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Grants:APG/Proposals/2017-2018 round 1/Wikimedia Sverige/Progress report form

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Metrics and results overview - all programs

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We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Grant Metrics. We understand not all Grant or grantee-defined Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome/results achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Grant Metrics.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. number of total participants 976 Breakdown by gender:
Women: 410
Men: 367
Non-binary: 1

The reduced work force and increased focus on internal capacity building means that all of the metrics can be expected to be lower than predicted when writing the proposal back in 2016. The metrics from the 50 international WikiGap events are also missing throughout as we have yet to compile these (the inital numbers can be found on the Outreach and Events Dashboard). In total these events had around 1,600 participants.

In addition to a general reduction of public facing activities this metric was also negatively affected by Wikispeech not having gone live for testing and the fulfillment of the technical wishlist being delayed. Even with public facing activities ramping up during the second half of the year we expect to be below our original prediction. Worth noting is that the Wikimedia hackathon originally planned in the application has been replaced by the smaller Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting, where we hope to lay the foundation for regular regional meetings. This first year will however have fewer people involved.

We have a number of presentations at different events planned for the second half of the year, including a presentation to all of the participants at Wikimania in Cape Town, that will increase the numbers significantly.

2. number of newly registered users 335 Breakdown by gender:
Women: 124
Men: 78
Non-binary: 0

This metric is at 2/3 of the predicted half-year result. In addition to the general reduction this is specifically affected by the decision to not run Wiki Loves Food, scaling back on the advertisement for Wiki Loves Earth and not running any events as part of Connected Open Heritage, which will now happen in 2019 (under the new name FindingGLAMs).

3. number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects 5,329 Breakdown by project:
Wikipedia: 600
Commons: 4,538
Wikidata: 191
Other: 0

This metric had ambitious goals based on the assumption that we would be running a sequel to the Connected Open Heritage project with the same setup as in 2017. The sequel being delayed and the format of the project changing means that the original predictions are invalid. Still we expect a significant increase during the second half of the year.

4. Blog posts[1] (deprecated grantee defined metric) 7 This metric is deprecated, but included here as it is mentioned in the proposal.

Downsizing at the end of 2017 meant we lost the person in charge of increasing communications about our projects, through blog posts amongst other methods. That coupled with putting the Visibility Making project on hold meant no active work has been done to meet this metric. With our new membership system in place we intend to start sending out a newsletter about our activities.

5. Diversity[2] 440 (non-unique) This is adversely affected by the same factors as the Participant and Newly registered user metrics. This metric will be strongly affected by the added metrics from the WikiGap events.
6. Reach[3] (new grantee defined metric) 1,186 (non-unique) We expect Reach to be significantly higher for the second half of the year when we start participating in and organising more external events.


Introduction

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For the first half of the year Wikimedia Sverige focused on capacity building of the organization. This was needed for three reasons: (1) because of the staff reduction at the end of 2017; (2) the move to a new office space; and (3) the new GDPR legislation coming into effect on the 25 May 2018. All these factors put the existing structures under constraints, but they were also an opportunity to review existing practices, tools and methods.

The four programmatic areas developed in 2016, Access, Use, Community and Enabling, continued to form the base of the project structure. Some of the most important activities and changes to date are the following:

  • We organized WikiGap together with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 50+ countries across the world together with Swedish embassies, local Wikimedia communities and local partners. The Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs participated in our event in Stockholm and the WikiGap initiative was even announced in the Government’s Statement of Foreign Policy 2018.
  • We activated our new membership system and tripled our membership base to 432 members. The tools and policies around privacy were revised as part of the GDPR work (our material is freely available and the extensive work were highlighted by other organizations as an inspiration). Switching systems in an organization that's been operating for more than a decade is a time consuming process and we took it on ourselves to take it as an opportunity to clean up in our documentation and online archives.
  • We have depend our cooperation with GLAM institutions, including a strategic partnership with the National library.
  • We have started to form a network of OER advocates in Sweden.
  • We have, for the first time, lobbied actively in the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen) regarding FoP.
  • We were selected to host Wikimania 2019 and have initiated preparations.
  • We sent in half a dozen of project grant applications and has so far confirmed around 4,000,000 SEK (450,000 USD) in funding for 2018-2019. A number of applications are still waiting for confirmations, or are being worked on. Hiring of more staff members was initiated in June 2018.

For the first time in the association's history our entire board decided to run again and were elected during the general assembly.

Access

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  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Access A.1.1 Enrich the Wikimedia projects with 25 resources,[4]through the creation and distribution of materials and by providing support and performing batch uploads. 44 5 resources out of 25
Below target: 15 The work that will take place as part of the new projects FindingGLAMs and Library data will provide the majority of the new resources made accessible. However, only part of the work will be finalized this year. Because of these large scale projects we will not include as many small GLAM batch uploads as we otherwise would have done.
A.1.2 150 identified[5] subject experts contribute to the Wikimedia projects with at least 1 productive edit each, through the dissemination of information, maintaining relationships or arranging thematic edit-a-thons. 181 122 experts out of 150
Above target: 180 The experts are quite evenly split between GLAMs and the education sector and we expect this to continue based on the planned activities.
A.1.3 Involve 15 courses in the Wikipedia Education Program,[6] through educating motivated teachers and providing expertise on the Wikipedia tools for education. 12 8 courses out of 15
Below target: 12 courses The increased focus on the OER network and on research in the area will use most of the remaining resources. A few courses are however already in the pipeline. Furthermore, the increased focus on working with educators at Stockholm University we believe will have a positive effect for next year.
A.2.1 To increase the use of free licenses ensure that 20 organisations[7] partake of information about free licenses. N/A 81 organizations out of 20
Above target: 120 This goal was re-phrased from 2017 when the focus was to get new organisations to release material under a free license. We found that this was a difficult metric to use since re-licensing often occurs many years after our initial interaction with an organisation and since it is often hard to say if it was our effort specifically that caused the change. As such we changed our metric to informing about free licenses as we know this has a long term effect. As we were given access to several larger new collaborations we managed to reach more organisations than first anticipated. We believe it will increase even further because of the planned structure of the FindingGLAMs project.
A.2.2 Work actively to nurture and develop the relevant networks and contacts with people who can influence license choice of material in order to safeguard the topicality of the issue. This is achieved, in addition to regular activities, through active participation in, or organisation of, at least 10 new events and at least 10 new direct contacts with content owners, organizations and politicians. 28 events, 75 contacts 8 new events out of 10

33 new direct contacts out of 10

Above target: 15 events

Above target: 60 contacts

Our definition of someone belonging to our network is when they have met a representative of the association and staff has some way of contacting them, they have received information about what we do as an organization and how they can reach us. This has been successful this year with a number of unexpected opportunities to take part in events in the GLAM sector. We believe it will increase even further because of the planned structure of the FindingGLAMs project.

Our Access program focuses on improving the free content on, or available to, the Wikimedia projects both short and long term. This was our largest program, both in number of ongoing projects and initiatives, and in budget. The work within this program is expected to increase significantly during the second half of the year with two new large, externally funded, projects starting.

Our earlier work with getting GLAM and other organizations working with us have shown that both individual staff members and the organization as a whole have to go through a number of steps, and that the environment (context) which they work in has to be suitable. As stated in our application we see contributions from new organizations happening mainly in two ways:

  • People contribute to the Wikimedia projects within their institutional frameworks. This could e.g. be GLAM staff, researchers or students.
  • Resources created elsewhere are put under a free license and can later be included in our projects.

Through the projects in the Access program we worked to influence staff, decision makers and the environment (context) they work within.

Access gained short term

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’’I.e. production, adoption of tools and methods.’’

Different organizations have reached different levels of maturity when it comes to how they view free knowledge and their perception of how they can contribute. Their maturity affects what we can achieve together in a particular timespan, and a large part of our work is focused on moving them forward to a more thought-through strategy. We focus on partners who have expertise and/or collections that we have identified as relevant for Wikimedia in general or for a particular project. The first half of the year we have, in the GLAM sector, initiated more long term partnerships with central actors and worked to deepen our work with existing partners. In the second half of the year we will actively work to engage new partnerships in Sweden and abroad. We strive to be considered a professional and generous partner.

The activities aimed at in the near time is to get access to more free information and including it on three of the Wikimedia platforms: Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. For ten years we have invested time and efforts in workshops where we train experts about free licenses, to contribute to the platforms, and other things related to the Wikimedia platforms and free knowledge. The output from these activities is in the short term are improved articles and content, but we believe a far more important outcome is the deeper knowledge and expertise which later will help when we organize projects together to release material owned by the institutions. From our experience, the decision for an institution to release larger amounts of material often takes place years after we have given them a first introduction, however every now and then we experience a faster turnover rate.

Through GLAM partnerships during the year we have managed to deliver unique material to the Wikimedia movement, with e.g. historical photographic collections of African tribes. Through dedicated efforts we have carried out the preparations needed to achieve more partnerships, either working directly with us or with other Wikimedia affiliates, in the future. We will during the second half of the year focus on bibliographical data and data about GLAM institutions.

We will focus on the documentation of processes and aim to create a number of case studies of how different collections at GLAMs can be accessed and included on the Wikimedia platforms. This will be valuable both for other Wikimedia affiliates that want to upload collections and for GLAM institutions that are new, but interested, in working with the Wikimedia movement.

We also work with the education sector to have educators assign students to contribute to free knowledge as part of their course work. Here the outcome we are looking for is to engage students in the production of large amounts of high quality material. We see teacher retention as a key in sustaining and growing in education.

We see educator retention as a key in sustaining and growing in education, as the quality of the program benefit from the experience and skills they gain over time. We have started with more targeted efforts towards specific programs where we believe the students are likely to work in organizations that we would like to partner with in the future, such as GLAM or university education.

Story: Data collections as a service

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We are continuing our efforts around batch data uploads. We are focusing on two different types of data: about GLAM institutions (e.g. location, type etc.) and bibliographical data (initially on the authors). Our goal with the GLAM data is to improve the coverage on the Wikimedia platforms, but also create a service for the international GLAM community and for the disaster response community as we know that the lack of knowledge, on a global scale, where GLAM institutions are located is a real problem for support during a crisis. This is especially true for poorer countries, and this work thereby also support equity regarding the protection of cultural heritage. We also believe that this type of data will also make it easier for Wikimedia affiliates to identify new potential partners to reach out to. We will work together with the Structure data on Commons team at the Wikimedia Foundation, whom are partnering with us in the project.

