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 September (October 4, 2012)

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for August:

456.25 million (+0.98% compared with July; +7.92% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release September data later in October)

Page requests for September:

19.1 billion (+5.3% compared with August; +20.9% compared with the previous year)

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

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

79,572 (-0.74% compared with July / -0.81% 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 August 2012:

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

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

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

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

All financial information presented is for the period July 1, 2012 – August 31, 2012.

• Revenue for the month of August is $1.4MM vs plan of $465K, approximately $946K or 203% over plan, primarily due to the $1.0MM received from the Sloan Foundation.
• Year-to-date revenue is $1.8MM vs plan of $1.9MM, approximately $0.1MM or 9% under plan.
• Expenses for the month of August is $2.6MM vs plan of $2.7MM, approximately $0.1MM or 3% under plan, primarily due personnel expenses, internet hosting expenses, travel expenses, capital expenses, and legal expenses partially offset by a grant for the India catalyst program and higher recruiting expenses.
• Year-to-date expenses is $5.2MM vs plan of $5.9MM, approximately $0.7MM or 12% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, internet hosting, travel expenses, capital expenses, legal expenses.
• Cash position is $21.8MM as of August 31, 2012 which is approximately 6.2 months of expenses.

Highlights

(more…)

Major news in September include:

• The introduction of translation memory by the Language engineering team;
• A breakage of our gerrit tool, and its subsequent recovery;
• A new version of the Wiki Loves Monuments App, that allows users to use it in combination with a separate camera.
• A new EPUB export feature enabled on the English Wikipedia;
• A call to nonprofits, schools, libraries, etc. who may be interested in getting decommissioned Wikimedia servers;
• The launch of the Page curation feature on the English Wikipedia;
• The completion of Google Summer of Code 2012. (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 August 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Screenshot of the Wiki Loves Monuments app

Wiki Loves Monuments app enables the first mobile contributions to Wikimedia projects

In preparation for September’s “Wiki Loves Monuments“, the worldwide contest to contribute freely licensed photos of cultural heritage sites to Wikimedia Commons, the mobile team released the new Wiki Loves Monuments app for Android. Users can find nearby monuments, or search for them on a list. One can take photos from within the app and directly upload them to Wikimedia Commons. This is the first time that a mobile contribution mechanism is officially supported. Others ways of contributing to Wikimedia projects using mobile devices are being considered, too.

Language support tools released in “Project Milkshake”

The Internationalisation/Localisation (i18n/l10n) team reported progress on its Project Milkshake, an effort to release its existing internationalisation-related JavaScript components as standard jQuery libraries. They include an i18n framework that supports parameter replacements and grammar-, plural-, and gender-dependent translations, a library to support WebFonts (fonts that do not need to be installed on the reader’s computer), and a library to provide text input methods in the browser.

Request for Comment on legal fees assistance program

In a Request for Comment (RfC), the Foundation proposes a program intended to help pay for the legal defense fees of eligible users in specified support roles – such as certain community administrator, arbitrator, email response, or project governance functions – if a lawsuit is brought against them in relation to their activities in these roles.

Pilot project on Arabic Wikipedia increases contributions by new editors

On the Arabic Wikipedia, a new “contribution portal” was created in June, as a pilot project within the Editor Growth and Contribution Program. It offers simple visual tutorials for six basic editing tasks, such as fixing a typo or creating a new article. It has already increased the ratio of new users who start contributing, according to an analysis of the first phase (in English and Arabic).

Contribution portal on the Arabic Wikipedia (phase 0)

Data and Trends

Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting, September 4, 2012

Global unique visitors for July:

(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 August (September 4, 2012)

Data and Trends

Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting, September 4, 2012

Global unique visitors for July:

451.82 million (-3.80% compared with June; +14.81% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release August data later in September)

Page requests for August:

18.2 billion (+2.6% compared with July; +20.7% compared with the previous year)

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

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

80,465 (+2.59% compared with June / +1.16% 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 July 2012:

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

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

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

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

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

• Revenue for the month-to-date and year-to-date is $347K vs plan of $1.5MM, approximately $1.1M or 76% under plan, primarily due to $1M from Sloan Foundation budgeted for July but actually received in August.

• Expenses for the month-to-date and year-to-date is $2.6M vs plan of $3.2M, approximately $639K or 20% under than plan, primarily due to lower personnel related expenses and awards and grants associated with Wikimania DC that had been reflected in FY 11-12.

• Cash position is $23.6M as of July 31, 2012, which is approximately 6.7 months of expenses.

Highlights

(more…)

Major news in August include:

• A site outage caused by a fiber cut between our two data centers;
• Progress by the Internationalization team on the Universal language selector & Milkshake, and WebFonts;
• Changes in our analytics system to improve the accuracy of the active editors metric;
• Major work on the Wiki Loves Monuments app.

