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Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedia Finland Annual Plan 2026

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statusUnder review
Wikimedia Finland Annual Plan 2026
Fluxx IDR-GS-2509-20418
start date2026-01-01
end date2026-12-31
budget (local currency)138430 EUR
amount requested (USD)152382.08 USD [note 1]
grant typeWikimedia Affiliate (chapter, thematic org., or user group)
funding regionNWE
decision fiscal year2025-26
funding program roundRound 1
organization (if applicable)Wikimedia Suomi ry

This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the web service of Wikimedia Foundation Funds, where the user has submitted their application. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.

Applicant information

[edit]
Organization name or Wikimedia Username for individuals. (required)
Wikimedia Suomi ry
Do you have any approved General Support Fund requests? (required)
Yes, I have already applied and received a General Support Fund
You are applying as a(n). (required)
Wikimedia Affiliate (chapter, thematic org., or user group)
Are your group or organization legally registered in your country? (required)
Yes
Do you have a fiscal sponsor?
No
Fiscal organization name.
N/A
Please provide links to the following documents if they are available

These documentation can be provided in your local language(s), no translations required.

  • Organizational website
  • Detailed financial reporting and/or audits
  • Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes
  • Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan
Homepage

Wiki

Financial statement 2024

Documentation of the governance structure, board list, governance processes

Documentation of the general assembly decision on your plan

Main proposal

[edit]
1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be a title for the Meta-Wiki page. (required)
Wikimedia Finland Annual Plan 2026
2. Do you want to apply for the multi-year base funding for 3 years? (required) (only for returning applicants)
No
2.1. Provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan? (required)

N/A


3. Proposed start date. (required)
2026-01-01
4. Proposed end date. (required)
2026-12-31
5. Does your organization or group have an Affiliate or Organizational Annual Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
Yes
6. Does your affiliate, organization or group have a Strategic Plan that can help us understand your proposal? If yes, please provide it. (required)
Yes
https://fi.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategia_2024–2026
7. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
Finland
8. What are your programs, approaches, and strategies? What are the challenges that you are trying to address and how will your strategies support you in addressing these challenges? (required)

Wikimedia Finland's 2026 strategy addresses stalling editor participation, need for community support, and content gaps through four integrated programs: Content and Outreach, Wikikysely survey Implementation, European Capital of Culture 2026 participation, and Community Helpdesk services.

1.) CONTENT AND OUTREACH

For finding new editors and addressing content gaps and biases, we are continuing well-working themes such as facilitating women-related and minority-related article writing. The idea is also to use broad and neutral topics such as the lack of articles about women or South American people to highlight gaps and their underlying mechanisms in areas which cannot be used as examples so easily. However, getting new editors from underrepresented groups such as women, who are only one-fifth of Finnish Wikipedia's writers, or Sami language writers for the Northern Sami and Inari Sami Wikipedias is even more important. An important aspect of our strategy is collaborating with Finto to promote the integration of the YSO ontology with Wikidata and to enhance support for the Northern Sami language.

The most relevant change is that we will try to find new methods for participating in the international Roma Editathon, such as automating the international results page or facilitating the writing of featured articles. In previous years, we participated only in the local competition on the Finnish, Northern Sami, Inari Sami, Skolt Sami, and Livvin Karelian Wikipedias.

Another change in our Outreach work has been the founding of the Wikikuvaajat volunteer photography group in 2025, for multiple reasons. There have been requests for us to organize IRL community meetups and Wikikuvaajat meetings works for that. We also wanted to continue our previous work with Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa city museums and their volunteer photography groups. This has also worked to restore other connections to what was created in the Helsinki rephotography project from 2019-2023. We plan to continue to host the Wikikuvaajat group also in 2026 (organize photo safaris and host the group meetups at Maria01). However, in 2026 our focus is also on how to scale and find funding for paid coordinator(s) and on how the work could best support the wikis and the Wiki Loves Monuments participation. We will explore the possibility of letting regional institutes of continuous education to run Wikikuvaajat activities as their photography courses.

Strategies
  • Collaborative Engagement: Collaborate with gender equality groups, cultural associations, and other Wikimedia communities to enhance the diversity of content on Wikipedia. Such groups include the Inari Sami Language Association (Anarâškielâ servi), Muijii Wikipediaan and volunteer photography groups. Align events with theme days such as European Heritage Days, International Women's Day, International Roma Day editathon, and Sami National Day to achieve higher visibility and participation.
  • Support for contributors: Provide technical support to active participants in weekly competitions, as well as to event organizers and editors contributing in languages other than Finnish. Offer technical support for competitions operated by Ukbot throughout the year, ensuring they run smoothly. Assist in community-organized events when necessary, foster a supportive environment for content creators, and ensure that someone with admin rights is available to solve issues such as IP blocks in real time.
  • Focus on Wikidata: Actively participate in Finto's YSO initiative to promote the linkage between the YSO ontology and Wikidata, as well as in the initiative to improve Northern Sami support as a formally supported language.
Results
  • Organize at least two workshops in northern Finland with Sami Wikipedias.
  • Organize the Punaisten Linkkien Naiset (Women in Red) competition and Wiki Loves Monuments.
  • Participate in the international Roma Day editathon by adding automatic results raporting.
  • Organize two photo safaris and host 4 volunteer photographer meetups.
  • Least one photographer who photographs in events to Wikiportraits.
  • Ukbot will support the weekly and monthly competitions organized by the Finnish Wikipedia community (54 in total).
  • Yupik will continue as a member of Finto's steering group and as a member of the Mii ovttas network of the Saami Parliament of Finland.
  • New Northern Sami translations from Finto are synced from Finto to Wikidata.

