For versions in other languages, please check the wiki version of this report, or add your own translation there!

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for May 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

From the Fundraising report: The “facts” banner (listing some basic facts about Wikipedia) was tested in many different versions and eventually performed better than all previous fundraising banners

Fundraising report released

The Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising team published a report from the 2012-2013 fundraiser. The report reviews the evolution of banner design and includes data about the 2012 year-end English campaign and the 2013 multilingual campaign, which raised a total $35 million USD from over 2 million donors.

Community invited to discuss trademark practices

The Legal and Community Advocacy (LCA) team published a statement on trademark practices, which requests community feedback on the Wikimedia trademark policy, procedure, and other questions. The objective is to balance the interest in licensing the brand for mission-aligned activities, with the necessity of preventing misuse and “naked licensing” (licensing without quality control). This is the opportunity to provide ideas as the team considers updating the trademark policy and practices.

Wikipedia Zero launches in Pakistan

Wikipedia Zero, the program to give people around the world mobile access to Wikipedia free of data charges, is now available in Pakistan, in partnership with Mobilink (Vimpelcom). The company’s user base of over 32 million people makes this the second largest Wikipedia Zero launch to date.

The “Nearby” feature in Vatican City. The camera icon (bottom) indicates an article which misses images, inviting users to contribute one.

“Nearby” feature shows Wikipedia articles in the reader’s vicinity

On location-aware devices (such as smartphones with GPS), a new “Nearby” page lists articles close to the reader’s current location. The feature is designed for mobile devices, but also works on the desktop version of Wikipedia.

Presentation slides with the Tool Labs logo

New hosting environment for community-developed tools

The Tool Labs, an environment for community developers to provide external software tools supporting work on Wikimedia projects, is now operating. With the support of the German Wikimedia chapter, many existing tools have already migrated from the Wikimedia Toolserver to Tools Labs.

Search for new Executive Director begins

The job opening for the Wikimedia Foundation’s new Executive Director has been posted. This starts the search for a successor for Sue Gardner, who will step down later this year. Board of Trustees chair Kat Walsh asked Wikimedians for help in finding the best possible candidate, by spreading the news in their networks.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for April:

(more…)

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 May (June 6, 2013)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for April:

517 million (-0.17% compared with March; +9.16% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release May data later in June)

Page requests for May:

21.0 billion (+0.8% compared with April; 16.5% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for April 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

82,553 (+0.86% compared with March / +4.38% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of April 30, 2013

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of April 30, 2013

(Financial information is only available through April 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date April 30, 2013.

• Revenue for the month of April is $8.87MM versus plan of $9.78MM, approximately $908K or 9% under plan.

• Year-to-date revenue is $50.44MM versus plan of $45.52MM, approximately $4.92MM or 11% over plan.

• Expenses for the month of April is $5.78MM versus plan of $4.10MM, approximately $1.68MM or 41% over plan, primarily due to higher grant expenses (timing of FDC grants), legal fees, and personal property tax expenses partially offset by lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, and bank fees.

• Year-to-date expenses is $30.84MM versus plan of $34.07MM, approximately $3.24MM or 9% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses, bank fees, outside contract services, and personal property tax expenses.

• Cash position is $45.6MM as of April 30, 2013.

Highlights

From the Fundraising report: The “facts” banner (listing some basic facts about Wikipedia) was tested in many different versions and eventually performed better than all previous fundraising banners

Fundraising report released

The Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising team published a report from the 2012-2013 fundraiser. The report reviews the evolution of banner design and includes data about the 2012 year-end English campaign and the 2013 multilingual campaign, which raised a total $35 million USD from over 2 million donors.

(more…)

For versions in other languages, please check the wiki version of this report, or add your own translation there!

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for April 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Screenshot: This user has received four new notifications

New notifications system launches on the English Wikipedia

On April 30, the Foundation’s Editor Engagement Team activated the Notifications system (also known as Echo) on the English Wikipedia. It inform editors about new activity on the wiki that affects them, for example when they receive a message on their user page, or when one of their edits is reverted, or when another user thanks them for an edit. The Notifications system is still being tested and modified based on community feedback. Later, it will be made available on other language versions of Wikipedia, and on other Wikimedia projects.

