Work and development strategy
Wikimedia Serbia Board approves the
as a mutual document of Wikimedia Serbia Board and its members, which will be the basis for organization’s planning, development and activity measurement in the following two years. This strategy has middle-term goals, but its execution will be a subject of constant control.
All subsequent instances of the Work and development strategy of Wikimedia Serbia will reconsider the goals and strategic priorities by (a) keeping suggestions from this Strategy (b) changing them or adding to them (c) completely rewriting them.
Throughout the creation of this Strategy, all Board and Secretariat members were consulted, and members of the organization were able to contribute to the process of defining strategic goals.
This strategy encompasses eight thematic areas:
1) capacity development of Wikimedia Serbia,
2) improving content quality of Wikimedia projects,
3) support for networking and increasing the amount of free content in Wikimedia projects,
4) regional and international cooperation,
5) attracting new members for Wikimedia Serbia,
6) attracting new users for Wikimedia projects,
7) public relations and media communications,
8) following and analysis of activity in Wikimedia projects.
This strategy is a result of several months worth of work and is based on the:
- Work and development strategy of Wikimedia Serbia draft, 2012.
- Status and activity report of Wikimedia Serbia, 2012.
Introduction
Wikimedia Serbia is a non-government, non-partisan and non-profit organization, whose goals are the promotion and support for creation, collection and dissemination of free content, in a strictly non-profit way, as well as the ideas regarding equitable access to knowledge and education.
The organization is registered in Serbia and acts as the only official Wikimedia chapter in Serbia.
Purpose
The purpose of the organization is finding the answer to the question of how knowledge can become completely free and thus available to all human beings.
Goals
The goals of the organization are the promotion and support for creation, collection and dissemination of free content in Serbian language solely in a non-profit way, as well as the ideas regarding equitable access to knowledge and education.
Capacity development of Wikimedia Serbia
Wikimedia Serbia was founded more than 6 years ago and since then it has gathered about 80 members, it has actively partaken in both local and international processes as a recognizable organization in the free knowledge movement. It has started and supported many projects and it has held a pioneering and leading role in some of them.
Today's amount of work and activity developments have surpassed the existing capacities of the organization. In some areas, such as information throughput and availability and work efficiency, there is now a bottleneck.
In order to increase capacities, it is necessary to:
- establish an office
- hire professionals
- attract new members
The existence of Wikimedia Serbia office would solve the following problems:
- keeping and professional processing of work documentation
- having documentation constantly available
- doing bureaucratic duties
- providing timely information to auditing institutions
- providing timely information to partners and members
- providing timely information to the public
- having work space for most of the activities of the organization
By hiring a professional, the organization would:
- increase its capacity for doing necessary bureaucratic duties
- preserve Board resources previously spent on administrative duties and redirect them towards other activities
By attracting new members, the bottleneck would be reduced within the:
- quantity and quality of the projects
- quantity and quality of accomplishing the goals of the organization
In order to accomplish this strategic goal, the organization will:
- ensure financial means for a functional office
- ensure financial means for its first employee
- create positive policies that will handle finances and hiring
- create a positive Privacy Policy and Conflict of Interest Policy
- create a positive atmosphere for attracting potential members
- create application forms that will enable all social groups to join the organization
- continue to promote the importance of Wikimedia projects
Improving content quality of Wikimedia projects
There are six Wikimedia projects in Serbian language. Those are:
- Wikipedia
- Wikinews
- Wikisource
- Wikiquote
- Wikibooks
- Wiktionary
Aside from contributions to the language projects, the national community contributes to the global multimedia project - Wikimedia Commons.
Among the Wikimedia projects in Serbian language, most notable are the successes of Wikipedia and Wikinews.
Wikipedia in Serbian language has accomplished great results, year by year. For several years, it has been the largest encyclopedia ever written in Serbian language. Wikipedia in Serbian language has the most articles compared to the other Southeastern European languages. It is one of the most visited sites in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. However, even though it's in the top 30 Wikipedias by the number of articles, a lack of coverage of certain topics has been noticed, where quality texts, references and media materials are necessary. It is necessary to direct efforts towards developing the quantity and quality of all content.
