Annual Report 2023 Wikimedia Switzerland | Full-Length Report

A word from the president

First things first: Merci, Grazie, Danke, Grazcha fich to the Wikipedians and Wikimedians, this community, the donors and partners – and to the members, the team and the board of Wikimedia CH. Every single one of you is helping create a world where information belongs to everyone – and an open, generous community where everyone belongs.

It has been an honour and great joy of my life to serve Wikimedia CH as president of the board. I am humbled by the commitment and passion in this community over the years. It’s rare – unique, even – for so many people to openly and genuinely share their knowledge, expecting nothing in return other than contributing to an informed society.

I’ve had the pleasure of watching the Wikimedia CH team and community grow in impact and sophistication. Wikimedia CH helped expand Swiss content on Wikipedia, built new partnerships to promote free knowledge, empowered the Swiss community of Wikipedians and became a trusted player in public affairs around important topics of our times.

I am inspired by the community and Wikimedia CH’s ongoing commitment to protecting, collecting and sharing free knowledge. With immense gratitude, I say goodbye as president of the board. While my tenure ends, my commitment does not. Quite the contrary: Endings are beginnings – and our shared mission is far from over.

Muriel Staub

Wikimedia CH Board President

A word from the executive director

The year 2023 was a year of both consolidation and growth for Wikimedia CH. We continued implementing the ambitious plans set out in the 2022-2026 strategy, which have helped us become a major player in the field of free knowledge. As our reach and reputation have grown, so has demand for our expertise, services and financial support.

Our challenge in 2023 was to meet increasing demand while both living up to our quality standards and remaining agile in an ever-changing environment. To that end, we continued to professionalise our operations and outreach, aiming to render our processes, team and communication more effective. We also recruited several new team members to fill empty positions and build our team’s capacity. We improved our membership engagement strategy and are working to secure our chapter’s financial future by developing new fundraising approaches.

From a programmatic perspective, 2023 was another important year for building relationships, developing new strategies and engaging the community. We celebrated the 175th anniversary of the Swiss Federal Constitution as an occasion to highlight our work advancing free knowledge and the importance of Wikipedia and other open knowledge projects for democracy.

The strategic work done in 2023 to create a more robust, efficient and holocratic organisation has created a strong foundation from which to expand our impact in 2024. We are well-placed at various levels of society – cantonal, federal and European – and across sectors to build on the momentum we have created since launching our five-year strategy in 2022. We are now beginning to have the team and processes in place to make significant strides towards our objectives.

Thanks to the work of our team and our community, we are well-positioned to make even greater strides towards our mission. I am exceedingly proud of what we have accomplished together and of how much we have evolved over the years. I look forward to our focus on impact and our work together in 2024 and beyond!

Thank you to everyone on our team, in our community and throughout our network of partners, donors and supporters for making Wikimedia CH what it is today.

Jenny Ebermann

Wikimedia CH Executive Director

GLAM

(Galleries, libraries, archives and museums)

Overview

In 2023, the GLAM programme refocused its activities under the relatively new Programme Lead, Sandra Becker, who joined in the second half of 2022. Sandra spent the first half of the year developing a new GLAM strategy, which guided activities and projects throughout the year and into 2024.

The new strategy focuses heavily on supporting inclusivity in cultural institutions. In 2023, this work centred mainly around museums, as per the new definition of museums announced by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in 2022, but it also touched on more general efforts in the programme. We lent our expertise and time to amplifying access to cultural knowledge and enhancing gender equity both in the professional field and in the collections’ representation of female artists. We gathered best practices from other GLAM institutions and like-minded organisations and worked to translate them for the Swiss museum landscape. We continued to strengthen our relationship with ICOM, positioning our chapter as an important partner to help realise their strategic goals.