The addition of bibliographical data will make sourcing on Wikipedia faster and easier, but we hope it will also make Wikidata a service for users outside of Wikimedia as well, providing a service for many. As the project is happening in partnership with the National library of Sweden, with the stated intention of sharing lessons with other National libraries, we expect to encourage similar projects in other countries and get more data to be added over the years.

The work done in previous years make us well prepared to work on these type of uploads. We know that time need to be set aside for discussions before, during and after the batch upload itself. Especially as bibliographical data is something that interests a lot of people and affiliates. We are therefore planning the project in such a way that we do not have to rush anything and can listen closely and work with the Wikidata and Wikipedia communities, Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia Foundation and other parties. Identifying what data to focus on, clean and prepare it will all be done in an inclusive manner.

We aim to increase our developer team again to be able to handle the work and has started the work on finding candidates for the position.

These are long term, externally funded, projects. They will last at least 2018-2019, with the bibliographical data project possibly for 2-3 years more.

Access gained long term

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’’I.e. changing minds, policies and attitudes, improving our capacity.’’

Wikimedia Sverige is in this for the long run. We aim to change the way organizations and the society think about knowledge dissemination and production. Creating that kind of change in attitudes will allow for the full impact of free knowledge. To reach this goal partnerships are key. We need to work to change the attitude of organizations in society to engage them in free knowledge production.

The practical work outlined above is therefore only half of the story. It is the end result of an often long period of finding common ground with an organization. We are continuously working to convince more organizations to partner with us and through this themselves become champions for free knowledge in the end.

Top down

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By convincing decision makers to adopt different forms of policies around openness we are laying the foundations for accessing new material in the future.

In the Swedish context, most organizations are rather non-hierarchical but individual staff members can nonetheless be restricted in their ability to act by limited funds or lack of supportive policy. Removing such barriers is therefore important to allow them to improve the amount of access to free knowledge. While decision makers are of course hard to reach, the strong Wikimedia brand gives us a real advantage compared to other organizations active in the free knowledge movement. It does however take a lot of preparations to develop argumentation, networks and supporting material. This is something we continue to invest resources in.

Due to our court loss in 2017 in the Freedom of Panorama case against Bildupphovsrätt Sverige (BUS) we focused on putting the donations we have received to good use. We contacted representatives from the largest political parties in the Swedish parliament (the Riksdag) to present arguments for why a legislative update was needed. See #Story: Discussing Wikimedia with Sweden's lawmakers.

Wikimedia Sverige has supported the important work done through FKAGEU over the years with both work time and financial resources. This is because we know the importance EU legislation have on our projects. However, during the first half of the year we had to hold back on any financial commitment until we had secured our cash flow. Now, when our financial situation is in better order after a few major grants, we will see how we can support the Brussels team’s work again.

Story: Discussing Wikimedia with Sweden's lawmakers

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Wikimedia Sverige has long been involved in international efforts to inform legislators about new laws that could harm Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia platforms. However, this has mainly been in a supportive position and we have had a limited amount of activities in Sweden. In 2018 this has changed.

In 2018 we could use some of the funds we had received in generous support from members of the public, whom were outraged by the fact that sharing photos of a public space online could create legal risks for the photographer. The parliament had a couple of motions for new legislation that were in line with our goals. Before the vote was taking place we contacted the parliamentarians in the responsible committee and requested meetings with them to present our point of view and why the legislation was crucial to be updated. In preparation for the meetings we discussed methods and arguments with Dimi Dimitrov in Brussels, which was valuable. We had positive meetings with representatives from three of the main parties in Sweden.

As the suggestions for new legislation were put forward by individual parliamentarians, rather than from the parties themselves, we were informed by all people we talked to (including the three parliamentarians that put forward the motions) that the motions had no chance of passing. Presenting individual motions like this is simply a way to put the issue on the political agenda. As expected the motion did not pass at this point. During the rest of the year we will work to present the issue of lacking Freedom of Panorama and its implications to the different parties.

The meetings were a good place to start and also to inform the parliamentarians about our interest as an non-profit organization to give our unique perspective of e.g. new internet or copyright legislation.

Story: Strategic high level partnerships

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The chapter has had a longstanding relationship with the GLAM institutions in Sweden and provided trainings and batch uploads to them. This has given us a good position to get even further.

Now we are working to form more strategic high level partnerships with the GLAM institutions that are so large, and that have a coordinating role in the country, so that we should be able to work productively with them for years to come. These are organizations that occupy advisory and best practice roles which give them the ability to influence other organisations within their fields of expertise to promote and adopt open licensing and engage with the Wikimedia movement.

At the end of 2017 we delivered our inputs to the National library of Sweden on how Sweden's libraries can work with Wikimedia and this year we start our first part of our strategic project to connect us with libraries in multiple ways for mutual benefit. This is a project funded by the national library and if this first part is deemed successful continuous funding is possible for 3-4 more years.

The National heritage board is a long term partner. In 2017 they became a coordinating authority for Sweden's museums and this year we had a first development project together with them, aiming to create a tool for easy uploading of 3D models to multiple platforms and events to discuss and promote 3D scans of historical objects.

The National archive of Sweden has requested that we start discussing how Wikimedia can work closer with the archives in the country. We aim to initiate high level discussions in Q3-Q4.

Through a contact provided by WMF staff we had a first meeting with a representative from International IDEA. We will work to engage their staff and management in the coming months to see if this can be developed into a fruitful partnership. If so, this would be our first with a aid organization and if successful could form a new set of partnerships.

Through the WikiGap initiative we started together with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs we have been able to work with Swedish embassies across the world, support local Wikimedia affiliates and volunteers and local NGOs. This partnership has the potential to support our work with Wikimania 2019 (as Visa applications are handled by the embassies), provide funding for the Wikimedia movement (as the embassies are financing projects in the countries) and to reach many new partners and volunteers in countries where the Wikimedia movement’s presences previously has been limited.

In Q3-Q4 we will start our new project #FindingGLAMs were we will continue our partnership with UNESCO. We will also work to engage ICOM, IFLA and Europeana in the project. Wikimedia Foundation's GLAM team are partnering with us in these efforts.

Story: Forming a national network around OER

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In the open knowledge landscape in Sweden, the area of open education and open educational resources (OER) is notably missing in policies and strategies, especially in comparison to Open data and Open Access which have been getting stronger government support and attention in Sweden recently. There is also a lack of OER supportive policy in Sweden compared to what other European countries have achieved.

From several years of working closely with educators and decision makers at universities, schools and libraries, our network has grown and we can see that there is interest in opening up learning resources to enable sharing and reuse beyond the institution. But supportive policy is missing for stakeholders to act.

Based on our in-house expertise in open education and free licenses and also inspired by OER initiatives by WMDE to boost the OER community in Germany, we have capacity to become a central hub for OER advocates in Sweden to meet and engage in OER policy discussions. The opportunity for us is to invite and coordinate discussions and meetings so that OER may align with Open Access and Open Data policies. We can also bring small pilot initiatives known to us together so that they become less isolated events and the overall capacity for advocacy is improved.

We initiated a working group to answer UNESCO’s call for comments on their upcoming OER recommendations, which engaged eight OER advocates from four Swedish universities. The working group generated a lot of ideas and identified core issues for OER in Sweden, beyond what we submitted to UNESCO, which is why we want to keep momentum and coordinate follow ups and more support for an open network of OER advocates in Sweden.

Bottom up

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‘‘I.e. finding partners, forming partnerships, working in joint projects and delivering content.‘‘

For the association to work efficiently with other organizations we often find that early interaction with staff members of the organization is crucial to form internal support for the needed changes (choice of license, how they can share data etc.) that make a partnership possible later on. We approach potential partners at different events (either organized by us, or when participating at e.g. conferences), when planning externally funded projects and through social media and offline networks.

When meeting with the staff members we need to be clear on what we have to offer, what we need and how we can work with them. The clearer our message is, the faster we can form a new partnership. This often take a bit of preparations to be able to tailor the message to them (using their lingo, connecting our message/suggestions to their own strategies and visions). After we start working together we strive to be accommodating and generous with our time and our resources to ensure a positive experience. We will continue refining the way we offer additional reporting to our partners during the year.

Regarding educational partnerships we have in 2018 had a lot of new partnership activities with a number of new departments at major educational institutions in Sweden. This has enable us to plant the idea of open within the institutions.

Fail fest: Blue screen of death – wiki on Windows

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Here we describe problems we struggled with and what we learnt from them.

In partnership with seven Swedish universities, we are part of a new externally funded three year project which uses a project wiki to collaboratively identify, curate and establish a Swedish nomenclature for how universities collaborate with the wider society (Samverkan) in areas such as outreach, open science and impact. WMSE’s role in the project is to give technical support as well as training for participants in the new wiki environment to use its affordances for collaboration. In the later phases of the project, we will coordinate for participants to contribute to Wikipedia, using their wiki-skills, the curated sources and the wiki as a resource for sharing content.

At the start of the project, our task was to set up the project wiki, set up the MediaWiki, install the necessary extensions and create guides and manuals. We decided to install the wiki on a Windows server as this was what Stockholm University offered full support for, and documentation on mediawiki.org indicated that a MediaWiki installation should be fully function in a Windows environment. As it turned out, at the first hands-on full day wiki training with 10 participants from the partnering universities the new wiki could not cope with having all ten users logged in at the same time. This manifested as very long loading times and, on occasions, server error pages. Despite extensive testing and increasing the resources allocated to the server we kept on having severe performance issues and we discovered that the existing documentation for MediaWiki on Windows did not address these.

Eventually, we had to make the decision to migrate the wiki to a Linux server at Stockholm University where it has since been running stably with a fraction of the resources. Since the university only offers operational support for their Windows servers, and as this was beyond our in-house expertise we needed to subcontract the ongoing server maintenance.

Finding this solution delayed the project at a vulnerable stage when partners needed to be onboarded with using the project wiki and getting comfortable with the technical environment. That being said, the migration to a Linux server completely solved the problems and the new and improved wiki has been embraced by the partners and praised by the project management. This has given us valuable insights and experience for future projects of this sort (as this is the first of its kind for us).

