Wikimedia New York City/Annual plan/2020-2021

Community need serves as the foundation of Wikimedia NYC and remains central to its activities. The Chapter serves as mentors to new editors and seek to engage new communities in the furtherance of knowledge equity. However, sustaining this work requires us to build and leverage our organic volunteer capacities. We see the development of standard workflows and professionalization as ensuring our continued success in providing knowledge as a service to our communities.

Annual Plan 2020-2021

The Wikimedia NYC Strategic Plan 2018–2020 classifies Wikimedia NYC activities into four program areas, each of which encompasses activities that share similar (and sometimes overlapping) goals and methodologies:

• Chapter Membership and Community
• Partnerships
• Outreach and Education
• Content Contributions

Wikimedia NYC will conduct its next strategic planning process during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 fiscal years. In the interim, the Wikimedia NYC Strategic Plan 2018-2020 remains in effect. The Annual Plan for the 2020–2021 fiscal year, which covers the period starting July 1, 2020 and ending June 30, 2021, defines the specific activities that are to be executed within three of these program areas. The measures of success for each program area are defined by the Strategic Plan, and include Wikimedia Foundation global impact metrics and additional program objectives defined by Wikimedia NYC.

Programs

Chapter Membership & Community

This program area focuses on growing and supporting the Wikimedia NYC membership in order to sustain the activities of the Chapter and the communities it supports. Creating a welcoming and inclusive space is central to this work. In 2018, Wikimedia NYC began a more focused commitment to inclusivity by developing a revised Code of Conduct and associated trainings. Out of this work, we discussed our roles in a neurodiverse community and the ways in which some points of conflict reflect differences in communication styles and needs. For this reason, Wikimedia NYC aims to provide education and foster more awareness around neurodiversity. we will host two workshops so Wikimedia NYC organizers learn more about the autism spectrum and how to create a more welcoming space for all.

We will know we are successful when we have had twenty organizers attend a training.

Partnerships

The partnerships program area has historically provided support for programming and content contributions in collaboration with institutional partners. While some partners will offer remote edit-a-thons, others will not have the capacity to do so. To continue our connection with the institutional partners and the people that work there, we will develop new ways of engaging with our partners.The Chapter aims to create opportunities for our partners to connect and learn from each other during this time; to grow best practices and build community so they are motivated by new ideas and projects when the pandemic is over. To do this, WMNYC will recruit facilitators to work with a designated domain area (i.e. libraries), identify the needs of professionals in those areas and then facilitate conversations to address them. It is our hope that these groups will not only deepen the partners relationship with Wikimedia NYC, but grow Wikimedia NYC’s capacity to support them as both relationships and best practices are developed and shared.

We will know we are successful when we’ve launched two focused discussion groups to bring partners working in a particular domain together.

Outreach and Education

The outreach and education program area focuses on activities that promote and advance the work of the Chapter and its vision for open knowledge. Wikimedia NYC has hosted public facing edit-a-thons and meetups for over ten years, and is one of the most active volunteer chapters doing this work. The Chapter respects efforts to shift offline edit-a-thons to online ones, and that these can be incredibly effective at mobilizing existing Wikipedians. However, offline events in New York City are intended to create a welcome space for new editors, and this cannot be replicated in a Zoom call. Thus, while the pandemic will reduce the number and nature of events and meetups hosted, we hope that experimentations in the virtual realm will provide an opportunity to expand the Wikimedia NYC community and deepen the public’s relationship with open knowledge.

During the 2020-2021 fiscal year, Wikimedia NYC aims to offer flexible programming in online and, eventually, offline spaces. In addition to WikiWednesday and our annual Wikipedia Day celebration, programming will engage a broader audience by offering a new speaker series on topics related to Wikimedia and the larger free culture movement. The Chapter has already started this work and, during the 2019-2020 fiscal year, is offering an online symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19. Not everyone has the time or inclination to become an active Wikipedia editor, but focused events may deepen their understanding of and engagement with the project through this series.

While in person edit-a-thons are on pause, Wikimedia NYC aims to find ways of connecting with editors who have previously attended an edit-a-thon or shown interest in doing so. Continuing its work developing Wikimedia NYC’s web presence, the Chapter will hire a consultant to develop tools that will allow improved communication channels and integration across Wikimedia NYC’s sites. For instance, this effort, title BoroBots, may look to synchronize communications between enwiki, meta, and the chapter website. It should be as easy as possible to create a new event and publicize it using both onwiki and offwiki venues. Information pages on one of our wikis should never be out of date, relative to what’s published elsewhere.

We will know we are successful when we’ve hosted 20 online events to connect New Yorkers and the wider public to Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and the larger free culture movement. And existing communication channels are improved.