You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations.

Wikimedia Foundation Highlights

WMF staff preparing for the anti-SOPA blackout

Foundation supports historic anti-SOPA Wikipedia blackout

On January 18, the community of the English Wikipedia made history with its decision to black out its entire project for 24 hours in protest of two proposed US laws — SOPA and PIPA — that would have seriously damaged the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. The communities of over 30 other Wikimedia projects supported the protest. Many Foundation staff assisted in the effort, handling the technical side of the blackout as requested by the community, providing code and design, facilitating discussions, contributing legal analysis and handling an unprecedented amount of press coverage.

During the blackout, more than eight million US-based readers used the CongressLookup tool to find their political representatives. A blog post by Sue Gardner received more than 13,000 comments, with the overwhelming majority supporting the blackout. Google News listed over 11,000 media stories about the Wikipedia blackout and the other Internet protests of January 18, and #wikipediablackout was tweeted almost 1 million times. Support for both SOPA and PIPA has since dwindled. Observers expect that they will not become law in their proposed form.

Participants at the San Francisco Hackathon

San Francisco Hackathon

The first San Francisco Hackathon was attended by 92 participants, many of them complete newcomers. They attended training sessions about Wikimedia technology, followed by team work on demo projects which were then presented in a showcase session and judged by a jury. The first prize went to “SMSpedia”, which allows the user to text a page title to a phone number; the user is then called back by the service and can listen to the Wikipedia entry read aloud.

Mobile announcements: Official Android app, and Orange partnership for free Wikipedia access in Africa/Middle East

In the first partnership of its kind, mobile operator Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation will provide more than 70 million Orange customers from 20 countries in Africa and the Middle East (AMEA) with mobile access to Wikipedia — without incurring data usage charges. Also in January, the official Wikipedia Android app was announced. It was installed more than half a million times within the first two weeks.

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You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations of the “Highlights” excerpts.

Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of January (February 2, 2012)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for December:

457 million (-3.7 percent compared with November; +15.6 percent compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release January data later in February)

Page requests for January:

18.0 billion (+10.4 percent compared with December; 16.4 percent compared with the previous year)

(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)

Active Registered Editors for December 2011 (>= 5 edits/month):

83,293 (+0.1 percent compared with November; +1.6 percent compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons) Report Card for December 2011: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_12_detailed.html

The report card is currently undergoing a redesign as a more fully-featured dashboard (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects).

Financials

(Financial information is only available for December 2011 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 – December 31, 2011

Revenue: $25.6 million

Expenses:

• Technology Group: $4,801,082
• Community/Fundraiser Group: $2,501,444
• Global Development Group: $2,154,912
• Governance Group: $464,533
• Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group: $2,916,686

Total Expenses: $12,838,657

Total surplus/(loss): $12,784,247

Revenue was ahead of plan due to grants of $2.8 million and additional donations ahead of plan of $2 million.

Expenses for the month is $2.9MM vs plan of $2.6MM, approximately 11% higher than plan. Year-to-date is $12.8MM vs plan of $14.2MM, approximately 10% lower than plan.

Underspending YTD is due to timing of capital expenditures ($989K – budget was spread evenly over 12 months), internet hosting ($64K), volunteer development ($142K), travel and conference expenses ($233K), personnel expenses ($584K), recruiting expenses ($124K), and IT desk equipment ($77K) offset by higher awards and grants ($261K) budget was spread evenly over 12 months), legal and accounting fees ($81K), professional services ($293K), and bank fees ($248K).

Cash of $30.6 million, which is thirteen months of cash reserves at current spending levels and fourteen months of cash per the annual plan.

Highlights

WMF staff preparing for the anti-SOPA blackout

Foundation supports historic anti-SOPA Wikipedia blackout

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Today the Global Journal, a Geneva-based publication focusing on issues facing global businesses, NGOs, and public sector workers announced that the Wikimedia Foundation was at the very top of their list of the 100 best NGOs.

