One of the annual plan targets of the Wikimedia Foundation for 2011-2012 was to reach 2 billion monthly page views to the Wikipedia mobile site by June 2012. We’re happy to say that we hit the mark sooner, on the second-to-last day of April to be exact. April clocked in at 2.089 billion, a year-over-year increase of 187%. The mobile site now attracts 12.6% of all page views for Wikipedia, more than twice of its 5.1% share in April 2011.

How did it happen? As internet usage shifts from a desktop-centric environment to a more mobile-centric one, there’s a migration to smaller screens. Various industries and factors have made that happen, and several things have been done at the Wikimedia Foundation to move with the change. We can’t do justice to all the individual work by attempting to list it here, but amongst the many changes and contributions, a few highlights include the launch of the new mobile site last October, better device detection, and the official Android app announced in January.

Also notable about the 2 billion mark is the way use has evolved globally. A year ago, 67% of all visits to the Wikipedia mobile site were to the English Wikipedia; now that number is 54%. In the Global South in particular, traffic to the mobile sites for certain languages has grown tremendously. Some examples include Portuguese (from 3.9M to 27.4M), Arabic (from 1.7M to 10.2M), and Turkish (from 1.0M to 9.0M). As our partnership programs roll out to allow hundreds of millions to access Wikipedia on their mobile devices without incurring data charges, we expect mobile use to be even more globally distributed over the coming year.

The work on mobile, from both the tech and global development side, is not slowing down in the least however. There’s a lot more to come, but it’s worth taking a moment to recognize the mark we’ve reached, and to thank every community and staff member who played a part.

On behalf of the Mobile Team (Tomasz Finc, Patrick Reilly, Arthur Richards, Jon Robson, André Engels, Kul Wadhwa, Mani Pande, Amit Kapoor, Yuvaraj Pandian, Max Semenik, Phil Chang, Dan Foy):

Amit Kapoor, Senior Manager, Mobile Partnerships

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

Earlier today we uploaded the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2008/2009 Annual Plan presentation and Questions and Answers page to the Wikimedia Wiki.  These materials were approved at the June 20 Board of Trustees meeting.  They can be accessed via the Finance Report page.

Posting our plan and (hopefully) answering some of your questions in advance is part of our commitment to providing transparent information about the Foundation’s goals and spending.

The Annual Plan lays out projected spending through the next fiscal year (which for us starts today and runs the rest of the year).  The plan describes spending in our three main operational areas: technology, programming, and finance and administration.  We also introduce our 2008/2009 organizational goals, which we hope to discuss in more detail in the coming months.

For your information and awareness!

Jay Walsh
Head of Communications<