Overview
As in past years, Program Community focused its activities on community health, community building, recruitment and international collaboration. Our 2021 activities were dominated by the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia, 50 years of women’s suffrage in Switzerland and the WikiSwiss Awards. In collaboration with Program GLAM, we held our first-ever bilingual workshop as part of the women’s suffrage theme, making the event more accessible to Switzerland’s German- and French-speaking communities. Thematic events also included the sixth edition of Women for Wikipedia.
Program Community also launched a flagship event with our first-ever awards ceremony to honor key volunteers throughout Switzerland, as explained in Community’s highlight section. We enhanced our international relationships at WikiCons and Wikimania, and we promoted interests valued by our community, including the topic of Black people and culture, as well as climate change. We hope the WikiSwiss Awards and all our activities will continue to build connections and show our gratitude for years to come.
Highlight activity
In 2021, Wikimedia CH conceived of and realized the first-ever WikiSwiss Awards and the accompanying in-person celebration on 12 June in Lucerne. We welcomed 55 guests to the event, and many of the attendees met in person for the first time. It received almost universally positive feedback and was a valuable networking opportunity. In addition to the awards, the half-day ceremony included a celebration of Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary, a networking lunch, two keynote presentations and a panel discussion. Read more about the speakers and the future of data in the Partnership & Outreach highlight of this annual report. Or watch our video about the ceremony.
The WikiSwiss Awards honored the extraordinary work and dedication of the community’s volunteers. In particular, this year’s awards were given to those Wikipedians living in Switzerland who’d been active for at least the past five years and enhanced Wikimedia projects in German, Italian, French, Alemannic or Romansh. The winners contributed a minimum of 10,000 edits, including contributing consistently to Swiss-related content (at least 50 edits and 1,000 bytes in a single article) in the main categories related to Switzerland.
At the awards ceremony, we also celebrated the winner of Wiki Loves Switzerland 2020. While this contest actually occurred the year before, we handed out the award at our 2021 ceremony. You can read more about Wiki Loves Switzerland in Wikimedia CH’s Annual Report 2020.
Key program activities
- Supported various celebrations for Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary (in addition to the event highlighted above): (1) Sang “Happy Birthday” on Zoom with Jimmy Wales (access via Facebook). (2) Produced a video (see it at 57:34 of this YouTube video) for Wikipedia’s global virtual birthday party.
- Celebrated 50 years of women’s suffrage in Switzerland with a yearlong schedule of events, including several edit-a-thons to enhance open knowledge about the right to vote and women’s history in Switzerland, as well as the sixth edition of Women for Wikipedia.
- Of note among the events celebrating 50 years of women’s suffrage: In response to a clear demand from our community, we held the first-ever bilingual event: the January 2021 virtual edit-a-thon about women in film presented in German and French. This same event was the first time a community group had evolved to create a dual-language event. The Who writes his_tory? initiative has been a German-language volunteer group for years but changed their typical programming to offer a more explicit welcome to the French-speaking community. The event’s successes included 11 articles created and 20 more improved by the 12 or so French-language participants (see the event dashboard). Moreover, Programs GLAM and Community collaborated to support the event, lending expertise in both fields. (More details about the edit-a-thon are in GLAM’s highlight section.)
- Participated in WikiCons. WikiCon Francophone was a 100% virtual event organized by a team out of Tunis, Tunisia. A hybrid German WikiCon included live activities in Erfurt, Germany, and worldwide online participation. Ulrich Lantermann, Community Manager, shed light on the topic “Wikipedia in Education” and presented current projects from Switzerland.
- Supported weekly online meetups and an edit-a-thon with Noircir Wikipedia to improve articles about Black people and culture, recruit new Wikipedians and support international outreach.
- Organized workshops around climate change topics as part of the WikiProjekt Schweiz Klima.
- Helped organize the #WikiGap edit-a-thon in cooperation with the Swedish Embassy and the German and Austrian chapters.
- Supported several other workshops and edit-a-thons with new and existing partners, including Nau.ch and the Jesuit Library in Zurich.
- Presented openedu.ch and the Cassandra project at the online Wikimania in August.
- Organized the Priroda Dossier editing contest with Swiss OpenStreetMap to improve and add entries under the category “Protected Areas of Switzerland.” Participants were active in German, French and Italian, and we cross-linked with Wikidata and OpenStreetMap.
