Volunteers
Together we are strong – how Wikimedia Deutschland strengthens volunteer communities
Every day, millions of people find reliable information from trusted sources in the German-language Wikipedia: Facts rather than misinformation! This is thanks to a strong community of volunteers who share their knowledge and help Wikipedia grow – with up to 400 new articles per day. None of this is possible without backing. Wikimedia Deutschland has been supporting the work of volunteers for over 20 years and is committed to ensuring that the community remains strong – again with a successful outcome in 2024!
A packed program, exchange and engagement: the 2024 community conferences
Together, community volunteers and Wikimedia Deutschland once again successfully organized community conferences in 2024. First and foremost the WikiCon in Wiesbaden. The annual “family reunion” of the German-speaking communities offered a varied conference program with more than 80 presentations, workshops and panel discussions. The focus was primarily on practical work on Wikipedia and its sister projects. However, another focus was on major future topics such as the impact of artificial intelligence on Wikipedia and the resilience of Free Knowledge in a world in crisis mode. In addition to the many committed volunteers, external guests such as Kirsten Bode and Andreas Grün from the German television broadcaster ZDF, Thomas Laufersweiler from the TV broadcaster ARD, Prof. Dr. Cornelia Mothes from Macromedia University in Leipzig and Prof. Dr. Claudia Paganini from the Munich School of Philosophy were also present. At a festive evening event, the “WikiOwls” were awarded to outstanding active contributors and projects for the eleventh time. The topics of the Wikipedia Future Congress (more on this in the Wikimedia article) were also discussed further at WikiCon.
With a total of 362 participants (263 on site and 99 online), it was the WikiCon with the highest number of attendees to date. “A good atmosphere, great opportunities for exchange, very good presentations, a good balance between a working atmosphere and relaxed conversations” – this is how one community member summarized the WikiCon 2024. The WikiCon is one of several community conferences that are organized every year in close cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland and that provide important impulses. AdminCon – the meeting of volunteers who administer the German-language Wikipedia – was also very popular again. The same goes for FemNetzCon, which brought together FLINTA* Wikipedians from Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the fourth time – with the goal to make Wikipedia more diverse.
The volunteer support barometer shows top values again
Every year, we use the volunteer support barometer to measure how satisfied the community is with Wikimedia Deutschland’s offers of support. For 2024, the survey continued to show a very high level of satisfaction with the association’s funding: 9.44 out of a maximum of 10 points. “A nice indicator that our offerings are noticed and appreciated by the communities,” says Sandro Halank from the team Community Conferences & Volunteer Support. In total, Wikimedia Deutschland provided 997 services for volunteers – an increase of 39 percent compared to the previous year – and supported 257 projects with over 2,000 participants.
New team launched: support for conflicts and personal stress
Wikimedia Deutschland not only supports the community financially, but also offers volunteers support in special life and conflict situations. The Support and Advice team began its work at the end of 2023, and another important milestone was reached with the opening of the advice center in October 2024. The advice center supports volunteers when disputes arise online, for example. “We don’t get involved in the content,” emphasizes team leader Miriam Konert, “we are not a reporting office”. Instead, volunteers can be shown strategies for resolving their conflicts – a network of external experts is also available. The motto is: helping people to help themselves. There is also help available in the event of a volunteer burnout.
The team also carries out awareness work and, together with the community, has developed new “Guidelines for respectful interaction at events”, which were successfully tested for the first time at WikiCon 2024. The range of support also includes educational offers such as workshops, for example on feminist topics, or on dealing with neurodivergence. Five of these workshops took place in 2024 with a total of 140 participants.
All of our formats have been developed in close cooperation with the communities and are very popularMiriam Konert
The advice center, which was founded in October, has already recorded eight ongoing advice processes after a short time. Wikipedians report that the counseling sessions provide them with immediate support and relief in difficult situations.
A tenth birthday and a triple award ceremony
Funded by Wikimedia, there are local (community) spaces in six German cities where the community comes together to edit, organize projects and to welcome new contributors. The local Wikipedia:Hanover space celebrated a special anniversary in 2024, having served as a meeting place for a dedicated community for ten years now. “We at Wikipedia:Hanover are all very different and have completely different interests – but we have a strong sense of togetherness,” says Wikipedian Bärbel Miemietz, describing the spirit of her local space. Bernd Schwabe, a recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, is also part of the Hanoverian community and has already written or significantly edited several thousand Wikipedia articles.
Every year, the “Wiki Loves” photo competitions show just how much the diverse commitment of volunteers enriches Wikimedia projects. Well over 30,000 images under a free license were submitted from Germany in 2024 in the two largest competitions, Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth. For the first time, a German edition of Wiki Loves Folklore also took place, with over 2,600 images uploaded to the free media archive Wikimedia Commons.
In December, Wikimedia Deutschland invited the winners of the three competitions to a joint awards ceremony at its offices in Berlin. In addition to the award winners, guests from the world of politics, culture and society were also present. Among them was Katharina Peranić from the German Foundation for Civic Engagement and Volunteering, who once again praised the exemplary effect of the competitions and of digital volunteering.
GLAM focus topic “Wiki Loves Democracy”
For many years, Wikimedia Deutschland has been working with the community to ensure that cultural institutions make their data and collections freely accessible to everyone, also including Wikimedia projects. With a successful outcome: More and more GLAM institutions (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) are opening up and placing their collections under a free license. In 2024, Wikimedia Deutschland organized almost 20 GLAM events with over 250 participants in person and online.
