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Feedback from the NWE Regional Funds Committee

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Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Dear Wikimedia Suomi Team,

Thank you for submitting your application for Fiscal Year 2024-25. The committee and the expert reviewers appreciated the way in which the proposed work, the strategies followed, the approaches taken and the participating partners planned were explained for each activity. It was valued that you provided self-reflections on your capacities for each planned activity as well. (We kindly ask you that next year, please provide external links to the listed technical and community projects on META/website, if they exist, to improve the understanding of the Committee of the details of the proposed work).

In terms of programming, the committee found great value in:

  • Your planned work around supporting the Sámi language work, and would like to ask if you are planning to collaborate in 2025 on it with Wikimedia Norge (on the implementation) and with the Language Diversity Hub (to share your learnings and best practices with other small languages on Wikimedia projects) and, should you plan the Arctic Knot event in 2026, if you are considering collaborating with e.g. WM UK/ WMC Ireland who have recent experiences with organizing the Celtic Knot, and with AvoinGLAM to secure the participation of representatives from heritage associations and the European Union? A language-focused event during the European Capital of Culture period would raise awareness of how Wikimedia projects support language inclusion on the Internet, but it would be an extreme challenge organising such a large event alone.
  • Your developed strategies to improve community health and volunteer retention by addressing backlogs and providing admin support for events to deal with IP blocks are great approaches. The Committee, however, would like to learn more about the ways you are engaging with the Wikimedia communities in the different languages in this proposal (in general), and learn about the reasons behind the reduced number of organizers (from 50 to 20) that you're looking at supporting, while the content contribution metrics are increasing? Are these changes related to opportunities or changing practices? It remained unclear what other measures you are planning to maintain and improve the community health, safety and inclusion, and how you receive and take into account the feedback from the community on how the planned work impacts them and promotes their retention. Can you please elaborate on this question for us?
  • Your planned work to improve interoperability between Commons and partner image repositories, to reduce duplicates and improve metadata accuracy, was found very useful. How are you planning on disseminating the results in the wider movement for shared learning?
  • In your strategy, you mentioned education and improving multi-literacy skills and civic skills, what approaches are you considering in these areas?
  • Furthermore, the Committee appreciated your maintained relationship with FINTO, and your plans of working together with the Oulu European Capital of Culture program, which affords an opportunity to build relationships with local and heritage associations.

Thank you for your reply to our questions!

In terms of the schedule for our review process, please complete your review and responses to committee feedback by November 20th, 2024. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a formal decision. Thanks again for your work on the proposal and supporting our review.

On behalf of the Regional Funds Committee, ABruszik-WMF (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your questions. We will respond by November 20, 2024. --Zache (talk) 10:07, 12 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Answers to the NWE Regional Funds Committee Feedback

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Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Feedback 1

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Your planned work around supporting the Sámi language work, and would like to ask if you are planning to collaborate in 2025 on it with Wikimedia Norge (on the implementation) and with the Language Diversity Hub (to share your learnings and best practices with other small languages on Wikimedia projects) and, should you plan the Arctic Knot event in 2026, if you are considering collaborating with e.g. WM UK/ WMC Ireland who have recent experiences with organizing the Celtic Knot, and with AvoinGLAM to secure the participation of representatives from heritage associations and the European Union? A language-focused event during the European Capital of Culture period would raise awareness of how Wikimedia projects support language inclusion on the Internet, but it would be an extreme challenge organising such a large event alone.

Are you planning to work with Wikimedia Norge on implementing your Sámi language initiatives?

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Yes. Our Sámi work is coordinated by board member Yupik, an admin on the Northern and Inari Sámi Wikipedias, who actively collaborates with Wikimedia Norge (WMNO) and the Inari Sámi Wikimedian users. Zache (WMFI) and Jon Harald Søby (WMNO) provide technical support for the editing competition bot Ukbot, which also tracks edits in the Sámi Wikipedias. For Oulu2026 events, WMNO and WMSE are natural partners, especially for Nordic grants requiring multi-country applicants. WMNO's organizing experience with Arctic Knot 2021 also adds valuable expertise.

Will you collaborate with the Language Diversity Hub to share your learnings and best practices with other small-language communities on Wikimedia projects?

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Wikimedia Finland's board member, Yupik, is a member of the Language Committee, which is stakeholder of the Language Diversity Hub. She regularly participates in Wikimedia events and gives presentations (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4). Note: These presentations represent Yupik's work not only in WMFI, but also in WMNO, and with the Inari Sámi Wikimedia Community.
As part of our wikidata work, we plan to document how to use Kartographer maps in smaller wikis (i.e., Sámi Wikipedias) and how to translate OpenStreetMap place names into the language used in the wiki. This would be useful for other language communities as well.

