Folks that use XML dumps of our projects will know that the dumps process has been stalled while we investigated bug 23264. We have been running individual project dumps manually and asking people to inspect them carefully. We have just started the automated dumps up again, and various code fixes should be checked in shortly. Thanks to all for your assistance and your patience.

If you are working with the XML dumps of the English language Wikipedia containing all page revisions (pages-meta-history), please note the following issues with the two completed runs.

The January 30 run is missing the text for a large number of old revisions of articles, primarily revisions created between January 1 2005 and May 14 2005. This was due to bug 20757 which was subsequently fixed. If you are doing analysis using the text data, you can retrieve the missing text by extracting it from an earlier file; see the archives.

The March 12 run is incomplete; it is missing about the last third of the revisions, due to early termination during the compression step.

The stubs files and the current page dumps appear to be fine, so statistical or other analyses that only use these files should not be impacted. The mysql table dumps are also unaffected.

We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on getting out a set of complete full history dumps with all revision text intact.

This week, Wikimedia Sverige announced an important ongoing partnership with international media group, Bonnier, releasing freely-licensed photographs to Wikimedia Commons. The media group has released 27 photographs of notable Swedish authors to Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license and plans to continue releasing photographs in the future. Authors included in the first release include: Inger Alfvén, Karin Johannisson and Martin Widmark.

This partnership was the result of important educational outreach and relationship building conducted by representatives of Wikimedia Sverige. The relationship was sparked by Bonnier’s curiosity about how to edit Wikipedia and interest in understanding how free licensing works on Wikimedia Commons. The partnership with Bonnier is just one example of the important educational outreach work Wikimedia Sverige has conducted. This September, for the third year, the chapter will conduct outreach activities at the Gothenburg Book Fair, the largest in Scandinavia.

Congratulations to Wikimedia Sverige!

Moka Pantages, Communications

Late last week Fox News ran a news story about Wikimedia projects, focusing on Jimmy Wales, which included quite a bit of false information. We would like to clarify some of those details

Jimmy is the founder of Wikipedia and of the Wikimedia Foundation. He plays a key editorial role in our projects, by virtue of his special status as our founder, and due to his continued active engagement in the projects. Jimmy is not the President of the Wikimedia Foundation nor is he President of Wikipedia: there are no such roles. The chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is Michael Snow, and the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation is Sue Gardner. They have both been in those positions for several years. Jimmy is Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees, as he has been for several years now.

Last weekend Jimmy voluntarily relinquished some technical user-account privileges he has historically held, but that in no way affects his official status with Wikimedia, nor his editorial position. It was false to claim that Jimmy ever held final editorial control on our projects — his decision to change the technical details of his user account should not be interpreted as changes to his status in general.  Jimmy is actively engaged in discussions with other Wikimedia editors about sexually-explicit materials on Wikimedia Commons: discussions like that are part of his normal role, and are part of the normal work of being an active volunteer. He is a thought leader in the Wikimedia projects, and although the discussions over the past week have been unusually intense, we don’t consider them problematic. Discussion is how Wikimedians work through policy development and policy interpretation: active argument and debate are normal for us — they are how we do our work. The Wikimedia Foundation is grateful for Jimmy’s involvement, and we’re glad he continues to be an important part of the Wikimedia movement.

Jay Walsh, Communications

(Update 2: The search interface was updated on May 20. This update addresses the problems where search query is truncated under some circumstances, and the problem that search suggestion is cut-off. Thank you for your prompt feedback.)

(Update: We have received problem reports and feedback that search queries were truncated sometimes and the search suggestions were hard to read due to the limited width. In order to mitigate the problem, the new search function was disabled and the search field was increased by fifty percent. We also have updated the new search interface which we are currently staging on the prototype. This updates address the reported issues such as truncation of search queries and the problems that search suggestions are cut-off. Prototypes in various languages are also available here. Please try it out and let us know your feedback. Thanks!)

Wikipedia has some new improvements, thanks to the hard work and dedication of over half a million beta testers and volunteers who worked with the Wikimedia User Experience team over the last year!  With a beta testing group of 635,000 people and an 83% user retention rate, we’re proud to introduce you to Wikipedia’s new look and feel.  As of 8:00am UTC today, the new features moved from beta and will be available for everyone to use.  This is the first major initiative the Wikimedia Foundation and its volunteers have ever undertaken for Wikipedia’s interface. And there’s more to come.

It’s been one year since we began the usability initiative, and we’ve rolled out the new interface to Wikinews (English and Serbian), Wikimedia Commons, and now English Wikipedia. That means that hundreds of millions of people around the world will now experience an easier to use, and more importantly, easier to edit Wikipedia.  Our most recent interface launch, on Wikimedia Commons, was a great success with continued adoption by over 91% of Commons contributors. Over the next few weeks, the new interface will cascade to all language Wikipedias.

Here’s what’s new:

• Look and feel: We’ve introduced a new theme we call “Vector” which makes essential functions easier to find.
• Navigation: We’ve improved the navigation for reading and editing pages. Now, the tabs at the top of each page more clearly define whether you’re reading or editing a page. There’s also a collapsible navigation for the left sidebar that hides items that aren’t used often, but allows them to continue to be easily accessible.
  