Family tree of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, generated from Wikidata by the “GeneaWiki” tool

Wikidata’s content can now be used on all Wikipedias

Wikidata has now begun to serve all language versions of Wikipedia as a common source of structured data that can be used any Wikipedia article, e.g. in infoboxes. Wikidata’s machine-readable knowledge database already contains over 11 million items. They can also be queried, evaluated and edited with the help of a growing collection of tools.

Wikimedia Commons app announced for iOS and Android

The Wikimedia Commons mobile app was officially announced in April, allowing quick and easy image uploads directly from mobile devices. It is available for both iOS and Android devices. Mobile users who don’t have the app installed can still upload images from the mobile web version of all Wikimedia projects.

Funds Disseminations Committee (FDC) publishes its recommendations about $1.2 million

Launched in 2012, the Funds Dissemination Committee is a group of Wikimedia volunteers tasked with helping to decide about the use of movement funds. On April 28, after a period of evaluation by supporting staff and public review by the community, it published its recommendations to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees about the second round of funding requests, by four organizations: Wikimedia Czech Republic (requested: $14,084.50, recommended: $0), Wikimedia Hong Kong (requested: $211,660.26, recommended: $0), Wikimedia Norway (requested: $235,715, recommended: $140,000), and Wikimedia France (requested: $747,259, recommended: $525,000).

New conflict of interest guidelines

With an immediate effective date, the Board of Trustees approved Wikimedia guidelines on the disclosure of potential and actual conflicts of interest in requesting and allocating movement resources (such as financial grants). Input provided by the community during a six-week consultation period greatly improved the original version.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for March:

(more…)

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 April (May 2, 2013)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for March:

517 million (+7.17% compared with February; +5.76% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release April data later in May)

Page requests for April:

20.8 billion (-3.4% compared with March; +20.1% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for March 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

82,105 (+5.67% compared with February / +2.15% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for March 2013:

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of March 31, 2013

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of March 31, 2013

(Financial information is only available through March 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date March 31, 2013.

• Revenue for the month of March is $5.92MM versus plan of $5.28MM, approximately $647K or 12% over plan.

• Year-to-date revenue is $41.57MM versus plan of $35.74MM, approximately $5.83MM or 16% over plan.

• Expenses for the month of March is $3.09MM versus plan of $4.04MM, approximately $943K or 23% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and grant expenses offset by higher bank fees.

• Year-to-date expenses is $25.06MM versus plan of $29.97MM, approximately $4.92MM or 16% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, FDC grants executed, WMF project grants, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and bank fees.

• Cash position is $41.02MM as of March 31, 2013.

Highlights

Screenshot: This user has received four new notifications

New notifications system launches on the English Wikipedia

(more…)

For versions in other languages, please check the wiki version of this report, or add your own translation there!

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Lua speeds up pages and empowers Wikimedia’s technical contributors

On March 13, Lua was enabled for templates on all Wikimedia wikis. The existing syntax for wikitext templates is complicated and limited: it does not offer loops, for example. With Lua, editors can now use a real programming language, in which they can also contribute to programming projects outside Wikimedia. For Wikimedia wikis, Lua means a big performance gain in widely used templates, such as citations. For example, 300 citations on an English Wikipedia article now render in 3 seconds instead of 18 seconds.

The new image upload button in an article on the mobile version of the English Wikipedia

Mobile uploads launch for apps and the mobile web

On the mobile version of Wikipedia, smartphone users can now easily upload a lead image to Wikipedia articles that lack one. Also in March, the Mobile team released a dedicated app for Wikimedia Commons, allowing media uploads from Android and iOS devices.

First Individual Engagement Grants awarded to innovative community projects

The recipients of the first Individual Engagements Grants were announced on March 29. These grants fund projects by individuals or small teams for a duration of six months. Among the largest of the eight funded grants are “The Wikipedia Library” ($7500), which aims to give editors access to reliable sources, donated by publishers, “The Wikipedia Adventure” ($10,000), an on-wiki game for new editors, and a project to collaboratively define a vision for the future of Wikisource (10,000 Euros).