Collaborating with Wikimedia UK (WM UK) or Wikimedia Community Ireland (WMC Ireland), who have experience organizing the Celtic Knot?

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Yes, although we have not actively contacted them yet, Yupik has regularly participated in the Celtic Knot, including the 2024 event, and is familiar with the event.

Working with AvoinGLAM to involve representatives from heritage associations and the European Union? How would you address the challenges of organizing such a large event, …

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The current plan is to work closely with AvoinGLAM. If possible, AvoinGLAM would lead the organization of the event, while WMFI would focus on a thematic program of the event.
This approach is based on the fact that AvoinGLAM and OKFI have greater experience in organizing events and the ability to mobilize volunteers. For example, they organized Hack4fi - culture hackathons (2015–2019), Hack4OpenGLAM online hackathons during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Creative Commons Summit, and in 2024, they also organized the AI Sauna event as a follow-up to the Wikimedia Hackathon. Wikimedia Finland has also participated in these events as a partner organization.
In Oulu, we are also seeking a local partner to assist with securing venues and managing other practicalities, such as recruiting local volunteers. Ideally, this partner would be something like the University of Oulu's Giellagas Institute (Sámi Studies Institute) and its student union. Other key Wikimedia movement organizations include Wikimedia Norway, Wikimedia Sweden, and Wikimedia Eesti, which has hosted the Wikimedia Finno-Ugric Collaboration and was the local chapter partner for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 in Tallinn.
Additionally, we could utilize the European Heritage Days network to establish connections with national organizations across EU countries, such as ministries responsible for European Heritage Days. This network could also be key for finding relevant heritage NGOs to collaborate with.

… particularly if you’re doing it alone?

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If organizing the event alone, we would limit event sizes so that they would be manageable with fewer organizers. One method could be dividing broad event into smaller, thematic events on different dates. This would make logistics like venues, catering, and other arrangements easier to handle. We would also consider organizing the event as part of larger events, such as European Researchers Night, to encourage public participation, followed by a weekend seminar for focused discussions.

Feedback 2

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Your developed strategies to improve community health and volunteer retention by addressing backlogs and providing admin support for events to deal with IP blocks are great approaches. The Committee, however, would like to learn more about the ways you are engaging with the Wikimedia communities in the different languages in this proposal (in general), and learn about the reasons behind the reduced number of organizers (from 50 to 20) that you're looking at supporting, while the content contribution metrics are increasing? Are these changes related to opportunities or changing practices? It remained unclear what other measures you are planning to maintain and improve the community health, safety and inclusion, and how you receive and take into account the feedback from the community on how the planned work impacts them and promotes their retention. Can you please elaborate on this question for us?

Could you elaborate further on how you are engaging with the Wikimedia communities in the different languages mentioned in your proposal?

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This is what we have been doing. Similar activities is expected to continue in 2025.

Finnish Wikipedia community
  • Local support: Helping with maintaining templates, Help pages, Lua modules, TemplateData, gadgets, and tracking Phabricator tickets etc.
  • Accessibility Improvements: Converting Finnish Wikipedia's inline CSS styles in articles and templates to templatestyles. The aim is to ensure compatibility with the Mediawiki’s new dark mode and with WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards. This started in 2024 and will continue in 2025 also.
  • Technical support for Weekly competitions (including. Ukbot support) and generally supporting the workshops and other events.
  • WMFI offers financial assistance for travel costs and community-organized events.


Sami Wikipedia communities (Northern Sami, Inari Sami, and Skolt Sami)
  • Board member Yupik actively works with these communities on wikis, on technical discussions on phabricator, github, work with Finto, etc.
  • WMFI offers financial assistance for travel costs and community-organized events.
  • Inclusion in competitions: Featuring these languages in Finnish Wikipedia's weekly and monthly competitions, including Wiki Loves Monuments.
  • In 2024 we updated deprecated palatalization characters in Skolt Sami Wikidata labels.(phab: T308792)
  • In 2025: Planning to import Sámi place name translations in Finland from the placename registry into Wikidata and OpenStreetMap to enhance language display in Kartographer maps on Sámi Wikipedias and improve our Wiki Loves Monuments maps. Improving the support for Sami languages requires also cleaning and interlinking the referred data in Wikidata and OSM. This will improve data quality for all use cases, not just for Sámi languages. The import will continue the earlier work done by WMNO and AvoinGLAM. (Prosjekt:Samiske_stedsnavn and d:Wikidata:WikiProject Finland/Saami place names to Wikidata as lexicographical data)


Swedish and Finnish Cross-Linguistic Collaboration
  • Participating in WLM/Wikimedia Commons workshops in Kemiö in 2025 and sharing information about these events.
  • Sharing knowledge with Projekt Fredrika on editing Wikidata and Wikipedia.
  • Wikimedia Finlands board member Cogitato, a native Swedish speaker, is a founding member of Projekt Fredrika.