The motto of the GLAM year was “Wiki Loves Democracy”. This is an important topic at a time when liberal democracies around the world are facing threats from growing right-wing populism and increasing disinformation. One of the highlights was an event on the “Mothers of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany” in cooperation with the Archive of the German Women’s Movement in Kassel. “The focus on democracy in particular enabled us to reach many people who had not been previously involved in the GLAM projects,” says Holger Plickert, Project Manager Cultural and Memory Institutions at Wikimedia Deutschland.
A second focus was on the 250th birthday of the painter Caspar David Friedrich. Wikipedians spent three days in his birthplace of Greifswald and visited the Pomeranian State Museum, the historic buildings of Greifswald University and the St. Nikolai Cathedral parish. Not only did the Wikipedians take hundreds of photos, they also focused on collecting a lot of knowledge about the painter, which was then incorporated into Wikipedia. The activities surrounding the birthday were flanked by visits to the special exhibitions in the Hamburger Kunsthalle and on Museum Island in Berlin.
Focus on diversity and new volunteers
Wikimedia Deutschland continuously collects feedback on all events – whether they are GLAM projects, conferences or award ceremonies. “We check whether there is a need to adapt our existing support guidelines,” says Sandro Halank. It is particularly important to attract new volunteers and facilitate access for previously underrepresented groups – including women, people without a university degree or young volunteers. “We want to increasingly reflect this in our funding measures in close cooperation with the communities.”
New volunteers: two formats are very successful once again
For Wikipedia to retain its relevance as a bastion of free and reliable knowledge, it depends on an active community that is as large as possible. In 2024, Wikimedia Deutschland continued its efforts to motivate people to participate in Wikipedia on a permanent basis.
The “On the road with Wikipedia” format once again attracted a lot of interest. New and experienced volunteers came together for a weekend in Bielefeld to talk about their work on Wikipedia. It is precisely this personal contact that helps to break down barriers and make it easier to get started as a digital volunteer. “The atmosphere was constructive and helpful, and both sides benefited from the format,” Karoline Lölhöffel from the Participation & Community Management team describes the event. The newcomers now have a better understanding of how decisions are made in the Wikipedia community, for example. The experienced contributors learned a lot about the needs of new contributors. Due to the great response, “On the road with Wikipedia” will be continued with stops in Neu-Ulm and Erfurt in 2025.
Another important format for recruiting new volunteers is the “Young editors” series. At regular meetings sponsored by Wikimedia Deutschland, young people under 25 learn how they can get involved in Wikipedia. In 2024, there were a total of eleven events with over 50 participants.
Train the trainer and zebra meeting
There are also opportunities for institutions to get a targeted introduction to Wikipedia. Experienced volunteers from the community offer training courses at universities and schools, or for museums, libraries or associations. There is a lot of demand: for example, an edit-a-thon on the topic of “witches” took place as part of the Münster Droste Festival in 2024. At the Humboldt University Berlin, an event was held on the topic of “(Re)writing legal history: Wikipedia for forgotten lawyers” was offered, and there was also a seminar on Wikipedia at the University of Wuppertal. Wikimedia Deutschland offers further training to the trainers themselves: In the context of the Train-the-Trainer program 2024, for example, there was a series of seminars with 30 participants at three stations in Berlin, Cologne and Munich.
Another cooperation was established with the so-called Digital-Zebras, a project of the Berlin Central and State Library. Employees of the district libraries offer open consultation hours on digital topics. As knowledge about Wikipedia should not be missing, Karoline Lölhöffel from Wikimedia Deutschland gave five of the “zebras” an introduction to the Wiki world.
The re-shape funding program goes into its second round
Knowledge is power – especially in terms of whose perspectives become visible and are part of the official narrative. The stories and experiences of people who experience racism are still given too little consideration. In order to create more knowledge equity – including for Wikimedia projects – Wikimedia Deutschland has launched the re-shape funding program.
The first round came to an end in the summer of 2024. Ten projects were funded with 5,000 euros each and equipped with an extensive mentoring program. Each of these projects is committed to increasing the visibility of marginalized knowledge in different ways.
With the program, we have succeeded in providing those receiving support with extensive information about Free Knowledge and the Wikimedia projects, while at the same time opening up a space for critical debate.Riham Abed-Ali, Project Manager in the Marginalized Knowledge team
The first round was a learning process for all participants. “The exchange with those receiving support was an important part of understanding which questions, gaps and omissions we need to address in order to make Free Knowledge more inclusive in the future,” summarizes Riham Abed-Ali. Following an extensive evaluation, the program for the second round, which started in the autumn of 2024, was adapted. The funding requirements now include that all project results must be published under a free license. In the first round, those receiving could still opt out if there were good reasons to do so. In order to increase the diversity of participants, the criteria for participation are less strict than in the previous round.
In its second round, re-shape is funding ten projects that make marginalized knowledge more visible. The “Have you eaten yet?” project, for example, sheds light on Vietnamese food culture in the diaspora and creates a digital collection of personal stories and recipes. “Fragments of age(ing) in the migration society” is dedicated to the realities of life for older people with a history of migration and documents their experiences on an online knowledge platform. “Clocking In, Dreaming On” deals with the precarious working conditions of migrant suppliers and makes their perspectives accessible via podcasts, videos and exhibitions.
re·shape is an important program for us because it makes our concerns visible and tangible for both individuals and organizations that are committed to marginalized knowledge.Dominik Scholl, Head of the Culture and Marginalized Knowledge team
Interest in re-shape is high – around 80 projects have applied for the second round, with ten receiving funding. The circle of network partners has also grown. In addition to the new German organizations – postmigrantisches netzwerk e.V., associations, organizations and initiatives such as LAMSA e.V., Migration Lab, Migrationsrat Berlin e.V., Multikulturelles Forum e.V., RomaniPhen e.V., and SUPERRR Lab are also supporting the program. Wikimedia also works with these partner organizations on projects beyond
re-shape.
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