Program impact
- In 2021, Program Community held the chapter’s biggest in-person event ever (hosting 55 people) to celebrate Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary and the WikiSwiss Awards.
- In another first, we supported the first-ever bilingual activity, meeting a clear need from the community. The edit-a-thon about Swiss women filmmakers at the Solothurn Film Festival was held in German and French, expanding access to the Who writes his_tory? events that have been offered only in German for years.
- Program Community attracted new editors and re-energized existing ones with the chapter’s thematic focus. Even workshop series that have been offered for years supported the theme. For example, WikiProjekt Schweiz, a series of writing ateliers, included a workshop at the Historical Museum in Baden on women’s historical biographies and another workshop at the Gosteli Foundation, the archive on the history of the Swiss women’s movement in Worblaufen near Bern.
- Throughout the year, we continued to build our experience around successful virtual and hybrid events.
Looking ahead
In 2022, we plan to further explore how to scale our Community efforts to better engage volunteers. As mentioned in Program GLAM, we learned in 2021 that our chapter can build engagement and interest with a thematic focus and that we should engage co-organizers to marshal needed resources and extend the impact of thematic programming. These same lessons apply to Program Community. As part of our efforts, we will recruit a junior-level Community Manager to involve community members more actively. We will also promote community members’ ongoing involvement in yearlong thematic events centered around the Year of Sound.
Operationally, we will look at revamping some or all train-the-trainer programs so that trainers who prepare institutions’ instructors to host future workshops on their own are compensated for their time and effort – a clear demand from our community.
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Photo credits
- High-resolution view of Zurich from the Quaibrücke, downstream on the Limmat River. This view shows some of the most important landmarks in Zurich: The towers of Fraumünster, Grossmünster and St. Peter (whose clock has Europe’s largest dial). The historic old town is on the right side of the river, and the area around the famous Bahnhofstrasse on the left. This panorama was constructed from two exposure layers with 13 images each, so from a total of 26 individual exposures. Photo by Daniel Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- The Swiss flag icon developed to celebrate Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary. Image by Lantus (talk), Wikimedia Foundation, CC0.
- Wikimedia CH celebrates 20 years of Wikipedia and premieres the WikiSwiss Awards at Neubad Luzern in Lucerne. Photo by Kerstin Sonnekalb (WMCH), own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Ulrich Lantermann, Community Manager for the German-speaking part of Switzerland, honors the community member with the username Hadi. Photo by Lantina, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. Overlaid on the photo: The 5- and 10-year awards for the Wikimedia CH WikiSwiss Awards. Image by Lantus (talk), own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
- Winner of Wiki Loves Switzerland 2020, awarded at the 2021 WikiSwiss Awards. An alphorn player taking a break after playing Swiss folk music for tourists on Mt. Pilatus. The player is mesmerized by the beauty of Switzerland’s landscape. Photo by Jeremy Blatti, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Torchlight procession for women’s suffrage in Zurich. The banner reads, “We love our country too. Let’s be responsible for it.” Photo by Heinz Baumann, Comet Photo AG (Zürich), from the collection of the ETH Library. Published on Wikimedia Commons in cooperation with Wikimedia CH, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- An atelier for Noircir Wikipedia on 18 December 2021 at the Brülhart Gallery in Geneva, which features contemporary art by African women. Photo by Flor (WMCH), own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- One of the most popular streets in Zúrich. Photo by Ottavio.Giovanniello, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Advertisement for the Edit-a-thon on Women in Film at the Solothurn Film Festival in January 2021. It was the chapter’s first-ever bilingual event and marked an expansion in the language communities embraced by the event’s host, Who writes his_tory? Image by Debora (WMCH), own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Tireless seagulls after a cruise on Lake Lucerne. Surrounded by popular excursion mountains and peaks, Lake Lucerne offers arguably the greatest scenic variety in Switzerland, characterized by a mild lake climate, boat cruises with five historic paddle wheel steamers and 15 elegant salon motor vessels, and the city of Lucerne. Photo by Dghosal, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Lake Thun and Niesen, a mountain peak in the Bernese Alps. Photo by Gabrielle Merk, own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.