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Wikimedia Community User Group Malta/Reports/2025 Annual Report

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This is the ninth annual report for Wikimedia Community User Group Malta (WCM). The report is designed to fulfill a requirements for officially affiliated Wikimedia user groups who are also annual grant recipients. It covers the period from 1 January 2025 until 31 December 2025.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the first annual report from WCM to cover the organisational year for the period that coincides with the calendar year.

Overview

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Wikimedia Community User Group Malta revolves around the work of the Malta-registered non-profit voluntary organization Wikimedia Community Malta, which was originally registered with the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector in October 2015. The organization was officially recognized as an affiliated Wikimedia user group on 1 August 2016. All reports created by this affiliated user group are available here.

An organisational annual action plan for 2025 was drafted in September 2024, based on an informal evaluation of work from the previous yearly plans. From this year, we have decided to use this annual action plan as a working document that's updated as needed.

The user group was administered through a series of regular meetings by the board held throughout 2025, in conjunction with our part-time Program Manager.

Activities

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WCM's activities in 2025 included:

Grants for activities

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WCM activities throughout 2025 were covered by the first year of a 3-year grant (2025–2027) through the Wikimedia Community Fund. The application for this grant was submitted in September 2024, favorably received, and awarded fully in December 2024. As far as this report is concerned, this grant covered activities from 1 January - 31 December 2025. One condition of the grant was to produce a cohesive strategic plan by mid-year. This was produced accordingly, thus fulfilling the full funding requirement. A useful guidance document was also acquired by the organization in the process.

Aside from this main grant, WCM benefited indirectly (i.e. in kind) from the CEE Spring 2025 grant, which provided financial support for the prizes on that contest (administered by WMAT), one scholarship to attend Wikimania 2025 (from the central pool), and two scholarships for CEE Meeting 2025 (administered by WMEL).

Highlights and metrics

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Maltese Language Project

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Our Maltese Language Project was initiated in January though a collaboration agreement with Malta's National Book Council. Joint Wikimedians-in-Residence were appointed to coordinate this collaboration. The collaboration included training for National Book Council staff, Maltese literature students at the University of Malta's Junior College, and Maltese book lovers. The activities associated with this project were presented by User:EnriqueTabone during WikiCite 2025, which was organized by WMCH in August. Daily meetings with potential new Wikimedia contributors were also held at the Malta Book Festival in November 2025.

Media coverage: National Book Council Appoints Wikimedians in Residence via The Times of Malta

Wiki Loves Folklore 2025 in Malta + Feminism & Folklore

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In 2025 we combined these two activities into one from an administrative perspective. We ran the 4th edition of this annual photo contest in Malta between 1 February and 31 March. During this period, starting on March 1st, we also ran another edition of the Feminism and Folklore article writing initiative, in collaboration with the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Malta.

Media coverage: Wiki Loves Folklore 2025 in Malta contest winners featured in The Times of Malta

The finalists and winners of Wiki Loves Folklore 2025 in Malta were awarded at a prize ceremony held during the Malta Book Festival in November, and the top 10 photos were submitted for the international contest.

Rebbiegħa CEE 2025

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2025 saw Malta's participation in the annual CEE Spring article writing contest for the fifth consecutive year. While Malta is among the smallest participating communities in this activity, it proportionally continues to provide an excellent opportunity for our community to engage in an article writing contest as well as a way to spread knowledge and information about Malta-related Wikipedia topics to many languages across the CEE region.

  • Rebbiegħa CEE Spring 2025: 53 articles created/edited on mt.wp - 57 articles about Malta created/edited in other languages - 2 editors on mt.wp

Wiki Loves Earth 2025 in Malta

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The 4th edition of this annual photo contest was organized in Malta between 1 May and 31 July 2025. This year's edition built noticeably on what has been established in previous years.

