Each year the Wikimedia Foundation charts its course through an Annual Plan, setting the direction that drives us forward. In July, we kicked off work under the Foundation’s new Annual Plan, which will guide our efforts from July 2024 through June 2025.
Throughout the planning process, we spoke with hundreds of Wikimedians—on-wiki, in co-created community calls and through Talking:2024. These discussions both informed the writing of the 2024-2025 Annual Plan, and provided insights that have fueled our work during the first two quarters of that plan, from July to December 2024.
The four main goals of this plan are Infrastructure, Equity, Safety & Integrity, and Effectiveness with a strong emphasis on Product and Technology, which is found in each of the four goals. In this post, we’ll share some of the progress we’ve made in the first two quarters of our fiscal year:
Infrastructure
Our Infrastructure goal is all about advancing knowledge as a service. The goal is broken down into three buckets of work: WikiExperiences, Future Audiences, and Signals and Data Services.
WikiExperiences involves strengthening the security, reliability, and scalability of the Wikimedia projects, while also making the wikis easier and more enjoyable to use—especially for established editors and functionaries. By continuing to improve our platform and creating a better user experience, we hope more people will want to join the Wikimedia projects, find the information they need, and continue to be involved as editors, technical contributors, or readers.
Future Audiences is about reaching and engaging new people in the Wikimedia projects, and Signals and Data Services is about investing in improved data services to be able to more effectively measure the impact of our work.
Wiki Experiences
Contributor & Consumer Experience
In Q1, we released the highly anticipated Dark mode, which had been a longstanding wish shared by many Wikimedians. This feature reduces eye strain for readers by providing a low-contrast reading experience. We have now deployed Dark Mode to over 40 wikis, including for anonymous users.
Another longstanding request was a way for contributors to easily find on-wiki events and communities that interest them. In Q2, this resulted in the expansion of the Collaboration List feature in the Campaign Events extension, which now includes a tab for “Communities.” This tab features WikiProjects on the local wiki, as well as links to the WikiProject page and the associated Wikidata item. The Collaboration List was also recently enhanced with more search filters, so people can now search for events by wikis or topics. Additionally, wikis with the CampaignEvents extension enabled can access the Invitation List feature, which was released in Q1. This feature helps organizers identify users who might be interested in their upcoming event or WikiProject, based on their contribution history.
Automoderator is the latest deployment in a suite of tools that volunteer editors can use to fight disinformation while making content moderation more efficient. A substantial number of edits are made to Wikimedia projects that should unambiguously be undone, reverting a page back to its previous state. In the past, patrollers and administrators had to spend a lot of time manually reviewing and reverting these edits. Powered by the new “Revert Risk” machine learning models, Automoderator automatically detects and reverts harmful edits. Between Q1 and Q2, Automoderator was deployed on 6 new wikis.
In addition to that, AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. In the same spirit of supporting editors on the wikis, the Chart extension, which enables editors to create data visualizations, is now available on MediaWiki.org and three pilot wikis.
We have also started introducing updates aimed at enhancing the editing experience on the iOS mobile app as part of a broader transition from a reader-focused platform to one that fully supports both reading and editing. Editors on the iOS mobile app have now updated navigation features, which include a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view. Expanding on this effort, the Alternative Text suggested edits feature has now been fully deployed to production on the iOS App for Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and French Wikipedias. This feature is designed to help newcomers add alt text to images, aiming to improve accessibility and engagement.
We are also continuing to look for ways to improve the experience for contributors with extended rights on the projects, like stewards. Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.
To guarantee a more secure and privacy-conscious experience without compromising convenience, we are updating Single User Login, the system that allows users to login on one Wikimedia site and be automatically logged in across all, to ensure compatibility with browser anti-tracking measures and will roll out to all users by the end of March. This will also further improve account security by limiting all authentication to a single domain.
The Foundation launched a series of community conversations with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for the next fiscal year. While current efforts focus on improvements to the UploadWizard that will make it easier for moderators, there are a wide variety of interests and needs across Commons that have been discussed with and across community members in the last few months.
And these are just a few examples of the progress made in the first two quarters. We’ve resolved a total of 650 volunteer-reported issues in Phabricator in the last 6 months. For instance, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page. We have also resolved bugs in important areas like Add Link, the Android Wikipedia App, and the “Download as PDF” system, among others.
To foster close, ongoing collaboration with community members across WikiExperiences work, the Foundation launched a Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) as a one-year pilot in October 2024. The council brings together technical contributors, affiliates and the Foundation to collaborate on building a more resilient, future-ready technological platform. The Council is charged with making recommendations around product and tech development work over a multi-year horizon to help align to the strategic direction of the Foundation. PTAC has already released its first recommendation.
