It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it (Avot 2:21, attributed to Rabbi Tarfon)

Hi! My name is Asaf Bartov, and I'm a longtime volunteer on Wikipedia and some other Wikimedia projects.

This user participated in the #100wikidays challenge.


User language
en-5 This user has professional knowledge of English.
he-N משתמש זה דובר עברית כשפת אם.
la-3 Hic usor probe ac Latine conferre potest.
grc-3 Ὅδε ὁ χρώμενος ἀνωτέραν γνῶσιν τῆς ἀρχαίας ἑλληνικῆς ἔχει.
uk-2 Цей користувач володіє українською мовою на середньому рівні.
de-1 Dieser Benutzer beherrscht Deutsch auf grundlegendem Niveau.
es-1 Este usuario tiene un conocimiento básico del español.
fr-1 Cet utilisateur dispose de connaissances de base en français.
Users by language

I also work for the Wikimedia Foundation, but I use my staff account for edits made in that official capacity. Take a look at that page for more about my work at the Foundation. Before November 2014, I had been using this account to do my official work as staff as well, so many older grant discussions here on Meta will show official edits by me.

Things I do

I have been a practicing (volunteer) Wikipedian for many years; my home wiki is the Hebrew Wikipedia, but I make occasional contributions on the English Wikipedia as well. I have a strong background in software engineering, and an abiding interest in literature, education, open access, linked data, and library science.

Also as an unpaid volunteer, I am a founding editor of Project Ben-Yehuda and a teacher of classical Greek and Latin. I used to serve on the board of Wikimedia Israel.

Here are Slides and recordings of my talks.

On March 4th 2015, I had succumbed to the #100wikidays challenge, as victim #2. I completed the challenge in precisely 100 days, er, plus one year. The story is told here, including its even more challenging conclusion.

Wikimedia tools I maintain

(All tools I write are free software and their source code is available on GitHub.)

  • Luthor -- a tool for finding usage examples from Wikisource and adding them to lexemes on Wikidata
  • GLAMify -- for a given category on Commons, suggests images for articles based on another Wikipedia's use of those images
    • This tool interacts with Meta (on my own userspace) using the Ijonbot bot account.
  • Wordpile -- for a given PagePile ID, calculate the total word count
    • This tool interacts with Meta (on my own userspace) using the Ijonbot bot account.
  • wimgs -- an image downloader for preparing offline Wikipedia dumps
  • erex_yomi -- a script sending a bidiurnal e-mail with a featured article, featured photo, and today in history, all from the Hebrew Wikipedia, to a list of subscribers. Subscribe here: ערך יומי בדואל

For developers

  • mediawiki_api -- the current Ruby Mediawiki API client gem. I am its main maintainer starting 2023.
  • Dhole -- a Ruby gem providing ActiveRecord mapping of main Mediawiki DB entities and relationships
  • I've contributed some features and patches to Mediawiki-Gateway, the older Ruby Mediawiki API client gem. I still know it well, and am happy to help if you're trying to do something on Mediawiki in Ruby.