Note: Following a reader’s advice, we’re trying out slightly colored backgrounds to help readers skim through sections. Let us know in the comments how that works for you, and how to improve it for the next report. (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 July 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimania 2012 group photograph

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Foundation staff at Wikimania

From July 12 to July 14, Wikimedians from around the world came together in Washington DC for this year’s annual Wikimania conference, organized by Wikimedia District of Columbia (see also the this month’s movement highlights). Among them were many Wikimedia Foundation staff, fellows and contractors.

The keynote of Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner was titled “Wikimedia Foundation: The Year In Review and The Year Ahead” (slides), and the Schedule included many other presentations by WMF staff, fellows and contractors:

• Fabrice Florin, Howie Fung, Karyn Gladstone, Brandon Harris, Oliver Keyes: Engaging editors on Wikipedia: A roadmap of new features (abstract, slides) / Oliver Keyes: Engaging the Community: What We’ve Tried and Where We’re Going (abstract) – video
• Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw: Life Without Brackets: Visual Editing for Wikitext (abstract,
• Erik Moeller: The purpose-driven social network: Supporting WikiProjects with technology (abstract, slides)
• Brandon Harris: The Athena Project: Wikipedia in 2015 (abstract. slides)
• Steven Walling, Maryana Pinchuk: Welcome to Wikipedia, now please go away: improving how we communicate with new editors (abstract, slides, video)
• Tilman Bayer (with MZMcBride): Stop Spamming’ vs. ‘Nobody Told Me’ – the state and future of movement broadcasting mechanisms (abstract, slides, video)
• Alolita Sharma: The next billion users on Wikipedia with Open Source Webfonts (abstract, video)
• Amir E. Aharoni: The software localization paradox (abstract, slides)
• Noopur Raval: GLAM and Outreach in India (abstract)
• Lori Byrd Phillips: State of GLAM-WIKI in the US (abstract)
• James Forrester & Philippe Beaudette: Wikimedia relations with governments, lobbying and public relations (abstract, video)
• Amir E. Aharoni: Supporting languages, all of them (abstract – submitted by Gerard Meijssen – , slides, video)
• Siebrand Mazeland: A Tale of Language Support (abstract, slides, video)
• Siebrand Mazeland, Santhosh Thottingal, Pau Giner, Niklas Laxström, Amir Aharoni, Arun Ganesh, Alolita Sharma: Ask the Language Support People (abstract, video)
• Fabrice Florin: Giving Readers a Voice: Lessons from Article Feedback v5 (abstract, slides, video)
• Geoff Brigham: Top 10 Legal Issues for the Wikimedia Movement (abstract, slides, video)
• Leslie Carr, Ben Hartshorne, Jeff Green, Ryan Lane, Rob Halsell: Ask the Operators (abstract, video)
• Ben Hartshorne: Swift and the Media Storage System (abstract, slides, video)
• Amir E. Aharoni: The hundred-year old websites – a new look at Wikisource (abstract, slides, video)
• Brion Vibber: Embedded scripting: creating interactive diagrams, maps, and other media resources in MediaWiki (abstract, slides, video)
• Andrew Garrett, with other panelists: Small Process Helpers: The case for Widgets (abstract, video)
• Tomasz Finc, Jon Robson: The Wikipedia Mobile Experience — Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going (abstract – submitted by Patrick Reilly -,slides, video)
• Yuvaraj Pandian: The Wikipedia Smartphone Apps Story (abstract, video)
• Oliver Keyes, with other panelists: Eternal December: How Awful Arguments are Killing the Wiki, and Why not to Make Them (abstract, video)
• Maryana Pinchuk, Steven Walling: “This is my voice”: the motivations of highly active Wikipedians (abstract, slides, video)
• Ryan Lane: Wikimedia Labs and the state of our open source infrastructure (abstract)
• Amit Kapoor/Kul Takanao Wadhwa: Reaching the Next Billion Users: Wikipedia on mobile (abstract, slides, video) + panel (video)
• Tomasz Finc, Dan Foy: Removing the barriers of access to Wikipedia (abstract, slides, video)
• Niklas Laxström: Translating the wiki way (abstract, slides, video)
• Rob Lanphier: Delivering MediaWiki faster, smoother and better (abstract, video)
• Siko Bouterse, Sarah Stierch, Jonathan Morgan, Jon Harald Søby, Peter Coombe, Tanvir Rahman, Steven Zhang: Wikimedia Community Fellows: what we’re researching, piloting and building to help the movement (abstract, slides: Introduction, Teahouse, dispute resolution, translation project, help pages, Small Wiki Editor Engagement)
• Sumana Harihareswara, Guillaume Paumier, Rob Lanphier: Transparency and collaboration in Wikimedia engineering (abstract, video)
• Katie Horn: Fundraising: Under the Hood (abstract, video)
• Sarah Stierch: 10 women in 10 minutes (abstract, slides)
• Santhosh Thottingal: Read and Write in your language (abstract, slides)
• Asaf Bartov: Funds for Free Knowledge: Wikimedia Foundation Grantmaking (abstract, slides, video)
• James Alexander: The Bad Assumptions of the Copyright Discussion (abstract)
• Sumana Harihareswara: What Does THAT mean? Engineering Jargon And Procedures Explained (abstract)
• Roan Kattouw and Timo Tijhof: ResourceLoader 2: The Future of Gadgets (abstract, slides)
• Guillaume Paumier: 11 years of Wikipedia, or the Wikimedia history crash course you can edit (abstract, video)
• Lori Byrd Phillips (with Àlex Hinojo and Andy Mabbett): QRpedia and you (abstract)