The Journal pointed out that the Foundation is “changing the world with an idea: to create a public space where all people can freely join to collaborate, share and communicate all of our collective knowledge.” The Journal also recognized WMF’s collaborative roots and our movement’s belief that information is a non-profit commodity. Among other global NGOs nominated in the list: Oxfam, International Rescue Committee, Creative Commons, and Habitat for Humanity.

Our thanks to the Global Journal for recognizing the Foundation, but especially for recognizing the work of our 100,000-strong global, volunteer community.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today (January 15) Wikipedia is celebrating its 11th year on the web. Happy Birthday, Wikipedia! Look who/what else you share your birthday with.

Last year was a big one for Wikipedia, rounding out an incredible decade of growth and impact around the world. Over 450 parties took place across virtually every continent, and the world had an amazing story to tell.

Just a year later and we’ve already seen more milestones achieved and records broken. In 2011 Wikipedia blew well past the 20 million article mark, now pushing towards 21 million articles. Wikimedia Commons, the repository of media files for Wikipedia and its sister projects broke 10 million files in 2011. The global page view from unique visitors count leapt up to and over 400 million, and our individual page requests across all Wikimedia projects broke 16 billion per month (see more of our updated stats here). Access on mobile platforms is skyrocketing, and Wikipedia is currently available in 282 languages.

Our global community of volunteers and chapter organizations are also celebrating. Get-togethers are planned around the globe, including meet-ups, hack-a-thons, a bicycle rally, a kite festival in India, and a picnic in Caracas. It’s not too late to host an event in your own neighborhood.

Here in the United States, and certainly in many other parts of the world, Wikipedia Day is also taking on a new meaning and urgency. The US House of Representatives is reviewing a new piece of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, that – if passed – would hurt the free, open, and secure web. This topic has already been explored on our blog – here and here. Wikimedia Foundation is joining a long list of other web organizations in opposition to SOPA, and today the global community of Wikipedia volunteers is talking about a day of protest here in the US against SOPA. You can join the conversation and voice your thoughts. On January 18 – just a few days after Wikipedia Day, make your views on SOPA known.

Wikipedia was born in a free and open web, and its future and success in all parts of the world is at stake. Let’s make sure our project is as strong and free for Wikipedia Day in 2013 as it is today.

Jay Walsh, Communications

You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations.

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for December 2011, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation Highlights

Wikitext (right) and its representation in the Visual Editor (left)

Visual editor prototype

The team developing a Visual Editor for Wikipedia and our other projects presented a first prototype for testing on December 13. Its development has been one of the Foundation’s top priorities according to the 2011-2012 Annual Plan. Wiki-markup is a substantial barrier that prevents many people from contributing, and it is hoped that the Visual Editor will make editing easier.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/help-test-the-first-visual-editor-developer-prototype/

Fundraiser ends with record-breaking donations

Tamil Wikipedia Editor Dr. Sengai Podhuvan being interviewed by Victor Grigas for a fundraiser testimonial

The 2011 annual fundraiser ended on January 1, 2012 raising a record-breaking USD 20 million from more than one million donors in nearly every country in the world. This year’s campaign highlighted staff and volunteers who help to create Wikipedia. It featured testimonials from volunteer editors in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States ranging in age from 18 to 76.

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/02/wikimedia-fundraiser-concludes-with-record-breaking-donations/

WMF annual report 2010-2011

Annual Report published, for the first time with translations

The Wikimedia Foundation’s latest Annual Report was posted in PDF and wiki format in mid-December. This year’s report focusses on the Foundation’s major strategic efforts: supporting growth in India, expanding our mobile reach, improving and simplifying our software, and building our global education program. The report also highlights accomplishments within our community through the last fiscal year, and features a center spread article about the creation of the Arab Spring article on Wikipedia. For the first time, we produced ‘summary’ versions in seven languages.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/17/our-latest-annual-report-how-the-world-tells-its-story/

Collaborative drafting process for Terms of Use update completed

After more than 120 days, the comment period for the proposed user agreement comes to an end with powerful and effective community participation. See the present version of the proposed user agreement and extensive discussion .

