequence of the heat wave, I not only asked for permission to use the image, but also asked the Foundation to actively support my project. To my great surprise, and thanks to Ivonne Kristiani (Senior Global Movement Communications Specialist) who believed in my idea, the Foundation said yes. That allowed me to create not one but four travel bugs for Wikipedia’s birthday, to leave them at the “four corners of the world”, where anyone can find them through geocaching, log them and keep the celebrations going. ## ⏳ Back in time Let’s be clear: the idea of a Wikipedia travel bug is not really new. One was already released into the wild back in 2005 by the geocacher Nicco, and it traveled for a few years before being declared missing. Unfortunately, this happens: geocaches sometimes disappear, and so do travel bugs. But this is quite normal in the world of geocaching, because geocaches are sometimes discovered by muggles (non-geocachers), or they are degradated by natural agents. From this point of view, geocaching shares a certain degree of unpredictability with Wikipedia articles, which anyone can edit and help evolve, and which can become outdated or vandalized, or have broken links, and so on. They, too, need care and maintenance from the project’s volunteers. Wikipedia travel bug of 2005. Photo by Samuele Manfrin relased in the Public Domain ## The Wikicaches To be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to bring a bit of Wikipedia into geocaching. Since 2022, I have been running my personal project, named Wikicaches, which consists of leaving Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap swags in some geocaches (like pins and stickers that I usually use for my volunteer activities and for regional meetups). This year, the project of Wikicaches has expanded to other volunteers, and there is now also an official wikicache in Sicily. Unfortunately, sometime it happens to me to go back to visit geocaches which I discovered in the past, and found wiki and OSM swags in poor condition, with nobody having taken them. On the other hand, swags can’t be tracked, so there is no way to monitor whether anyone takes them or carries them around. For that, the best solution is travel bugs. A wikicache in 2024 Photo by Una tantum published under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 A wikicache in 2023 Photo by Patafisik published under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 ## 📦 Some logistics Once made and delivered to my home, all that was left was to decide what to do with my four new travel bugs. Should I send them all off from beneath the Two Towers of Bologna? Or involve other geocacher-mapper-wikipedian friends in the adventure, so their journeys could begin in different cities? Of course, I chose the second one! After a few unsuccessful attempts to reach some people, I finally convinced three brave volunteers (Ivanbranko, Cruccone and Lord Yoruno) to join me and launch the Wikipedia25 travel bugs from the Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont and Marche, and from Catalonia in Spain. ## 🌍 On the road! The four travel bugs began their journeys in September 2026. As I write (mid-October), some have already met a lot of people or visited interesting places: * the first Wikipedia25 travel bug (TBB7FTB), after exploring the suburb of Bologna, was spotted at the ‘Meet the Brits’ event, still in Bologna. So far it has officially traveled “only” 28 km, but it is about to leave Italy to visit 🇸🇲 San Marino and then the 🇬🇧 United Kingdom; * the second travel bug (TBB7FTE) left Vercelli and was placed in a geocache close to the Milan Malpensa Airport, where it was promptly picked up by a geocacher who took it on a flight to 🇩🇪 Germany; * the third travel bug (TBB7FTC) began its journey on the shores of the ⛱️ 🌊 Adriatic Sea, and at cruising speed, but without needing to board a ship, it has already covered 901 km toward Northern Italy; * the fourth travel bug (TBB7FTD) is gladly traveling around 🇪🇸 Spain, from cache to cache, meeting lots of geocachers and enjoying the _movida_ ; so far it has covered 49 km. Screenshots of the Geocaching.com pages by Una tantum. Maps by OpenStreetMap contributors. OpenStreetMap data is available under the Open Database License. Map tiles are licensed under the CC-BY-SA 2.0. Animated GIF by Idil Keysan for the Fondation Wikimédia published under the licence CC-BY-SA 4.0 You can follow the journey of each travel bug on the geocaching website by searching for it by code; through the links above, you can access both the comments and the map of their movements. But, above all and what really matters, you can go hunting for Baby Globe’s travel bugs in the geocaches where they currently are. You can log your birthday wishes (using the code on the tag), helping them travel the world, spread the word about Wikipedia, and share the message that we volunteers continue to work on free knowledge while having fun. See you in a year for updates about where the travel bugs have ended up. In the meantime: have a nice trip, Baby Globe! Wikipedia25 travel bugs Photo by Una tantum published under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reac...

Wikimedia Foundation marks quarter-century milestone with docuseries, partnerships with Microsoft and Amazon, and new strategy to sustain volunteer-powered knowledge.

Wikimedia Foundation marks quarter-century milestone with docuseries, partnerships with Microsoft and Amazon, and new strategy to sustain volunteer-powered knowledge.