2.) DISSEMINATE THE WIKIKYSELY SURVEY RESULTS

In autumn 2025, we started to conduct a Wikikysely survey for Wikimedians. Based on our 2025 Wikikysely survey of Finnish speaking Wikimedians, we identified three main challenges: a lack of active Wikipedia editors; a need for support in specific areas such as promoting the UCoC, uploading images from Finna, and organizing meetups; and a poor awareness of Wikimedia Finland's work and available support. Based on these findings, our strategy focuses on creating infrastructure and documentation that will have a lasting impact while also continuing to improve the use of Wikidata in Wikipedia.

Strategies
  • Regular communication and documentation that ensure WMFI resources are visible and accessible.
  • Split task ideas from Wikikysely survey into Phabricator tickets and start to implement them.
Results
  • Update Wikimedia Finland's communication strategy and plan, which were created in 2018
  • Address the poor knowledge of WMFI's work by creating:
    • A bi-monthly newsletter about our activities published through Extension:MassMessage (same what This Month in GLAM and Wikipedia Signpost uses) for a total of 6 issues
    • A documentation page on what kind of reimbursements are available from Wikimedia Suomi for Wikimedia community members' travel costs, organizing local events, event participation costs and license costs for accessing online sources
    • A documentation page on the possibility to do internships, civil service and thesis work at Wikimedia Finland
  • Improve the Finnish Wikipedia's community culture and skills by:
    • 1 presentation about what the UCoC requirements mean for communities in practice. Onwiki UCoC documentation pages on Finnish Wikipedia and Wikimedia Suomi wiki.
    • Facilitate 2 online or IRL meetups with admins and arbcom members
    • 3 online workshop meetups where participants can decide beforehand what topic they want to learn about and then a Wikimedia Finland member will make a presentation about it
  • Improve access to sources by
    • Update of Wikipedia's Wikipedian lähdekirjasto (Wikipedia library) pages, Finnish online collection donation status is updated
    • onwiki page for open online sources which can be used as references to Finnish Wikipedia. (ie. such as info for Finland's national e-library and historical journal archive)
    • blogging about Wikipedia library
    • Add link to Wikipedia Library to visible place in Finnish Wikipedia so people will find it
  • Provide tools for import and data integration:
    • Import The Finnish National Filmography Elonet dataset from Finna to Wikidata
    • Use imported Elonet data in Finnish Wikipedia's movie, actor and TV infoboxes
    • Web tool for searching and transferring images from Finna (Finland's national metadata aggregator for GLAMs) to Wikimedia Commons with prefilled information from Finna ( This is potential Outreachy / Google Summer of Code project )
  • Add support for questions in multiple languages to Wikikysely survey.

3.) OULU AS THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2026

We have submitted two different programs to the European Capital of Culture initiative. The general expectation is that the challenge will be to successfully organize the events.

The first is the Public Art Documentation Projects meetup in May, where we are planning to publish the Public art dataset of 39 municipalities of the Oulu 2026 area and a map tool for them. The challenge here is that everything must be ready before May and also the April/May period is usually very tight in terms of available time for WMFI, because of yearly activities such as Punaisten linkkien naiset and financial statements etc. We are trying to mitigate this by preparing Public Art related things earlier and separating the work among different people.

The second is the combination of the Wikimedia Nordic/Finno-Ugric meetup with the OuluLöyly hackathon in June, which is planned together with Wikimedia Eesti, Wikimedia Finland, Wikimedia Sweden, Wikimedia Norway, and AvoinGLAM. The Nordic meetup will be organized in collaboration with the other Nordic chapters to the best of each chapter's ability. Wikimedia Eesti / Ivo Kruusamägi will be responsible for organizing the Finno-Ugric meetup. AvoinGLAM organizes the framework for the meetups as part of the Oulu Löyly event, comprising of the space and catering for the particpants. The Nordic and Baltic chapters are responsible for their travel and accommodation costs. Three Finno-Ugric meetup participants have been included in the Wikimedia Foundation support for participants.

Note: These events are still unconfirmed, as selection for the Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026 program will come in October 2025. Secondly, funding for OuluLöyly depends on whether the external and WMF grant applications are successful. The size of the event depends on these outcomes.

Strategies
  • Begin public art preparations in January-February to avoid the April/May bottleneck.
  • Start having regular Slack channel and video calls for planning/implementation when we have confirmation for the funding.
  • If AvoinGLAM's grant applications are successful, organize meetup and other work as part of OuluLöyly.
Results
  • Public art documentation project meetup with 5-15 participants, including a picnic or dinner and presenting the project to local art museum/city museum employees.
  • Public art database of Oulu 2026 area is formally published.
  • On-wiki documentation for the public art database of Oulu 2026 area on Wikidata for easy use of the data.
  • Blog post about the public art database of Oulu 2026 area on Wikidata and the public art map.
  • One article about the public art project offered to Skrolli.fi - a Finnish DIY computer culture magazine.
  • Facilitate Nordic Wikipedian and FinnoUgric meetup as part of OuluLöyly. If inari sami wikipedists are doing their meeting in previous weekend then participate to that.
  • Participation in the OuluLöyly hackathon with the public art dataset.

4.) COMMUNITY HELPDESK

The Wikimedia community has a technical sustainability challenge: most Wikipedia editors are non-technical users who depend on specialized tools and systems. Many essential community tools, templates and modules were developed years ago by contributors who have since moved on, leaving behind tools with inadequate installation and maintenance documentation. When these tools break or need updates due to MediaWiki changes, non-technical editors cannot fix them, and the technical knowledge needed for administration and troubleshooting often exists only in source code rather than documentation.