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/31/terms-of-use/

Data and Trends

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You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations of the “Highlights” excerpts.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for November:

474 million (-0.4% compared with October; +15.6% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release December data later in January)

Page requests for December:

16.3 billion (-6.2% compared with November; +17.1% compared with the previous year)

(estimate from Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)

Active Registered Editors for November 2011 (>= 5 edits/month):

83,444 (-1.2% compared with September / comparison data for November 2010 currently unavailable)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons)

Report Card for November 2011: http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2011_11_detailed.html

The report card is currently undergoing a redesign as a more fully-featured dashboard (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects).

Financials

(Financial information is only available for November 2011 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 – November 30, 2011

Revenue: $14.5 million

Expenses:

• Technology Group: $3,916,000
• Community/Fundraiser Group: $1,732,000
• Global Development Group: $1,454,000
• Governance Group: $406,000
• Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group: $2,419,000

Total Expenses: $9,927,000

Total surplus/(loss): $4,573,000

Revenue was ahead of plan due to grants of $2.8 million and additional donations ahead of plan of $2.1 million.

Expenses were below plan at $9.9 million actual versus $11.6 million plan. Expenses were below planned due to lower than planned expenditures in capital expenditures, chapter grants, recruitment cost and other activities due.

Cash of $22.8 million, which is twelve months of cash reserves at current spending levels and ten months of cash per the annual plan.

Highlights

Visual editor prototype

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I am happy to announce that we have completed the most collaborative, interactive drafting of a proposed terms of use for any major website.   For more than 120 days, the Wikimedia community reviewed, drafted, and redrafted with more than 200 edits modifying the original proposal.  While accumulating 19,000 page views, community members offered comments, edits, and rewrites.  Complete or partial translations appeared in 20+ languages.   With over 4500 lines of text and as many words as Steinbeck’s classic “The Grapes of Wrath,” discussion helped ensure a thoughtful process.

These proposed terms of use are intended to replace our present version. It is not commonly known that our present terms are nothing more than a licensing agreement, not traditional terms of use. The new proposed terms of use represent a step forward and a more comprehensive view of the Wikimedia projects.  Among other things, they provide for:

• Better understanding:  The proposed agreement includes an easy-to-read template summary to help facilitate understanding of the terms.
• Stronger security: The proposed agreement prohibits a number of actions – like installing malware – that could compromise our systems. We thought we should be clear as to what is unacceptable in this area, though most of these restrictions will not be surprising or represent any real change in practice.
• Clearer roles: We have heard a number of community members asking for guidance, so we set out clearly the roles and responsibilities of the community, including editors and contributors.  The proposed agreement also seeks to provide guidelines to help users avoid trouble.
• More community feedback: With this version, and with each major revision afterwards, we want the community to be involved. So the proposed agreement gives users at least a 30-day comment period before a major revision goes into effect (with Board approval). There is a 3-day exception for urgent legal and administrative changes.
• Clearer free licensing: We feel our present agreement is somewhat confusing on the free licensing requirements. The proposed agreement attempts to explain more clearly those requirements for editors (without changing existing practices).
• More tools against harassment, threats, stalking, vandalism, and other long-term issues: The proposed agreement would make clear that such acts are prohibited. Novel for us, the agreement raises the possibility of a global ban for extreme cross-wiki violations, a need that we have heard expressed from a number of community members.  While the global ban is authorized by the terms of use, it will be implemented by community policy.
• Better legal protection: The proposed agreement incorporates legal sections that are commonly used to help safeguard a site like ours, such as better explanation of our hosting status as well as disclaimers and limitations on liability for the Foundation.

If you’re interested in more detailed reasons why we are proposing updated terms of use, you can find a thorough discussion here.  Suffice it to say, we are consistent with other like-minded organizations, which have incorporated similar agreements, including Internet Archives, Creative Commons, Mozilla Firefox, Open Source Initiative, Project Gutenberg, Linux Foundation, StackExchange, WikiSpaces, and WordPress.com.

