Yes! I was talking about this with @VMasrour-WMF today at Wikimania. Specifically in the context of online courses (i.e. imagine an "Introduction to Wikimedia Tech" MOOC) and also events (i.e. certificate of participation at the Wikimedia Hackathon).

I was surprised to know from Vahid that Mozilla's OpenBadges found a new path of maintenance. See also: OpenBadges

(OpenBadges MediaWiki extension: See T170728 about anything related to "way forward". For example does not support the 2.0 spec)

Assuming this could be digital to self-print, do we have any past designs around? If not, who would we ask for a generic "Wikimedia certificate" design?

In the context of the Wikipedia Education Program, badges would be useful as a way to certify students' and teachers' capabilities ("how to read the Wikipedia", "how to edit", "Wikipedia Teacher lvl 1", and so on). This would be an additional motivator for participants to get involved in editing.

We could also certify Education Program Leaders, as a form of recognition of their expertise in certain fields (such as "teacher trainer", "medical contents", "High school expert", ...). This would encourage Program Leaders, as it would recognize their contributions and the value of their experience (as volunteers+organizers, ...). I'm pretty sure that logic would also apply with librarians and GLAM organizers.

Badges would be delivered not necessarily right after training, but after demonstration of the relevant skill, especially when a practical activity can show that the participant can achieve certain goals.

I have found https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Education_Program_recognition

There must be more somewhere else. Only at the Wikimedia Conference earlier this year there were two speakers who mentioned distributing certificated in their editathon / competition. If there is an interest to move this task forward and check previous designs, I could check the program (to find their names) and ask them.

It seems to me that the designs you found seem good enough. @Sadads might know of a GLAM design?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Certificate_of_training_CWS.pdf

In T173258#3659993, @Qgil wrote:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Certificate_of_training_CWS.pdf

I've asked its author if there is an "editable" (non-PDF) version.

In T173258#3825820, @Aklapper wrote:

In T173258#3659993, @Qgil wrote:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Certificate_of_training_CWS.pdf

I've asked its author if there is an "editable" (non-PDF) version.

Word document. I've asked to share it in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AKlapper_(WMF)#Certificat

(Turns out the frame in that image mentioned in the last two comments is actually shipped by default by Word so I have doubts we can/should use that.)

There is no lack of certificate templates for LibreOffice / OpenOffice available for downaload (example after searching 30 seconds). :)

We could even offer a Google Code-in task to design one.

Heh, true that. However even if we had a design...how would the "creation" part work and scale?
I don't think we have some (technical) infrastructure in place which would add a name (from a list of names and email addresses?) onto an existing "design" (whatever file format that would be), turn that into a PDF, and send that PDF to the right email address.
In theory, people could print that and put it onto a wall.
If we really talked about 'classic' certificates and not some online badges which don't have names on them.
(Or maybe I need to take a step back from this task if I totally misunderstand and run into a wrong direction?)

IIUC this would be given out "after certain achievements", so I'm assuming a manual process wouldn't be so unbearable.

Attaching Google's Google-Code-in-2017 digital mentor certificate here for inspiration:

Since I saw this scroll by in IRC, a few days ago the DPL announced (or, reminded everyone) that Debian contributors can get a official certificate for their contributions: https://wiki.debian.org/DDCertificate

On a cert template file itself, not on a potential process:

I guess this boils down to someone with design skills (so likely not Developer-Advocacy) to create a Powerpoint/LibreOffice template slide with text like

Certificate of Appreciation
presented to
_______name_________
for
_______activity_________

and the usual info footer a la

Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world.
Wikimedia strives to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

and probably some signature like

Victoria Coleman
Chief Technology Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
February 30th, 2018

and the Wikimedia logo and maybe project logos from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia-logo_black.svg

For your interest, Google open-sourced https://github.com/google/certificate-maker . It's used every year to send certificates to GSoC/GCI program participants.

Josh wrote:

I invite you to take it and make it your own -- perhaps you can use it to recognize students with a certificate emblazoned with your project's logo, or to recognize people who contribute as part of other programs.
It's got some sharp edges, inadequate docs, and no test coverage to speak of, but I've got it to work, starting from scratch, on Debian/Ubuntu/Mac OS X. Patches *definitely* welcome.