Today (Wednesday, November 16, 2011) is an important day in Washington, DC.

This morning, hearings take place regarding the “Internet Blacklist Bill” – a bill that, if approved, would overturn laws relating to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor, and would allow any government or corporation to block a website, remove it from a search engine, and/or cut it off from payment processors or advertisers. In response to these hearings, organizations like Wikimedia, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, and many more are joining together to declare American Censorship Day.

If approved, this bill would have disastrous effects for Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Why is this bill an issue for a project like Wikipedia?

In a nutshell, Wikipedia relies on Creative Commons licenses and a series of established, community-led open collaboration processes to ensure that its information and media are a part of free culture, and that copyrighted materials (which may inadvertently end up on Wikipedia or its sister projects) can be quickly and effectively removed so we remain in compliance with US copyright law.  Our global, volunteer community understands these laws well – maybe better than any other online community on the net – and they work hard to ensure that everything on Wikipedia and its sister sites complies with the law.

The Internet Blacklist Bill would change all of that.  The bill would allow corporations, organizations, or the government to order an internet service provider to block an entire website simply due to an allegation that the site posted infringing content.  In addition, sites like Wikipedia could be required to monitor for any “banned” links, resulting in delegated proactive censorship of the Web, not to mention significant additional costs to Wikipedia, a site of a non-profit charity.  Useful international sources of knowledge and information – which often serve as a basis for our articles and projects – could be blacklisted if rights owners simply felt that there was some infringing content. Individual contributors could face criminal liability for posting or sharing a copyright work for what we consider to be common fair-use situations.  The DMCA system, which allows Wikimedia and its volunteer community to quickly remove copyright-violating material at the request of the copyright owner, would be overturned.  In short, our users and all of our projects, would be forced to operate in an untenable legislative environment, putting Wikipedia at the beck and call of the rights owners as opposed to the distribution of free knowledge. Simply put, this bill is a reckless and burdensome model in Internet censorship.

The future of Wikipedia, the free knowledge movement, and tens of thousands of open and free projects is at stake, and we must stand up to oppose this bill.  Join us in these efforts by spreading the word.  If you are in the United States, contact your local government representative, and take a stand on American Censorship Day.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today we were very pleased to announce another amazing grant from the US based Stanton Foundation, and our largest grant yet.  The grant totals $3.6 million USD, and will fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects – specifically to serve our growing readership.

On the grant, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner offered the following:

The Stanton Foundation is a long-time funder of the Wikimedia Foundation, and I am thrilled they’re increasing their investment in us. The Stanton Foundation was one of the first institutions to recognize that Wikipedia is a serious educational endeavour that’s having a significant impact on people around the world. I will always be grateful to them for taking a risk in first funding us, many years ago.

The Stanton Foundation was created by the American broadcasting executive and media pioneer Frank Stanton, who, in 1960, organized the first-ever televised presidential debate. Among its previous grants to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Stanton Foundation provided $1.2 million in 2010 for the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative, a program designed to improve the quality and quantity of information related to public policy topics in Wikipedia. The project resulted in 800 American students at universities such as Harvard and University of California Berkeley adding the equivalent of 5,800 printed pages of material to Wikipedia, and has now been expanded to include universities in Canada and India.

Our heartfelt thanks to the Stanton Foundation for helping us bring Wikipedia and its sister projects to even more people around the world.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today the volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community made the decision to replace all of Italian Wikipedia with a message to readers about a law (PDF in Italian) being discussed before the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament. The message outlines the viewpoints of the Italian Wikipedia community, and provides details about the proposed bill, and how it threatens the ability to openly collaborate in the sharing of knowledge. This is certainly a decision the Italian Wikipedia community did not take lightly.

The Wikimedia Foundation stands with our volunteers in Italy who are challenging the recently drafted “DDL intercettazioni” (or Wiretapping Bill) bill in Italy.  This bill would hinder the work of projects like Wikipedia: open, volunteer-driven, and collaborative spaces dedicated to sharing high-quality knowledge, not to mention the ability for all users of the internet to engage in democratic, free speech opportunities.

Wikipedians the world over pride themselves on their ability to rapidly remove false information from their project.  Wikipedia has established methods to receive complaints or concerns from individuals or organizations and a strong system exists to remove incorrect or false information, and if necessary to remove complete articles in an effort to prevent vandalism. For Wikipedians, there is no value nor need for this proposed legislation.

