Wikimedia España/Plan Anual/2019

Background

Wikimedia Spain is a Spanish non-profit organization, recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation as Wikimedia chapter in Spain. It was officially approved by the Wikimedia Foundation on February 7, 2011 and the same month was registered in the National Registry of Associations of the Ministry of Interior. In May 2011 an agreement was signed with the Valladolid City Council through which the association's headquarters would be located in a municipal agency.

2015 was a key year; in addition to attending the Princess of Asturias Awards Ceremony, where Wikipedia got the International Cooperation award, and which had an important impact on Spanish society, the activities and projects we carried out increased substantially. Due to this, we applied for the first time for a simple annual grant for 2016; it included the hiring of our first employee, a Programme Coordinator. Thanks to this, it was possible to manage the growing demand for activities and projects throughout the country, achieving good results in the number of activities, improved articles, obtained images or volunteers involved.

At that time we detected that our activities, achievements and everything related to Wikipedia were not well known, so we requested a second employee in the simple annual grant for 2017, a Communications Manager. Since then, internal and external communication has improved a lot, reaching more people, better managing our communication with the press and involving volunteers in the different activities and projects.

However, this important growth required planning to carry out a more effective management of the chapter's activity. For that reason, at the end of 2017 we started an internal process to define our strategy for the period 2019-2021. The first step took place in the conference that Wikimedia Spain held in Murcia in mid-September. There, the members attending worked on a SWOT analysis to define the situation of the chapter. Then an online survey was sent to all members to collect information about the situation of WMES.

In January 2018 we held a meeting in Torreandaluz (Soria), during a weekend, involving the staff, members of the board and members, to process all the information obtained from the SWOT and the survey and discuss the next steps. Once everything was documented, in August 2018 we held a meeting of board members and staff in Madrid in which we discussed the last aspects to be addressed before writing the final document. Finally, the strategy document was approved by the board members in October 2018.

Programs

Diversity

Description

In the same way that we have been working in last years, we consider that the sum of human knowledge will not be complete if it does not involve all types of communities, both in terms of content and participation. This means that, for example, we need more content on women, on the rural areas or on spaces outside Europe, such as Africa or Asia. This problem can be extrapolated to the linguistic context, where we find several very small communities in Spain that work with Wikimedia projects in minority languages but there are shortage of content or participation. At the level of participation, the predominance of the same profile affects directly this diversity of content and the diversity in the community which, if it did not exist, would mean leaving part of the population out. Therefore, after discussing it in our strategy process and in the last WMES Conference, and taking into account the people who collaborate in the Wikimedia projects and the content of the Wikipedia articles, we consider women, emigrants, minority languages, elderly people and the rural world as under-represented communities.

Our aim for 2019 is, therefore, to continue the work of recent years and emphasize our work with those communities with which we have not previously worked. Thus, on the one hand, we will continue organizing activities, both face-to-face and online, to reduce the gender gap. The good results of 2018 (51,85 % of the events were focused on it) and previous years encourage us to continue working to increase content and attract more women editors, with the collaboration of institutions, organizations and other Wikimedia groups. March 8th Women's Day (focusing on #WikiGap and Art+Feminism), #DíaDeLasEscritoras or Women and Young Girls in Science Day are some of the campaigns to participate in.

In the rural environment our plan is to continue organizing activities to improve and make visible the contents on this subject. Previously we have focused mainly on multimedia content, through, for example, Wiki Takes activities involving volunteers from different regions of Spain, but the aim for 2019 is also to involve the rural population, either directly or through associations or institutions. The different language communities, especially the smaller ones, are another focus of interest. In addition to carrying out activities, such as the Intercultur initiative, in which 10 languages of the Iberian Peninsula have participated since last year, we want to continue promoting participation in Wikimedia projects in those smaller communities. Last year we started this task with Extremaduran Wikipedia and in addition to strengthening that work we want to involve another community.

At community level, to achieve greater diversity and representation of other social groups, both in Wikimedia Spain and in Wikipedia and sister projects, our purpose is to work with older people or razialiced communities, for example, with whom we intend to carry out training activities and participation in Wikimedia.

Objectives

• Increase the number of contributors from under-represented communities in Wikimedia projects
• Increase the number of female contributors in Wikimedia projects
• Increase the content about knowledge gaps on Wikimedia projects in the different languages from Spain

Metrics

• Thanks to the different activities, we want to engage 250 women (from 97 in 2016, 152 in 2017 and more than 200 until now in 2018, in edition events) and 100 contributors from the rest of under-represented communities.
• 1,500 articles improved or created as a result of our Diversity Program (at least, 400 of them in local languages other than Spanish and 400 about women).