Future audiences
We are also responding to volunteer requests to experiment with how new generations of people may read and use Wikipedia content. Our reader experience teams are running six experiments now to help us learn where to invest even more time and attention. To learn more about “free knowledge everywhere” as a potential strategy for multigenerational sustainability, we began an experiment to remix Wikipedia content into short “fun fact” videos and publish them on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube – popular platforms where younger generations like to spend time and learn. Over the course of October 2024 to January 2025, we attained a total of 1.87M views and 1.51M unique users reached via this experiment, indicating that this is an effective strategy to bring Wikipedia knowledge to younger audiences at scale. We are continuing to test different content types and are inviting community members who are active on these platforms to join in and collaborate with us.
Knowledge Equity
Our Knowledge Equity goal is all about making sure everyone in the Movement gets a fair say in decisions, resources are distributed equitably, and communities get the support they need to fill knowledge gaps. It’s also about building stronger, more inclusive connections—both globally and regionally—by convening and celebrating the humans behind the projects.
Closing knowledge gaps
During Q1 and Q2, we focused in particular on language equity by expanding the tools available to the movement around localization and translation of content. One highlight so far is the future of wiki projects in new languages, with a pilot that accelerated the onboarding of five new Wikipedias after language committee approval. The overall goal is to simplify the technical setup for creating language wikis and improve each phase of language incubation—before, during, and after. These new five languages are Pannonian Rusyn, Tai Nüa, Iban, Obolo, and Southern Ndebele, which have combined over 4.5 million native speakers. Through this experiment, the five new Wikipedias were able to use features like the Visual Editor, content translation, and WikiData directly in the main wiki spaces.
We also established the Language and Product Localization team that is working to facilitate multilingualism within the movement and provide tools that can easily be adapted for different languages, cultures, and regions.
Hubs
The Foundation worked on providing additional assistance to Hubs—new movement structures working across regions and thematic areas that bring together affiliates and communities while providing services and coordination.
Over the past few months, we have been supporting Hub exploration, including improving communication by creating a central “front door” where anyone can find information about Hubs. We have also brought people together through a community of practice, held regular support calls with Hub groups, published Hub guidelines, and a Hub Toolkit. Additionally, we have also provided targeted planning support and adjusted movement strategy grants to help kickstart Hub pilots through a new fund called the Wikimedia Hub Fund.
Fostering connections across the movement
Last August, over 2227 Wikimedians from 143 countries came together—1054 in person and 1173 online—at Wikimania in Katowice, Poland, our annual conference to celebrate and convene volunteer contributors. This Wikimania, made with love, welcomed the next generation of our movement. About 50% of the attendees were under 35, and for about half of them, it was their first Wikimania. As they engaged in discussions about the future of our movement there was a spotlight on product & technology and a celebration of functionaries across the movement. In total, over 300 sessions were available to the community in the six languages of the conference. Coverage of the event traveled around the world, including in the Guardian and the Economist. Wikimania remains an important part of the movement and fuels a sense of belonging for all who join.
To continue strengthening connections within the movement, we celebrated four Wikimedians from four different language communities through WikiCelebrate. They have been part of the movement for anywhere from 5 to 20 years, and two of them are users with extended rights. Their stories have been read more than 1,000 times across movement channels.
The Foundation also provided communications and event programming support to regional conferences (WikiArabia, WikiIndaba, WikiConference North America, WikiConvention francophone, itWikiCon 2024, Wikimedia CEE Meeting, Bangla WikiConference, Wiki Nigeria) and thematic (Global Advocacy) conferences.
Safety and Integrity
Our ongoing Safety and Integrity work revolves around both proactive work to advance awareness of and protect the Wikimedia model, as well as work to respond to broader global trends that may threaten the work of the Wikimedia projects.
Advance our model
During Q1, when UN Member States gathered in New York for the 79th United Nations General Assembly, the Foundation and affiliates led advocacy efforts to protect an open internet. We called on governments and the UN to ensure that stakeholders from all sectors can work together in deciding how digital technologies and spaces are governed.
A coalition of Wikimedia stakeholders were at the Summit of the Future, which took place in the days before the 79th General Assembly. The Summit represented the culmination of over a year of work from the Foundation and dozens of Wikimedia affiliates on the Global Digital Compact—a blueprint for how Member States shape their internet policies and develop regulation at the country level. We successfully advocated for inclusion of language that will protect community-moderated, public digital goods like Wikimedia far into the future. The Foundation reinforced this message by co-hosting “The Power of the Commons,” a UN side event showcasing grassroots efforts and the value of community-governed public-interest technologies. Wikimedia EU, Wikimedia Poland, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia Czech Republic were co-organizers of the event, while a core group of affiliates worked on the Open Letter and general advocacy efforts that led to successfully influence the final text of the Global Digital Compact and through it, the future of the internet.