The Wikimedia environment is also in continuous change. There are updates on MediaWiki which require updating templates, abuse filter rules, and local gadgets. There are also information requests, for example in cases of cross-wiki vandalism or when getting background information for discussions or competitions, which require combining data from SPARQL, SQL, and different APIs. Sometimes there is just a need for expertise. Wikimedia Finland has also been working on promoting Wikidata usage in Wikipedia and systematically improving Wikidata and importing datasets to Wikidata, most notably the location related data of Finland. To be able to do these tasks, we have been building a pool of people with technical skills. This is not automatic but a process where skills are aggregated when users participate in tasks which needs use of technologies like SPARQL, Phabricator, MediaWiki API, Lua modules, templates, gadgets, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Toolforge, writing documentation, and defining tasks as tickets.

To be able to support the community and WMFI persons in this progress, we have had one person dedicated to on-wiki support. We have also searched for methods to support community tools. For this, we participated in Outreachy round 30 in 2025 to see how it worked by submitting the Cat-a-lot tool as a project, which seemed to be a good way to learn about the tool, fix bugs, and write developer documentation for it. In 2026, we are exploring this further and plan to participate in Google Summer of Code or Outreachy again.

Another capacity building path is that in Finland there is currently a lack of mandatory internship positions for students, so this would be a good time to collaborate with schools and offer positions on open source projects as unpaid internship placements for summer 2026 as this would be win-win for everybody. This, however, requires that these open source projects have mentoring capacity, but in any case this should be investigated further.

Strategies
  • Have a person whose task is to solve on-wiki technical problems, report them to Phabricator, and debug and fix them if possible.
  • Focus on onwiki problems and improving existing tools used by the community instead of creating new tools.
  • Do internship projects to be able to focus on specific projects and for learning new skills. Google Summer of Code and Outreachy seem to be good "externally guided" methods for making projects which require tangible results in predefined time from both mentor and intern.
Results
  • There is one dedicated person on fiwiki for the whole year who follows the technical village pump, answers questions, fixes problems and especially focuses on advancing Wikidata usage in fiwiki.
  • There is at least one Outreachy or Google Summer of Code project proposed and mentored by WMFI.
  • Strategy document on how to do internships with Finnish higher education students in the future.
9. What categories are your main programs and related activities under? Please select all that apply. (required)
Category Yes/No
Education Yes
Culture, heritage or GLAM No
Gender and diversity Yes
Community support and engagement Yes
Participation in campaigns and contests Yes
Public policy advocacy No
Other No

Education

9.1.1. Select all your programs and activities for Education. (required)
Other activities
Other programs and activities if any: Participation to Outreachy and/or Google Summer of Code. Collaboration projects with higher education students.
9.1.2. Select all relevant audience groups for Education. (required)
Vocational, tertiary, or higher education
Other groups if any: N/A

Gender and diversity

9.3. Select all your programs and activities for Gender and diversity.
Bringing in women and/or gender diverse participants and editors, Focusing on creating content about women and/or gender diverse groups, including biographies, intersectional topic areas and/or adding images, Focusing on creating content about marginalized (underrepresented) communities and their knowledge
Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Community support and engagement

9.4. Select all your programs and activities for Community support and engagement.
On-wiki training of community members, Off-wiki training of community members, Organizing meetups, conferences, and community events, Supporting community members' participation in events and conferences, Offering micro-funding and other financial support to community members , Offering non financial support and services to community members (equipment, space, books, etc.)
Other programs and activities if any: N/A

Participation in campaigns and contests

9.5. Select all campaigns that apply. (required)
Wiki Loves Monuments, WikiGap, Other, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos
Other programs and activities if any: International Roma Day Edit-a-thon 2026, Wikidata birthday

Technology (software development)

T1. Describe the technical project(s) or provide relevant links. (required) Include the following information
  • Project goals, impact, and product strategy
  • Technical approach, integrations, and dependencies
  • Milestones, progress tracking and success metrics
  • Demand and community consultations

Wikimedia Finland's technical projects focus on three key areas: building skills, supporting community activities, and maintaining functional Wikimedia tools and integrations. These projects serve a dual purpose—they help achieve community goals like competitions, content imports, data quality improvements, and outreach, while also developing technical expertise within our community. Strategically, we aim to collaborate with the global Wikimedia community and also with higher education students so it will connect Finnish editors and coders to these groups.

PROJECT GOALS, IMPACT, AND PRODUCT STRATEGY

Our technical projects are designed to:

  • Provide tools that enable participation in Wikimedia projects, such as competition scoring, fulfilling statistic and data requests, vandal/harassment fighting, edit reviewing tools for FlaggedRevs and user-friendly interfaces for data entry.
  • Support wiki communities with bug fixes and maintenance, and improvements of widely used tools and their technical documentation (e.g., Cat-a-lot, Wikishootme, Ukbot, PendingChangesBot …) and do inwiki maintenance work related to templates, CSS and Lua modules.
  • Create places for students, interns, and volunteers to learn Wikimedia-specific technical skills through Outreachy, GSoC, and course collaborations.

Improve and maintain our technical skills by doing technical projects including project management and wikimedia related tool usage (such as phabricator, gerrit etc).. Experiment with new technologies such as LLMs, in partnership with students who bring fresh expertise.

  • Enable data integrations (Wikidata imports, Commons uploads) and encourage the use of Wikidata in infoboxes and templates.


TECHNICAL APPROACH, INTEGRATIONS, AND DEPENDENCIES

Our default technical stack for our own apps currently is Python, Django, Pywikibot, OAuth and JQuery and some external dependencies such as Python’s imagehash library. For web apps we try to keep dependencies simple enough that app can be easily installed using “pip install -r requirements” to Toolforge and developed locally on OS X and Linux.