Fail fest: A low amount of new GLAM partners

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Here we describe problems we struggled with and what we learnt from them.

One of the first things that happened when Wikimedia Sverige started to build up the office and staff resources 2012 was that we signed a letter of intent to cooperate with the Council of Central Museums, a huge accomplishment and a great way to reach out and have great partners. The next year we continued by signing a similar agreement with the Council of Working Life Museums, representing some 1,500 small museums. Having that many both big central museums and small volunteer run museums meant that we have had our plate full when it comes to doing batch uploads, data ingestions, run courses and edit-a-thons and answering questions. Having a full plate is not the worst thing, and we could keep working with our regular partners for a long time before all images are freely licensed and available and all articles are improved.

On the other hand there are other GLAMs that we have turned down when they have asked for both free and paid help as we don’t have the manpower to do what they ask for. One way to solve this is to move our partnerships up one level to be on the more coordinating level, we also have our new FindingGLAMs project where we will form new cooperations and find new partners to work with while also scaling up our staff to better meet the needs and wishes of both old and new GLAM partners. This will, we believe, create new opportunities for partnerships from the networks we will create. Also the list of GLAM institutions itself we aim to create as part of the project will make it easier to identify suitable new partners for a project being planned. We are also looking for ways to scale up our work and to form new strategic partnerships (for details, see #Story: Strategic high level partnerships).

Detailed project overview

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Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories has been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

FindingGLAMs 2018

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What is the project: This is a major global externally funded project aiming to add information about GLAM institutions from around the world, and the collections they hold, to Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. The database will be the first one of its type and will provide a service for both the GLAM sector, for organizations working with crisis situations and for Wikimedia affiliates to find potential partners. Case studies regarding batch uploads and other activities with different type of GLAMs will be developed to summarize the learnings and analyse the effect and future possibilities.

What’s been done: The first months of the year we have worked to develop the project FindingGLAMs. We received news that it will be funded at the end of June, but no exact sum nor timeline is yet confirmed. The project will most likely last until the end of 2019 with a budget of around 3,000,000 SEK (ca. 345,000 USD).

What's next: We will develop a finalized timeline and an updated budget for the project. The project will most likely start in August.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Project impact: Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia

Partners: UNESCO, Wikimedia Foundation, GLAM institutions in Sweden and abroad (more to come)

Link to the project: FindingGLAMs 2018

Wikipedia in Education 2018

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What is the project: This project supports educators to implement Wikipedia based assignments where students improve Wikipedia as part of their curricular activities. It also support the work around Open Educational Resources (OER) in Sweden.

What’s been done: We have worked together with 8 university courses and thereby continued to further develop our partnerships with institutions for higher education as part of the education program.

We have also invested in partnerships which can improve our evaluations of Wikipedia in educational contexts and deployed a student survey with researchers at Stockholm university as a pilot for that. With the same team we are also developing a package for digital competence development for the educators at the university.

We have initiated a network around OER in Sweden, which has been dearly missed. See also #Story: Forming a national network around OER.

What's next: Support for another set of university courses is expected to take place. We will focus some extra energy to get the OER network up and running, this is a long term investment. We will also conduct the study with Stockholm University.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Karlstad University, Linné University, Stockholm University, Södertörn University, Uppsala University, Åbo Akademi, Örebro University

Link to the project: Wikipedia i utbildning 2018

Samsyn 2018

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What is the project: We work with six institutions for higher education within a three year long externally funded project called Samsyn. The goal is a shared nomenclature for the university sector's collaboration. The central tool for collaborating is a wiki that we have helped them create. We are also providing training for the staff at the institutions on how a wiki works. At the end of the project suitable parts will be included on the Wikimedia platforms.

What’s been done: We have set up a functioning wiki (see also #Fail fest: Blue screen of death – wiki on Windows), create training material in a way that it can also be reused for our chapter wiki and given a number of workshops to the staff and hence familiarizing them with working on a wiki (with the long term goal of having them contribute to the Wikimedia platforms).

What's next: We will give more trainings and further improve the information material.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Chalmers University of Technology, Gävle University, Kristianstad University, Linköpings University, Malmö University, Stockholm University

Link to the project: Samsyn 2018

GLAM 2018

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What is the project: This project maintains continuous interaction with GLAM partners and seeks out new collaborations. It also serves as an umbrella project for smaller projects funded by individual GLAMs.

What’s been done: The focus has been on acting as a meta level project focusing on providing training for partners where we want to deepen our cooperation in the future, making more GLAM institutions aware of our work and on preparing for externally funded activities both with our long term GLAM partners (where they pay us for the worktime needed for i.e. a batch upload or training) and with involvement in initial meetings for possible major projects in the future. For example we are involved in a grant application of 20 million GBP(!) led by Bradford university in the UK that are reaching the final stages. See also #Fail fest: A low amount of new GLAM partners.

The GLAM 2018 project was also the umbrella under which three externally funded GLAM projects were performed and concluded in the first half of the year. Two were with the same GLAM, one batch upload and one WiR where a staff member worked at the istitutione one day per week conducting training and organising both internal and public edit-a-thons. The other focused on 3D files created by GLAMs and consisted of two parts. Firstly we developed a prototype for a tool to simultaneous upload files to both Wikimedia Commons and Sketchfab, secondly we organised a workshop discussing best practices for 3D and the role of Wikimedia Commons. We have also organized a preparatory meeting for librarians as part of the #1lib1ref initiative.

The Twitter bot @WMSEimages has tweeted out about 200 sample images, which have been viewed almost 35,000 times, from the batch uploads to showcase the wide scope of content our GLAM partners contribute to Wikimedia Commons.

What's next: For the second half of 2018 the GLAM project will continue as an umbrella project offering support and coordination to both keep previous partners up to speed and to find, develop and execute new partnerships.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata

Partners: National Museums of World Culture, Swedish National Heritage Board, Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology

Link to the project: GLAM 2018

GLAM Educators 2018

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What is the project: This outreach project caters to educators in GLAM institutions.

What’s been done: We have prepared to present about the project at a national event for GLAM educators (FUISM) and we have been discussing with the Nordic museum, which we worked with last year, about possible external grants to scale the project.

What's next: We will continue to meet and discuss with the educators and museums we worked with last year. We want to keep the network intact and stable and at this point we are not attempting to scale the activities from last year.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Association of Pedagogy at Swedish Museums, Nordic Museum

Link to the project: GLAM-pedagoger 2018

Presentations 2018

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What is the project: This project include different presentations by WMSE staff, that are paid for by an external organization. The project exists to simplify taxation of our work.

What’s been done: Staff members have given two presentations: one for teacher students on how open resources create pedagaogical value, and a webinar about Wikidata for a large number of authorities working with water data.

What's next: We will continue to meet and discuss with the educators and museums we worked with last year. We want to keep the network intact and stable and at this point we are not attempting to scale the activities from last year.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata

Partners: Association of Pedagogy at Swedish Museums, Environmental Protection Agency, Nordic Museum

Link to the project: Föreläsningar 2018

Advocacy 2018

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What is the project: Our political activities are compiled in this project to keep them separate from FDC funded projects. The project is funded by donations and membership fees.

What’s been done: Our main focus area for advocacy during 2018 has been Freedom of Panorama. We have mainly worked in Sweden and discussed the issue with members of the parliament (Riksdagen) (see #Story: Discussing Wikimedia with Sweden's lawmakers for more information).

Due to limited financial means available we had to scale back on our financial support for FKAGEU for the first time. We have however supported the work with opinion building against the existing proposal for the Copyright Directive in the European Union by signing the Open letter on the EU copyright reform.

In April, one board member participated in the yearly meeting for coordination of EU Policies in Brussels along with participants from a dozen of other member countries.

What's next: We will work on finding and engaging new partners for a changed legislation around Freedom of Panorama in Sweden and we will continue discussing the issue with politicians and preparing information material.

Furthermore we will stay involved in the copyright reform in the European Union and coordinate the work with other affiliates. We also hope to be able to start supporting FKAGEU again, when we have final confirmation of our new external grants.

We also hope to continue improving our strategy around opinion building and get a board approval of it.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia

Partners: FKAGEU

Link to the project: Påverkansarbete 2018

Sounds of Change 2018

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What is the project: Sounds of Changes is a cooperation between several European GLAMs aiming to record and collect soundscapes of various kind.

What’s been done: The project has focused on organizing workshops and activities aimed at enhancing the use of sound recordings in Wikipedia articles. We have also taken part in organizing a sound recording event which also functions as a useful pilot for our planned activities around sound recordings for Wikispeech in 2019-2020.

What's next: Further communication with the stakeholders and collaboration partners in the project.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: Wikimedia Commons

Partners: Council of Working Life Museums, Swedish Air Force Museum

Link to the project: Sounds of Change 2018

Wikipedian in Residence 2018

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What is the project: The project is focused on laying the foundation for WiR projects in Swedish contexts.

What’s been done: This project has mostly been put on hold until late 2018, mainly due to lack of available resources to cofund WiR positions. We have supported the continuation of a WiR at the Internet museum.

What's next: We will work to create internal material for how WMSE will engage with future WiRs and material for the hosting organization and supporting information for new WiRs. Furthermore we will evaluate the WiR work that we have had during 2017 and 2018 to be able to further improve our processes and methods.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons

Partners: UNESCO, SBU, Musikverket, Internetmuseum

Link to the project: Wikipedian in Residence 2018

Use

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  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Use U.1.1 To inform the public about Wikimedia projects and free knowledge, good media relations are central. This is achieved through active work with press releases, op-eds, commentaries, newsletter and presence on social media. During the year, a set of well defined metrics for media activities will be developed and the measured media presence will increase by 10%. N/A 0 out of 1 metrics defined

N/A (media presence has not been measured)

Below target: 0 metrics

Below target: 0% measured increase

As agreed the 2017 goals for this metric were kept since the work on this was not completed in 2017. No work is planned for this metric this year unless external grants free up some of the FDC funding.
U.1.2 To increase awareness of the usage and trust, clearer measurement methods for how the Wikimedia projects are used, in general and by specific user groups, will be developed during the year. N/A No work was done
Below target: 50% Wikipedia will be included in an external report about Internet usage in Sweden. No further work is planned for this metric this year, unless external grants free up some of the FDC funding.
U.2.1 To decrease the number of bugs in the software and increase clarity all identified and verified bugs shall be reported on Phabricator within one week of being encountered and critical system messages will be translated.[8] The result is monitored annually. 100% (20 new bugs and 0 translation messages) 50% (11 new bugs and 0 translation messages)
On target: 100% We have reported all the bugs that we have encountered in the MediaWiki software. We have not included bugs that we have reported in external Wikimedia related tools. 50% indicates that we are halfway through the year.
U.2.2 To make content available for more people the Wikispeech extension shall be activated as a beta function on three language versions of Wikipedia[9] before the end of the year and future development should be investigated through a pilot study. A prototype was finalized for all three languages but was not activated as a beta function. 0 of 3 languages activated

0 of 1 pilot studies conducted

Below target: 0 languages

On target: The pilot study is planned for Q3-Q4.