The Wikimedia Foundation supports the rights of all people to access our free knowledge content everywhere in the world, and we equally support the work of our editors to collaborate in the production of this free knowledge without the spectre of sanctioned punishment or attacks towards their work.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Since the WMF Strategic Plan was released this past March, the realization of an ambitious set of goals surrounding Wikipedia’s progress over the next five years has been widely discussed among our community. We’ve now moved into the second of the five year strategic plan we’re pleased to share the Foundation’s 2011-12 Annual Plan, which our Board of Trustees approved on June 28, 2011.

The Annual Plan provides an overview of the Foundation’s main work through the fiscal year (July 1 through June 30), most importantly highlighting our efforts on diversifying and expanding the Wikimedia project editor/contributor community, growing our presence in India and Brazil, increasing our reach via mobile devices, and ensuring our financial sustainability.

We have seven big targets for the fiscal year.  Highlighting two:

1. We want to increase Wikipedia page views on mobile devices to two billion by June 2012, up from 726 million in March 2011. This will mean a big emphasis on partnerships with mobile service providers and technological improvements to our mobile Wikipedia gateway. Mobile is crucial for engaging online users, particularly those from the Global South, where mobile devices are already the primary method of accessing the Internet, and for some, the only method available to edit.

2. The declining participation of seasoned Wikipedia editors must be reversed. We’re aiming to increase the number of active editors from just under 90K in March 2011, to 95K by June 2012. Our community has been continuously engaged in this conversation for several years, and the Foundation has made the decline a major focus of our work over the coming years. Proactive steps must be taken to reinforce Wikipedia’s core community of strong editors, and we must continue our research into the causes and solutions for the decline.

Our other major targets in this fiscal year:

3. Increase the number of Global South active editors from approximately 15.7K in March 2011, to 19K in June 2012.
4. Increase the number of female editors from approximately 9K in spring 2011 to 11.7K in spring 2012.
5. Develop the Visual Editor. First opt-in user-facing production usage by December 2011, and first small wiki default deployment by June 2012.
6. Develop a sandbox for research, prototyping, and tools development, with initial hardware build-out and first project access by December 2011, and full access for all qualifying individuals/projects by June 2012.
7. Increase read uptime from 99.8% in 2010-11 to 99.85% in 2011-12.

The full plan includes more details and footnotes related to these goals. We’ve also posted detailed questions and answers on the annual plan hosted on the Foundation wiki.

In addition to the Foundation’s monthly report card meetings, where progress on these goals will be regularly reported, we’ll also be blogging about our efforts throughout the year.  Get involved if you’d like to help.  Join our projects and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge!

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today we are very pleased to announce a great gift from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  For the second time since 2008, the Sloan Foundation is providing us with a $3 million, unrestricted grant to support the Wikimedia Foundation in pursuit of its main goals as outlined in our recently published strategic plan.

As described by our Executive Director Sue Gardner in today’s press release:

“Three years ago, at a time when cultural elites were ambivalent about Wikipedia, the Sloan Foundation took a risk by supporting us. I will always be grateful to Sloan for its courage in doing that,” said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Today the academic community in particular has begun to appreciate Wikipedia, and is starting to work closely with us to make it even better. I’m grateful to Sloan for sending an important signal that helped make that happen, and I’m thrilled at this renewed expression of confidence in our work.”

The grant comes to us as part of the Sloan Foundation’s Access to Knowledge component of its Digital Information Technology program. Sloan Vice President Doron Weber reflected on their perspective on Wikipedia:

“Wikipedia embodies the ideal values of the world wide web and we are proud to be part of this bold endeavor to use the wisdom and the altruism of the crowd to create the biggest, most up-to-date and most open global encyclopedia in human history.”

This is great news for Wikimedia Foundation as we push into our strategic planning priorities: increasing Wikipedia’s quality, increasing the number and demographic diversity of its editors, and reaching more readers, particularly in the global south.

Our thanks to the Sloan Foundation for their continued support!

Jay Walsh, Communications

Last week the organizers of Wikimania 2011 sent out an announcement encouraging all Wikimedia project enthusiasts to register and attend this year’s conference.  The conference will be held in Haifa, Israel, August 4 through 6, and is organized by members and volunteers from the very active chapter there, Wikimedia Israel.