When updating existing tools, the software stack varies from tool to tool. For example, Cat-a-lot is a Javascript script built with jQuery UI, whereas Ukbot is a Python and MySQL application deployed in a Docker container.

Specialized projects have also used in previous years PostgreSQL for OSM/vector data, IIPImage IIIF server, Apache Jena for SPARQL, Ontop for bridging SQL/SPARQL, and Flutter for crossplatform mobile apps. In Outreachy round 31 we are expecting to use some local LLM and Wikidata Embedding project API and models server through Liftwing.

Integrations often involve merging data across Wikimedia and external APIs: Finna and Finto, Digitransit routing API, OpenStreetMap, Overpass, Sophox, Ajapaik.ee, MediaWiki API, Petscan, Wikidata/Commons Query Service. We also use Toolforge database replicas in our scripts directly or via Superset. Integrations are done in bot scripts or on the server side. Only ones which are directly used from browsers are Petscan and Wikidata Query Service.

DEMAND AND COMMUNITY CONSULTATIONS

Community demand is visible through direct bug reports, feature requests on wikis, and survey results (e.g., Wikikysely questions #57–58). For example:

  • Cat-a-lot and other gadget fixes were prioritized based on Commons talk page messages and their report pages.
  • Wikikysely survey features were added through IRL user testing and feedback discussions which are collected to Google Docs.

-- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ESGdVbqqgT3dhkGxQT7ykhfUzGvhphnpRZwyF8jUrX0/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.10yoifhr43qh


MILESTONES, PROGRESS TRACKING, AND SUCCESS METRICS

We are doing progress tracking in Phabricator and for Ukbot in Github. We are also making status updates on monthly WMFI board meetings and depending on project also shorter periods such as daily Slack checkups or weekly checkups.

We evaluate success through quantitative measures, including:

  • Number of Phabricator tickets resolved and merged into production.
  • Number of new contributors and volunteers in coding, code review, or technical discussions.
  • Number of outputs such as workshops, blog posts, and documentation done for knowledge sharing.
  • Concrete outcomes, such as the Wikidata infobox pilot in Finnish Wikipedia or the planned FinnaUploadBot UI are tracked by counting the number of items/files are created or updated and how many of the added files/items/properties are actually used in articles.
  • Reduction of technical and accessibility errors, measured using automated tools such as night-mode-checker.

Some links to things where we have participated


In 2026, Wikimedia Finland our technical work focus on following areas: category management (Cat-a-lot), edit review automation (PendingChangesBot-ng), cultural heritage documentation (Oulu2026 public art project), community consultation (Wikikysely), and editing competitions (UKBot). We're also exploring community-driven project selection through participatory surveys.

PROJECT LIST

Below is a list of software projects that we would be doing in the first part of the year. There is also continuous in-wiki work related to accessibility, improving Wikidata usage, templates and Lua modules etc which is not in the list.

Cat-a-lot development

Cat-a-lot is a user script/gadget available on Wikimedia Commons and some Wikipedia projects that helps users manage categories. When enabled, Cat-a-lot allows users to select files and pages in a category view and then perform batch operations like adding them to a new category or removing them from the current one.

The biggest currently open issue from an end user perspective is that Cat-a-lot is still substantially slower than it used to be. As, now the phab:T365303 is solved, Cat-a-lot speed can be increased and simultaneously add a option to Cat-a-lot for executing long-running batches in the Quickcategories tool instead of running them in Cat-a-lot. There is also some Cat-a-lot bug fixes and features from Outreachy round 30 that are almost ready and need just to be polished and merged. The timeline for merging these is late 2025 or early 2026.

Cat-a-lot updates from Outreachy round 30 which will require further development. No timeline for these—but Cat-a-lot is potential student project, GSoC, Outreachy, etc project for summer 2026.):

PendingChangesBot-ng (Outreachy round 31 - December 8, 2025 - March 8, 2026)

PendingChangesBot-ng is a Django application that inspects pending changes on Wikimedia projects using the mediawiki API and toolforge database replica. It fetches pending pages of a selected wiki, caches their pending revisions together with metadata, and automatically approves pending changes based on rules. App exposes a Vue.js interface for reviewing the edits, approvals and stats.

The project's purpose is to replace the older PendingChangesBot (i.e., SeulojaBot, which has been automatically reviewing edits on Finnish Wikipedia since 2014). Other targets include supporting other Wikipedias that use FlaggedRevs and providing statistics on how FlaggedRevs is used on different wikis.

Outreachy project homepage:

Main targets:

  • Implement features that existed already in the PHP version to Python version:
    • Mechanical rules for automatic approvals (i.e., approve retroactively edits by users who have been given autoreviewed user rights; automatically approve edits that are reverts/reverted that are missed by the system; approve edits that don't have an impact on output; skip edits whose additions are removed from the latest version, etc.)
    • Utilization of ORES/Liftwing models for improving approvals
    • Batch operating (i.e., cronjob)

New features:

Public art project dataset and map tool

Project goal is to document public art and monuments from the municipalities of Oulu European Capital of Culture 2026 on Wikipedia and Wikidata, and to present them on a map. At the same time, the project aims to create articles about these works and their creators. Public art dataset publishing time is in May 2026 Public Art working group meeting in Oulu area, and if OuluLöyly is actualized, it will be Wikimedia Finland's project for it.