Some work has been done on identified blockers and more extensive development work is planned as part of the pilot study. After this beta activation still requires a full code and security review.

At the moment we do not expect the reviews from the Foundation and the required follow-up by us to be done by the end of the year. We will however continue to invest resources to get there and believe that we will be fairly close to the goal.

The focus of the program is to make the platforms and activities known, appreciated and trusted. It also include our work to make the platforms easy to use and both our platforms and activities accessible to everyone.

Making the platforms and activities known and appreciated

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We work to spread information about the value and importance of free knowledge and about the Wikimedia platforms as tools to achieve more free knowledge of better quality.

We believe that more communication will, amongst other things, improve our possibilities for increasing participation at our events, help us to find more partners, increase funding opportunities and avoid misunderstandings about our work and the Wikimedia platforms.

We aim to start the work to redesign our website so that it will become a much more active platform. We want it to become a site where we can guide new organizations, members, volunteers, journalists, and members of the general public interested in our work or free knowledge in general.

Story: Showcasing our volunteers on social media

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The fundraising and member recruiting campaign highlighting volunteers was started by Gitta Wilén when she was our communications coordinator. The work was continued by Gitta but in a volunteer capacity during the Spring. Three more portraits featuring a Wikimedia Commons contributor, a #WikiDivCon volunteer and the board of Wikimedia Sverige were used to show different ways to participate in the movement.

The campaign also worked as inspiration to the Wikimedia Conference and the WikiIndaba Conference which both ran similar image campaigns in their social media accounts leading up to the two events. A difference is the interviews and longer texts put together by Gitta to connect the individual volunteers to Wikimedia Sverige as an organization and to give personal accounts for the reasons of their involvement, something that made the images and stories popular and shared in social media.

The campaign will continue to run during the rest of the year, and we will continue to be part of the process in finding and publishing the stories.

Story: Telling the story of democracy and the wiki

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We organized the second edition of the Wikipedia Day in Sweden adjacent to our Annual General Meeting. The Wikipedia Day is a local event focused on inviting Swedish Wikimedians and the public to learn more about what the association is doing regarding issues relevant to free knowledge.

The first event was made possible by external funding that we were free to use as we wanted. We have now established the event as part of our yearly activities and are improving our evaluation methods to meet the needs of the Swedish community. One participant said that the benefit of attending Wikipedia day in 2017 and 2018 was: “I’m getting to know more of the people here, which makes me feel more part of the community”.

We have utilized the event as a way to focus on how Wikimedia is relevant for for different societal issues; this year’s theme was Democracy and the wiki. By highlighting one aspect, we get the chance to reflect on the work we do and its wider impact on society, such as the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and it offers a frame to communicate our activities with members. We believe that this reflection is important for the chapter and that the topics help increase visibility and interest from both participants and partners.

From the survey we sent out some people said they would like to see more practical sessions such as workshops and others suggested that participants can give lightning talks. Several participants in the event offered to help organize the next Wikipedia Day.

Story: Inviting new editors together with WMF

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Donors are great, and if they can donate more than money it’s even better. Every year people from around the world contribute with many donations of various size, some equal to the cost of a small cup of coffee, others several large cups of coffee. The donors also gets the chance to answer some questions about what is important to them and if they would like to contribute in other ways.

Following up to the once who answered yes to that question the WMF fundraising team and Wikimedia Sverige created an email campaign inviting the donors to create user accounts, do their first edits, contact mentors, visit meetups and eventually become regular wikiholics.

After a lot of discussions about what can be tracked, wordings of emails, what pages to link to and how to contact mentors some test emails were sent out. Then, after evaluating all of the steps and the responses, more emails were sent out and so far around 2,000 donors have received the emails. At this point 75 new accounts have been created as a result of the campaign, and the group of volunteer mentors have answered questions ranging from how to change an image to how to judge the quality of an article.

Being that this is the first time this is tested an evaluation will follow, but as the initial indicators look promising we hope other chapters and affiliates can continue building on this work.

Story: High visibility events utilizing strong partners

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One highlight of the year was our partnership to support Swedish embassies’ engagement with the Wikipedia gender gap in 50 countries, announced in the Statement of Government Policy in the Parliamentary Debate on Foreign Affairs in February 2018.

The WikiGap campaign presented us with opportunities to engage in strategic external communications made possible by resourceful partners during a time when we have had to limit our own resources for communications outreach. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs contracted a professional PR agency to research the Wikipedia gender gap and learn about the key facets of successful edit-a-thons. They ran interviews with us and with other Wikimedians and partners in various locations around the world and attended one edit-a-thon in person to study it. We supported other research they needed to do in order to grasp Wikipedia and the gender gap in general as well as our movement and community efforts specifically. They then drafted the outline for WikiGap, including a rationale for what to call it, a comprehensive narrative of what WikiGap is about, and a graphic profile suitable for social media. With this base, the our partnership with the Ministry could take shape. The campaign was visible in social media under the hashtag WikiGap and reached audiences that we could not have reached on our own. The WikiGap Tool kit was released under a free license with the specific audience in mind, namely external organisations who may not know how to engage with the Wikimedia movement but wish to do so to support efforts to close the gender gap on our projects.

The WikiGap communications was also sensitive to possible pushback stating clearly how it complied with community guidelines such as notability, reliability and conflict of interest. We are aware that if this piece of communication had been poorly planned, we would risk conflicts with community members in Sweden and in other parts of the world. The external communications in Sweden reached the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation who we have now partnered with to run more WikiGap events in Sweden. Also other organizations have shown interest and willingness to organize WikiGap events using the toolkit.

The visibility also continued with the project being judged the Coolest project done by a Wikimedia chapters since Wikimania 2017.

Story: Data to stop a pandemic outbreak?

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The Epidemic Intelligence team at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) approached us about the possibility of using increased traffic to Wikipedia articles about infectious diseases as an early indication of an outbreak. Their own research showed that there was often a significant increase in the visits to these articles, likely as a result of local news reporting. What interested them was that this increase in visits was often visible several days before their other tools detected the mention of an outbreak.

The ECDC are interested in developing a tool which can trigger some form of notification when there is a surge to an article on a predefined list. While breakdown by language is interesting the true value would come when the visits could be broken down by geographical areas, pinpointing where an outbreak might be happening. This would in turn allow them to respond as fast as possible to an emerging outbreak. Any such tool would be freely accessible also to other agencies in this area, including the WHO and the CDC in the US.

The strict privacy rules that WMF adheres to around geographical location data means that external access to such data is non-trivial and current solutions are costly and do not scale well. As a result the WMF are now putting together a Panel for recommendations on data sharing to ensure some sensitive data can be made available in a safe (privacy wise) and scalable way. A representative from the ECDC will participate in the panel.

Even though the project is in its infancy we think that this is worth exploring further, both because such a tool would mean that our statistical data could be used to save lives and because it means that as a movement we can leverage even our metadata as knowledge. The ECDC has stated their interest to fund the development of the tool, as long as it is open source (obviously a demand we are happy to meet). We hope that we will be able to develop a joint plan and lasting partnership with ECDC to make the tool into a reality.

Making usage easy and accessible to everyone

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Through our efforts we hope to make the platforms easier to use for our readers. We focus both on our in-house development and on informing other developer teams about issues that we encounter during workshops and other events that we organize.

Fail fest: Struggling with long term follow-ups of activities

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Here we describe problems we struggled with and what we learnt from them.

In our last Impact report we detailed the struggles we had with getting our Wikispeech extension code and security reviewed by the WMF and the various times when support had been promised only to not be realised. We are happy to see that our concerns were shared by the Foundation and that they are now investigating how this process can be made more accessible in line with our suggestions.

Wikispeech, our project to develop an open source text-to-speech solution for Wikipedia, was financed since 2016 by an external grant which came to an end at the conclusion of 2017. At about the same time as the project ended we also received our first technical feedback on the project and what it would take for it to be considered for inclusion on Wikipedia. This illustrated two problems with project based funding: how do structure the interaction with third parties, here WMF, that are not bound by the same timeline; and how can you keep supporting the developed product once project financing has ended.

Some of the feedback was quite surprising in that it required significant restructuring of some components or deployment processes. Issues which would have been easier to address had they been discovered early on in the project. Complicating things is the fact that some of the development work is done by a project partner on a consultancy basis making it hard to finance after the end of the project whereas funds could more easily have been re-allocated earlier.

As we were actively applying for various grants to continue our work on Wikispeech we kept funding internal work with addressing the feedback, albeit at a slower pace than before. As one of these grants have now been approved we are expecting to scale the work on Wikispeech back up, clearing the feedback and preparing Wikispeech for a proper review.

The difficulties with how to handle feedback/follow-up requests after a project has been concluded is not unique to Wikispeech nor to tech projects in particular. While technically advanced projects have the increased difficulties that fewer people can address them we see difficulties in executing the needed long term work in everything from Wiki Loves Monuments and maintenance of the underlying data, to clean-up after a batch upload of media files to returning events such as WikiGap. Long term (even ongoingly) funding commitments for especially valuable and interesting activities could be part of the solution as can further investments from the WMF to develop missing information and trainings about the structures and processes to launch a new extension onto the Wikimedia platforms.

The availability of funding through the APG grant or through a long term commitment for funding for specific technical development work which is not tied to a hard timeline (i.e. structured in a similar fashion as the WMF-WMDE partnership around Wikidata) is crucial to addressing this. For smaller projects a dedicated effort to hand it over to a volunteer can be a way of ensuring follow-up over time.