Media coverage: 15 Images of Malta's Natural Beauty in Running for Global Prize - via The Times of Malta

The finalists and winners of Wiki Loves Folklore 2025 in Malta were awarded at a prize ceremony held during the Malta Book Festival in November, and the top 15 photos were submitted for the international contest.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2025 in Malta

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Participants in this year's edition of the WLM annual photo contest were considerably encouraged to take part by the success of a photo from the 2024 contest in Malta in the international contest.

Through a collaborative initiative with Wikimedia Italia, which was presented at Wikimania 2025, Malta was also included in the visual map app developed to enable easier uploads during the annual WLM contest. There was little uptake through this tool in 2025 and we are planning to engage with this further next year to provide better visibility for this resource to participants for Wiki Loves Monuments 2026 in Malta; a workshop to facilitate use of this tool is being prepared from July/August 2026.

Media coverage: Marika Caruana's Photo Places 6th in Global Wiki Loves Monuments

Here are some basic metrics from this activity based on the customary statistics tool:

The finalists and winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2025 in Malta will be awarded at a prize ceremony held in early 2026, and the top 10 photos have been submitted for the international contest.

Wikimedian in Residence - Times of Malta

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The work of WCM's Wikimedian in Residence at The Times of Malta continued throughout 2025. There were three areas that the residency has focused on: (a) capacity building through Wikipedia editing workshops, (b) including The Times of Malta's paywall service on the Wikipedia Library, and (c) releasing images from the newspaper's archives under a CC license via Wikimedia Commons.

Each of these areas of focus achieved different levels of maturity during 2025. Details about the Wikipedia workshops can be found in the first two links below, while the Wikipedia Library initiative came to fruition to the level explain in the Diff post linked below. Work on the release of images from the newspaper's archives remains in process, and it is hoped that this will become available in 2026.

International networking

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As per our annual plan, we have also engaged in Wikimedia activities outside Malta as part of our strategy to network internationally to achieve better visibility for our work as well as to gain insights from other Wikimedia affiliates to help us improve our own activities.

*CEE Meeting 2025 is of particular note because three members of Wikimedia Community Malta attended this gathering, one of whom is the chair of the CEE Hub Steering Committee. Aside from participation in various instructive sessions, they also gave a presentation about WCM's WikiProject Każini, which often serves as a recruitment ground for our photo contests and editing workshops.

Collaborations with other organizations

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We hold our close collaborators to heart as they make much of what we do possible. This is a list of our active collaborators, indicating relevant activities in the 2025 period covered by this report:

Outside the Global Wikimedia Movement

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  • Our main new collaboration for 2025 was with Malta's National Book Council, which is outlined above, with an eye on further developments in 2026.
  • M3P Foundation is the Malta Media Memory Preservation organization, a Malta-registered non-profit VO which provides us with technical support and resources, including web hosting and office space, as well as other general assistance through our shared goals.
  • At the 2023 Malta Book Festival, we announced a partnership with The Times of Malta, in the form of a Wikimedian-in-Residence to explore ways of sharing knowledge. This arrangement continued during 2025, as outlined above, and is planned for continued engagement in 2026.
  • An exploration on the possibility of developing an Education Program in collaboration with the University of Malta started in early 2022. As a pilot project we delivered Wikipedia editing training to students on the MA in Translation Studies, and they in turn took part in our Feminism & Folklore activity. This was carried forward into 2023 and 2024, with further Wikipedia editing workshops for the translation students; working primarily on Feminism & Folklore articles in 2025. This line of activity make us hopeful towards the development of a more formal education program for the University of Malta after we have developed some critical mass in the coming years.

Interactions with other Wikimedia Affiliates

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We recognize that interactions with other Wikimedia affiliates are essential for the healthy growth of our user group. This is a list of other Wikimedia affiliates with which we had meaningful interaction during the period covered by this report, aside from the major global photo contest organizers:

We are particularly keen on developing an ongoing edit-a-thon into a broader pan-Mediterranean collaboration between Wikimedians, in the foreseeable future. This is forming primarily through discussions with Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia Morocco as well as other affiliates in the Mediterranean from the CEE Hub. We are aiming to build capacity for this initiative in 2026/2027.

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