The strategy also aims to facilitate new partnerships and opportunities. A key success was our collaboration with the Swiss art association Femme Artist Table (FATart), which led to a free dedicated community space for Wikimedia CH events (see the highlight activity below). We also raised Wikimedia CH’s visibility and reach by giving speeches and presentations at several high-profile events, including a presentation on knowledge equity in GLAM at the NGO CSQ67 Forum in New York City.

Highlight activity

Dedicated Community Space in Schaffhausen

One of the big successes of 2023 was a partnership with the Swiss art association Femme Artist Table (FATart), which led to them offering our community a meeting and editing space in Schaffhausen.

The opening event for the space was on 2 September, with a cocktail event and a Wikipedia workshop. The space also hosted several other workshops, including a workshop on women’s monuments; the Anti Bias Wiki Time event, which included a presentation on artistic research on bias and discrimination by artist María Linares in collaboration with Wikipedian IvaBerlin and a free Wikipedia atelier; and a Mini GLAM event on Peruvian Moche Culture.

The partnership was born from cooperation between GLAM Lead Sandra Becker and FATart co-founder and artist Ursina Gabriela Roesch. As an artist, Sandra exhibited several times at the FATart fair. She invited Ursina to the GLAM-on-Tour at the Montreux Jazz Archive in November 2022, which resulted in Ursina becoming a Wikipedian.

Located on the fourth floor of the “Kammgarn West” district, the community space organises year-round activities with an exhibition programme specifically dedicated to female artists. It offers ample space for discussions, workshops, co-working and a café-bar service. In the second half of the year, Wikipedia authors met there to research, edit, network and exchange experiences. The aim of this innovative space is, above all, to contribute to more female representation on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The collaboration advances Wikimedia CH’s aim to increase inclusivity on Wikimedia platforms, as well as FATart’s core mission to ensure equal rights for women* in society, especially in the arts. Says Ursina, “As FATart, we are committed to the visibility, recognition and appreciation of women in the art world, which is still dominated by men.”

[As per FATart: “The gender asterisk (*) serves as a reference to the social construct of ‘gender’. The asterisk after ‘women’ is intended to clarify that it refers to all persons who define themselves, are defined, or are visually perceived as ‘women’.”]

Key programme activities

• Gave a presentation on knowledge equity in GLAM at the NGO CSW67 Forum, a civil-society gathering in New York City that runs parallel to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
• Organised three GLAM-on-Tour events: one at the Abbey Library in St. Gallen in May, one at the Zug Library at the end of June and early July, and one with the Swiss National Sound Archives in Lugano in November. We also produced a promotional video demonstrating the benefits of the GLAM-on-Tour events.

• Organised a global campaign for International Museum Day 2023, collaborating with ICOM, the German and Austrian chapters and GLAM partners. The campaign included a photo contest, a video release and an online roundtable on ICOM’s new definition of museums.
• Supported International Archives Week 2023 with the Association of Swiss Archivists and the German and Austrian Wikimedia chapters around the theme “ArchivesUnited”. This campaign included an online roundtable about the Swiss archive landscape.
• Launched a partnership with the Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts to promote archives and data about the performing arts in Switzerland.
• Trained 21 librarians from the Vaud canton to add more than 190 references to 40 Wikipedia articles as part of the University Library of Lausanne’s #1Lib1Ref Campaign.

• Worked with the Swiss National Library to build a digital collection that compiles, archives and freely shares Wikipedia content related to Switzerland. The Wikipedia collection is listed in the library catalogue and can be consulted through e-Helvetica Access, the library’s online portal.
• Strengthened existing GLAM partnerships, including the French-speaking WikiRomandie network and our cooperation with Les sans pagEs and FemNetz, a feminist network in the German Wikipedia.
• Sponsored the Journée des logiciels libres en Archives, Bibliothèques et Centres de documentation (Libre ABC) in the Geneva Ethnography Museum and gave a presentation entitled “Wikidata and the Swiss Archive Landscape”.
• Gave a keynote speech entitled “Wikidata as Normdata” at the convention of the Swiss Archivists Association (VSA-AAS) in Sarnen and also presented the VSA-AAS Map Integration Project. Both topics were included in the online Swiss review Arbido, published by VSA-AAS.
• Participated, in cooperation with other Wikimedia chapters, in the 20th ICOM Triennale Conference in Valencia. It was the first time Wikimedia chapters participated in the event and contributed with a stand, a project page and speeches (see the event report.)

