Strategy

The following is Wikimedia Sverige's new strategy for the years 2021 to 2025.

• See explanations of important words in the glossary.
• See the background of the strategy.

Strategy 2021–2025

This is Wikimedia Sverige's strategy for the years 2021 to 2025. The strategy describes how the chapter will work until 2025 to achieve its overall vision, and provides a number of frameworks and guidelines for how we will get there.

The chapter's objective

The chapter shall work to make knowledge freely accessible to everyone. Among other things, we do this by supporting Wikimedia Foundation's online, multilingual knowledge platforms, which everyone can freely use, edit, share and spread. The chapter shall also work towards spreading knowledge about these platforms, promoting their use, supporting the technology that is crucial for them, as well as collaborating with other free knowledge organizations.

From Wikimedia Sverige's by-laws

The chapter's vision

“Free knowledge for a better world. To help people and organizations create and support free knowledge, and make it easily accessible for all.”

From Wikimedia Sverige's vision.

We are Wikimedia Sverige

Wikimedia Sverige is an association with its roots in the digital knowledge society, sprung from the platform Wikipedia. Our mission, goals and activities are all to make knowledge free and accessible to more people, in more ways.

Wikimedia Sverige is a non-profit association, and its members are of crucial importance for our work. It is them who democratically – through our annual meeting and the board – make decisions that set a direction for the association's work. The association's office and members work together with Wikimedia movement volunteers and partners in order to do our work with good results. If the strategy is to become reality, we need to continue developing the internal work of the association, and we need to offer more space to members on equal conditions.

We work in different sectors of society. Partnerships with different organizations are a given part of our work, enabling us to constantly find new innovative opportunities. Cultural heritage is an important area to us; we work close to the so-called GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector, both in Sweden and internationally. As we believe in the great value of education and lifelong learning, we also see the educational sector as an obvious cooperation partner.

The chapter has a high level of technical competence. Our members and staff all contribute to the technical development of the Wikimedia platforms. They also support external actors in developing their platforms. The chapter works towards making the platforms accessible to all, regardless of their disabilities. For several reasons, free and open-source software (FOSS) is of central importance to us. For one, because we want knowledge to be spread to as many people as possible. Furthermore, it helps us ensure long-term access to and independence of knowledge. Finally, FOSS prevents personal integrity violations.

Wikimedia Sverige's commitment is both national and international. We are part of the global Wikimedia movement, and every day we work together with other Wikimedia chapters, user groups and volunteers around the world. We want to be a driving force in developing new concepts, coordinating initiatives and sharing experiences so that the Wikimedia movement can continue to develop globally.

Mission of the chapter

The mission of the chapter is to enable volunteers, members and other organizations to spread free knowledge, and to ensure that it is used. To concretize this mission, it has been broken down into four areas:

• Access – Wikimedia Sverige shall work for a societal change in Sweden and globally, where increased access to free knowledge becomes the norm and practically possible, and where high quality material benefits the Wikimedia platforms.
• Use – Wikimedia Sverige shall contribute to a feeling of safety on the Wikimedia platforms, so that people are motivated to use the knowledge on them, and to contribute to it themselves.
• Community – Wikimedia Sverige shall support existing communities, as well as help create new communities.
• Enabling – The work of Wikimedia Sverige shall be financially and operatively sustainable. It shall be possible to re-use and build upon by the broader free knowledge movement.

Background to the strategy

“A strategy is a general document aiming at developing the activities of the chapter. It lays out, based on an analysys, how the chapter will achieve its stated goal.”

Wikimedia Sverige's strategy describes how the association will be working in the upcoming four years in order to come closer to our vision of free knowledge for a better world.

This is described in a number of strategic directions and goals that the association's members, volunteers, board and staff should work towards. In this way, the strategy lays out a long-term direction for the association.

The strategy is aligned with with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals as well as with Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) strategic recommendations. Both of these extend to the year 2030.

Access

The chapter shall work to ensure that information that is of broad interest is made open and easily accessible, linked together and refined.

With the vision of free knowledge for a better world, a central part of Wikimedia Sverige's activities is focused on ensuring that knowledge is made freely available via the Wikimedia platforms. A lot of valuable information is still difficult to access. This is true in a global context, where information is often neither structured nor digitized, but also in Sweden. With the right efforts, Wikimedia Sverige can work to make this information both more accessible and more useful.

We will achieve this by:

• Putting more interconnected and linked data on the Wikimedia platforms.
• Making this information machine-readable and providing it with unique identifiers, so that it can be linked together and used by other actors, for example with the help of Wikidata.
• Championing the refinement of information, such as via volunteer improvements of data.
• Working towards making information that is of broad general interest and useful to many people available.
• Enabling the uploads and use of large datasets.

The chapter shall work towards a societal change, where increased access to free knowledge is facilitated by practical means and thus becomes the norm.

Major societal changes are needed in order for knowledge to become freely available to everyone. We are talking about changes in attitudes, education and technical support. This is an area where Wikimedia Sverige can make great contributions, not least through cooperation with various parts of the society.

We will achieve this by:

• Making an effort to get more organizations to work strategically with spreading knowledge and making it freely accessible.
• Collaborating with other actors to achieve societal change towards free and accessible knowledge, both in Sweden and internationally. This can include initiatives such as influencing public opinion and building different types of networks.
• Working to ensure that information is made available under open licenses without restricting conditions.
• Working to establish better [technical] infrastructure, stable funding and knowledge exchange in the area of free access to information.
• Collaborating with other actors to make information available and check its quality.
• Sharing knowledge and encouraging learning about open licenses and data.

Use

The chapter shall provide volunteers and users with tools and opportunities to contribute to and ensure qualitative information.

