Wikimedia Belgium

Annual plan/2021

< Annual plan

The simple APG grant 2021 for Wikimedia Belgium (WMBE) was (proactively) approved at the end of June 2020. Now we need to submit the content of the request. The process is delayed until the end of October 2020, due to corona, and the new submission format introduced in August 2020. The sAPG 2021 should be approved at the beginning of November 2020.

Logo Wikimedia Belgium
Logo Wikimedia Belgium

Affiliate strategy

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We need more collaboration with other (larger) institutions, organisations, and peer affiliates. We can’t do everything ourselves. We have very limited (human and financial) resources. Our current strategy of collaboration with institutions and organisations works. But it should be intensified. Word of mouth advertising works. We need more knowledgeable and sustainable volunteers.

Problem: cultural institutions have also problems with (paid) personnel and budget reduction. And so we might need to attract more volunteers, Wikipedians and Wikimedians, to gather and structure valuable content.

One way could be attracting students and young professional heritage people to start writing for Wikipedia, and using Wikidata to amend and document items. And uploading and categorising pictures to illustrate heritage.

But we need to guide them to a list of (missing or incomplete) subjects, closely linked to their interests, using Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and LysteriaBot.

Constraints

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Constraints for the coming year(s):

  • The corona pandemic is still not under control worldwide. The corona pandemic will possibly stay for the next few years. We need to organise less physical and more virtual activities: video conferencing, campaigns, online sessions, virtual museum visits, individual (online) coaching, producing video “howto” training (with subtitles), a YouTube channel.
  • We need to work in 3 or 4 languages (nl/fr/en/de). This requires a lot of translation effort. People love to read, write, and speak in their own language.
  • Promote, guide, and stimulate institutions to use OTRS to grant free licensed content and enable upload and/or reuse of content (Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia).
  • Examples of successful organisations are attracting and stimulating other institutions: meemoo, Erfgoedcel Pajottenland Zennevallei, Iedereen Leest
  • Less physical conferences: no travel, no hotel, no entrance fee, so less budget required? We need alternative expenses and support for our volunteers:
    • More budget for volunteer expenses?
    • More budget for (professional) video production?
    • More budget for other communication channels?
    • More budget for websites? Additional possibilities with One.com
      • Extra websites/domain names, e.g. wikilovesheritage.be
    • More budget for publications?
      • Several user communities have requested more useful material
      • Rewrite of Book “Écrire pour Wikipédia”? (there is no French up-to-date handbook?)
      • Brochure “Write articles and uploading images” (and translation in fr/nl)
      • How to write Wikidata Queries. There is a new website that could be translated
    • More budget for volunteers?
    • More budget for other tools?

Enabling factors

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  • Fast internet connections
  • Powerful client devices
  • Open source software
  • Virtualisation (Wikimedia cloud)

Programs

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Basically, WMBE will continue the same (good, proven) programs and activities as the last previous years. We will go for more stability, predictability, impact, and performance. Through 2021 we plan for more virtual activities due to corona. We plan to better support the volunteers (online help, expenses, documentation, helpdesk, training, and assistance).

We continue to use the Outreach program planning and review tool to monitor the progress and the impact of our activities on the progress of the projects. We announce and document the activities on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons project pages. Technical aspects are documented on the WMBE website, Wikidata, and other projects, as appropriate for the project. We refer to existing documentation and procedures on other Foundation websites. We use social platforms to announce and report our activities.

We use Phabricator to report technical and operational problems.

We educate collaborating institutions and organisations to use Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, and related tools being instruments to promote and facilitate the creation of new Wikipedia pages for their own benefit. Institutions and organisations have less budgets to pay employees, so they could benefit from the Wikipedia/Wikimedia volunteers to create and maintain web pages.

We need to pay more attention to volunteer, partner, and social platform communication. Our own websites, Facebook,Twitter, and Telegram are evident instruments. The press, radio, and television are also to be kept in the loop.

We need to choose a limited number of successful and visible campaigns/activities, rather than a multitude of small, unwatched, or less important activities, that do not attract much attention or participants.

Let us also pay attention to the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia on 15 January 2021, the integration of Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikipedia, and the long-term strategy (Strategy 2030). This requires much more public attention.

We search for more collaboration with schools, universities, and more generic cultural institutions and organisations. Heritage clubs should be more attracted to our activities. Recent and early retired people are seeking an interesting new hobby, but they might require more technical training and might suffer from a slower learning curve? Individuals of +65 are less susceptible to IT techniques, and the MediaWiki interface which is not always simple, straightforward, nor well documented.

We need to plan for engaging a first employee. There is currently a lot of operational work to do, that is currently done by one single, or a few volunteers.

Volunteer program

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Volunteers should not feel alone. We need to support volunteers.

  • Support volunteers (transport, museum tickets, training, books, brochures)
  • Have laptops available for renting during activities (Chromebook? 250-300€)
  • Corona masks with a “Wikimedia Belgium” label
  • Provide printed material:
    • Schrijven voor Wikipedia
    • How to upload photos
    • Brochure ateliers FR/NL

Activities that are planned:

  • 15th of January: Celebrate 20 year Wikipedia: Press, radio, TV campaign - Event?
  • March - Mois de la Contribution Francophone
  • Wiki Science Competition

GLAM program

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Collaboration with Musea and organisations.

Activities that are planned/investigated:

  • Project digitise Museum Hof van Busleyden, Mechelen
  • Maison Losseau
  • Iedereen Leest (partial transfer of the texts of the website)

Educational program

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Collaboration with educational institutions.

Activities that are running/planned:

  • Architectuurinstituut Antwerpen (Women designers and architects)
  • Continue the university and hogeschool projects
  • Universiteitsbibliotheek, Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, UBGent, Gent

Other possibilities:

Heritage program

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Wiki Loves Heritage photo contest

Collaboration with heritage organisations:

Support: (video) training on how to use the MediaWiki applications and tools.

Activities that are planned:

Techniques

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We need to provide permanent education about Wikimedia techniques.

Documentation, awareness, promotion, implementation of automated tools: Technical training (how/when to use which WM tools => overlapping, (non)technical)

Special attention

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Humans are limited in capacity (mental, time availability, fatigue, boredom, repeated operations/tasks, understanding). We need more:

  • More volunteers
  • More coaches
  • More project managers
  • More board members
  • Closer collaboration with institutions, and better follow-up

At the same time we need to:

  • Continue budget follow-up/reallocation/monitoring/reporting
  • Adhere to government administration requirements
  • Office and meeting room renting
  • Websites (internet costs, maintenance)

Training

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Non-technical training

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  • Board development (management skills, general ledger principles, people & team skills, weekend => impossible due to corona?)
  • Volunteer development
    • Project management
    • Setting up activities

Technical training

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  • Wikipedia editing
  • Wikimedia Commons
  • Wikidata data modelling
  • Copyright and licensing
  • Lysteriabot queries based on Wikidata (Query) to deliver auto generated lists
  • Livestream workshops (video recording)
  • Video training.
  • How to use the Wikimedia cloud tools (advantages)
  • Using Wikimedia Meet (Jitsi server)

Organisation and Strategy

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See also

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