Media content

Description

Consolidated as one of our main programs, the goal is to involve photographer and creative communities in Spain, in order to increase the number of editors and the quantity and quality of files in Wikimedia Commons and help spread this content in other Wikimedia projects. Activities under this program include organizing Wiki Loves photographic contests (Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Folk) and local photographic events such as Wiki Takes (also linked to the diversity programme), supporting events coverage (sports, music, cultural) in order to achieve quality images of, for example, prominent personalities in these fields, and photo documentation projects such as "Ningún municipio español sin fotografía". All these activities involve WMES members and other volunteers.

In 2018, the participants in the activities of this program took 16 074 (October 31th) pictures, with 6132 uses and 1766 (10,99 %) distinct images used until now. In 2019, our goal will be obtain 25 000 new uploaded files, 15 % of them used in Wikimedia projects. Also, getting new editors is important because they maintain or increase the level of activity of the project, benefiting the contents, and because, as we have seen in the past, helps to increase the community of Wikimedia Spain, to which members have come thanks to our photography initiatives. Finally, in the context of working for diversity in Wikimedia projects, another important goal will be to diversify the kind of multimedia content, so far focused on images. In 2018 we organized a first activity in which audio files were uploaded to Commons, in Wiktionary editathon, so either through such events or participation in initiatives such as Lingua Libre, our intention is also to work on those type of contents (audio and video files).

Objectives

• Increase the quantity of photographic content from Spain on Wikimedia Commons
• Increase the number of editors on Wikimedia Commons
• Diversify the kind of multimedia content on wikimedia commons

Metrics

• At least 25,000 files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (500 of them audio or video files).
• Participation of at least 250 new users in activities of this programm.

GLAM

Description

Since we started a project of Wikipedian in Residence in three state museums (National Archaeological Museum, Museum of Romanticism and Costume Museum) in 2015, when we signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, our efforts to involve cultural institutions in the Wikimedia projects and make them aware of the importance of free licenses are continuous. The agreement was renewed in 2017, when other museum added to collaborate with us (González Martí National Museum of Ceramics and Decorative Arts of Valencia), and in 2018, when Sorolla Museum started to organize some Wikimedia-related activities. Also, the Prado Museum showed interest and we had a series of meetings to talk about collaborating in the near future, which would involve signing a new agreement as its management is independent outside the network of state museums.

Therefore, a part of this GLAM program is focused on continuing to work with these museums through the organization of workshops or the uploading of archives of their collections to Wikimedia Commons under free license. In the context of the releasement of contents, in 2018 we began to upload part of the thousands of files available from the National Geographic Institute and our purpose for this year is to continue this task, with the incentive of managing this process within the framework of the new Structured Data development in Commons.

On the other hand, the training and participation of the staff of GLAM institutions is key as they have access to quality content and a traditional commitment to the dissemination of knowledge. Therefore we propose the organization of training sessions in which they know the Wikimedia ecosystem and how they can collaborate by themselves. An important aspect of this task is the work with libraries or museums, with whom we will work, being able to link also with the diversity program if their context is rural.

Objectives

• Releasement of free materials from GLAM institutions and use them in the Wikimedia projects
• Training and involving the personal from GLAM institutions

Metrics

• Releasement of at least 2,000 files from GLAM institutions.
• At least 5 training sessions for the personal of GLAM institutions.

Education

Description

Wikipedia is key to education, and education is key to expand the use and to improve the quality of Wikipedia. The interest of educational institutions, teachers and in general the educational community for Wikimedia projects, especially Wikipedia, has been increasing every year. Our collaboration with educational institutions date back to 2012. Since then, each year the quantity of institutions we collaborate with has increased; 2 more in 2013, 2 in 2014, 2 in 2015, 5 in 2016 and 7 in 2017, to a total of 19. These collaborations are translated into very diverse projects, covering different degrees or subjects such as e-learning, medicine, communication, physics, art history or aerospace engineering, to name a few examples. These include translation projects, which are already organised in three different universities.

These collaborations are not only under the educational project model but also as specific actions, such as editathons. The reasons for continuing and supporting these collaborations, according to the professors themselves, are the good results obtained and the involvement, satisfaction and motivation of the students. The use of Wikipedia is generalized but there are still many professors and students who are unaware of how it works. Therefore, in addition to continuing this work, supporting the different forms of collaboration (content translation, writing articles), it is important to emphasize professor training so that they are aware of what it means to work with Wikipedia, how it is managed and its policies. This knowledge will allow these projects are managed autonomously because, due to the growing number of them, there are not enough volunteers to solve the requests for help. Along with these larger collaborations, other educational or training institutions ask us for a talk or a workshop or small sessions that in previous occasions have been the beginning of such projects.

Objectives

• Increase the number of editors in Wikimedia projects
• Strengthen the collaboration with educational institutions
• Training teachers in the knowledge of Wikimedia projects

Metrics

• Collaboration in 15 different educational projects.
• At least 400 new editors from the educational projects.
• At least 25 teachers trained in the Wikimedia projects.