Sylheti Wikipedia began as a long-term effort to create a space for a language that had been largely absent from the digital knowledge ecosystem. More than a decade after the first proposal, the project has grown into something broader: a community movement connecting language preservation, education, local history and open knowledge.
On 25 February 2025, the Sylheti Wikipedia officially became available to the public. For many people, the launch of a new Wikipedia language edition might appear to be a technical milestone: a new website, a new language code, and a growing collection of articles. For the Sylheti community, however, the moment represented something much larger.
It marked the culmination of a journey that had begun more than a decade earlier, when Wikimedians started working towards creating a digital knowledge platform for the Sylheti language. The proposal for Sylheti Wikipedia had begun in 2014, and after years of community-driven work, the Wikimedia Foundation approved the project on 14 February 2025. The Wikipedia officially launched shortly afterwards, using the traditional Sylheti Nagri script.
Today, the project has become part of a broader conversation about how Wikimedia communities can support languages that have historically had limited representation in the digital world.
More than an encyclopedia
Sylheti is spoken by millions of people in Bangladesh, India and communities around the world. Yet the language had long remained underrepresented in the global digital knowledge ecosystem. The creation of Sylheti Wikipedia was therefore not simply about translating knowledge into another language. It was also about creating space for knowledge to be created, organised and shared in the language itself.
A defining feature of the project is the use of the traditional Nagri script. In this way, the project supports not only the presence of the Sylheti language online, but also the continued visibility of an important part of its written cultural heritage.
By its first anniversary, the community had grown to include contributors from Bangladesh and abroad, while the number of articles had reached into the thousands. The anniversary became an opportunity not only to celebrate these achievements but also to reflect on what the project could become in the future.
Celebrating the first year—and looking ahead
On 25 February 2026, Sylheti Wikimedians, language enthusiasts and university students gathered at RTM Al-Kabir Technical University in Sylhet to celebrate the first anniversary of Sylheti Wikipedia.
The event included discussions about the project’s achievements, its future direction and the challenges of developing knowledge resources in a regional language. Participants also took part in a hands-on editing workshop designed to introduce new contributors to creating and improving articles.
The celebration reinforced a message that has become central to the community: Sylheti Wikipedia is not merely an online encyclopedia. For many contributors, it represents a continuing effort to preserve and strengthen the presence of the Sylheti language and culture in the digital age.
The anniversary also demonstrated something important about smaller-language Wikimedia communities. Building a language edition is only one part of the work. Sustaining it requires contributors, partnerships, educational activities and spaces where people can learn from one another. This is where a related initiative, Wiki Loves Sylotology, began to take shape.
From Wikimedia meetup to educational movement
The roots of Wiki Loves Sylotology can be traced to a Sylhet Wikimedia Community meetup held on 9 April 2025. The discussion brought together people interested in strengthening Wikimedia activities in the region and exploring how local educational institutions could participate in the creation and sharing of open knowledge.
From this idea emerged Wiki Loves Sylotology (Sylhetology)—an educational movement focused on using Wikimedia projects to explore and document Sylhet’s language, culture, history, geography and heritage.
The initiative began its educational activities at Springfield School in Sylhet, where contributors, teachers and researchers explored ways of using Bangla, English and Sylheti Wikipedia, alongside other Wikimedia projects, to help students engage with knowledge about their own region.
Taking Sylotology into higher education
On 15 August 2026, a workshop on Wiki Loves Sylotology was held at RTM Al-Kabir Technical University in Sylhet.
The workshop, held from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM BST, brought together participants interested in exploring how Wikimedia projects could support the documentation and sharing of knowledge related to Sylhet.
The programme was organised by Dr Mohammed Rahman, a Sylhetologist, with me (Abu Sayeed). The workshop connected the study of Sylhet—its language, history, society and culture—with the practical possibilities of open knowledge.
Connecting knowledge across Wikimedia projects
One of the central ideas behind Wiki Loves Sylotology is that knowledge about a place does not have to live on a single platform.
An article about Sylhet’s history can be developed on Wikipedia. Structured information about people, places and institutions can be organised on Wikidata. Historical books and texts can be preserved through Wikisource. Photographs, audio recordings and video can be shared on Wikimedia Commons.
Together, these projects can help create a richer and more interconnected record of a community. For Sylhet, this approach offers particular possibilities.
The region has a significant amount of historical, cultural and linguistic knowledge—much of which remains scattered across books, oral traditions, personal collections and local institutions. Making this knowledge more accessible requires not only digitisation, but also people who can research, document and contextualise it.
Wiki Loves Sylotology seeks to bring these different groups together: Wikimedians, educators, researchers, students, local knowledge holders and volunteers.
Gathering at Murari Chand College
That continuing community-building effort was visible again on 29 August 2026, when Sylheti Wikimedians gathered at Murari Chand College in Sylhet. The meetup focused on two connected areas: Wiki Loves Sylotology and planning and coordination around Bangla WikiConference 2026.
Participants discussed how collaboration among Sylheti contributors could be strengthened and how Wikimedia projects could be used to document and share knowledge about the region’s language, culture and heritage. The meetup also aimed to raise awareness of Sylotology within the Wikimedia movement and support future community activities.
Murari Chand College is one of Sylhet’s historic educational institutions. Gathering there to discuss the future of digital knowledge created a connection between the region’s educational history and the possibilities of open knowledge in the digital age. The conversations moved across languages as well as projects, reflecting the multilingual nature of the community. Sylheti, Bangla and English all have roles to play in telling the story of Sylhet to different audiences.
A movement growing beyond one website
The story of Sylheti Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the story of a wider ecosystem. A language edition of Wikipedia can create a home for knowledge in a particular language. But meetups can bring contributors together. Educational programmes can introduce new generations to Wikimedia. Partnerships can help preserve historical materials. Cross-project work can connect text, data, images and cultural records.
The journey of Sylheti Wikipedia—from a proposal that began in 2014 to a growing community celebrating its first anniversary in 2026—shows what long-term volunteer commitment can achieve. The emergence of Wiki Loves Sylotology represents the next stage of that journey. It asks a broader question: What happens when a Wikimedia language community moves beyond building an encyclopedia and begins connecting open knowledge with education, local history and cultural participation?
It is being written in articles and datasets, in classrooms and workshops, in photographs and historical documents, and in conversations between people who believe that knowledge about their language and community deserves a place in the world’s shared digital commons.
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