So you want to run a top-10 web site? Now’s your chance…

We’re now hiring for a full-time system administrator to help monitor, maintain, and document the 400+ Linux/Unix servers that operate Wikipedia and its sister projects. This position will be based at our San Francisco headquarters, but will work closely with our remote staff and volunteers.

Currently, system administration tasks are spread over our other tech staff and volunteers, who have to split their time with software development, data center management, and network planning. A full-time system administrator will let us be more responsive to site issues when they happen, and more importantly be more proactive about planning for and averting problems before they affect the folks back home.

We’ve got operating systems to upgrade, configurations to document, software installations to automate, and a lot of service data that needs to be monitored and digested… if you think you’ve got the chops for it, send us your CV by the end of January!

Brion Vibber
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation

Eight years ago today Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia.  It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. Wikipedia has become one of the senior sites on the web, growing from a top 1000 site shortly after its creation to the fourth most visited site on the web in the last few months.

And on its eighth birthday Wikipedia exists in 265 languages and well over 10million articles – with thousands and thousands of active editors.

This morning Jimmy conducted an interview on CBC Radio’s “Q” – a national morning show broadcast across Canada and on Sirius satellite radio.  The interview will be ported to podcast a bit later today.  Take a listen to hear the founder recount the history of one of the greatest projects on the web.

Congratulations to all the volunteers who have built Wikipedia from a grand idea to a truly grand project.  Here’s to many more years!

Jay Walsh, Communications

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Earlier today the Foundation announced in a press release that Roger McNamee, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Elevation Partners (and a professional musician!) has joined the Wikimedia Advisory Board.  Roger’s been working with the Foundation since before our move to the bay area, both as an active supporter of Wikipedia and the Foundation’s project, and helping to introduce us to many new stakeholders and like-minded organizations.

Welcome, Roger!

Jay Walsh, Communications<

Wow.

It’s been a nice few weeks in fundraising for Wikimedia Foundation.  Our users have demonstrated overwhelming support for our projects and our mission.

We’ve more than passed our initial fundraising goal of $6 million (though you are still encouraged to make a donation…bolstering our reserves in preparation for the years ahead is always welcome) with over 130,000 people making a statement for open and free information.

I love being able to say that.  Thank our donors again for their support.

That said, we’ll be taking down the site notices/banners today at 4pm PST.  We’ll be sending out some news next week (approaching the 8th anniversary of Wikipedia) with some new geographic breakdown data about giving.

-Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving<

I’m very happy to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation is now opening hiring for the Wikipedia Usability Initiative!

Realized by a grant from the Stanton Foundation, the goal of this initiative is to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation.

We have three positions open, all local in San Francisco. See the linked pages for details and how to submit your CV:

• Interaction Designer

• Senior Software Developer

• Software Developer

The new team will be lead by project manager Naoko Komura, who was very helpful in organizing localization and translations for our recent fundraiser, and will coordinate closely with me and the rest of Wikimedia’s core developers. Also joining the project will be Wikimedia staff developer Trevor Parscal.

As always, all of Wikimedia’s software development is open-source, and we expect to be able to roll improvements into the live Wikipedia environment and general MediaWiki releases over the course of the project.

Brion Vibber
CTO, Wikimedia Foundation

We’re very pleased to share news today that Mike Godwin, General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, has been appointed to the Board of Directors for the Student Press Law Center.

Mike was recognized for his media and internet law expertise in the appointment.  His resumé also includes a post as editor of The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas.

The Student Press Law Center is based in Washington DC.  They provide legal support and advice to student journalists and media outlets, and answer questions and concerns regarding freedom of speech, censorship, and First Amendment issues.  Mike joins other members that represent expertise in journalism, law, education, and non-profit management.

Congratulations, Mike!

Jay Walsh, Communications<

We’re extremely pleased to be sharing the news that the 5th annual Wikimedia on-line fundraising campaign in support of Wikipedia and our sister projects has burst past its $6million USD goal.  Today we issued a press release, and later today we should have some further correspondence to share.

We will aslo be rotating the site banners on Wikipedia and the other projects later today to point to a new thank you note from Jimmy Wales.