• Organised a WikiNeocomensia workshop with the Neuchâtel State Archives to mark the 175th anniversary of the Republic and the canton of Neuchâtel and the founding of modern Switzerland. The workshop aimed to improve and create Wikipedia articles and content about the historical figures who left their mark on Neuchâtel.
• Supported the 9th Swiss Open Cultural Hackathon (GLAMhack 2023) organised by OpenData.ch, bringing together those passionate about GLAM and coding to work on various projects focused on colonial collections and provenance research.
• Supported a series of WikiNeocomensia online workshops and professional meetups for GLAM professionals to enrich Wikipedia resources on the built heritage in the canton of Neuchâtel, engage local GLAM partners and train new Wikipedians. Working with Programme Community, we organised an in-person workshop in October that was open to Community members, prompting a few of them to participate.
• Awarded grants to fund two initiatives that support diversity and inclusion in Wikimedia projects and within our community: an event for “Who writes his_tory?” to convene women and non-binary Wikipedia contributors and the campaign Wiki Loves PRIDE (inSPORT) inEurope to address the content gap on LGBT+ topics in Wikimedia projects and participation gaps of LGBT+ contributors in non-English languages.

Programme impact

• Our partnership with VSA-AAS led to several outreach opportunities, such as a keynote speech, a publication and the integration of our map service on their website. We had a significant presence at their event, helping raise our profile and positioning us as a trusted partner.
• Our partnership with FATart led to a community space and allowed us to organise several events for free.
• We deepened our cooperation with ICOM and extended our activities around International Museum Day 2023.

Looking ahead

For 2024, the GLAM Programme will focus on museum transformation in alignment with ICOM’s new museum strategy, which focuses on civil society, sustainability, disruption and digitalisation. Through different events and video releases, we will aim to address the challenges for museums in the future and explore new forms of archiving and creating knowledge bases. Our main theme for 2024 is decolonising collections and encouraging inclusive narratives. Our guiding questions will be:

• What narratives can be told?
• How can marginalised knowledge be presented?

The GLAM Programme aims to extend our cultural network by reaching out to small- and medium-sized GLAM institutions for more diverse knowledge-creation processes.

Education

Overview

Programme Education saw important changes in 2023. As mentioned above, we welcomed two new team members to manage Education activities in the second half of the year. Daniela Mor started at 50% in June and now works at 80% as the Education Expert. She is based in Ticino and speaks Italian, Swiss German and English. In August, Daniela was joined by Vivian Epiney, the founder of DicoAdo (a longtime Education partner). Vivien works at 40% and speaks French and English.

Despite transitions within the programme, the team still implemented most of the annual plan. What’s more, not having an Education Lead for half of the year opened up opportunities for collaboration with other programmes and for other team members to advance Education projects. The Community Managers, in particular, stepped up to meet the demand for educational activities and support the new Education team members.

Highlight activity

Media in Piazza

One such collaborative project was the two-day workshop Wikimedia CH offered as part of the Media in Piazza series of events in Ticino. The event series, which is open to all secondary school classes in Italian-speaking Switzerland, brings together organisations and people working in the field of media and digital education. For years, Wikimedia CH has supported the event to advance our objective of making online knowledge more accessible and safer for young people. Past events have seen Wikimedia workshops that teach students ages 12-15 how to find and use information online, how to differentiate information sources and how to responsibly share knowledge.

