— Overview
In 2024, the Innovation programme moved into its consolidation phase, focusing on establishing well-working processes and delivering concrete results. Our key priorities included releasing our first incubated and reviewed projects, defining partnerships within the Movement, and realising two master projects. As laid out in our roadmap, this year marked an important transition from organisational setup to active implementation, with an emphasis on creating efficient processes that will support innovation across Wikimedia CH.
The programme continued to operate through its core frameworks: the Incubator for new ideas, the Pit-stop for reviewing existing solutions, the Factory for project support, and our tech community initiatives. These worked together to fulfil our mission of being a learning organisation that anticipates societal changes while supporting our core purpose through experimentation and exploration.
— Highlight activity
Anticipating social changes
A key focus for Programme Innovation in 2024 was developing and supporting initiatives that anticipate, understand and address future societal and technological challenges through expert and community insights. Rather than attempting to predict the future in isolation, we actively seek input and foster dialogue to prepare Wikimedia CH for what’s to come. This approach focused heavily on how AI and other technological disruptors can impact and enhance our work.
In 2024, we launched the Wikimedia CH AI Project. Working closely with the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation, this project aimed to understand community needs and identify areas where AI could enhance Wikimedia projects while promoting AI awareness. The project kicked off by establishing a preliminary scientific committee to guide the programme. Through meetings, working groups and interviews, the team developed a Research Direction document to guide research centres and technical partners in developing AI solutions in key areas. This strategic framework aims to address critical challenges within Wikimedia projects using AI to improve content quality, accessibility and fairness. The initiative demonstrates Wikimedia CH's commitment to thoughtfully incorporating emerging technologies while staying true to Movement values.
In 2024 we supported several projects using AI to improve Wikipedia:
- Extending Cité Unseen: This project aims to expand the "Cité Unseen" tool, enhancing transparency and accessibility of source metadata on Wikipedia to help readers and editors better assess the reliability of information.
- CitationWatchlist: This project focuses on developing a tool to monitor and address citation issues on Wikipedia by creating personalised watchlists for missing or problematic references.
- WikiCommons Gallery Showcase by WikiPortraits: This initiative seeks to create curated galleries on Wikimedia Commons to showcase high-quality portraits of notable individuals, promoting accessibility and reuse of visual content.
Our work around AI and a changing society sets the stage for the Next20 project, which complements AI projects by addressing current technological changes. This initiative looks 20 years ahead, exploring how Wikimedia CH and the world might evolve. By organising events and engaging experts from various fields, Next20 investigates future societal and technological trends, helping us identify the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
— Programme activities
- Supported a variety of initiatives that integrate scientific research into Wikimedia platforms and provide visibility for the scientific community, including: hosting the awards ceremony for Wiki Science Competition 2023 and supporting planning for the 2025 edition; funding the Researchers in Switzerland project to create a database of Swiss-based researchers on Wikidata; and helping develop the project Wiki goes HoCHschule, in collaboration with partner Science et Cité.
- Began implementation on the WikiKlima project and the Wikimedia open science community, including several sub-projects aimed at enhancing climate-related content, and prepared to launch a Climate Observatory to monitor and improve climate change information across Wikimedia platforms.
- Presented "Wiki Intelligence: The Role of Wikimedia Projects and AI" at DINAcon 2024 in Bern as part of a collaboration with Programme GLAM.
- Began initial work on the AI4Wikipedia project, which aims to explore potential AI integration in Wikimedia projects, in collaboration with the community and a newly established scientific committee.
- Identified new internal tools to support team and project functioning, including the Kanban framework that the team now uses to track projects.
- Launched three new projects through the Innovation Incubator after a successful call for proposals: WikiCommons Gallery Showcase by WikiPortraits, Extending Cite Unseen, and Scaling Wikidata by benchmarking QLever.
- Collaborated with Programme Community to help fund and support the first Italian-speaking Wikimedia Hackathon in April.