• Editing improvements: We’ve reorganized the editing toolbar to make it easier to use. Now, formatting pages is simpler and more intuitive. And we’ve introduced a table wizard to make creating tables easier. You’ll also discover a new find and replace feature to simplify page editing.
• Link wizard: An easy-to-use tool allows you to add links to other pages on Wikipedia, or to pages on external sites.
• Search improvements: Search suggestions are now improved to get you to the page you are looking for more quickly.
• Pediapress book creator: Create a printed book by selecting Wikipedia articles and adding them to the Book Creator.  Your articles will be turned into a PDF (or OpenDocument) file so you can easily take Wikipedia wherever you go.
  
• Updated Puzzle globe and wordmark: The well-known Wikipedia globe and wordmark have been enhanced and improved. We’ve introduced Linux Libertine, an open source typeface to help support the creation of hundreds of localized Wikipedia wordmarks, and the internationally-recognized puzzle globe has been recreated in 3D and includes even more languages.  Read more from our recent blog post.
  

We kicked off this effort in April 2009, and immediately went to work to figure out how to make Wikipedia easier to use for everyone.  We started with usability testing among everyday readers with no editing experience, and we learned about the way people interact with Wikipedia and how we could make the experience better.  Using this valuable information, we incrementally released new features to users who opted into our beta testing group.  Over the next several months, we continued to improve the features based on feedback from both our beta testers and from usability studies we conducted.  We’re thankful for the input of thousands of international users and volunteers who gave us feedback on our progress.

Naoko Komura, on behalf of the Wikimedia User Experience team

(Update: We’ve received a lot of feedback about how the new Wikipedia identity functions in different browsers, and we’re working on some minor improvements over the next few days.  We’ve captured much of the feedback below, and now encourage users to visit this thread on Wikimedia Commons where you can further comment on a revised version, currently being tested on our prototype Wikipedia.  Thanks!)

Later today you’ll be reading about one of the first major changes to  Wikipedia’s user interface.  A significant part of that change is a minor, but noticeable refinement to one of the most-recognized logos on the internet: the Wikipedia puzzle globe.

Our puzzle globe has an amazing story, and its creation and localization across more than 250 distinct language versions of Wikipedia is a collaborative design achievement. The original globe was created in 2003 following a historical logo-creation contest on Wikipedia.  The original winning design came from Paul Stansifer (Wikipedia User:Paullusmagnus), a design that was then revised to reflect the international breadth of Wikipedia by David Friedland (User:nohat) — the version users around the world have grown to know as Wikipedia’s puzzle globe.

Just over a year ago we saw a need to update the beloved Wikipedia globe, both to resolve some minor typographic errors found by our volunteers, and to develop a high-resolution version with gradient qualities (it is a sphere, after all) that could be used in a variety of new settings.  It was a perfect opportunity to build a new model that would be completely 3D in its design.  To complete the project we would need help from a 3D designer, and we’d go back to our community of volunteer contributors to examine what the 52 or so un-identified puzzle pieces might look like.

A new chapter in the history of the logo was written as volunteers examined languages and scripts that were not represented in the previous iteration of the puzzle globe.  Several small errors were corrected, and the Klingon character was replaced with an Amharic character (Klingon Wikipedia wound down in 2005). A great history of the puzzle globe, not surprisingly, can be found on Wikipedia.

The actual 3D construction of the new mark was carried out by a San Francisco bay area professional 3D animator, art director, and graphic designer, Philip Metschan.  Through his career Philip has worked for Industrial Light and Magic and Pixar, and currently he’s also a visualization and concept artist for the DIRECT program.

The results are fantastic, and now you can see many new languages and scripts represented.  The final state for our puzzle globe is quite similar to the original.  The ‘hero’ version closely resembles the shape, and orientation of the original.

You can review more details about the revised identity, and see some of its current physical manifestations, here.

Aside from the puzzle globe, you’ll also notice a small refinement to the text underneath the puzzle globe.  To facilitate the incredible work of our volunteers in localizing the Wikipedia identity into over 250 languages and character sets, it was decided to use Linux Libertine (an open-source typeface) as an alternative to Hoefler.  ”The Free Encyclopedia” tag line has also lost its italics to facilitate better on-screen reading (although we’re pretty sure everyone on the internet knows those words by now). You can see the incredible volunteer effort of localizing these new Wikipedia identies unfold here.

This is a small part of the next steps for Wikipedia in terms of look and feel, but we hope the revised logo is a useful and more practical tool for our volunteer chapters and volunteers around the world. We’d love to hear your feedback as well, because like any great and visible logo, small improvements are always in store.

Our thanks to the whole usability team, Philip Metschan, and the dozens of volunteers who have helped make this project a reality. We also recognize the original efforts of David Friedland, Paul Stansifer, and those early pioneers who brought this identity to life in 2003.  We hope it’s a lasting tribute and a testament to the incredible impact this symbol makes on millions of people every day.