This year’s theme of “Respect” aligned perfectly with Wikimedia and Wikipedia’s values. In line with the theme, Wikimedia CH offered a workshop on “netiquette” in online communities, including how to debate respectfully in the digital space. Using the five pillars of Wikipedia as a guide, the workshop aimed to translate the principles of neutrality, free and open knowledge, and respect into students’ daily interactions online. Through the workshop, we demonstrated that respecting each other is fundamental to carrying forward one’s ideas, having a constructive discussion and collaborating to improve knowledge.

The workshop was a resounding success, both in terms of impact and collaboration. Around 200 students participated over two days, underscoring how important the topic is for young people. Additionally, from an internal perspective, the workshop represented a deep and successful collaboration between different programmes and team members. While the two new Education Managers helped implement the event, they worked in tandem with the outgoing Education Lead, as well as the Community Manager for Ticino. This was an important step forward as our chapter aims to work in a more cooperative and less siloed manner.

Key programme activities

• Worked on the certification workstream, learning from other chapters about how we might implement it.
• Officially sponsored the EduWiki Conference in Belgrade and gave two speeches about Wikimedia CH’s education strategy and education tools.

• Prepared materials for teachers using Openedu.ch as a knowledge base and set the stage for a more detailed look at the user interface in 2024.
• Collaborated on a project with the Institute of Psychology at the University of Zurich to teach 26 students to improve and expand Wikipedia articles around stereotypes. The project spurred significant engagement and discussion among students and staff, underscoring the interest in this topic.
• Hosted a Wikipedia edit-a-thon with Les sans pagEs to create biographies of women in medicine and biology at the "Gender equity and digital transformation" conference in Lausanne.
• Supported the translation of Wikeys into Italian, German and Swiss German; it is an educational board game for secondary students to understand Wikipedia.

Programme impact

• Following workshops we gave to librarians and teachers in Gland on the online dictionary for kids, DicoAdo, those trained were able to organise and lead workshops themselves. This illustrates our commitment to empowering educators with digital knowledge and tools for the long-term sustainability of our initiatives, even after Wikimedia CH is no longer involved.
• We strengthened our relationship with Wikimedia France, especially around educational projects, setting the stage for increased collaboration going forward.
• Programme Education worked with the new Wikimedia Innovation Lab to advance free online educational platforms, including migrating DicoAdo onto our servers.
• The team carried out all planned Education activities despite transitions among personnel.
• Programme Education successfully collaborated with other programmes on various activities to ensure a more holistic approach to our Education goals.

Community

Overview

As the first year with the full Community team in place, 2023 was full of activities that engaged Wikipedians and volunteers in Switzerland’s three major language regions. Several new initiatives took place, as well as recurring activities successfully executed by the regional Community Managers. Meanwhile, the Community Lead worked to develop the new programme strategy, which the team will begin implementing in 2024.

It was also a year of strong collaboration with the other programmes. With a complete team and diverse language capabilities, the Community Managers played an important role in activities that technically fell under programmes such as GLAM, Education and Outreach. This was a testament to the team’s engagement and commitment to our mission, as well as their valuable individual expertise. Going forward, this collaboration will create a strong foundation for one of the programme’s core goals: to engage the Wikimedia Community around all programmes to multiply impact.

Highlight activity

GLAM-on-Tour at the Swiss National Sound Archives

While officially falling under Programme GLAM, this year’s GLAM-on-Tour events saw both heavy involvement from and significant impact on the Community programme. In 2023, the GLAM and Community teams organised three GLAM-on-Tours: one at Abbey Library in St. Gallen in May, one at the Zug Library at the end of June and early July, and one with the Swiss National Sound Archives in Ticino in November.

These events required significant cooperation between the programmes. The Community Managers of all language regions stepped up, offering organisational support, linguistic expertise and regional relationships to ensure the events were successful.

