Commons:GLAMwiki Toolset/Obituary
An obituary for the GLAMwiki Toolset
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Dear friends, family, and Wikimedians.
We are gathered here today to say goodbye to a tool that gave us so many emotions: the Glam Wiki Toolset. Or, as many of us lovingly called it: the GWT.
Ten years ago, the GWT was born thanks to the passion of a bunch of GLAMwiki pioneers who dreamt a big dream: sharing culture on a truly epic and global scale. I have heard that some people in this room have witnessed the origins of the GWT and want to speak a few words?
(Siebrand said many words)
The GWT was built with financial investment from four Wikimedia affiliates, and the blood and tears and sleepless nights of a bunch of folks from Europeana. In its most productive days, the GWT happily piped millions of images and other media files to Wikimedia Commons, sharing the collections of so many galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Sharing the gift of knowledge with the world.
Among our midst, we have someone who really liked the GWT in all its flaws. Olaf, would you like to say a few words as well?
(Olaf said many kind words)
Whenever there was a will to donate media files, to wrangle a lot of XML, to drink way too much coffee, and to bang one’s head on one’s keyboard, the GWT was there, ready to help us learn our learnings and measure our metrics. We will even fondly remember and generously forgive the GWT’s flaws, the convoluted data mappings, the nearly unsurmountable onboarding and testing procedure on Beta Commons, and the quite peculiar XML that it placed as its signature in the source of those millions of files that it uploaded. We will even learn and grow from the painful trauma when the GWT failed to become a maintained MediaWiki extension. Deep down, all the way through these flaws and this hardship, the GWT meant so well, and it served us with determination.
All good things must come to an end. The GWT’s last file was uploaded on the 21st of May 2022. But its legacy will live on. On its shoulders, other Wikimedia Commons upload tools will stand and shine. More batches of files will be processed and piped, more data will be mapped and reconciled. The GWT has laid strong foundations. Its blessings will shine upon us. The future is structured. The future is bright.
To collectively honor the GWT’s legacy, I now invite you all to grab a plate, and enjoy a piece of cake in the GWT’s memory.
Thank you GWT, and farewell. You will be missed.
— Obituary started by ChatGPT, User:Husky, modified by User:Spinster, and (partly) read out loud during the GLAMwiki Toolset farewell ceremony on November 12, 2022.