Collaboration with Wikimedia Eesti (Estonia)
  • In 2024, we shared insights on organizing WLM as WMEE relaunched the event after nine years' pause. Including jury members from Wikimedia Eesti in Finland's WLM.
  • Wikimedia Finland has been participating in Wikimedia Eesti’s Summer Days, their annual community meeting.
  • WMFI and WMEE are facilitating meetups for editors to visit each other’s countries.
  • Planning photo and metadata imports from Ajapaik and other Estonian image repositories to Wikimedia Commons, similar to the Finnish Journalistic Photo Archive upload project in 2024.


Wikimedia Benin user group and Villa Karo
  • In 2023, the Wikimedia Benin User Group organized a workshop at the Finnish Cultural Center, Villa Karo, in Benin. However, we had no contact with the Wikimedia Benin User Group in 2024.


Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia community
  • We have very little contact with the community. Editing in Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia is included to weekly and monthly competitions organized in Finnish Wikipedia.

What are reasons behind the reduced number of organizers (from 50 to 20)?

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The number is likely too low and should be higher. Hovever, there have been less organizers. The reduction in the number of organizers is primarily due to a shift from in-real-life (IRL) events to more online activities. IRL events typically involve collaboration with co-host organizations, and reducing these events naturally decreases the number of organizers involved. This shift reflects the interests and skill of our volunteers and project workers. Ie. they are more focused on enabling asynchronous participation methods. Additionally, since 2023, we have been collaborating on Wiki Loves Monuments with the Finnish Local Heritage Federation, a central organization in Finland. Their work aggregates efforts from local heritage organizations. However, this aggregated work is not directly visible to WMFI, and we have only counted people with whom we have personally worked in 2024.

What other measures you are planning to maintain and improve the community health, safety and inclusion?

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Our board member and a community member proposed that we facilitate in-person community meetups similar to those organized by the Norwegian Wikimedia community. We are likely planning to organize more of these in the future.
Another important measure we are already implementing is actively ensuring that Wikimedians feel heard, especially regarding technical issues. For example, when users encounter issues, we explain what happened, report the issue, and try to fix it if possible. While not all problems can be resolved immediately, we focus on keeping users informed and ensuring they feel their concerns are acknowledged.
One example of this from the English-speaking world. In Wikimedia Commons, the very popular Cat-a-lot tool was not maintained, and its legacy code caused disruptions to all wikis.(phab:T370304) As a workaround, the WMF site engineers slowed down the tool to prevent further disruptions. However, Cat-a-lot was used by 5–10% of daily Wikimedia Commons editors, and slowness heavily disrupted workflows, leading to frustration among editors against WMF engineers. We were also using the tool, so Zache participated in the discussions by explaining (1, 2) the reasons behind the change and updating the Cat-a-lot code. This helped resolve unnecessary conflict between wmtech and the community. This approach mirrors what we are also doing in the Finnish Wikipedia community.
We are also identifying bottlenecks in how users find information about Finnish Wikipedia policies and decision-making processes. While experienced Wikipedians may easily navigate help pages, the village pump, and discussions or voting systems, new users often perceive these structures as overly complex and confusing. To address this, we are working on improving help pages and editing notification templates, and related resources to make them easier for newcomers to find and understand. (example: How to organize an editathon FAQ)

How you receive and take into account the feedback from the community?

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Most of our community feedback is provided through Wikimedia talk pages and project page discussions. We also have in-person discussions when we meet community members at different events, hangouts, or informal personal meetings. During monthly WMFI board meetings, we discuss and codify feedback as activities. Similarly, feedback affects our yearly and strategic planning.

Feedback 3 - Howto disseminate the results?

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Your planned work to improve interoperability between Commons and partner image repositories, to reduce duplicates and improve metadata accuracy, was found very useful. How are you planning on disseminating the results in the wider movement for shared learning?