Wikipedia Zero wins award, reaches new users

Wikipedia Zero, which gives people around the world mobile access to Wikipedia free of data charges, won the 2013 SXSW Interactive “Activism” award, beating four other finalists. Also in March, Wikipedia Zero became available to more than 55 million additional subscribers in Russia, as part of a partnership with Beeline (VimpelCom). This was the biggest launch for the Wikipedia Zero team to date. The same month, a new Wikipedia Zero partnership with Axiata Group was announced, which will expand the program in Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh this year.

Four of the Ombudsmen during their visit at the WMF office

Ombudsmen meet, might expand mandate

In March, the Foundation’s LCA team hosted five out of seven members of the Ombudsmen Commission in San Francisco, where these community members from around the world met with each other in person for the first time. They consulted with various WMF departments and provided input regarding privacy topics and the work of administrators. Formed in 2006, the Ombudsmen Commission is currently tasked with investigating complaints of alleged Privacy policy violations on behalf of the Board of Trustees. It has been proposed that the Commission should also be allowed to handle complaints about the global CheckUser policy and Oversight policy. An RfC (request for comment) about this is being prepared.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for February:

(more…)

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 March (April 4, 2013)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for February:

483 million (-1.12% compared with January; +1.53% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release March data later in April)

Page requests for March:

21.5 billion (-1.1% compared with February; +24.8% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for February 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

78,083 (-7.53% compared with January / -2.43% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for February 2013:

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of February 28, 2013

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of February 28, 2013

(Financial information is only available through February 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date February 28, 2013.

• Revenue for the month of February is $1.89MM vs plan of $276K, approximately $1.61MM or 585% over plan.

• Year-to-date revenue is $35.65MM vs plan of $30.46MM, approximately $5.19MM or 17% over plan.

• Expenses for the month of February is $4.25MM vs plan of $4.03MM, approximately $215K or 5% over plan, primarily due to higher capital expenses offset by lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, and grant expenses.

• Year-to-date expenses is $21.96MM vs plan of $25.94MM, approximately $3.98MM or 15% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, FDC grants executed, WMF project grants, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and bank fees.

• Cash position is $40.68MM as of February 28, 2013.

Highlights

Lua speeds up pages and empowers Wikimedia’s technical contributors

(more…)

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 February 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Legal victory for Wikivoyage and free knowledge

The Wikimedia Foundation’s legal team announced a settlement in the legal proceedings between the Foundation and Internet Brands, relating to issues stemming from the creation of Wikivoyage, our community’s newest free knowledge project.

Last year, Internet Brands (owners of a for-profit wiki-based travel project) sued two Wikimedians involved in supporting the travel wiki project. The Foundation supported the legal defense of the volunteers and the court ultimately dismissed Internet Brands’ lawsuit.

The Foundation also went on the offensive and filed its own separate lawsuit against Internet Brands seeking a declaration from the court that Internet Brands had no proper basis to block the travel wiki project. That suit was resolved in an out of court settlement on February 14, 2013. In that settlement, Internet Brands released the Foundation and Wikivoyage e.V. (the German non-profit organization who worked hard to make the travel project a success) from all claims related in any manner to the creation and operation of the travel wiki project. In return, the Foundation agreed to dismiss its suit.

Screenshot of the new mobile watchlist

Mobile watchlist available

Facilitating contributions to Wikipedia on mobile devices is an important goal for the Foundation’s mobile team. As one of the first results of these efforts, mobile Wikipedia users are now able to log into their account, and to view and modify their watchlist. On the mobile version, the star symbol for the watchlist is shown to all users, to encourage them to log in or create an account. Experienced contributors can use the watchlist as usual: To track changes to the selected pages and fix problems if necessary. But to make the watchlist more newbie-friendly, the mobile version also offers a full view of all selected pages, which can function as a reading list.

Language Engineering team attends open source conferences in India

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Language Engineering team participated in two conferences in Pune, India: GNUnify 2013, a major open source conference, and the Second Open Source Language Summit, co-organized by the Foundation with Red Hat. The team aims to make Wikipedia a website that can be used by anyone on the planet in their own language. India’s many different languages make it a natural location for the team to see the effect of their work. At the Language Summit, the engineers from the Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with attendees from Red Hat, KDE, Google and other groups. The work areas included the following:

• Input methods (enabling typing in a certain language), bringing the number of supported languages to 140.