The Ticino event, in particular, was a highly successful collaboration between the two programmes. One of the most multilingual GLAM-on-Tour events ever, it attracted 16 participants from Switzerland, Germany and Italy. Several of the participants were new contributors to Wikimedia projects, requiring more high-touch support from Wikimedia CH team members. What’s more, the focus on women in the sound industry and the varied programme activities attracted interest from a diversity of ages, genders, backgrounds and interactions with Wikipedia. There were even general public participants with no previous knowledge of Wikimedia CH, presenting an opportunity to introduce them to our organisation and potentially engage them as contributors to our projects.

While organising this event was challenging and required good coordination between the teams, it also allowed team members to divide responsibilities, share knowledge, appreciate other team members’ complementary skills and value each other’s contribution. Overall, it was a huge success that provided important learnings for continuing collaboration.

Key programme activities

• Developed a new strategy for community engagement in Ticino to build membership and visibility in the region and expand our network of local partners. Read the report about regional activities.
• Hosted around 45 active volunteers at New Year’s Brunches in each linguistic region and supported a community-organised hike at the Witi nature conservation area, providing our community with opportunities to get together and share experiences.
• Supported two successful Women for Wikipedia edit-a-thons to expand the visibility of women on Wikipedia while forging collaborations with two new partners, ETH Zurich and TX Group. We also worked with event founder and Wikimedia CH President Muriel Staub to create and implement a volunteer retention plan.
• Organised and led Frauenbewegungen-Mouvements féministes Biel-Bienne, a bilingual, community-driven Wikipedia workshop with the Biel library to train new Wikipedians while creating and editing articles about women.
• Supported several community-led writing workshops, including a workshop with the Swiss Alpine Museum in Bern on women mountaineers, an edit-a-thon with Photo Elysée Lausanne and Les sans pagEs on women photographers, an event at the Ballyana archive on industrial culture, a well-attended workshop at the Winterthur Library and a workshop at the ETH Library.
• Helped organise and attended three Wikicons: WikiConvention Francophone in Abidjan, Ivory Coast; the German-speaking WikiCon 2023 in Austria; and the itWikiCon 2023 in Bari, Italy.

• Partnered once again with Service Civil International (SCI) Schweiz to organise the Wikipedia Online Workcamp “Wikipedia for Peace Online: No More War”, as well as the offline camp “Wikipedia for Peace & Climate Justice Journalism”.
• Strengthened cooperation with Les sans pagEs in collaboration with Programme GLAM, including supporting the first workshop of the Wikiproject Witches on the theme of witch hunts in Switzerland.
• Forged a promising new partnership with Paulus Academy, an educational and cultural institution in Zurich.
• Supported the participation of two volunteers in Translating Queer Movements, Wikimedia Austria’s project to translate articles about the history of the queer movement into other languages.

Looking ahead

In 2024, we will start implementing the new programme strategy. A central aspect of the strategy is to support initiatives that diversify our community. We will also review and adapt recurring activities to ensure alignment with this goal and the overall strategy. We will continue to expand collaboration with other programmes to create the greatest possible impact while sharing knowledge and working more efficiently internally. To this end, we will participate in the "Value for Good" Impact Academy with the help of the Mercator Foundation.

Partnerships & Outreach

Overview

Wikimedia CH is uniquely positioned to advocate for issues important to our Movement. As Switzerland is home to the United Nations and other international organisations and non-profits, as well as the European headquarters for many corporations and start-ups, our potential for impact at a political and social level is significant.

In 2023, our focus was two-fold: continue our advocacy work by fostering our collaboration with like-minded organisations and strengthen our outreach work with an approach more aligned to communication, fundraising and association member management.

In terms of advocacy, we continued to engage with partners like Parldigi and the Alliance Digitale in Switzerland, as well as European partners like the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU (FKAGEU) through Wikimedia Europe. At the national level, we provided feedback on two different public consultations on proposed laws.

We also built a strong foundation for communication and outreach, especially as it relates to fundraising and membership engagement. We decided on a new thematic focus for the chapter, “Building a more inclusive future”, and we developed and began implementing a new membership engagement strategy.