Protect our projects and our people
Our reactive work so far this fiscal year has focused on responding to changing legal frameworks and fighting strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) that target Wikipedia. SLAPP lawsuits occur when individuals or entities in power disagree with what is published about them, even if the information is supported by reliable sources. They are designed to keep people silent on matters of public interest.
In Q1, the Foundation celebrated a legal victory involving a SLAPP in Germany. The SLAPP revolved around correctly-cited information about a gambling tycoon that appeared on Wikipedia, and, following many months of legal proceedings, including an appeal, the judgement ended in favor of keeping the article in full. The Foundation also filed an amicus brief in the Paraguayan Supreme Court involving another SLAPP with the potential to threaten freedom of expression and access to information.
In October, we filed an amicus brief or friend-of-the-court before the Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico, advocating that internet intermediary platforms should be protected from liability for user-generated content (UGC). The absence of such protections would threaten our community-led content creation and moderation model, as well as harm to the freedom of expression of readers and volunteer editors. We also continue to provide support for ongoing cases in India defending the rights of Wikimedians through every avenue available.
Additionally, we convened a cross-departmental working group to monitor and support the Wikimedia projects during the largest election year on record. Our goal was to understand and prepare for the impact of the elections on our work and on the projects, and to focus on cross-foundational coordination. The group identified the most critical elections, and worked with multiple Foundation teams to ensure a coherent response. Ahead of major global elections, we led media campaigns to generate news stories to increase public trust and understanding of Wikimedia. We worked very closely with volunteers before and during the elections, sharing training and resources with them, and actively monitored disinformation activity and incoming reports leading up to election date. At the end of the year, there had been no successful disinformation attacks on the projects; the Wikimedia guidelines and on-wiki processes worked like they should to prevent disinformation. You can read more about this work in a report on Meta.
In response to evolving internet privacy laws and regulations and seeing the urgent need to strengthen protections for personal data, we have started rolling out temporary accounts for unregistered (logged-out) editors on multiple wikis. Pilot communities have the chance to test and share comments to improve the feature before it is deployed on all wikis in mid-2025.
Laws and regulation
In the last year, there were significant changes in the regulations for online platforms. Wikipedia received its first independent audit under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and published the results. Notably, Wikipedia was the only Very Large Online Platform that did not receive a negative evaluation.
Effectiveness
Our Effectiveness goal emphasizes how the Foundation as an organisation can continue to adapt and improve its processes for maximum impact.
Processes
We enhanced the effectiveness of gathering and addressing user proposals by revamping the Community Wishlist, a space where technical suggestions and ideas are welcome. The improved Wishlist is now always open, allowing for continuous input, and supports submissions in any language, ensuring broader accessibility and engagement with technical suggestions and ideas.
One of the most significant changes to the previous version is the introduction of focus areas—clusters of ideas with the same underlying problem. In Q1 and Q2, 11 focus areas were scoped, touching diverse wikis, user levels, and content types. One focus area, Template Recall and Discovery, will serve as a case study guiding the Foundation to incorporate more focus areas into annual planning. Two areas, Task Prioritisation for Patrollers and Helping Newcomers and Patrollers Have a Shared Understanding of Moderator Work and Decisions, have also been created and progressed to consideration and fulfilment. In October 2024, machine-translation powered by MinT was implemented on the Wishlist, enabling the automatic translations of wishes. By December, we marked a noteworthy milestone: 300 wishes submitted and counting.
Financial sustainability
At the core of this objective is maintaining strong financial health, which increases the long-term sustainability of our movement. Thanks to a successful 2024 “Big English” campaign, we are on track to meet our revenue target for FY25. In parallel, Wikimedia Enterprise, a service for the high-volume commercial reusers of Wikimedia content, is performing well and is set to exceed revenue target by FY25.
We have increased cost-effectiveness by completing a relocation from our San Francisco office to a new, significantly smaller administrative space, resulting in a rent cost savings of over 80%. This move recognized the Foundation’s increasingly globally distributed workforce, with 82% based outside the San Francisco Bay Area and almost half based outside the US.
Be part of what comes next
We’re beginning to map out our next Annual Plan (July 2025 – June 2026), and we’d value your input. As the way we connect and share knowledge online keeps changing, your thoughts can help with our planning for next year.
To help kick off the conversation, we’ve prepared a list of questions for the Wikimedia Movement organized by topic of interest:
Your perspective will help how to allocate our finite resources toward achieving the most impact.
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