This is a great day for Wikipedia, and for the more than 125,000 supports of the project.  You’ve helped us raise over $6.2million – and we’re still seeing donations come in.  Thank you for showing extraordinary support, and for helping to sustain and grow Wikipedia.

Happy New Year!  What a great way to kick it off.

Jay Walsh, Communications<

There is just no doubt in my mind that Jimmy’s Appeal letter has been the cause of our wonderful, incredible fundraising bump over the last 7 days.  None of us here predicted  such a wonderful response…but when you think about it, it really makes sense.

A few blog posts back, we proved that people do read our site notices…our messages matter.  So is it so hard to imagine these results?

Fundraiser Snapshot 122908

Yeah… I guess it might be hard to imagine.   Those LONG green lines are the donation totals for Jimmy’s Appeal.  It’s roughly 8 times what we had been raising on a daily basis previous to the appeal.

Date    # Donors    $USD
12/23/08    8,192     $283,994.98

12/24/08    6,823     $229,293.59

12/25/08    5,139     $169,109.73

12/26/08    5,995     $213,963.27

12/27/08    5,791     $200,988.24

12/28/08    5,627     $196,524.30

12/29/08    5,850     $207,349.76

Compare those results to the recent weeks (when we were averaging about $30,000 per day), the biggest change is running the Jimmy Appeal at 50% of the time.

Site Notice Frequency 12/20/08 to 12/22/08:

There Need it Meter: 25%
Rely on donations Meter: 25%
Wikipedia is a Non Profit: 25%
Various Quotes:  25%

And from 12/23 to present:

Jimmy Appeal Red Border:  25%
Jimmy Appeal Grey Border:  25%
There Need it Meter: 10%
Rely on donations Meter: 10%
Wikipedia is a Non Profit: 10%
Various Quotes:  20%

Incidentally, how did the grey bordered vs. red bordered vs. quotes and other site notices do?

# donations        sum           average
red border            13,372      $441,163.75     $32.99       25%
grey border          12,215       $419,911.63     $34.38       25%
quotes                     1,560        $59,445.81     $37.69       20%
Helped Meter           963        $35,814.23     $37.19       10%
Need it Meter           927        $32,502.97     $35.06      10%
NonProfit Meter      867        $38,412.25     $44.30      10%

Nope… no doubt.   The Jimmy Appeal was a huge push.

The Appeal really hit the right notes for our community:  direct and honest.  It was straight to the point and forceful.  And it helped our donors understand why we needed the money and what we were going to do with it.

As I write this, we’re at approximately $5,500,000.00 and still going strong toward our $6 million goal.   That’s with over 100,000 donors (many of them new donors) averaging over $30.00 per donation.   That speaks very well for the depth of our donor pool and the future.

Rand Montoya
Head of Community Giving

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Today marked the single most active fundraising day since the beginning of our campaign, and maybe in the history of fundraising at Wikimedia. People have come out in great numbers, and with a great total: Over $283K USD was raised in one day, from 8,186 donations!  That’s up from 800 contributions yesterday – or an 892% increase in the number of donations  (see the green spike):

Why the jump? It can very likely be attributed to the intro of our banner inviting users to read a donation appeal letter from founder Jimmy Wales:

This is a tremendous gesture from all the supporters of Wikipedia from around the world. A huge thanks to all of you – here’s to a few more days like today so we can keep pushing for our $6million goal!

Jay Walsh, Communications<

Video tutorials are often more beginner-friendly than text based online help pages. Wikimedia is therefore producing a number of videos demonstrating the basics of Wikipedia editing and increasing the public understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia.

On 19 November 2008 the shooting of the very first Wikipedia video tutorials took place. They will deal with two very basic questions:

* How do I edit Wikipedia?
* Why does Wikipedia work even though anyone can edit it?

To give you a look behind the scenes we produced a short 3 minute making-of video that can be watched online:

* on Wikimedia Commons (11.7 MB, better quality)
* on Wikimedia Commons (6.2 MB, lower quality)

and also

* on Vimeo
* on blip.tv
* on YouTube

Currently, the two video tutorials are in the process of post-production (assembling the film, adding visual effects etc.) and we hope that they will be online soon.  We’re also working on a portal space where the tutorials will be hosted for the long-term, and of course you’ll be able to find them here on the Wikimedia blog.

Frank Schulenburg
Head of Public Outreach<