We support the idea of a Wikimedia Foundation-maintained service that automatically generates content-based hashes, which are added as image metadata by default and can be used to identify images. This would reduce the need for individual tool developers to maintain their hash databases and foster broader collaboration within and beyond the Wikimedia community. There is already some movement towards this goal. (phab: T362352)
WMFI can help this goal by adopting the ISCC (International Standard Content Code; see phab:T373285) image hash to enhance interoperability between different applications. Promoting the idea requires also implementing the ISCC reference implementation, which is currently tied to Python's Pillow library, using the Java programming language. Java code will be designed to be easily portable and to be used as a reference when ISCC imagehash calculation code is implemented in other programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript. Portable code will enable broader adoption of ISCC in tools like OpenRefine, Spacemedia, and MediaWiki.
We will also add ISCC hash calculation to the Python imagehash.py library and update my existing database to use ISCC image hashes. Using ISCC image hash will improve compatibility and reduce duplication issues. (imagehash.py github issue) Also, to support tool development until there is WMF-provided imagehash metadata, Wikimedia Finland will host its imagehash database as a public backend for matching images.
To disseminate the results and promote shared learning:
  • Collaborate with individuals maintaining tools involved in mass uploads to Wikimedia Commons, such as the Spacemedia project.
  • Add Pywikibot support for developed features with code examples
  • Coordinate development through Phabricator tickets and wikipage discussions.
  • Document the use of ISCC hashes in Java and Python on a wiki project page, including sample code on github.
  • Share progress in publications like This Month in GLAM and at events like the Wikimedia Hackathon.

Feedback 4 - improving multi-literacy skills and civic skills

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In your strategy, you mentioned education and improving multi-literacy skills and civic skills, what approaches are you considering in these areas?

Starting in the fall of 2024 and continuing in 2025, the Open Democracy Communities project study groups have been organized in Tampere, focusing on learning open decision-making practices and tools. The aim is to explore, through case examples, the good practices used by Finnish associations in areas such as agenda setting, proposal preparation, decision-making platforms, and the transparency of financial data and budgeting. Participants include Pispalan saunayhdistys (the association that runs the Rajaportin Sauna), Pispalan kirjastoyhdistys (the association that runs the Pispala Community Library), Tampere Hacklab, and Tampereen seudun polkupyöräilijät (Tampere Cyclists). Wikimedia Finland is involved as a front row national example of an association that follows open decision-making principles. We are also exploring opportunities for cooperation in 2025.
Another educational project under discussion since 2023 is to translate the terms and concepts from the Gymnasium Table Book (Lukion taulukot) into the Sámi languages spoken in Finland on Wikidata. The Gymnasium Table Book is a reference book on math, physics, and chemistry used by high school students. The book was published from 1979 to 1993. The latest version was open-sourced in 2019 and published on Wikisource and Wikibooks. The aim is not to translate the entire book but to use it as a word list of terms needed in school education. The idea is to start with topics that are covered in primary school (SI units, solar system, colors, basic mathematics, and basic physics, etc) because, at this level, teaching is provided in Sámi languages in Finland, and existing educational resources are very limited. From there, we will proceed to more complex topics in the book. Beyond Sámi the concept could also be used to translate the vocabulary used at school into the native tongues of immigrants in Finland to support their language learning and make it easier to learn concepts in their native language.
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We kindly ask you that next year, please provide external links to the listed technical and community projects on META/website, if they exist, to improve the understanding of the Committee of the details of the proposed work

Noted. Here are some links related to the projects mentioned in the application:

FinnaUploadBot

This is a generic account and tool for all Finna-related work on Wikimedia Commons.


Imagehash database

Wikimedia Commons similarity search tool

Direct database access


Ajapaik

Ajapaik is an Estonian crowdsourcing platform for historical photography. Wikimedia Finland has been collaborating with them since 2018 through multiple initiatives, including photowalks, student projects, and full-stack development.


Wikimedia Finlands Pywikibot script and example repository

Thank you for your feedback,
-- On behalf of the Wikimedia Suomi team, --Zache (talk) 16:13, 20 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Round 1 - 2025 decision

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Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to fund your proposal in full for 134,000.00 EUR for the period of 01st January - 31st January 2025.

Comments regarding this decision:
Wikimedia Suomi's proposal in 2025 was one of the clearest presentation of complex programming, with details of approaches and expected outcomes for each line of work. The Committee hopes that the preparatory work in 2025 in support of the Oulu European Capital of Culture in 2026 will lead to the expected opportunities.

The committee recommends WM Suomi to work closely with WM Norway’s plans on coordinating a proposal for the Nordic Council to support the Sámi communities across multiple countries. The WMF will provide WM Suomi the opportunity to consult with our external fundraising expert in defining relevant alternative funding opportunities that align with the Chapter’s ongoing work. We hope the best for WM Suomi in its support of the community, the technical improvements for the projects and partnerships this coming year!

Next steps:

  1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
  2. If you have questions, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.

Posted on behalf of the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Funding Committee, ABruszik-WMF (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

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