  • Dataset for Oulu2026 will contain 1,000 geotagged works of art stored in Wikidata.This will be done in 2025 and we will focus then on UI.
  • Map tools should be an end-user-friendly method for looking up information about nearby public art, but also for crowdsourcing the metadata for artwork (i.e., fixing coordinates, adding years, uploading photos somewhere). Photo uploading is not for uploading these directly to Wikimedia Commons, as most of the artwork is not free, so it would be a staging area. However, we would also like to collect information that can be used as references, like photos of onsite texts related to the works. Current map tool is a customized WikiShootMe, and the map tool will still require work and ETA is Q1 in 2026.
  • Documentation on how to use the dataset (i.e., SPARQL queries)
Wikikysely survey tool

Wikikysely is a survey tool developed by Wikimedia Finland for conducting surveys within the Wikimedia community. The tool uses a Pol.is style deliberative democracy style approach where participants can only answer yes/no/skip to questions, and participants themselves can add new questions. This design is intended for generating information that can be easily understood and visualized. The next development target is to polish the UI and make a survey tool to be suitable for running multiple surveys simultaneusly.

Planned improvements:

  • Refactoring the design so that there is a client-side UI made using Vue.js and server-side backend API separation, as when the code is running on Toolforge (US), the latency is too high for a pleasant user experience when Django and server-side rendering are used. ( Background info for latency problem: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T348599 )
  • Making the results page sortable and adding methods for filtering results.
  • Adding multiple language support to text input fields so the whole app would be multilingual. Currently, only UI is multilingual but the input fields are monolingual.
  • Moving UI translations to translatewiki.org
  • Adding an option to either do separate surveys OR add tags or similar to questions that can be used for grouping and filtering the questions by topic
  • Adding methods for embedding results on separate web pages and/or updating to the wiki
  • Deadline: late spring/early summer 2026 (ie. Wikimedia Finlands spring meeting)
UKBot

UKBot is a script used for counting points, drawing graphs, and submitting badges for winners in Finnish Wikipedia's weekly and monthly competitions, such as Punaisten linkkien naiset and Elokuun kuvitustalkoot. Norwegian Wikipedia and Catalan Wikipedia, among others, use it in the same way. It has been used for some larger international competitions that have included up to 10 different Wikipedias, but it currently doesn't scale well in terms of speed when dealing with a large number of different wikis or slow SPARQL queries. This causes the bot to skip updating the stats or to get stuck if SPARQL query starts to timeout every time.

  • Deadline: For practical reasons Womens Day is usually a yearly deadline for solving SPARQL performance related bottlenecks as it require human related SPARQL queries. Also as Ukbot support is an ongoing process it is likely that issues that are currently noted as required tasks will be solved well before the deadline and there are new issues found for 2026.

Fiwiki project pages

Source code:

Open tickets

Planned improvements:

Note: A larger refactoring of UKBot to use Django could be a potential GSoC/Outreachy/student project for summer 2026.

Second part of the year

For summer 2026 projects (i.e., GSoC/Outreachy round 32 or a project for Finnish students), we would like to try to use the Wikikysely survey tool to collect proposals from the Wikimedian and Wikipedian community on what the project should be, and the topic would be decided based on that. For late 2026, we would be focusing on well sourced metadata import from Finna to Wikidata and using the data in infoboxes. However, we are also purposely letting room in the later part of the year for continuing work started in the earlier part of the year or doing something else that is raised during the year.

Here is our software projects idea page for potential student projects, Outreachy and GSoC etc.which will give general idea what these would be.

T2. Describe the project team, maintenance, and risk management. (required) Include the following information
  • Security and privacy considerations and expertise
  • Mitigation of security or privacy risks
  • Long-term maintenance, code documentation and licensing
  • Team description with expertise, roles, contribution (hours & compensation)

Our approach for security and privacy is to minimize storing any information that cannot be published on wikis or public data dumps. If user login is required, we use OAuth and botpassword authentication instead of storing Wikimedia usernames or passwords. To be GDPR compliant in our web apps users are given the option to view and delete any data stored about them in our databases. (Note: Competition statistics bots, such as Ukbot, do not currently have user interfaces for user data deletion. )

Backups are stored securely in two physically separate locations, with sensitive data encrypted. Basic idea for our backup implementation is described here.(https://github.com/Ajapaik/Odroid_m1_backup_sbc) Backups however don't include process for removing deleted content and we should include some process for removing content from backups too.

Another method which is used is that if data can be easily recreated from master data in Wikimedia Services, then we can recreate when it is needed instead of keeping backups. For this we are also preferring on saving changes directly to wikis so the latest state is always on the wiki.

For input sanitization we are using Django’s input validation rules. For enforcing this more in database access, we rely on the Django ORM to prevent SQL injections. When remote access to Toolforge replicas are necessary, we usually use Superset SQL Query API as it requires only wikimedia accounts. To prevent cross-site attacks we are using Django’s CSRF rules and XSS prevention measures. Static resources (images, JavaScript, CSS) are hosted on Wikimedia’s CDN, Wikimedia Commons, or on Toolforge.

As security monitoring we are using slack-alerts for downtimes, hardware and backup status. We should also add automatic code reviews, security scans and tests when code pushed to Github.

Known security risks are that our code is manually updated so there may be significant delay in the process and every new web app will increase the overhead.

Known privacy risks include metadata embedded in uploaded photos (such as location coordinates) and the use of external services which can be used for passing data and it will expose the IP address to the remote service (e.g., PetScan, Ajapaik.ee, SPARQL) . External service usage is mitigated by handling data loading in server side. However, in some cases Petscan and SPARQL are also accessed directly from browsers, which can expose user to potential data leakage.

