The Kerala's Backwater Ecosystems aren't just mesmeric, subline, enchanting and utterly beautiful, they also manage floods, help with carbon storage and all of this with their diversely rich communities in flora and fauna who continuously promote, nurture, breathe and develop. If Nature is the biggest Teacher, Wikimedians are its biggest learners. The fourth iteration for Wiki Conference India 2026 began from the banks of backwaters in Kochi,Kerala to encourage reflection and contemplation on the ever challenging and changing Internet ecosystems. From Backwaters managing floods to Wikimedians managing flooded Artificial Intelligence information, from backwaters helping with carbon storage to limiting climate change to Wikimedians archiving and preserving the information to limiting cultural gaps. Kerala Backwaters became the Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient pillars.

The Conference began with Wikimedia Foundation's Board Chair Lorenzo Loza citing Wikipedia's visitors traffic decline is lesser than other websites yet marked it a significant problem for us to solve. This proceeded with Santhosh Thottingal presentation with some interesting, insightful and concerning analytics on State of Indic Language Wikis^[1]. Indian Sub-continent has Wikimedia projects in 89 languages, 14 Wikisource projects, 20 Wiktionary projects and 30 Wikipedia projects with Magahi Wikipedia being its newest edition. It raised appreciations for we are being so diverse but also challenges as further slides showed there happens to be a visible decline in active editors involvement since 2020. The slides spoke further that those who remain active happen to do much more work and translations per years have grown by 184%. What might be the reason for it? Possibly tools and technology advancement that makes active editors more involved or there is more to reflect? Several active editors told me during the conference about their pain in finding so many articles under Stub, so many articles with flagged notice and so many articles requiring an update. They jointly built this knowledge ecosystem, but now as traffic has dipped, some of their community members have not been around. The slides also presented the eight silent years in Indian community from 2006 till 2014 when no new projects were launched. Incubator and other infrastructural developments supported subsequent project launches. What do those eight years bring on the table today? Are we in a quest for some technological infrastructure advancement with of course a touch of magic that solves all our problems? The magic that increases traffic to our projects, the magic that increases more editors to our projects. Also, the fourth edition of Wiki Conference India had good many technological contributors as attendees.

Be that as it may, Counting Wikipedia in 30 more languages, stretching from Malayalam Wikipedia read across the Kerala’s Backwater to Kashmiri Wikipedia read across Kashmir’s Dal Lake. Have you ever thought about shopping in Kashmir’s Dal Lake via boating and finding open sharable information in their native language? The distance between the two water bodies is almost 1,650 miles (2,660 km) and they all unite. The 2023 Conference report discussed Kashmiri Wikipedia and its struggles, but this report focuses on steps ahead to ensure the sum of all human knowledge accessible. The high altitude, below zero freezing and lesser oxygen region has an active Wiki Project Med on Kashmiri Wikipedia, and User:511KeV tells me there is even information on radiology to promote scientific temperament with Kashmiri language. He and few others, want to do more, document Kashmir's Manuscripts, have OCR with better results and do far more advocacy for kashmiri language under open licensing. A language with limited readership, advocacy under open source could even become more challenging, those in publishing may find you as a challenger than collaborator.

To balance high calorie intake, Tulu wikimedians celebrated their 10th Anniversary on 2nd day of the conference. Day one was marked with traditional onam sadya lunch over banana leaf, traditional music played, and of course the scenic kerala backwaters provided the view. Managing calories is thus important and who better teaches us than Tulu wikimedians with their patience and perseverance. After almost eight years on incubation, they became live during WikiConference India 2016. They now also have Wiktionary and Wikisource projects and document living cultural heritage in their region such as Pursere Kattuna. They aim to build a structured heritage collection for making knowledge reusable under free license to support asking not just "What was tradition?", but "How is the tradition practiced, understood and transmitted today?"

Almost like every Wiki Conference write-up, this space may also fall short, so many sessions and running between different conference spaces always make you question,” Which way should it be?”. If ever there was a chicken and egg decision problem in the movement, the conference dinner on day two had a soup named, "Chicken and Egg Drop Soup".

I had the privilege to attend all four Wiki Conference India, from studying at the graduate school during 2011 Bombay to being at the job market during 2016 Chandigarh to surviving Covid during 2023 Hyderabad and finally Kochi wherein graduate school and job market shifted to paying taxes and few hairs turning grey. It was only in 2011 that law of commerce had made sublime submission to open knowledge ecosystem, 2016 made way to building communities while 2023 was controlling censorship. I travelled all the way to Kochi in search of answers to the challenge of Artificial Intelligence and traffic downfall. In turn, What I discovered was belief. Wikimedians not only greet each other when they meet but that big warm hug is all it takes to say, "Together We Can, Together We Will".

Backwaters in Kerala will always be a Common Property Resource.