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Wikimedia Community User Group Malta/Reports/2021 Annual Report

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This is the fifth annual report for Wikimedia Community User Group Malta. The report is designed to fulfill a requirements for officially affiliated Wikimedia user groups. It covers the period from 1 August 2020 until 31 July 2021.

Overview

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Wikimedia Community User Group Malta revolves around the work of the Malta-registered non-profit voluntary organization Wikimedia Community Malta, which was originally registered with the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector in October 2015. The organization was officially recognized as an affiliated Wikimedia user group on 1 August 2016. All reports created by this affiliated user group are available here.

A general action plan for 2020 was drafted in December 2019, based on an informal evaluation of work from a previous year. For the purposes of this report, the general action plan for 2021, drafted in December 2020, should also be of interest.

The user group was administered through a series of regular meetings by the founding board held throughout 2020 and 2021.

The organisational year for this user group runs from January to December of each year, so the annual report required from it as an officially affiliated Wikimedia user group relates to work split over the latter part of one calendar year and the first half of the next year.

Activities

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For the second consecutive year a list of planned activities for the seasonal year (coinciding with the dates covered by this report) started being prepared in the summer just before the start of the seasonal year.

Highlights of activities between 1 August 2020 and 31 July 2021 include:

In accordance with Covid-19 restrictions associated with the global pandemic, all in person activities were cancelled and/or delivered exclusively as online events.

Grants for activities

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2 rapid grant applications were submitted during the period covered by this report:

Furthermore, WCM benefited indirectly from the CEE 2021 grant, which provided financial support for the prizes on that contest. It should also be noted that WCM activities were made possible through in kind support by Spazju Kreattiv and the European Commission's Malta Office. Moreover, Valletta Design Cluster collaborated with WCM on hosting Malta's first Wikimedian-in-Residence.

Metrics

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Here are some basic metrics from our activities with links to statistic tools:

Collaborations

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Collaborations with other organisations

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We hold our close collaborators to heart as they make much of what we do possible. This is an alphabetical list of our official collaborators since 2016, indicating relevant activities in the 2018/19 period covered by this report:

  • Bioversity International first requested a Wikipedia editing workshop and a general introduction to Wikimedia projects at their head quarters in Rome, Italy, through Wiki Media Community Malta in 2016. We delivered a second workshop for Bioversity in January 2018. The collaboration is ongoing and has now developed to include the European Forestry Institute (EFI) more directly through a project called EUFORGEN in Spring 2020. The relationship became dormant in after Spring 2020 owing to the Covid-19 global lockdown situation, but it is hoped that it will be reignited again once some type of normality is restored.
  • Electronic Music Malta (EMM) is a nonprofit organisation active in the field of Electronic Music in Malta. An informal collaboration with EMM aims to provide EMM members with training and awareness opportunities for Wikimedia projects. Their annual conference in May 2018 included a keynote speech on editing Wikipedia in the context of histories of electronic music, especially in Malta. Keynote video available here. This point remains active as WCM continues to collaborate on the history of Electronic Music in Malta, with a target to explore Wikidata in 2021/22.
  • Following an initial invitation for Toni Sant to present at a Wikipedia perspective at the Digital Prospects for the Maltese Language symposium in November 2019, the European Commission's Malta Office invited WCM to organise a series of events around the 2019 European Parliament election leading to a 2019 European Parliament Election Edit-a-thon in Valletta. This has led to the involvement of the Language and Translation Directorate within the European Commission's Malta Office to support the development of Rebbiegħa CEE Spring 2021 after the relative success of 2020. Online Wikipedia editing training for Maltese translators based in Luxembourg and Brussells was also provided by WCM in January 2021.
  • M3P Foundation is the Malta Media Memory Preservation organization, a Malta-registered non-profit VO which provides us with technical support and resources, including web hosting and an office address, as well as other general assistance through our shared goals.
  • Spazju Kreattiv through a formal collaboration agreement with Fondazzjoni Kreattività, Malta's national centre for creativity, since April 2016. The initial period of the agreement expired in April 2019 when the agreement was renewed for another five year period. Spazju Kreattiv was central for the success of Art+Feminism in Malta in both 2019 and 2020. It has also helped us establish a smooth transition to online meetings, workshops, meet-ups and edit-a-thons during the Covid-19 lockdown in the period covered by this report.
  • A new working relationship was established during the period covered by this report for the creation of Malta's first Wikimedian-in-Residence program at the Valletta Design Cluster. In spite of the fact that all activities moved online during the period of the residency, WCM collaborated smoothly with the VDC through a formal agreement that covers the period September 2020 - August 2021.

Interactions with other Wikimedia affiliates

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We recognize that interactions with other Wikimedia affiliates are essential for the healthy growth of our user group. This is a list of other Wikimedia affiliates with which we had meaningful interaction during the period covered by this report:

Along with this, a weekly radio show called Vjaġġi Enċiklopediċi was broadcast on Campus FM featuring regular guests from the global Wikimedia Movements and general advocacy for open knowledge projects. 26 recordings of the broadcasts from October 2020 to March 2021 are archived here.

Additionally, during the period covered by this report WCM members presented their work on mt.wikipedia during:

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