MITIGATION OF SECURITY OR PRIVACY RISKS

  • Collecting only the minimum necessary personal data, with user ability to view, download and delete their own data.
  • Using OAuth and botpassword logins and avoiding direct password handling.
  • Preventing SQL injection via Django ORM-based queries.
  • CSRF/XSS protections are enforced by Django.
  • Hosting static resources on Wikimedia infrastructure.
  • Limiting or replacing client-side data calls with server-side implementations with data validation.
  • Backups are stored in two physically separated locations, with sensitive data encrypted

LONG-TERM MAINTENANCE, CODE DOCUMENTATION, AND LICENSING

Our code is maintained either in GitHub repositories or directly on Wikimedia wikis (gadgets, templates, modules). Documentation is provided in README files or in-wiki help pages.

We use permissive open-source licenses (MIT or Apache), which align with Wikimedia’s values and allow other developers to reuse and build on our work. For long-term sustainability, we favor upstreaming changes over forking or creating custom software so there is also other maintainers than our team. In some cases, like one-time data imports to Wikidata or Wikimedia Commons, the imported content itself is the final outcome, and ongoing tool maintenance is not required.

CORE TEAM

Kimmo Virtanen (Zache)

Tasks: project leading, including both technical, organizational and planning tasks. Background: Software developer with 20+ years experience and a degree from Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. Wikimedia contributor since 2005. Administrator on Finnish Wikipedia and FlaggedRevs PendingChangesBot maintainer and one of the Ukbot maintainers. Initiated yearly Wiki Loves Monuments Finland (2017) and Punaisten linkkien naiset (Women in Red) competitions (2018). Experienced in software development, project management, and mentoring (mentor for Outreachy round 30 and 31 in 2025). Contribution: 0.25 FTE for 12 months for tech (full work time including non-tech work is 0.5 FTE)

Ilkka Prusi (Ipr1)

Tasks: Works as on-wiki technical helpdesk person, data imports and cleanup and co-mentors in Outreachy round 31 in 2025. Background: Software engineer degree from Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences and Wikimedia contributor since 2016. Made the import of the Journalistic photo archive (2024) and has focused on accessibility improvements in Finnish Wikipedia (e.g., WCAG 2.1 compliance, moving inline CSS to TemplateStyles). Contribution: 0.5 FTE for 12 months for tech.

Mika Virtanen (Aurorakiitäjä)

Mika has been working in Wikimedia Finland from late 2023 and is working as general project support person, assisting with data imports, testing, communication and competitions. Contribution: 0.25 FTE for tech in 12 months. Mika's overall worktime is 0.5 FTE which includes non-tech project support and communication also.

Tuukka Hastrup (TuukkaH)
Freelance developer with expertise in OpenStreetMap and public transportation data. Advises on geodata integrations and open data projects that connect Wikimedia content with external datasets. Wikimedia Finlands board member and volunteer.
Tero Toivanen (Teromakotero)
Teacher with experience in coding education for children and adults. Wikimedia Finlands board member and volunteer.
Kimberli Mäkäräinen (Yupik)
Localization, language and translation expert. Seasoned translatewiki translator and works with Finto ontology service. Wikimedia Finlands board member and volunteer.
T3. Approximately, how much of the requested budget will you dedicate to technical projects (local currency)? (required)
65000 EUR
10. Please include a link to or upload a timeline (operational calendar) for your programs and activities. (required)
Q1 2026 in general
  • Finalizing public art data cleanup
  • Finto steering group meeting

Q2 2026 in general

  • Oulu 2026 events
  • Punaisten linkkien naiset campaign, Roma Day Edit-a-thon
  • Finto steering group meeting.
  • Spring meeting

Q3 2026 in general

  • Public art projects' primary photoshoot season
  • Elokuun kuvitustalkoot ( August illustration month)
  • Wiki Loves Monuments
  • Finto steering group meeting

Q4 2026 in general

  • Wikidata birthday, Autumn meeting, WLM award ceremony
  • Documentation, uploading photos, wrapping up the year
  • Finto steering group meeting

January

  • Writing final report
  • This Month in GLAM Finland report
  • Outreachy 31 intern period
  • Release of the new stable version of Wikikysely ( release multingual questons, tags and mobile UI fixes )
  • Start of communication strategy update
  • Bi-monthly newsletter #1

February

March

April

May

  • WMFI Spring Meeting
    • present communication strategy
    • start to collect information for next year activities using Wikikysely survey
  • Wikimedia hackathon
  • Finto steering group meeting
  • Public art project Oulu2026 meeting
  • Bi-monthly newsletter #3

June

July

August

September

October

  • The Finnish National Filmography Elonet -import
  • WikidataCon 2026 + Wikidata’s birthday
  • Online workshop + wikidata meetup/workshop (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikidataCon )
  • Wiki Loves Monuments Jury
  • Finto steering group meeting
  • OPTIONAL: Outreachy 33 contribution period (?)

November

  • Wiki Indaba
  • The Film and TV -infobox Wikidata udate
  • Writing WMFI action plan for 2027
  • Wiki Loves Monuments Awards ceremony
  • Bi-monthly newsletter #6