Detailed project overview

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Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories has been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

Trust Making 2018

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What is the project: The focus of this project is to develop methods on how to survey the trust of Wikimedia.

What’s been done: The active work in this project will start during the second half of the year. Thus, not much has been done yet. This is in line with the project plan we have.

We have received confirmation that Wikipedia, once again, will be highlighted in this year’s edition of "Svenskarna och internet" (“the Swedes and the Internet”), which will be published in the autumn of 2018. The report is created by Internetstiftelsen, which is also sponsoring our office space and which we have had an increasing amount of cooperation with this year.

What's next: The focus of this project is to develop methods on how to survey the trust of Wikimedia. In the following months, we will define the focus and methods of our surveys, identify earlier surveys relevant for our purpose, find partners at universities and compile surveys.

We will also try to compile a few personal stories from the participants at the Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting.

This project is currently not the top priority due to other commitments.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: -

Partners: -

Link to the project: Förtroende 2018

Visibility Making 2018

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What is the project: In this project we develop long term communication activities in a number of channels to increase visibility for our organization and Wikimedia in general.

What’s been done: This project has mainly been put on hold as we do not have a staff member dedicated to communication, instead communication efforts have been taken over by the project managers.

We have increased the number of followers on Facebook to 2,095 (up from 1,815 since last Progress report) and to 2,234 (up from 2,119 since last Progress report) on Twitter. We have also started an Instagram account and have reached 354 followers (up from 200 followers since last Progress report).

What's next: This project has mainly been put on hold.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: -

Partners: -

Link to the project: Synlighet 2018

Wikispeech 2018

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What is the project: This project aims to develop a prototype of a speech synthesis solution for the Wikimedia projects. The main features are that it should be server based (so as not to demand to much of the readers device), modular (so that new languages can be added using existing open source solutions) and it should allow readers to improve the pronunciation and contribute with recordings of words and sentences.

What’s been done: Our developers have continued to develop the extension in preparation for a code and security review. We have been preparing an application for building a tool to collect speech data with. This application was successful. We also applied, but did not receive funding, for projects focusing on how a text-to-speech solution can be used in an emergency situation.

What's next: We will continue developing the player with the aim to have a stable version ready for code and security review, for later release as Beta for Swedish, English and Arabic. We will also add functionality to allow users to improve the lexicon, which will enhance the pronunciation of certain words. The work to create a development plan for the coming two years of the project will be initiated.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: WMF, STTS, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Link to the project: Wikispeech 2018

Bug Reporting and Translation 2018

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What is the project: The main purpose of this project is to decrease the number of errors in the software used on the Wikimedia projects by reporting bugs and correcting erroneous translations in the software.

What has been done: We have improved the supporting material to make it easier to contribute with bug reports as well as translations. A number of questions to ask if someone experience a bug at an event have been prepared.

So far, a total of 15 bugs were reported by three of the employees, and one of these bugs have been patched by our own staff.

What's next: The reporting of bugs will continue and we will organize some type of activity to improve important technical messages (perhaps in the form of a translate-a-thon).

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: MediaWiki

Partners: Wikimedia community

Link to the project: Buggrapportering och översättning 2018

Community

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  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Community C.1.1 To make work easier, support will be given 365 times to at least 100 different Wikimedians (or others who advocate for free knowledge) through access to expertise, financing or other resources.[10] 114 occasions to 47 Wikimedians 93 out of 365 occasions

39 out of 100 Wikimedians

Below target: 200 occasions to 90 Wikimedians Please observe that the numbers for Wikimedians from the returning weekly activities in Gothenburg are missing as we have yet to compile these numbers. We also still have to compile the impact of the WikiGap events on this metric.

As a result of not having our own office the support through the use of our office space has been eliminated, reducing the number of occasions.

The Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting and the camp in Molkom is expected to add a large number of Wikimedians to the list.

C.1.2 To strengthen the community the chapter will support at least 75 recurring meet-ups[11] for Wikimedians 113 60 of 75
Above target: 85 meet-ups We have supported a large number of meet-ups. Especially the group in Gothenburg has been very active.
C.1.3 To facilitate the use of new technical solutions on Wikipedia, a project shall be carried out around implementation, based on the Community's needs and desires. 0 1 technical wish implemented
Above target: 2 technical solutions activated Last year we did not reach our goal as the technical solutions were not completed. This year we have completed one of the wishes from 2017 and a second one is just awaiting deployment. Over the two year period of the grant the goal can thus be considered met. We will carry out a new collection of wishes this year, but the outcome may not be deployed until the first half of 2019.
C.2.1 To increase participation from Wikimedia's underrepresented groups[12], targeted initiatives organized by the association shall result in one productive edit from 365 unique users belonging to one or more of those groups. 382 99 out of 365
Above target: 600 unique users The GLAM and educational activities are still an efficient way to engage people from underrepresented groups.

Please observe that the numbers from the 50 international WikiGap events are missing as we have yet to compile these numbers (the inital numbers can be found on the Outreach and Events Dashboard). In total the events had around 1,600 participants. A conservative estimate is that half were women, but not all have been editing.

The second half of the year we will also have a couple of WikiGap events in Sweden and we have supported volunteers to travel to Sweden to engage with cultural associations from Middle East and beyond. We are also supporting a volunteer driven initiative called Wikipedia for Peace Stockholm Europride.

C.2.2 To lower the threshold for new users, 50 users shall be supported on the Teahouse (Fikarummet) at the Swedish Wikipedia. We will provide support for one additional language version of Wikipedia to activate the Teahouse. 21 supported users

0 additional languages

13 supported users out of 50

0 additional languages out of 1

Below target: 30 supported users

Below target: 0 additional languages

As mentioned in our 2017 Impact Report our code for Fikarummet was not integrated into the Teahouse code base, hence we decided not to promote Fikarummet to other language versions. The supported users found Fikarummet organically as we did not do any particular promotion of this venue.

Supporting existing community

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We work to support our wider community in a number of ways, which is possible thanks to staff members with a wide variety of skills and because of the infrastructure we have built up in the last few years.

This year we have focused on creating meeting spaces, cover associated costs with the volunteer work and we have provided technical support to create tools for the most active volunteers. We aim to continue with more technical support also later this year.

Story: Taking the lead in organizing international meetings

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Wikimedia Sverige decided a few years ago to actively work to support the wider movement in different ways. As an established chapter we identified our capacity to organize events as one suitable avenue. The value of international events are sometimes contested, but we strongly believe in the value of bringing together people around the world to discuss shared opportunities and struggles and to find strength and support in networks.

We are willing to experiment with the traditional approach of organizing/structuring the events and hope to make the events more suitable for the Wikimedia movement as it currently stands. Furthermore we strongly believe that more coordination, sharing of learnings and dedicated work towards creating legacy from the events are needed, and we intend to work on this.

In November 2017 we organized our first international conference, the Wikimedia Diversity Conference (WikiDivCon), with 80 participants from across the world. It received a 100 percent approval rating from the participants and in 2018 we have worked hard on a conference report summarizing the lessons learnt and offering recommendations for the future events.

In 2018 we focus on organizing a regional event, the Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting (WikiNEM) which we hope will take place yearly from now on. This first year we bring together representatives from affiliates in Northern Europe to outline how we can improve our cooperation and knowledge sharing over time. Furthermore, we aim to use this opportunity to engage the local communities in the region in the work around Wikimania 2019. We already have a close ongoing cooperation with Wikimedia Norge and worked together in the preparation of WikiDivCon and WikiNEM. This partnership has added capacity to the team and valuable new perspectives.

We will participate at Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town to learn about the work needed for a successful Wikimania in Sweden, to discuss about WikiNEM and our other internationally oriented projects. We hope to secure funding from WMF to, in the preparation of Wikimania 2019, work on ways to create legacy from international event both for the movement and our chapter. In Q3-Q4 we expect to work a lot with the early preparations of Wikimania to be able to engage our partners in the work in different ways.

Story: Our first steps to support the community's technical needs

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In 2017 we launched our Development support project and in order to investigate how technical support can be given to the Swedish volunteer community we set up a community wishlist on Swedish Wikipedia aimed at wishes which were not well suited for the WMF wishlist (e.g. by only affecting the Swedish community). Budgetary constraints meant that, other than support for ORES activation on Swedish Wikipedia, work on the wishes was postponed until 2018.

The project which was selected was to add Citoid support to a few of the most influential news sources in Sweden. The project was in part selected because it fit the goal of the wishlist well and in part because such improvements are done to the underlying Zotero software, thereby also strengthening free knowledge projects beyond Wikimedia. Since there was no prior support for any Swedish news sources we hoped that developing support for a few news sources would make both Zotero and Citoid more appealing to Swedish consumers.

We developed support for a few sources and got the first included on Zotero only to discover that it did not work on Wikipedia because this component of Citoid was outdated (ours are not the only translators affected). That this was not discovered by us earlier was in part due to a lack of documentation and in part due to the the infrequency by which our community adds new sources.

This leaves us in the interesting situation where what we developed is still of use to the greater free knowledge community whilst not being useful to the intended target, the Swedish Wikipedia community. As such should the project be considered a success or not? Our conclusion is that it should. The fact that the solution was tailored to a larger community, rather than specifically to Wikipedia, ensured that the work had real value, even if the goals did not come fully into fruition. This also acts as a reminder to us that we are part of a larger ecosystem of open source/free knowledge proponents.

We also know that us encountering this problem was one of the reasons why it was brought to the fore. We are confident that the work which we put into this will be of use to the Wikipedia community in the near future.

Expanding the community

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To grow the community on Wikimedia platforms we are organizing a number of activities aimed at creating interest amongst groups of people who have yet to engage on our platforms, or around free knowledge in general.

We work to raise awareness of Wikimedia projects in order for new participants to engage. When new participants start to contribute we make sure to lower barriers and create an inclusive environment and to provide direct support of different forms.

Our cooperation with different organizations has been a cornerstone in achieving success in community growth. By involving the communities of our partners in our projects, some of their community members has joined the Wikimedia community in some capacity.