Specifically, in its more than 320 printed pages of discussions, the community raised, discussed, and resolved more than 120 issues.  There were many substantive and editorial changes that greatly improved the document.  Much language was deleted or tightened at community request.  As part of this process, the community addressed a number of interesting topics, such as:

• Whether we should emphasize that the community (not WMF) is primarily responsible for enforcing policy:  We agreed to underscore this primary responsibility of the community to avoid any confusion.
• Whether we should include an indemnification clause to the benefit of WMF:   We chose to delete it in light of community concerns.
• Whether we should adopt a “human-readable” version to facilitate understanding:  We agreed to incorporate such a summary.
• Whether we should expressly prohibit linking to certain sites:  We chose not to, deleting earlier language unacceptable to the community.
• Whether we should require civility and politeness:  With varying views, we decided to “encourage” it.
• Whether the WMF should provide resources to support forks:  We chose not to address this now, though we agreed to highlight the discussion to the Board for its consideration.
• Whether we should emphasize the independent roles of chapters:  We chose to do so.
• Whether we should increase the liability limitation for WMF from $100 to $1000:  We answered affirmatively.
• Whether we should provide for additional comment time after the posting of translations in three key languages:  We said “yes” to address international community concerns.

From a process standpoint, the legal department will circulate the proposed terms of use within the Wikimedia Foundation internally, and then the department anticipates recommending their adoption to the Board.  We expect the Board will take some time to review before reaching a final decision.

Needless to say, this project would have been impossible without the hard work and expertise of our community. Through their tireless effort, the community mentored important and deep discussions on critical subjects for Wikimedia.  The process forced us to think about issues that we had never addressed directly. In short, the value of collaboration quickly became obvious. Its magic created a document many times better than the original.

Geoff Brigham, Wikimedia Foundation

Community Fellow, Sarah Stierch

I’m pleased to announce Sarah Stierch has been awarded a Wikimedia Community Fellowship for 2012.  Sarah’s fellowship is intended to support her commitment to encouraging women’s participation in Wikimedia projects.

As a volunteer, Sarah moderates Wikimedia’s gender gap mailing list, has done outreach to hundreds of editors in order to conduct a survey of women in Wikimedia, and curates a scoop.it collection of media related to women and Wikimedia.  She also serves on the advisory board for the Ada Initiative, a non-profit organization that supports women in open-culture communities like Wikipedia.  Sarah has been an editor on English Wikipedia since 2004, and has been active in GLAM-Wiki projects since 2009.  An art historian by training, Sarah was a 2011 Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Archives of American Art in Washington D.C., organizes edit-a-thons on art-related topics, and is in the process of finishing her master’s degree in museum studies at George Washington University.

Her experience working with female editors in the community and enthusiasm for outreach makes Sarah a great candidate for what we hope will be the first of several fellowships focused on the gender gap.  Sarah’s initial project will be a new-editor support pilot where she’ll build a team of volunteers to actively reach out to promising new editors (particularly women) to offer help, mentorship and peer support, encouraging them to continue editing and become more integrated into the Wikipedia community.

Congratulations, Sarah, the Wikimedia Foundation looks forward to partnering with you!

And, as a reminder, we’re still looking for more fellows to join Sarah in 2012.  The deadline to apply for this round is January 15th, please contact fellows at wikimedia dot org with any questions.

Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowships

This is the last in my series of introductory posts about Wikimedia Platform Engineering, focusing on the MediaWiki Core group.  This group is responsible for our sites’ stability, security, performance and architectural cleanliness.  This ends up translating into a lot of code review, along with infrastructure projects like disk-backed object cache, heterogeneous deployment, continuous integration, and performance-related work.  While it’s not a prerequisite, everyone on this team started off as a volunteer developer.  The whole engineering organization has some level of responsibility for our code review process, but this group has more of a primary responsibility for it than most groups.  We have an open position in this group.

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