December

  • WMFI Autumn Meeting
  • Communicaion strategy checkup
  • Finto steering group meeting
  • OPTIONAL: Outreachy 33 intern period (?)
11. Describe your team. (required)
Job title
Administrator
Who is filling this role
Kimmo Virtanen
Brief description
Organizing projects, strategy work, reporting, tracking day-to-day finances, and doing financial reports. Lead coder and project organize/implementation, Wiki Loves Monuments lead. Mentoring in the student projects, employees and volunteers.
Indication of FTE and duration of work
FTE 50% (2026/01/01 - 2026/12/31)
Background
Zache Kimmo Virtanen is an admin in the Finnish Wikipedia Kimmo is a long-time Wikimedia Finland active. Started in Wikipedia 2005 and Wikimedia Finland 2013. Kimmo has been working part-time in Wikimedia Finland since 2018. His background is in software development. Wikidata and linked data encaustic. Kimmo Virtanen is brother of Mika Virtanen.
Job title
Wiki Technician/software developer
Who is filling this role
Ilkka Prusi (Ipr1)
Brief description
Public art project Wikidata imports, Pending changes refactoring, technical support for Ukbot
Indication of FTE and duration of work
FTE 50% (2026/01/01 - 2026/12/31)
Background
Ilkka Ipr1 is an active Finnish Wikipedia editor. His background is in software development, and he is an active template developer in Finnish Wikipedia. Ilkka has been fiwiki-editor from 2016 and working part-time at Wikimedia Finland since September 2022.
Job title
General assistent
Who is filling this role
Mika Virtanen
Brief description
Helping and organizing Wiki Loves Monuments, Punaisten linkkien naiset coordinator, general competition help:
Indication of FTE and duration of work
FTE 50% (2026/01/01 - 2026/12/31)
Background
Mika Virtanen is brother of Kimmo Virtanen. Mika has been a computer hobbyist since the 1980s, and now he has been studying programming, and he would need work experience in the field. Mika has been working part-time in Wikimedia Finland since October 2023.
Job title
Wikikuvaajat coordinator
Who is filling this role
Nanna Saarhelo
Brief description
Organizes, communicates and plans Wikikuvaajat (volunteer photographer group) work
Indication of FTE and duration of work
Unknown, Funding is currently unconfirmed for 2026. In 2025, this was funded using external grant funds from 2024, and we are trying to find a way to fund this from external sources for 2026 as well.
Background
Nanna is a photographer and an art educator with teacher qualifications. Nanna worked as part-time in a Helsinki rephotography and Wiki Loves Monuments coordinator in 2020-2023. She has also worked as a photojournalist in the newspapers.
Job title
Software project interns
Who is filling this role
TBD
Brief description
Coding, testing, debugging, writing documentation
Indication of FTE and duration of work
FTE 100% 8 months total
Background
Wikimedia Finland's goal for 2026 is to participate in Outreachy and Google Summer of Code by submitting our software projects as project ideas and working as mentors for the selected interns. Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing new contributors into open source software development. Outreachy is a similar open source internship program with a focus on diversity and inclusion in tech. A third group that is our focus is working with Finnish higher education students beyond technical fields (e.g., Sami language and Karelian language students).
12. Will you be working with any internal (Wikimedia) or external partners? Describe the characteristics of these partnerships and bring a few examples of the most significant partnerships. (required)

Wikimedia Finland has worked with Open Democracy Communities, an initiative to facilitate especially civil society organizations' learning on open democracy. WMFI participated last year in an ODC study circle and is now invited to share its best practices with other early adopters. In addition, WMFI and Open Democracy Communities have developed the Wikikysely survey tool (https://wikikysely.toolforge.org) and will continue in 2026.

The biggest hacker community in Finland, Tampere Hacklab ry, has contributed earlier in developing the Wikikysely survey methodology. It is going to be the first external CSO to run an experiment process with the survey tool. WMFI is collaborating with Tampere Hacklab in sharing experiences and insights in developing the survey tool.

In the Wikikuvaajat (wikiphotograpers) project, in addition to our own city photographer volunteer group, we revitalized collaboration with the Helsinki, Vantaa, and Espoo city museums and their volunteer photography groups. We hope this collaboration will lead to further Wiki Loves Monuments partnerships. We also have contacts from the Wikiportraits project and forwarded information from that to Finnish photographers.

In Wiki Loves Monuments, the Finnish Heritage Agency is our long-time partner. Our collaboration includes, for example, communication and organizing award ceremonies. Since 2022, our WLM themes have been the same as the European Heritage Days theme. Other notable partners in WLM have been the Ministry of Environment and Finnish Local Heritage Federation.

WMFI uses the Ajapaik.ee platform for crowdsourcing and rephotography, and this continues in 2026. We have also done joint software development and student projects. Google API/Maps services are donated by Google NonProfits (1500€/year) and 500€ for other Google NonProfit services. WMFI runs one of Ajapaik's offsite backup nodes.

With Wikimedia Estonia, we are participating in their Summer days meeting and we are planning to do mutual visits in 2026 where Estonian wikimedists visit in Helsinki and Finnish wikimedists visit in Tallinn. We also have active communication with Wikimedia Eesti where we share experiences, ideas, questions related projects and grant applications.

In the gender equity project, we have collaborated with the Muijii Wikipediaan group, which advocates for improving skills and abilities as editors and has organized editathons in April together with Punaisten linkkien naiset for multiple years in a row. With Muijii Wikipediaan, WMFI has participated in workshops as speakers and wikitutors, and we have also helped promote the events. WMFI has also provided assistance when organizers needed advanced user rights, such as removing IP blocks.

Wikimedia Suomi board member Yupik is an active member of the Northern and Inari Sami Wikipedias where she is a bureaucrat and administrator respectively. Her work transcends the state borders splitting the Sami homeland as she helps organize workshops for the Wikimedia community on the Finnish side of the border and also works with Wikimedia Norway and the community on the Norwegian side. The companion organization for organizing workshops in Inari has been the Inari Sami association Anarâškielâ servi.

Yupik Outside the Wikimedia projects, Yupik serves as WMFI's representative in the steering group of the Finnish ontology service Finto at the National Library of Finland, which meets four times a year.

Editors can participate in our Wikipedia weekly competitions by editing Wikipedia in Finnish, Inari Sami, Northern Sami, or the Livvi-Karelian language. For our monthly themed competitions, Skolt Sami is also included; edits in this language need to be calculated by hand since Ukbot does not work in the incubator. Points for these edits are calculated by the Ukbot, which is operated by the Norwegian Wikipedia user Danmichaelo, but active maintenance and development is transitioned to Zache from WMFI and Jon Harald Søby from WMNO.

