Annual Report 2022/Story: Development and improvements of strategically important tools

Tillgång

2022

In this story, we focus on how we have continued to develop our capacity to provide support to the volunteer developers who are responsible for strategically important tools. Wikimedia Sverige's development of three tools has continued and we have investigated the needs and interest in collaborating with us through surveys and a large number of discussions.

Demonstration of a newly developed OpenRefine function – automatic reconciliation of file names with existing files on Wikimedia Commons. This was the first step towards implementing file upload functionalities in OpenRefine, which was completed later in 2022. Thanks to this work, volunteers and GLAMs have been able to use the software to upload almost 30,000 files.

Wikimedia Sverige is working on establishing a thematic hub for content partnerships within the coming years. We want to establish the organizational structures, the infrastructure and the capacity needed for strategic, long-term work towards improving the conditions for content partnerships – in Sweden as well as globally. An important piece of this puzzle is continued development of the specialized tools that can be used to make content available on the Wikimedia platforms. For example, a museum might want to share digitized files or photos on Wikimedia Commons in a so-called large-scale upload, meaning that thousands of files with accompanying metadata are uploaded using a software tool rather than manually. Right now, there's a plethora of available tools they can choose to do this task, and it's not always easy to identify the tool that's best for the job and worthy of investing time in mastering.

In the 2021 Annual Report, we explain why we're prioritizing this and summarize the experimental preparatory work we had done.

The work to support the maintenance and further development of existing, strategically important tools for successful content partnerships has taken several important steps forward during the year.

In 2022, our work on contributing to the maintenance and continued development of the three tools: Pattypan, ISA Tool and OpenRefine has continued. This ongoing work has been important for both gaining a better insight into the costs of the development and deepening our collaboration with the various volunteer developers we work with. Through a couple of smaller externally funded assignments, we have also been able to contribute with some further development of new functionalities when the volunteer developers were not interested in doing so.

In parallel with this practical work, we have compiled a list of the tools used in the Wikimedia movement, and carried out surveys and interviews to understand which of these tools are most prioritized by different target groups. This knowledge has since served as a foundation for the discussions we've had with a large number of different stakeholders.

There's a lot of interest in getting involved in this work and supporting us in our further steps. A couple of Wikimedia organizations who have technical skills on their teams say they are willing to dedicate some working hours to this work in the coming years, which we see as a great success. For example, we're talking with the Wiki Movement Brazil User Group about how they can contribute with their expertise on how the tools could be made less resource-heavy – something that's often needed in less prosperous countries where internet usage is otherwise too expensive. This is an important piece of the puzzle if we want to improve the diversity of our material and make sure people and organizations do not get excluded from our work. We're also having conversations with Wikimedia Deutschland about closer collaboration around tools connected to Wikidata and Wikibase and about sharing knowledge and experieces.

However, it's still not clear how long-term financing can best be organized, which is one of the challenges we're going to focus on in 2023.