• Translation tools, including a demonstration of the new design and features for the translation editor in MediaWiki’s Translate extension

• The “Language Coverage Matrix”, a detailed overview of language support in different projects and platforms (with 285 languages currently supported by Wikimedia, and more than 100 in the Fedora Linux distribution)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for January:

(more…)

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 February (March 7, 2013)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for January:

488.5 million (+3.37% compared with December; +1.31% compared with the previous year)

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

Page requests for February:

21.8 billion (-2.1% compared with January; +20.2% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for January 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

84,848 (+8.60% compared with December / +2.03% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for January 2013:

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of January 31, 2013

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of January 31, 2013

(Financial information is only available for January 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date January 31, 2013.

• Revenue for the month of January is $2.84MM vs plan of $276K, approximately $2.56MM or 927% over plan.

• Year-to-date revenue is $33.76MM vs plan of $30.19MM, approximately $3.57MM or 12% over plan.

• Expenses for the month of January is $2.26MM vs plan of $4.13MM, approximately $1.87 or 45% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, timing of FDC grants disbursement, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and outside contract services.

• Year-to-date expenses is $17.72MM vs plan of $21.90MM, approximately $4.18MM or 19% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, timing of FDC grants disbursement and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and bank fees.

• Cash position is $41.47MM as of January 31, 2013.

Highlights

Legal victory for Wikivoyage and free knowledge

(more…)

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 January 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Logo of the IdeaLab

New program offers financial support for projects by individual Wikimedians

The Foundation’s Individual Engagement Grants program launched on January 15. While most WMF grants have so far gone to organizations like chapters, the new program will finance initiatives by individual Wikimedians or small teams to improve Wikimedia projects. The first application period lasts until February 15. During the first two weeks, 31 ideas, drafts, and proposals were submitted. An “IdeaLab” has been set up where draft proposals can be discussed, and applicants can get help to turn their ideas into complete proposals.

Wikimedia Foundation servers

Successful migration to new data center

On January 22, Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia sites were migrated to the Foundation’s new primary data center in Ashburn, Virginia (US). The prior data center in Tampa, Florida had been the main hosting site since 2004; it will remain on standby to take over in case the new data center experiences an outage. The switch worked nearly without any problems. The Operations Team attributes this success to the careful preparation since 2011. This involved reviewing, improving and documenting the configuration of the servers (currently about 885) in a way that has already improved stability in 2012, and will make it possible to set up new data centers much faster.

New partnership grows the reach of Wikipedia Zero to 330 million mobile users

VimpelCom, the sixth largest mobile network operator in the world, joined the Wikipedia Zero program in January, raising the number of mobile users who are eligible to access Wikipedia without data fees by 100 million, to 330 million worldwide. Among the countries serves by VimpelCom are Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and other countries of the former USSR.

Wikivoyage logo

Wikivoyage becomes newest Wikimedia project

On January 15, the 12th anniversary of Wikipedia, Wikivoyage was officially launched as the newest project of the Wikimedia Foundation. The free travel guide that anyone can edit is already available in nine languages – Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish – with more being added. There are more than 50,000 articles, which are edited and improved by a core group of approximately 200 volunteer editors.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for December:

(more…)

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 7, 2013)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for December:

472.6 million (-2.46% compared with November; +3.39% compared with the previous year)

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

Page requests for January:

22.2 billion (10.3% compared with December; +23.4% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for December 2012 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

78,536 (-1.04% compared with November / +0.09% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects. Note: We recently refined this metric to take into account Wikimedia Commons and activity across several projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for December 2012:

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of December 31, 2012

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of December 31, 2012

(Financial information is only available for December 2012 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date December 31, 2012.

• Revenue for the month of December is $14.30MM vs plan of $14.41MM, approximately $109K or 1% under plan.
• Year-to-date revenue is $30.92MM vs plan of $29.91MM, approximately $1.01MM or 3% over plan.
• Expenses for the month of December is $2.70MM vs plan of $3.14MM, approximately $433K or 14% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses, bank fees, and outside contract services.
• Year-to-date expenses is $15.46MM vs plan of $17.78MM, approximately $2.31MM or 13% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, internet hosting, travel expenses, and capital expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses, bank fees, and awards and grants.
• Cash position is $41.17MM as of December 31, 2012.

Highlights

(more…)