Wikinews in Serbian language is, thanks to the fruitful cooperation with Beta news agency, one of the most noticed Wikinews editions. Compared to the other sites, it is one of ten most read Wikinews editions. However, a lack of active editors has been noticed, which is also a problem with all other Wikimedia projects in Serbian language, with the exception of Wikipedia.
Because of that, it is necessary to promote these projects and emphasize their advantages, in order to attract new users and editors.
Wikimedia Serbia intends on promoting Wikipedia, but it will also put additional efforts into popularization of other projects.
It is necessary to make adequate activities, for every Wikimedia project, that would devoted to a) the target group that would yield best results b) all potential users.
The support for networking and increasing the amount of free content in Wikimedia projects
Ever since its inception, Wikimedia Serbia has been connecting with similar organizations, in order to increase capacities in the mission of Wikimedia projects development. We have established successful cooperation with the Youth Center of Belgrade, Štap i kanap, News agency Beta, Ebart media archive etc. Among international organizations, we have made formal connections with Creative Commons, through the national Creative Commons project, and Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikimedia Serbia supports networking, as one of several good ways in reaching our goals and fulfilling our mission with joint capacities.
Wikimedia Serbia will continue to develop cooperation with its partners in the following year, but it will also make new partners.
In order to have successful networking, it is necessary to:
- create attractive projects
- increase capacities
- follow goings-on in the area of work of Wikimedia Serbia, but also in other fields that contribute to the dissemination of free knowledge in a non-profit way
- create a positive image of Wikimedia Serbia as a reliable and able partner.
Regional and international cooperation
Mutual support on regional and international levels produces positive impulses for the development of all partner organizations and projects. Through cooperation, we all learn and exchange positive and negative experiences, with the goal of making future projects better. Wikimedia Serbia has so far successfully organized several regional and international events. In such a way, Wikimedia Serbia has established successful relations with organizations based outside of Serbia and improved its reputation. With the goal of instigating others to work in the field of free knowledge, Wikimedia Serbia has given support to the development of like-minded organizations and Wikimedia chapters.
The continued development of good regional and international cooperations is one of the strategic goals of Wikimedia Serbia. That is why we will put additional efforts and improve activities toward accomplishing this goal in the next year.
International cooperation will be accomplished by:
- taking participation in international and regional conferences
- organizing regional and international conferences
- developing and strengthening the CEE group
- ensuring financial means intended for participation and organization of international conferences, as well as organization of international projects
Attracting new members
Wikimedia Serbia currently has 80 members, of which about one quarter is actively involved in the organization. For further development of the organization, it is necessary to increase the number of active members. It is necessary to direct program and project activities in a way that will attract more active participants.
Attracting new users
According to the official statistics, there is a slight increase in the number of users in Serbian language Wikimedia projects.
We wish to keep the positive trends, which means that Wikimedia Serbia will adapt to the current state, but it will also create a basis for improving that state.
Communications and strategic public relations
Bearing in mind the importance of media in fulfilling our mission, as well as the efforts to ensure correct and efficient ways of reporting about activities in Wikimedia, it is necessary to create a strategy of communications and strategic public relations.
Good public relations are beneficial to the development of free knowledge awareness, free content sharing culture and attracting new users and members. Additionally, they influence the development success and importance of the organization.
The strategy should include elements regarding activity, ways and methods of work, target groups and expected results.
Because of its expected complexity and breadth, a Communications strategy will be created as a separate document based on this Strategy.
Following the activities in Serbian language Wikimedia projects
Statistics for all Wikimedia projects are available and positive trends can be noticed for statistics regarding Serbian language projects. However, sufficiently granulated statistics are not yet available. Wikimedia Serbia wishes to obtain appropriate data on a daily level, which could be statistically and analytically processed. Such data could be used for activities which would help to make the projects more successful.
In order to realize this goal, Wikimedia Serbia has to:
- facilitate programmatic work, which would enable the generation of statistics
- analyze the statistics regularly