Highlight activity

A New Approach to Membership Engagement

In 2023, we continued our work to professionalise and strengthen our outreach efforts, turning our attention to membership engagement.

When it comes to membership, we aim to attract more – and more engaged – association members who actively participate in events, vote at general assemblies and become volunteers. We also want to increase awareness about membership and improve communication with existing members. Our long-term goal for this approach is to grow our association organically with a base of interested, engaged members, whether they are supporting or active.

Starting essentially from zero, we first identified gaps and opportunities for membership engagement. This work started with some core questions: Why does Wikimedia CH need members? What are the benefits of becoming a member? Who is our target group for membership? How can we motivate people to actively support our work? Working with the team, we learned that many overlaps exist between the association membership management and Community programme management. Exploring these overlaps helped us better understand how our organisation operates and what internal processes and communication are necessary for seamless integration between the two groups.

Together we:

• Created an ongoing list of membership benefits and incentives
• Developed a member onboarding process and guidelines for payments and refunds
• Organised three feedback calls for members and interested people
• Looked ahead to 2024 to continue to improve the member experience

Throughout this process, we have learned that while we have made enormous progress around membership management, our approach won’t be perfect right away. It is an iterative process that can be improved by listening to member feedback and adjusting as we go. We should allow ourselves to listen, learn and improve step by step. In doing so, we can better support our community, advancing our mission to advocate for free knowledge by motivating people who can help us.

Key programme activities

• Hosted a successful Friendraising event in Lugano on 12 October, which strengthened our network and supported our growing presence in the region.
• Became increasingly involved in public affairs and provided feedback on two different public consultations on proposed laws: one regarding culture and the other on the remuneration of journalistic works cited online. We collaborated with Opendata to sign the latter.
• Further explored a partnership with the broadcasting company SRF to open their archived content.

• Promoted the 2023 GLAM-on-Tour events with invitations to the press and created a video for the 2022 event in Montreux.
• Ran various media campaigns to support programmatic and outreach activities, including International Museum Day, International Archives Week and a project with the National Library.

• Continued growing our newsletter readership and improving our website, including fixing a bug on our contact form and streamlining our process for responding to inquiries.
• Attended events for various partnerships, including Digital Alliance meetings, a Parldigi dinner and the 1st General Assembly for Wikimedia EU in Prague.
• We froze our X (formerly Twitter) account, as the platform’s values no longer align with our own, choosing to focus on our new account on Mastodon, which is running well.

Programme impact

• Our Friendraising event attracted around 40 attendees and was an important step forward in engaging new partners and strengthening relationships with existing ones.
• We began improving membership engagement with a new strategy and onboarding approach.
• We continued to see impressive open rates for our newsletters. The open rate grew 3.5% from last year and remains well above the industry average.
• Our fundraising campaigns were more effective and aligned thanks to more efficient processes.

Looking ahead

In 2024, we will expand our outreach activities, advocating for issues important to us as a Movement, such as copyright, digital public infrastructure, net neutrality and digital self-determination. In line with this expansion, we will change the programme name to International & National (Public) Relations and Partnerships.

In 2024, we will continue to focus on in-person meetings with Parliament and continue to support and engage with national and international groups, both within the Movement, such as Wikimedia EU and Wikifranca, and with external organisations that share our values. We will also begin implementing our new thematic focus and continue integrating fundraising into project planning. We will take the feedback and initial learnings from our new membership engagement strategy and will continue to refine how we engage members and volunteers.

Alongside our General Assembly on 27 April in Bern, we will organise “Wikipedia Day”, an event featuring high-level speakers and discussions for partners, donors, members and other active people related to our association. This will create more visibility for our chapter and hopefully garner more partnerships and collaborations with like-minded organisations.

Innovation

Overview

In 2023, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our new strategic impact direction around experimentation and innovation, also referred to as the Innolab. The goal of the Innovation programme is to create a space and a framework for Wikimedia CH to become a learning organisation while identifying and advancing projects that support our core purpose.