- Supported "Fill the Data Gap" project to address digital discrimination through data gap analysis including helping to convene 15 stakeholders to discuss data gaps related to barriers on footpaths.
- Supported tech community development through events like the Open Innovation in Life Science Conference and Wikidata Days in Bologna, fostering collaboration around open knowledge and technology.
- Collaborated with Programme GLAM to restore and update the Cassandra GLAM tool, and begin development on the 2.0 version.
- Worked with Programme Education to support online educational tools like Dico des Ados and Wikimini with technical updates, documentation and an online repository to support the platforms.
- Created comprehensive documentation and updated the servers in our data centre to ensure enhanced security.
— Programme impact
- When exploring innovation initiatives, we must balance experimentation with resource constraints while carefully considering and prioritising projects to pursue.
- Strong community interest in innovative projects highlights the need for ongoing communication and support to transform ideas into actionable projects. However, aligning diverse community expectations with strategic goals remains challenging.
- Clear strategic planning and focus are vital for success. With limited resources, we must carefully evaluate and prioritise projects, particularly around emerging areas like climate change and AI, to ensure they align with our mission and deliver meaningful impact.
— Looking ahead
In 2025, Programme Innovation will focus on moving from planning to active implementation, prioritising impactful and resource-efficient projects. Key initiatives will include expanding the three successful Incubator projects around visual content, citation reliability and Wikidata optimisation. The Factory will advance several major projects including the Climate Observatory, Project AI's white paper on ethical AI integration, and Project Lingo's AI-driven approach to multilingualism. Through the new "Learn & Connect" initiative and expanded tech community events, we aim to foster stronger collaboration and skill-building across the Movement. These efforts align with our goal of positioning Wikimedia CH as a forward-thinking organisation that embraces technological innovation while maintaining our commitment to open knowledge and community engagement.
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Photo credits
- A new monohedral polyhedron of type 3 with genus 1. It has 28 vertices, 56 faces and 84 edges, and it exhibits dihedral D_7 symmetry. The image was rendered in Blender and the polyhedron was set in scene with an iridescent surface of mother-of-pearl. The picture is part of the article "New families of monohedral polyhedra", submitted for publication in the "Journal of Mathematics and the Arts", in collaboration with Nina Hungerbühler and Marcel Pirron. Entry in the Wiki Science Competition 2023, a global photo contest. Photo by Norbert Hungerbühler - own work, CC BY 4.0.
- Image for Programme Innovation's strategy for 2022-2025. Report by Ilario (Wikimedia CH) - own work, CC BY 4.0.
- Lizard (Podarcis) on a wall in Switzerland. Entry in the Wiki Science Competition 2023, a global photo contest. Photo by Lavandulifolia - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Cité Unseen in action: Cité Unseen on Citizens United v. FEC (July 2023). Image by Kevin Payravi - own work, CC BY 4.0.
- Cockpit of a Robin DR400 aircraft (HB-KFI) in flight over Château d'Oex. Entry in the Wiki Science Competition 2023, a global photo contest. Photo by Giles Laurent - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- The Wiki Science Competition Switzerland Awards Ceremony. Image by Fei Wang - own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Winning image for the Image Set category of the Wiki Science Competition Switzerland: Stacked images of a European Bee-eater in flight. Image by Giles Laurent - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- The scientific photographs of Bart Vercruysse (shown in photo) make it possible to complete the collection of herbarium parts for the identification, monitoring and conservation of threatened and endemic species of the island of Fogo. These photographs complement field work carried out by the Projecto Vito Association with the support of the Audemars Piguet Foundation (Le Brassus-Suisse). Entry in the Wiki Science Competition 2023, a global photo contest. Photo by Roguet Didier - own work, CC BY 4.0.
- An Indian peafowl chick at the Zurich Zoo. Photo by Winkelbohrer from Schweiz - DSC_3854Uploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Lauterbrunnen. Entry in Wiki Loves Switzerland 2022. Photo by Dini78 - own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.