Jay Walsh, Communications

With more than 100,000 active contributors globally, Wikipedia is one of the world’s most successful experiments in peer production. Volunteers have always made a collective effort to recruit new contributors, by welcoming new users, developing tutorials and help pages, creating promotional materials, meeting face-to-face, and so on. The Public Outreach department of the Wikimedia Foundation works in collaboration with volunteers and with the Foundation’s 20+ worldwide chapters to determine and foster the most effective approaches to public outreach.

With our recently announced Public Policy Initiative, we are developing a flexible model for reaching out to one specific target group: subject matter experts. Professors and students of U.S. public policy will be solicited to participate in writing and improving articles on the English language Wikipedia, and actively supported in their efforts throughout the the 2010–2011 academic year. We will thoroughly evaluate and document the initiative, providing a template for our volunteers to replicate its approach in other disciplines and other geographic areas.

Please visit the job openings page to read more about these and other employment opportunities at Wikimedia today.

Daniel Phelps, Human Resources

Today we announced a new initiative to improve the quality of information on Wikipedia and broaden our group of contributors. This project, the first of its kind for the Foundation and for any of our projects, was made possible by a generous $1.2 million grant from a longtime Wikimedia Foundation supporter, the Stanton Foundation. The grant will support a pilot program to engage current volunteers, academic experts and students to help improve subject-specific articles on Wikipedia, initially focused on the topic area of public policy.

During the pilot program (which we’re calling the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative), we will work with volunteers, academics, and students at post-secondary educational institutions, and experiment with various ways to use Wikipedia in the classroom. Ultimately we’re aiming to improve the quality of articles, but this experiment will also help us learn more about the use and editing of Wikipedia in the classroom.

We will connect current Wikipedia volunteers with academics and students in order to engage and encourage participation by new editors and subject matter experts. Thrhoughout this process the Wikimedia Foundation aims to develop models and best practices to share with Wikimedia chapters and volunteers all over the world. We are also interested in finding new ways to increase the quality of articles in additional subject areas and languages, and to find new ways to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool.

Wikimedia is now planning for and hiring the project team for the initiative, which will kick-off in the fall academic semester 2010 (keep an eye on our jobs page for the postings). We will be working with some of the most esteemed educational institutions and public policy schools in the United States.
We’ll continue to share updates and information on the Wikimedia Foundation blog, and you can also track our progress and plans on the Wikimedia Outreach wiki.

We’re grateful to the Stanton Foundation for its continued support of important programs that advance the Wikimedia mission.

Thanks for your interest,
Frank Schulenburg, Public outreach

Today we’re very pleased to announce two new members of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board.

Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist examining children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. She is an Associate Researcher with the University of California Humanities Research Institute with appointments in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine.

Jing Wang is an author and editor of seven books, Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at MIT and founder and organizer of MIT’s New Media Action Lab. She is also an affiliated faculty with MIT’s Comparative Media Studies. In spring 2009, Professor Wang launched an NGO 2.0 project in collaboration with two Chinese universities, three Chinese NGOs, and three corporate partners including Ogilvy & Mather China and Frog Design.

The Foundation’s Advisory Board consists of an international network of experts and advisors in a range of topics, including technology, education, law, media and communications and philanthropy. The Advisory Board provides strategic advice to the Foundation and to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

Welcome, Mimi and Jing!

Jay Walsh, Communications

Notice a new feature on the left-hand sidebar today? Now, you can “create a book” and take English Wikipedia with you wherever you go, thanks to the good work of our partner, PediaPress. First launched last year for German language Wikipedia, the feature has been extended to a number of languages, now including English. Initially, this feature was available to logged-in users due to scalability issues, but today, everyone using English Wikipedia can assemble any articles of their choosing into a printed book, a PDF file, or an OpenDocument file for word processing.

To create your book, you can start by clicking on the “create a book” button found on the left-hand sidebar under the “print/export” section. From there, you can add any articles you like while browsing through millions of Wikipedia articles. When you’ve completed your selection, you can further customize your book by creating chapters and a title, choosing a photo for the cover and including an author or editor’s name.

Making Wikipedia available to as many people as possible and providing ways for our volunteer community to enjoy the work that they’ve done is central to our mission here at the Foundation. This is an exciting way to share more.

Moka Pantages

Communications

Collapsible navigation for Vector's side bar

Wikimedia Commons now has a new feature, collapsible navigation for the sidebar of the Vector skin. Now you will see an arrow icon next to the title of each section. Each section title can be clicked to hide and show the links within the section. We refer to this hiding and showing action as expanding and collapsing.

The motivation for this feature came from observing users being distracted by and lost within the sidebar while trying to find various links. This solution helps to tuck away less frequently accessed items, without making them entirely inaccessible or fatiguing to access frequently for users who want do make use of them.

Part of our research also included tracking the frequency of clicks on sidebar links to discover which items were used the most. The results of our click-tracking experiment guided our choice to make the first navigation section always visible, the second section initially visible but collapsible, and all other sections after that initially collapsed but expandable. As you expand and collapse each section, your preference is saved on your computer so that it’s remembered between pages and sessions.