For a continued high use of the Wikimedia platforms, credibility and verifiability need to be safeguarded. Volunteers need to be given opportunities, tools and knowledge to be able to contribute to articles using credible sources. Furthermore, users need to be given opportunities, tools and knowledge to understand how they can critically review the articles they read and the sources used. In this way, the Wikimedia platforms will become become important democracy tools, which Wikimedia Sverige shall promote.

We will achieve this by:

• Promoting the work of ensuring that the knowledge shared the Wikimedia platforms is accurate and presented in a correct way.
• Implementing initiatives aimed at raising knowledge about source criticism and fact-checking.
• Developing tools, methods and campaigns to help volunteers and users quality check information and provide it with sources.

The chapter shall contribute to improving the user experience on the Wikimedia platforms.

The Wikimedia platforms need to become more user-friendly – for both their contributors and users.

We will achieve this by:

• Identifying technical opportunities and solutions that lower thresholds for volunteers to contribute, and training volunteers in using them.
• Identifying areas where software development is particularly important, and working to influence the Wikimedia Foundation in that direction.
• Ensuring that the tools used or developed by us are well documented and updated.

The chapter shall work towards giving all volunteers equal opportunities to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms.

To ensure that the community is inclusive, the chapter needs to extend particular support to some volunteers to enable them to use the Wikimedia platforms.

We will achieve this by:

• Working with the integration of new volunteers so that everyone quickly becomes comfortable with the platforms.
• Identifying underrepresented knowledge areas and social groups, and supporting their further development.
• Focusing on groups who have knowledge about intangible cultural heritage or the knowledge and cultural heritage of indigenous peoples.

Community

It's easy to talk about "the community" in singular. That's why Wikimedia Sverige wants to particularly emphasize that the Wikimedia projects are comprised of several different communities, and that this strategy is meant to reach many communities – both Swedish-speaking ones and those that work in other languages in Sweden.

The chapter shall support existing communities.

Wikimedia Sverige shall work to support the various communities that contribute to the Wikimedia projects. Those who contribute to the Wikimedia projects should know about the association Wikimedia Sverige and be aware that our support is available to them. The association needs take initiative to reach out to these communities.

We will achieve this by:

• Compiling and maintaining the chapter's and the communities' internal knowledge.
• Initiating or supporting networking meetings between communities in different locations or thematic areas, and offering assistance with the first meetings and gatherings of a community.
• Supporting communities and volunteers with resources, such as training, equipment, activity grants or our staff's skills.

The chapter shall help create new communities.

It can be difficult for a new community to get started and keep going long enough for it to build its own capacity. This is an area where Wikimedia Sverige can make a difference by supporting new communities – for example among underrepresented groups or national minorities.

We will achieve this by:

• Investigating which groups in Sweden are underrepresented on the Wikimedia projects and supporting them in their work.
• Getting to know and actively contacting more communities than we do today.
• Extending our particular support to communities that work with or in Sweden's official minority languages.
• Creating contexts and tools that make it easier for new volunteers, especially minorities and marginalized groups, to feel welcome, and to stay in the movement and on the Wikimedia platforms.
• Increasing the number of events run by volunteers.
• Working to make it easier for members in other associations to get involved in the communities of the Wikimedia movement.

Enabling

The chapter's work shall be operationally sustainable.

A stable organization is a prerequisite for the chapter to be able to achieve its vision. Stability is reliant on a strong membership base and committed volunteers.

We will achieve this by:

• Growing both our membership base and our activities so that Wikimedia Sverige can become a popular movement in the long run.
• Working strategically to include volunteers in our activities, decision-making and organizational development, as well as providing support and encouragement for volunteer-initiated projects.
• Dedicating resources to coordinating and supporting volunteer initiatives.
• Avoiding dependence on individuals, and at the same time having a well-balanced competence profile for our staff, board and volunteers.
• Supporting our members in their local and regional initiatives.
• Making it easier for our members and other interested people to find information about what Wikimedia Sverige is and learn about our work.
• As far as practically possible, selecting free software and open source tools for our work.
• Striving for increased transparency within the Wikimedia movement.

The chapter's work shall be financially sustainable.

In order to achieve financial sustainability, Wikimedia Sverige cannot become too dependent on an individual party. We must therefore strive to achieve a well-diversified income stream. This will be a basis for operational sustainability, and for being able to contribute to the development of new tools and services. In order to be able to scale up our national and international operations, funding needs to increase to a corresponding degree, so that internationalization can be achieved sustainably as well.

We will achieve this by:

• Ensuring a stable, sufficient and diversified income flow, both globally and nationally, that corresponds to the association's ambitions.
• Finding strategic partnerships, where financial and staff resources can be built in collaboration with other actors.
• Finding strategic partnerships for innovation.

The chapter shall collaborate with new partners and actors.

By collaborating with new partners and actors, Wikimedia Sverige wants to spread the knowledge about how the Wikimedia platforms can be used in many different contexts. By collaborating with more partners, Wikimedia Sverige will become a network builder in society and kan work towards increased transparency.

We will achieve this by:

• Strengthening our organization through strategic collaborations with key players in a wide range of organizations, in the non-profit and public sectors and among intergovernmental organizations.
• Making Wikipedia and our other relevant platforms an obvious part of all education.
• Seeking collaborations with a focus on taking part in, and spreading, free knowledge and data.

The association's work shall be based on and contribute to learning and monitoring what's happening in the world.

Wikimedia Sverige's work is of high quality and valuable to many, including other organizations within the free knowledge movement. That's why we need to work clearly and systematically so that others can benefit from our work.

We will achieve this by:

• Spreading Wikimedia Sverige's ideas and tools to other parts of the free knowledge movement.
• Actively monitoring and collecting information about what's happening in the free knowledge world, and actively sharing and taking in experiences from other parts of the Wikimedia movement.