PeaceWiki: Can a Knowledge Network Incubate Peace?

Test copy of the proposal on semantic-mediawiki.org, used to test Template:AgendaDay26. Time slot and status are test values from the draft program.

PeaceWiki: Can a Knowledge Network Incubate Peace? (Discussion, 15 min, Remote, Accepted)

Speakers: Keith Lyndaker Schlabach · Start: 2026/11/11 16:25:00 · Conference: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2026

PeaceWiki explores whether Semantic MediaWiki can serve as an open, collaborative incubator connecting peacebuilders, organizations, projects, practices, and resources in ways that generate new relationships and initiatives for peace. Peacebuilding happens everywhere, yet much of its knowledge remains fragmented. Organizations, educators, faith communities, researchers, artists, activists, mediators, and local initiatives often work on similar problems without knowing one another or having an effective way to discover related projects, practices, resources, and potential collaborators.

PeaceGrooves, a small peace-education initiative exploring creative approaches to conflict transformation, is considering PeaceWiki: an open, collaborative knowledge space designed not simply to collect information about peace, but to help relationships and new initiatives emerge from it.

Could Semantic MediaWiki provide the architecture for such a space?

PeaceWiki might connect people, organizations, projects, locations, peacebuilding practices, research, educational resources, events, and funding opportunities as structured relationships. Rather than functioning only as an encyclopedia, it could become an incubator in which participants discover unexpected connections: Who is working on similar problems in different parts of the world? Which organizations use related peacebuilding methods? Where might researchers, practitioners, artists, educators, and funders collaborate?

This presentation comes from a prospective new MediaWiki user rather than a developer. It will introduce the peacebuilding problem, sketch a possible PeaceWiki model, and invite the MediaWiki community to consider what would be technically possible, what challenges such a project would face, and whether interested participants might help develop or prototype it.

The larger question is simple: Can we design a knowledge system that does more than preserve what people know—one that helps what they know encounter other knowledge and generate new possibilities for peace?