Story: Working for diversity globally through WikiGap

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We have been able to continue our international engagement for increased diversity in Wikimedia. The network of diversity leaders who participated in Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2017 became central in designing and executing the international WikiGap campaign. We designed the campaign with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs so that affiliates and small Wikimedia groups could connect with the Swedish embassy in their region and benefit from their resources and platform to reach partners and contributors interested in increasing the number of female biographies on Wikipedia.

Several conference participants helped support local events or connecting affiliates with partnerships for the campaign of 50+ events between March and June, with around 1,600 participants. In some of the cities, the WikiGap event was the first ever organized Wikipedia event and in some of them it became the biggest Wikipedia event. The Swedish embassies have told us that the events themselves have been door openers for local partnerships around diversity, counting both other NGOs and Wikimedia affiliates. Civil society is therefore strengthened by these Wikimedia activities and the partnerships formed.

In order to open up for broader participation beyond the embassies, we supported the Ministry in designing a Wikigap Toolkit under free license, including a video, specifically targeting how an organization can turn to Wikimedia affiliates and co-organize a local WikiGap event.

Following the main WikiGap event in Sweden on International Women’s day, the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation reached out and we are organizing more events with them and two universities in 2018. Internationally, we know that so far the Swedish embassies in Indonesia and India have made plans to repeat WikiGap. We will investigate the possibility to repeat the initiative after the election has taken place in Sweden.

Fail fest: Not utilizing the power of our returning photo contests

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Here we describe problems we struggled with and what we learnt from them.

The Wiki Loves concept is great, both for getting new material (images) to Wikimedia Commons and to recruit new contributors, but also as a way to find and establish new collaborations and partnerships.

After having run Wiki Loves Monuments since 2011 and adding images to the monument lists from the National Heritage Board, the Maritime Museum and the Council of Working Life Museums our efforts to find new partners have faded. We are running the competition with low input from our side and hence the outcome is not as good as theoretically could be. The number of images received during September is one thing, but not using the name and brand as an opportunity to better build up new partnerships or to get new datasets to Wikidata is not making the most out of the contests.

One way to move forward is to make better use of the available data about users contributing to this and other contests to see what triggers them to participate. Another possibility is to connect the different contests with our support to the community as a way to get photo equipment out to users and go get users out to objects and monuments that are included in the contest. Being that several other affiliates run Wiki Loves contests organized in different ways there is also the possibility to use their experiences in order to find out what they have done and what they have avoided in order to make their contest successful. We are also looking into how 3D capturing of the monuments could create more interest and encourage existing volunteers to revisit sites that they have already photographed.

We will continue to evaluate and adapt our approach to utilize the contests more in the future.

Fail fest: A lack of community members using our pool of technology

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Here we describe problems we struggled with and what we learnt from them.

Support to the community is an important part of what we as a chapter do. The support we provide, or try to give, ranges from help with technical issues, lending of cameras and other technical equipment, help with press accreditation, grant to go to conferences or organize photo safaris and access to books and online databases. Some members have found the support we give great, and use different parts every now and then. Unfortunately we believe that there are not enough use of the support we offer, with our cameras locked in our storage to much of the time and there are usually money left at the end of the year that could have been used by editors to e.g. go to events to capture better photos or learn new things.

As a response, and complement, to this we have started a new approach in offering courses and exchange of knowledge among volunteers. So far we have started a page to collect both things volunteers want to learn (Wikidata, take better photos, scan books to Wikisource) and things more knowledgeable and experienced users can teach and share to help other users become more effective and to be able to contribute in new ways. One thing we have found is that some of our cameras and scanners are hard to use, and to make sure users can make the most of our pool of technology we need to make it easier to use all equipment. Our ambition is also to make better documentation and trainings during this project as a way to make onboarding of new volunteers easier. We hope that these efforts will create more interest and allow us to increase these activities in the future.

Detailed project overview

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Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories has been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

Community Support 2018

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What is the project: This project is directed directly towards the Swedish Wikimedia community, and consists of a technology pool, the possibility to apply for grants, money for purchasing of books, sponsorship for photography accreditation to events etc.

What’s been done: The project runs throughout the year, and so far support has been given at 93 occasions to 39 Wikimedians (not including the activities in Gothenburg where we currently are missing)). We have given support to edit-a-thons and regular activities in Gothenburg. The technology pool has been used to create 800 files shared on Wikimedia Commons. See also #Fail fest: A lack of community members using our pool of technology.

What's next: Continuing with giving support, and systematically informing about possibilities in the form of events with photo accreditation etc. The third iteration of the Molkom Wikipedia camp is being planned, as well as activities at the book fair in Gothenburg and EuroPride in Stockholm.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource

Partners: Wikimedia community

Link to the project: Stöd till gemenskapen 2018

Development Support 2018

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What is the project: The project focus on giving technical (development) support to the Swedish volunteer community by solving technical problems that they have specifically requested to be worked on.

What’s been done: Based on last year’s wishlist we have supported the activation of ORES on Swedish Wikipedia and we have contributed to the Zotero software, which is the underlying software for converting URLs to references in Citoid. This will make it easier to add references to online Swedish news sources on any Wikipedia. See also #Story: Our first steps to support the community's technical needs.

What's next: In Q3 we will expand the Zotero support to more Swedish news sites. Q3 will also see us collecting new wishes and in Q4 we will collect the community feedback, analyse the results and select projects to work with. Even though some work might be initiated in Q4 we expect the majority to be done in 2019.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, MediaWiki

Partners: Wikimedia community

Link to the project: Utvecklingsstöd_2018

Wiki Loves 2018

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What is the project: The project aims to plan and organize Wiki Loves Earth 2018 and Wiki Loves Monuments 2018.

What’s been done: Wiki Loves Earth was organized in Sweden for the second time. It took place in May, and in total 102 individuals engaged and produced 645 media files, added 200 of them to Wikipedia articles or Wikidata items and added or improved 74 articles. Out of the participants 82 (80% of all contestants) were completely new users to our projects. The result can be found here. Some preparation has begun for Wiki Loves Monuments. See also #Fail fest: Not utilizing the power of our returning photo contests.

What's next: Wiki Loves Monuments will take place in September, and the Swedish Wikimedia community will participate. A jury will be selected and communication around the competition will take place.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata

Partners: Council of Working Life Museums, National Environmental Agency, National Heritage Board, Swedish National Maritime Museums

Link to the project: Wiki Loves 2018

A Community for Everybody 2018

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What is the project: This project focuses on inviting diverse participation in Wikimedia.

What’s been done: WikiGap, a global initiative to increase the coverage of women on Wikipedia and to attract a more diverse crowd on editor was launched in cooperation with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. WMSE had a coordinating role in linking Wikimedia groups with Swedish embassies and a total of about 50 events have been held. A few separate events has been organized after the current initiative was finalized. We participated in the "Stockholm forum on gender equality" where the WikiGap initiative was highlighted. We created the report for the Wikimedia Diversity Conference, outlining a number of recommendations. We have also supported regular edit-a-thons in Stockholm and Gothenburg. See also #Story: Working for diversity globally through WikiGap and #Story: High visibility events utilizing strong partners.

What's next: A couple events with the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation is planned and will take place in Q3. We will work on our internal report for the board on how our work around diversity is looking.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikimedia movement

Partners: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Stockholm Public Library, more than 50 Swedish embassies – in partnership with local volunteers or Wikimedia affiliates

Link to the project: En gemenskap för alla 2018

Enabling

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  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Enabling E.1 For the association to work competently the office staff shall be given the opportunity to develop their skills in relevant fields and the members of the board shall strive to develop their competences. 4/8 board members and 7/8 staff members 0 out of 9 board members

1 out of 6 staff members

Below target: 3 board members

Below target: 3 staff members

As there was no new board members this year fewer of them are likely to participate in any trainings. A couple of more staff members are expected to take part in trainings. We acknowledge that we need to review the goal and/or the resources allocated to it for next year.
E.2 To strengthen the transparency of the organisation and to offer insights to the international Wikimedia movement the members of the board or office staff shall participate in at least 5 international Wikimedia events and on a monthly basis update international newsletters[13] and key wikiportals etc. 9 int. events and 11 newsletters 4 int. events out of 5

6 newsletters out of 24

Above target: 8 int. events

Below target: 12 newsletters

For personal and personnel reasons we opted to not participate at some of the events we attended in 2017. We still expect the target to be surpassed as some external project grants will enable more participation in the second half of the year. We have regularly been publishing in This Month in GLAM. We have however not been updating This Month in Education which is why we expect the target not to be reached.
E.3.1 To ensure organizational stability the chapter shall work towards broad and sustainable funding where no donor exceeds 50 % during the year, a 20 % increase in membership from the 31 December the previous year, increased volunteer involvement with 20 % compared to the total amount previous calendar year. Largest donor was FDC with 51.5%. Membership decreased with 83%. Amount of volunteers decreased with 9%. WMF is the largest donor at 63% in Q1+Q2

432 out of 167 members, 211% increase (compared to 139 members)

23 out of 72 volunteers, 62% decrease (compared to 60 volunteers)

Below target: 65% of funding from largest donor

Above target: 450 members On target: 72 volunteers

To date 63% of our funding comes from the WMF (FDC makes up 59.5% of total funding), the second largest funder comes in at 17.3%. We expect some large grants for Q3 and Q4, however, a large part of these grants will be used in 2019 and we expect the distribution of the used funding to be similar to the first half of the year. The distribution of funding does not take in-kind donations into account, for the Impact report we may update our calculations to also increase these.

The huge percentage increase in membership is explained by the drastic decrease in 2017 as result of not getting our membership system up and running. While this represents an important recovery we are still only at 50% of the membership number we had in 2016.

Most of the volunteer involvement occurred through our WikiGap activities. However, the international WikiGap events organized by volunteers are not included here as we are lacking data.

E.3.2 To ensure organizational stability the chapter shall actively work to increase the amount of overlapping competencies in business-critical areas. Fulfilled the goal. -
Goal fulfilled. Efforts include improved instructions for screencasts, usage of our wiki and information about our new tools. We have focused more on organizing small working groups at the office instead of delegating the responsibilities to one person and on documenting the work on Phabricator.

The chapter aims to be a relevant actor for years to come and is actively working towards building the organizational capacity needed for long term activities. We need to be a good employer, a strong partner, and a well functioning democratic and transparent membership organization with a close cooperation with a strong volunteer community. The chapter is also intending to not be an isolated player but be actively involved in the international movement.