In the Innolab’s first full year of operations, the programmatic activities built upon the foundation set forth in its strategy. The programme forged important partnerships around topics like the knowledge gap, AI and climate change, among others. It also continued to support innovation within the other programmes and advance internal systems and processes that improve coordination and efficiency.

Highlight activity

Wiki Science Competition

The Wiki Science Competition, a photo contest that collects high-quality scientific images for public use, has significantly impacted education and science. It routinely garners robust participation from a global audience of professionals and amateurs alike, including photographers, scientists and educators.

Wikimedia CH is a key supporter of the Wiki Science Competition, not only in Switzerland but also on the international stage in collaboration with Wikimedia Estonia. Our involvement has been pivotal in promoting the Swiss contest, enhancing its visibility and impact within the Swiss scientific and educational communities. Our support demonstrates our dedication to enhancing the accessibility and dissemination of scientific knowledge worldwide.

The 2023 edition of the competition attracted thousands of entries from numerous countries. The contest showcased a wide range of scientific disciplines through photographs, diagrams and non-photographic media. These contributions have greatly enriched the visual representation of science, particularly on Wikimedia Commons.

The submissions are not only beautiful but also invaluable educational tools, helping to visually explain complex scientific concepts and phenomena, thereby enhancing learning experiences for students and educators. The contest has been instrumental in increasing public interest in science, making scientific research more accessible and understandable and fostering an appreciation for the beauty and complexity of scientific exploration.

In line with the principles of open access and with Wikimedia CH’s mission, the competition has significantly contributed to the public domain, offering freely usable scientific images and supporting the wider movement towards open access to scientific knowledge. The contest continues to be a cornerstone in the promotion of scientific knowledge and education through open-access platforms.

Programme activities

• Continued to advance the programme strategy by helping other programmes to improve their processes and activities, defining projects to incubate and creating new partnerships to explore and strengthen.
• Helped fund and support the “Fill the Data Gap” project to address digital discrimination and data gaps with two pivotal data crowdsourcing projects: one focusing on digital hate imagery and another identifying barriers in footpaths for barrier-free mapping.
• Partnered with Lib4RI and Science et Cité on the WikiKlima project, which aims to aggregate information related to climate change across Wikimedia platforms and bridge the gap between complex scientific data and public comprehension. The collaboration, which also identifies content gaps, will ensure that the content is not only extensive but also scientifically robust and reliable, making it a valuable resource for both the general public and the scientific community.
• Explored the integration and impact of AI technologies in supporting Wikimedia projects, analysing potential actions to enhance Wikimedia projects and assessing the impact of ChatGPT on the traffic and engagement within these projects. This initiative was pivotal in determining effective strategies for using AI to enhance the content quality, accessibility and reach of Wikimedia’s vast knowledge base.
• Finished the new IT strategy, which includes a risk assessment, knowledge transfer and the Tech Boost concept to enhance projects via developer support.

• Identified new internal tools to support team and project functioning, including the Kanban framework that the team now uses to track projects.
• Established partnerships with technical partners, mainly in the fields of innovation, science and IT.
• Continued to help the other programmes introduce innovation into their activities by facilitating innovation sprints and the concept of continuous improvement for their projects.

Looking ahead

In 2024, we will continue the strategic alignment of the programme, building in-house knowledge and partnerships to advance our mission. This includes defining the incubator structure and projects to incubate, as well as how to support other programmes. We’ll continue to strengthen technological and engineering aspects and build up projects we started in 2023 around climate change, knowledge equity and AI. We will also continue developing a translation tool for multilingual online meetings.

We’ll continue supporting the “Fill the Data Gap” project with presentations and workshops, and we will establish partnerships with Amnesty International and Awareness in Art to enhance and integrate workshops into their educational programs. The aim is to complete the first phase of the project by the second quarter of 2024, alongside developing a framework for diversity and data gaps to address digital justice.

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