Now in its seventh year, Wikimania is the largest gathering of Wikimedians in the world, bringing together coders/developers, editors, researchers, enthusiasts, organizers, and other project collaborators – from all corners of the globe – to learn about and share their efforts to spread free knowledge around the world.

This year’s incredible schedule of events includes 125 sessions from project participants from all over the world, as well as two days of developer meetings preceding the main events. Plenary session speakers include Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, Dr. Joseph Reagle, Prof. Yochai Benkler, and Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner.

Online registration continues through August 1, but register early to ensure your spot at this year’s conference. Accommodations provided by the event organizers are limited.

Hope to see you in Haifa!

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today we released the 2009-10 Wikimedia Foundation annual report, the Foundation’s third annual report since 2008. This year’s report is built on our incredible vision statement, well known to just about any Wikimedian in our community: Imagine a world in which every person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Well, we are, and this year’s report follows that vision and recounts some of the Wikimedia community’s incredible successes since mid 2009.

This year we published the report in three formats: paper/print (24 pages in all), PDF for easier on-screen reading, and in wiki format.  The wiki version is hosted on Meta-wiki, the open wiki staging ground where thousands of Wikimedians collaborate on new projects to support the Wikimedia movement. The wiki format will also allow easy translation and reuse of the report by any person wishing to tell the story of the Wikimedia community.

The images in the report are particularly beautiful, and show just a tiny fraction of the extraordinary photographs that people and institutions from around the world have given away freely on Wikimedia Commons.  The report is, of course, CC BY SA, and copying and reuse of the materials is encouraged.

Thanks to our report designers at EXBROOK, as well as our advisor David Weir for their hard work.  And thanks to the community members from all over the world who work hard to build and maintain the projects, establish new partnerships, spread the ideas and values of the Wikimedia movement, and bring the Wikimedia vision to reality.  We hope this report helps tell part of that incredible story and helps bring new supporters into the fold.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Thanks to our friends at No Starch Press, San Francisco-based publishers of one of the largest and most detailed guides to Wikipedia ever printed (and available under the GFDL!) the bookshelves at Wikimedia Foundation’s offices in San Francisco are over-flowing with how-to knowledge.

In January the publishers offered to provide us with a few hundred copies of “How Wikipedia Works” to give to Foundation visitors, particularly editors and contributors.  Authored by Wikimedia Foundation board member Phoebe Ayers, and long-time Wikipedians Charles Matthews and Ben Yates, the 500+ page book discusses the culture, history, technology, and impact of Wikipedia, while also providing a detailed primer for getting involved and participating among the community of editors.

Our thanks to No Starch Press for  their generous donation and their continuing support of the Wikimedia mission.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today the Ada Initiative announced the appointment of Sue Gardner, ED of the Wikimedia Foundation, to its first advisory board. The Ada Initiative launched just a few weeks ago, and has the aim of promoting the visibility and participation of women in open-source culture. The group, founded by Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner, will undertake unique research in the field of women in open-source culture, provide consultative services to organizations and businesses, and develop training and education services.

The Initiative‘s namesake, Countess Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), was considered one of the world’s first computer programmers, and was almost certainly the first woman in computer programming. She collaborated with Charles Babbage, the creator of one of the first mechanical computers, the analytical engine, writing what is generally considered the first code instructions for a computer.

From Wikipedia,

She was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron (with Anne Isabella Milbanke), but had no relationship with her father, who died when she was nine. As a young adult she took an interest in mathematics, and in particular Babbage’s work on the analytical engine. Between 1842 and 1843 she translated an article by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with a set of notes of her own. These notes contain what is considered the first computer program—that is, an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine. Though Babbage’s engine was never built, Lovelace’s notes are important in the early history of computers. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities. [1]

Wikipedia has been in the news recently following a New York Times story highlighting the lack of women participating in the project, based on researched gathered by the United Nations University Study.  Interest in the topic has brought new thinkers to the Wikimedia community, which also recently resulted in the creation of a Wikimedia gender gap mailing list, which is open to the public.

Congratulations, Sue, and good luck to everyone involved in the Ada Initiative!

Jay Walsh, Communications

[1] Ada Lovelace. (2011, February 24). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:03, February 24, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ada_Lovelace&oldid=415671634