These intentions demand projects that are more long term oriented and strategic. The projects in this program therefore contribute only marginally to content production in a given year, but over time will ensure the success and sustainability of all our activities.

Increasing competence

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To be able to develop skills in relevant fields board and staff members shall be given the opportunity to develop their skills. We are planning to organize in-house training for Wikidata during the year. A couple of staff members have signed up for external trainings/courses that will start in Q3 or Q4. We have also started working on educational material for new volunteers and members to easier use our tools and join our projects.

We see a great need to ensure that we ongoingly identify and take notice of suitable board members, potential new staff members, and volunteers who have capacity to take leadership roles in different initiatives.

Story: Engaging new volunteers from outside the online community

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Volunteer engagement is a key resource for running successful Wikimedia activities nation wide and long term in Sweden, outside of volunteer engagement in Wikimedia projects online. We have previously identified the risk of volunteer burnout and cannibalizing on volunteers who already actively contribute to Wikimedia projects and that there is a lack of support for volunteers outside of the core editing community to engage in our projects and activities. This year, we have taken several steps in centering the needs of this group of volunteers to better offer opportunities for engagement.

One example is the event manual to coordinate for volunteers as wiki-guides during larger editing events, such as WikiGap in Stockholm with 50 participants editing Wikipedia for the first time. The guide is an off-wiki complement to edit-a-thon pages on wiki, with overall instructions on the event plan, who the participants will be and likely scenarios of the kind of support they will need from guides and when. The manual is not on details how to edit, but on details of how the event is run and where editing instructions are located. Five volunteers with no previous knowledge about Wikipedia successfully supported the Stockholm event. The experienced editors involved were impressed by how the new group of volunteers managed to lead the activities.

We have also initiated a user manual for our chapter wiki, so that new staff, members and partners other than experienced wiki editors may contribute and take equal part. The manual takes into account the stark differences in scope between Wikipedia and the chapter wiki so that instructions are not focused on how to contribute to an online encyclopedia, and we have identified other significant features of our wiki that we want to better communicate, such as local media uploads and talk pages.

We have also launched a new landing page for new members to illustrate that the Wikimedia identity is not limited to community members with many years of Wikipedia editing experience. We are trying to make this visible in our communications of volunteer efforts on social media.

Being transparent

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Ensuring that our work is transparent is core to how we plan our projects and day-to-day work. Transparency is inherently valuable as more people can give feedback, point out problems, suggest solutions and in other ways contribute.

However, working in such a transparent manner is something that takes a bit of getting used to for new team members, new volunteers, consultants and external partners. It also comes with an increased cost to ensure that all documentation is understandable, summarized and presented in the different places where our members might expect to find it. Simply making materials available without ensuring that it is understandable is arguably a false transparency.

While acknowledging the issues, our conclusion is that the value of transparency is much higher and we are working to increase our transparency even further. The aim for transparency affect many of the choices regarding what tools we use and it is also something that has to be done while respecting privacy.

Story: Preparing for GDPR – tools, policies and services

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Along with the rest of Europe Wikimedia Sverige had to look over their policies, routines and tech infrastructure in preparation for GDPR becoming applicable on May 25th.

This provided an excellent opportunity to go over what data we store where and why as well as making some changes to our technical infrastructure which had been long needed but prohibitively expensive time wise. It influenced our choice of membership management system, allowed us to switch from a chronically overfilled Dropbox to Nextcloud and from personal Google accounts to a Non-Profit G Suite solution.

Our work with rewriting our policies and routines was only made possible by having our dedicated head of board being very knowledgeable about GDPR implementation and investing significant time in this for the chapter. The need for a point person with these qualifications was key to being able to do the work we did. The lack of the same resource is likely the main reason for which there wasn’t large scale collaboration between the European chapters around GDPR, something which a priori was something which we had fully expected. At the same time it was interesting to see how the preparations involved all of the staff and the board, coming together as a team to tackle something which affected almost every single area of our activities.

Our new policies and routines are now essentially in place. The result is freely licensed and we’ve already seen other civil society actors, such as Techsoup, re-use our materials. There are still some uncertainties related to the usage of some of the more niched tools, e.g. Events dashboard and OTRS left to resolve. In October we will perform our first data destruction under our new end-of-life data routines at which point we will likely have to fine tune some policies and routines.

Improve organizational quality

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For the chapter to continue to improve its quality and efficiency we worked to keep our broad and sustainable funding, with the aim of no donor exceeding 50 %, and to find new financial options, including a long term increase in paid memberships, and also to increase volunteer involvement which can help ensure high quality projects for a limited cost.

Our work to secure funding from external grants have continued in 2018 and we have secured three large grants with multi-year funding. We currently have funding secured for our current size into 2020 and are planning to scale up our organization the coming months. We also have a number of possible grants and other revenue streams identified.

The amount received from memberships and donations from individuals allow us to focus more on advocacy work. We are working to secure a sponsorship from Adwords for free advertisement and to remodel our website to be able to highlight sponsorships in a better way. We will also evaluate the new remuneration that we started with in 2017 for some of the work we do with batch uploads and trainings.

Our volunteer community has been supportive and active in 2018. In addition to our volunteer run board of trustees we have had 23 volunteers helping us with our projects in different ways (currently not including the volunteers involved in the WikiGap events outside of Sweden). We have seen volunteers join our organization in roles other than the typical helper at edit-a-thons or with initiating partnerships with other organizations.

At the very end of 2017 we prepared an application for a so called 90-account to the Swedish Fundraising Control. The 90-account is a confirmation for the donor that the fundraising operation is being managed in an ethical and responsible way and that the money is used for the intended purpose (at least 75% of the total income) without excessive cost (maximum 25% of the total income). This was not accepted due to the phrasing in our statutories. The General Assembly voted in favor to revise and update the statutories in according with the suggestion put forward by the board. However, the new statutories will not be active until confirmed by a vote by the General Assembly in 2019 and at that point we can re-apply for a 90-account.

Story: Producing new grant applications

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Wikimedia Sverige has been applying for project grants from external funders since 2012. Previously the grants we applied for were small and merely complemented the Annual Plan Grant from Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). In 2015 the board decided to set a goal of having no individual funder covering more than 50 % of the chapter’s costs each year. In 2016 we succeeded with the goal (only 41 % came from WMF) and in 2017 we nearly reached it (52 % came from WMF as we organized the Wikimedia Diversity Conference). With the grants more or less confirmed (projects will receive financing, but contracts and final budget needs approval) we are close to achieve our goal for both 2018 and 2019.

We have focused more and more on applying for major project grants spanning over many years. In 2018 we have produced a large amount of major grant applications, many of them international in their nature, including participation in two EU applications. As the project are very large (100,000s of USD) we have spent a lot of resources on identifying strong partners and developing the projects in preparation. This year our partners in the grant application include many large actors (see #Story: Strategic high level partnerships).

We have also successfully applied for funding from WMF’s Conference & Event Grants program for Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting (WikiNEM) and for Wikimania 2019. We are currently discussing funding to cover work around the legacy of Wikimania from Wikimedia Foundation, but this is not confirmed as of now.

The multi-year grant we have from WMF is an important reason for our success as we have been able to join long term initiatives and confirm budgets in advance. That said, even more value would be created for grants spanning even longer (4-5 years) as long term investments can be executed. If done right, long term grants also help achieve long term thinking and planning.

Story: Using technical solutions to build a strong membership base

[edit]

During 2017 we switched membership management systems after our existing one had been malfunctioning for a long time. As described in our Impact report for 2017 we did however not get the public facing part up and running in time to send up membership renewal requests for 2017 resulting in a membership drop of 80%. We predicted that once the new system went live we would re-acquire most of these members, as of today 60% of this drop has been recovered.

The work on the new membership system has closely connected to our work on preparing for the GDPR. We chose a membership management system which integrated with our new accounting system so as to minimize our need for manual processing of new members. That the chosen provider is smaller has meant some additional work for us but has at the same time allowed us to influence how GDPR compatibility was built into the system. This and the ease with which feature requests and suggestions get implemented is something we don’t believe could have been achieved had we gone with one of the larger providers.

A focus during the first half of 2018 has been systematic work with preparing membership communications, both for existing members, in the recruitment of new members and in the communication of the changes brought about by the GDPR. Using the new system for sustainable communications with our membership base (transitioning from from a one-sided focus on recruitment to a holistic take on member care) will be an area of focus for the remainder of the year.

We want to learn more about how to offer volunteer engagement with members who come from outside of the core community. As we have managed to lay the foundations for our membership base, we have the opportunity to learn more about how members wish to contribute and engage with Wikimedia. We can then further invest in resources and support customized for this group. Converting members to volunteers was something we identified as missing in our last impact report. Furthermore, we are excited by the opportunity to scale membership recruitments when we turn to technical solutions such as the new member management system and the possibility of using online advertising through possibilities such as Google Ad Grants for AdWords.

Fail fest: The risks associated with project grants

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Here we describe problems we struggled with and what we learnt from them.

As outlined above in #Story: Producing new grant applications we have applied for a number of large grants this year. Receiving a large grant that you worked on for a long time is a fantastic feeling, however, such a grant is also very disruptive. If the budget from one day to another is increased with 25 % all previous planning need to be reworked.

As project grants, even the ones lasting 12-24 months, are per definition not ongoing one has to plan for the end of them when the project staff and associated costs might drastically have to be reduced. This is something that creates a lot of volatility and insecurity for staff members and the organization as a whole. The long term support from the APG with unrestricted funds are crucial to mitigate some of these problems. Further flexibility and longevity would increase the value further.

Knowing that this is an issue make it possible for us to take precaution and work to divide costs and earnings over time. For this we have created two documents, the “Burnchart” where costs and earnings are divided per months and the “Yearly plan for projects” where staff time is divided based on the timelines of the different projects, that we are revisiting regularly (monthly and quarterly, respectively). These documents ensure that we do not have to keep all information in our heads or split up on different pages/documents.

We continue developing our methods and organizational maturity as we keep receiving more large grants. This year the staff and board will also develop a fundraising strategy to diversify our earnings further. Overall, despite the disruptiveness of project grants is our strong belief that the work with project grants is an important and positive activity for our association and that it should be continued. The grants create opportunities for partnerships, increases the overall funding for the Wikimedia movement and ensure that the organization continues to experiment and develop its practises.