We are also working with Open Knowledge Finland (OKFI) and AvoinGLAM Network. WMFI and AvoinGLAM have members in common. AvoinGLAM and WMFI have shared Slack channels for joint communication and we are discussing and sharing our plans.

We are collaborating with Project Fredrika, which is a project that focuses on writing about Finnish topics in Swedish in the Swedish Wikipedia and Swedish topics in Finnish in the Finnish Wikipedia.

Collaboration with Villa Karo and Benin Bilateral Companionship program with Wikimédiens du Bénin have been working through direct personal contacts. As an association Wikimedia Finland is a member of the Villa Karo support association, Kapsi internet users Finland, Wikimedia EU, and Wikimedia Northern Europe.

13. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select all that apply. (required)
Improve User Experience, Provide for Safety and Inclusion, Ensure Equity in Decision-making, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

Metrics

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Wikimedia Metrics

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14. Please select and fill out Wikimedia Metrics for your proposal. (recommended)
14.1. Number of participants, editors, and organizers.

All metrics provided are optional, please fill them out if they are aligned with your programs and activities.

Participants, editors, and organizers
Metrics name Target Description
Number of all participants 600 200 Oulu 2026 events

30 Wikikuvaajat + photography meetups 120 Punaisten linkkien naiset + workshop + women's day 100 Public art documentation project 100 Wiki Loves Monuments, Elokuun kuvitustalkoot, drone photography 80 other workshops and events

Number of all editors 350 New editors

50 Punaisten linkkien naiset + workshop + women's day 25 Wiki Loves Monuments + Elokuun kuvitustalkoot 15 Wikikuvaajat 20 other events

Number of new editors 110
Number of retained editors N/A
Number of all organizers 30 N/A
Number of new organizers 20
14.2. Number of new content contributions to Wikimedia projects. (recommended)
Contributions to Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia project Created Edited or improved
Wikipedia 1500 3000
Wikimedia Commons 5000 10000
Wikidata 1000 10000
Wiktionary
Wikisource
Wikimedia Incubator
Translatewiki
MediaWiki
Wikiquote
Wikivoyage
Wikibooks
Wikiversity
Wikinews
Wikispecies
Wikifunctions / Abstract Wikipedia
Description for Wikimedia projects contributions metrics. (optional)


Other Metrics

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15. Do you have other quantitative and qualitative targets for your project (other metrics)? (required)
Yes
Other Metrics Description Target
Number of different cities where Wikimedia Finland organize events N/A 5
Number of Journalistic photo archive photos are in use Number of Journalistic photo archive photos imported Wikimedia Commons are used in articles/Wikidata. Current status is 5%. 7
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A

Budget

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16. Will you have any other revenue sources when implementing this proposal (e.g. other funding, membership contributions, donations)? (required)
No
16.1. List other revenue sources. (required)

N/A

16.2. Approximately how much revenue will you have from other sources in your local currency? (required)
N/A
17. Your local currency. (required)
EUR
18. What is the total requested amount in your local currency? (required)
138430 EUR
Multi-year funding request summary
Year Amount (local currency)
Year 1 N/A EUR
Year 2 N/A EUR
Year 3 N/A EUR
Requested amount in USD
152382.08 USD [note 1]
Multi-year funding request summary in USD
Year Amount USD [note 1]
Year 1 N/A USD
Year 2 N/A USD
Year 3 N/A USD
  1. ↑ a b c The following amount in US dollars was calculated by Wikimedia Foundation staff using the fixed currency rates. This amount is approximate and may not reflect the actual currency exchange rates on the day of submission or distribution. If the application is funded, the funding will be sent in the recipient’s local currency.
19. Does this proposal include compensation for staff or contractors? (required)
Yes
19.1. How many paid staff members do you plan to have? (required)

Include the number of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include them separately and mention their terms.

3 and if we will get funding for Wikikuvaajat coordinator then 4 and with software project interns 7.
19.2. How many FTEs (full-time equivalents) in total? (required)

Include the total FTE of staff and contractors during the proposal period. If you have short-term contractors or staff, please include their FTEs with the terms separately.

2.2 FTE ( Admin: Kimmo Virtanen, 0.5 FTE, Wikitech: Ilkka Prusi 0.5 FTE, Project assistant: Mika Virtanen 0.5 FTE, Software project interns as total 0.7 FTE)
19.3. Describe any staff or contractor changes compared to the current year / ongoing General Support Fund if any. (required only for returning grantees)
We had Wikikuvaajat coordinator with 0.2FTE at average from Q2 - Q4 in 2025. We expect that this would be same in 2026 if there is (external) funding for that. We plan also to have more software project interns (3 compared to 1 in 2025). Internships are externally funded through direct grants to the persons doing internships and this funding is not routed through WMFI. However, this will require more planning, coordinating, tools and mentoring from WMFI than in 2025 even if it doesn't increase direct salary costs.
20. Please provide an overview of your overall budget categories in your local currency. The budget breakdown should include only the amount requested with this General Support Fund (required).
Budget category Amount in local currency
Staff and contractor costs 97020 EUR
Operational costs 14730 EUR
Programmatic costs 26680 EUR
21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DBMZRsB3nd7ZxJfqVHr1dAqxgUeCVUFklUogbp2cOUM/edit?gid=607091750#gid=607091750


Additional information

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22. In this optional space you can add any other additional information about your proposal or organization that you think can help us when reviewing your proposal. (optional)



By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Feedback

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