Detailed project overview

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Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories has been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

Organisational Development 2018

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What is the project: This project aims to improve the functioning of the organization and the efficiency of its work through targeted activities against identified bottlenecks.

What’s been done: We have worked to reduce bureaucracy by simplifying the process around decisions and reporting of travels and events.

The work with GDPR preparations was coupled with a significant amount of work to change, document and improve our technical systems. See #Story: Preparing for GDPR – tools, policies and services for more details.

We have successfully created and tested a survey structure for our events to collect feedback and support for future events.

What's next: A user manual for our wiki will be developed to make it easier for new employees and volunteers to contribute to it.

We will join the sponsored Google Ad Grants for AdWords program and start experimenting both with visibility for activities etc. and to attract donations and new members.

We will document our new financial routines, update some of our policies, create a new financial strategy. Furthermore, we will automate the process of adding information about the projects on our wiki in the beginning of the year as well as automate the process of collecting the data that has been reported about different activities.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: Phabricator, Meta

Partners: -

Link to the project: Organisationsutveckling 2018

Exchange of Experiences 2018

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What is the project: The project is to ensure that we share our experiences and learn from other affiliates through available events and platforms.

What’s been done: We have taken part, with staff and/or board members, at the Wikimedia Conference; the Big Fat Brussels Meeting; and two ED meetings. Furthermore we have had meetings with representatives from WMNO.

We are actively preparing for organizing both the Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting in October 2018 and for Wikimania in August 2019 (see #Story: Taking the lead in organizing international meetings).

We have contributed to the Strategy process by discussions within the ED group and with the drafting of the text for the Diversity working group.

What's next: We will participate in Wikimania 2018 to learn and prepare for next year's Wikimania. Staff members will continuously work on sharing lessons learnt on Meta. For example we hope to be able to develop the Wikimania Handbook further.

We have offered time as part of the Strategy process in the working group for Resource allocation.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: Meta

Partners: Wikimedia affiliates

Link to the project: Erfarenhetsutbyte 2018

Association Involvement 2018

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What is the project: The project aims to increase the number of members and volunteers, find tasks and the necessary support to get and stay engaged and a new membership management system.

What’s been done: We have moved and activated our new membership management system. As part of the move we worked with the company behind our membership system, Zynatic, with the preparations needed before GDPR. We also created a number of reusable texts that can be sent out through the system.

We organized a small campaign to encourage previous members to again join us as members. This was very successful and we now have 432 members.

Furthermore, tasks for volunteers have been identified and volunteers have been engaged in different ways. We have also handed out certificates for larger voluntary efforts.

As part of the project, we have organized the Annual General Meeting and the connecting Wikipedia Day (see also #Story: Telling the story of democracy and the wiki).

What's next: We will organize a membership meeting in October.

We will discuss strategies and best practices around attracting new members with WMDE.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: -

Partners: Wikimedia Foundation

Link to the project: Föreningsengagemang 2018

FOSS for the Association 2018

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What is the project: Investigate where FOSS alternatives can replace proprietary software used by the organization or where fairly minor issues are preventing that FOSS from fulfilling our needs.

What’s been done: We have not worked on this project specifically, but has instead moved the funds to #Organisational Development 2018 as we, as part of that project, have changed many of the different systems we use.

What's next: No activities will happen in this project.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Project impact: -

Partners: -

Link to the project: FOSS för föreningen 2018

Notes

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  1. Definition: The number of blog posts and newsletters written by Wikimedia Sverige or blog posts written by guests on the Wikimedia Sverige blog. Used as a proxy for visibility.
  2. Definition: The number of participants and/or organizers of activities conducted or supported by Wikimedia Sverige who belong to underrepresented genders in the Wikimedia movement in Sweden (non-unique as we are not tracking them with names). These groups are defined as women and people identifying themselves as something other than male or female.
  3. Definition: The total number of people who have heard us talk about Wikimedia related topics through participation at events or activities, either in person or virtually (non-unique as we are not tracking them with names). Does not include reach through Social media.
  4. The Wikimedia projects mean those platforms within the Wikimedia Family that are usually called sister projects of Wikipedia:
    • Wikipedia The free encyclopedia
    • Wikimedia Commons The free media database
    • Wiktionary The free dictionary
    • Wikisource The free library
    • Wikibooks Free textbook collections
    • Wikiquote The free quote compendium
    • Wikivoyage The free travel guide
    • Wikispecies The free species directory
    • Wikiversity Free learning resources
    • Wikidata The free database
    • Meta-Wiki About the projects
    • We also include translatewiki.net.
  5. Identification can be via user names systematically connected with the institution, special user templates showing the connection to an institution, registration in a Wikiproject, or possibly through personal knowledge etc.
  6. This include the Wikimedia projects, translatewiki.net and Wikimini, according to the principle that we train a pedagogue that are using the creation of content as a part of the pedagogical process.
  7. An organisational unit with self-governing power is included here; however, units that have been included previous years are not.
  8. Software which is considered is MediaWiki extensions in use on the Wikimedia project or on translatewiki.net. This is in accordance with the priority order: bugs, erroneous translations, untranslated.
  9. Swedish, English and Arabic language Wikipedia.
  10. We are counting occasions and Wikimedians as follows:
    • Only activities outside of other project related goals count. I.e. a Bot Academy focusing on cultural heritage and as part of Connected Open Heritage does not count, but an event focused on running bots but not related to a specific project count.
    • Wikimedians and advocates for free knowledge who got support count, regardless of if they used the information or not. The important part is that they asked for help/resources. I.e. people contributing to FOSS-projects count.
    • We count occasions as when someone got help from a WMSE staff member. I.e. if Volunteer 1 works for two weeks they have not gotten support, but if they send an e-mail with some follow up questions after a week then that requires a contribution which corresponds to one occasion.
    Questions related to memberships, donations or administrative matters does not count towards the goals.
  11. With recurring meetups we are referring to some type of face-to-face meetings that are repeated over time.
  12. Underrepresented groups are here defined as:
    • women
    • contributors whose native language are different than the 10 largest Wikipedias (per 5+ editsp/month (3m avg) according to https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm) or Swedish
    • contributors 60 years or older
  13. GLAM Newsletter and Education Newsletter.

Revenues received during this six-month period

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Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
Donations SEK 115,000 - 63,559 N/A N/A 63,559 13,455 7,436 This is in line with our expectations. Part of the sum is specifically donated to support our lobbying efforts to update the legislation regarding Freedom of Panorama.
FDC SEK 2,950,000 - 1,720,833 N/A N/A 1,720,833 345,150 201,337 This is in line with our expectations.
Interest, misc SEK 15,000 - -2 N/A N/A -2 1,755 0
Other grants SEK 873,600 - 1,050,928 N/A N/A 1,050,928 102,211 122,959 This contains one larger grant for work on bibliographical data and a few smaller grants related to work with specific GLAMs. Included in this post are also non-FDC grants from the WMF.
The Culture Foundation of the Swedish Postcode Lottery SEK 1,600,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 187,200 0 This revenue source is expected for Q3-Q4. We are still working with the funder on defining the budget for this year.
European Union Grant SEK 200,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 23,400 0 We have joined three different EU applications. One has so far been declined funding, but it will be reworked and sent in again in 2019. The two others are still awaiting a response.
Pelagios Commons Resource Grants SEK 50,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 5,850 0 We have not applied for any grant from this funder.
Event Grant Wikimedia Hackathon SEK 500,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 58,500 0 This revenue sorce is no longer expected since the event will not take place. Instead we have received a smaller grant for Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting, which is included in Other grants. We are investigating the possibiltiy for a grant for Wikimania 2019 to improve legacy of the event.
Swedish Post and Telecom Authority SEK 1,400,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 163,800 0 This revenue source is expected for Q3-Q4 but at 400,000 SEK instead. A larger grant will be applied for in late 2018.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Notes:

Exchange rate: 1 SEK = 0.117 USD (per 1 USD = 8.547008547 SEK in APG proposal).
All numbers rounded to whole SEK/USD.
We also received in-kind donation of about 1,000 SEK (117 USD) by FSData for server hosting, 56,250 SEK (6,581 USD) by The Internet Foundation In Sweden for office space and 3,840 SEK (450 USD) by Google for G Suite for Nonprofits. The Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities donated venue spaces for our Annual General Assembly.

Spending during this six-month period

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Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Access SEK 2,618,100 - 428,172 N/A N/A 428,172 306,318 50,096 16.4% This is significantly less as we have not received any major grants for Q1-Q2. We have received two grants for Q3-Q4 but these are for multi year projects and the budget for 2018 will not be as large as expected.
Use SEK 1,810,333 - 86,592 N/A N/A 86,592 211,809 10,131 4.8% This is significantly less as we have not received any major grants for Q1-Q2. We have received a smaller grant for a pilot project in Q3-Q4. The budget for 2018 will not be as large as expected.
Community SEK 1,545,885 - 206,994 N/A N/A 206,994 180,869 24,218 13.4% Around 1/3 of the budgeted amount was for the Wikimedia Hackathon, which we will not organize this year. A large community grant for a Wikipedia camp will take place in Q3.
Enabling SEK 260,000 - 297,011 N/A N/A 297,011 30,420 34,750 114.2% We have focused a lot of efforts on enabling in Q1-Q2, both related to updating our membership system and with GDPR preparations and related system changes. A lot less resources will be used in Q3-Q4, but we will overspend further in this program as we intend additional work to get a larger membership base.
Operational costs SEK 1,419,350 - 798,414 N/A N/A 798,414 166,064 93,414 56.3% We expect these costs to be lower Q3-Q4 as we have our office space sponsored since Q2. In Q1 we also had increased costs for the move between offices and becuase of a focus on grant applications and other OH work.
To reserves SEK 175,000 - 89,490 N/A N/A 89,490 20,475 10,470 51.1% We intend to increase the amount in our reserves as they were depleted last year. We see a need to increase the reserves again rather than increase the team to fast. This is possible as we have received a few large long term grants covering large part of our current needs, freeing up funds from the APG and donations to us.
TOTAL' SEK 7,828,668 - 1,906,673 N/A N/A 1,906,673 915,954 223,081 24.4% N/A

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Compliance

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Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?

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As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

  • Yes

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Signature

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Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.