Beyond these, Wikimedia Foundation staff, fellows and contractors also participated in various other panels.

The fundraising team recorded over 100 on-camera interviews with Wikimedia editors, programmers and volunteers from all over the world. Interviews are inspiring new editor appeals (and a short video about Wikipedia), which we will showcase during the annual fundraiser.

Data and Trends

(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 July (August 2, 2012)

Data and Trends

Erik Möller explaining pageviews

Global unique visitors for June:

469.64 million (-4.62% compared with May; +17.60% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release July data later in August)

Page requests for July:

17.7 billion (-1.9% compared with June; +25.3% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for June 2012 (>= 5 edits/month):

82,220 (-3.2% compared with May / -1.3% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons. Note: We are in the process of moving to a metric that takes into account SUL and Wikimedia Commons.)

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

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

Financials

WMF YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of June 30, 2012

WMF YTD Expenses by Functions as of June 30, 2012

Sue Gardner explaining financial information

(Financial information is only available for June 30, 2012 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 – June 30, 2012.

• Revenue for the month is $549K vs plan of $162K, approximately $387K or 238% over plan.
• Year-to-date revenue is $36.1MM vs plan of $29.5MM, approximately $6.6MM or 22% over plan.
• Expenses for the month is $3.3MM vs plan of $2.2MM, approximately $1.1MM or 49% higher than plan, primarily due to catching up on planned capital expenditures and higher-than-budgeted expenses for professional services and wikimania.
• Year-to-date expenses is $28.8MM vs plan of $28.3MM, approximately $512K or 2% higher than plan, primarily due to higher-than-budgeted payment processing fees (reflecting over-achieved revenue targets), higher-than-budgeted expenses for Wikimania, and an over-spend for Legal to fix issues with our trademark portfolio.
• Cash position is $25.4MM as of June 30, 2012 which is approximately 10.9 months of expenses.
• Please note that the June 30, 2012 numbers presented in this report will be different from those in the audited financial reports due to the way capital expenditures and other items are presented. For example, for this report capital expenditures for servers and other equipment purchases are shown as an expense for the fiscal year, and for our audited financial statements they will be moved to fixed assets on the balance sheet and the audited statement of activities will show depreciation expense.

Highlights

Foundation staff report on their work at Wikimania

(more…)

Major news in July include:

• Engineering presence at Wikimania 2012 in Washington, D.C., and the pre-Wikimania hackathon;
• the launch of Limn, an open source dataviz toolkit developed by the Wikimedia analytics team;
• the deployment of Article Feedback Version 5 (which supports free-text feedback and moderation thereof) to 10% of English Wikipedia articles

(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 June 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Advisory group discusses future funds dissemination structure

The FDC advisory group meeting in San Francisco

On June 9-10, the advisory group for the formation of the future Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) met at the Foundation’s offices in San Francisco. Community volunteers, Wikimedia Trustees, chapter representatives, Foundation staff and members of the Bridgespan Group discussed how the FDC will guide the decisions about the distribution of money (over 10 million US dollars in 2012-13) among the Foundation, chapters and other groups. Based on the resulting recommendations, the Board of Trustees has since approved the charter and initial operation of the FDC. Wikimedians who wish to serve on the FDC are invited to nominate themselves.

Logo of the Visual Editor project

Second Visual Editor prototype launched

A new prototype of the “visual editor” for Wikimedia projects was launched, the first release that can create and edit pages. It will enable users to contribute without having to learn complicated wikitext syntax.

“Teahouse” pilot concludes with encouraging results

The Teahouse, where new Wikipedia editors can receive support from experienced community members, concluded its three month pilot phase on the English Wikipedia, publishing a report and metrics. 568 volunteers participated in the pilot. In a survey, 70% said that they were satisfied with their Teahouse experience, while only 5% were not satisfied. New editors who are invited to the Teahouse made many more edits afterwards than those who do not receive an invitation. 28 percent of Teahouse participants are women, compared to 9 percent of editors on Wikipedia in general.

Hackers convene in Berlin

A panoramic view of the Berlin Hackathon

Over 100 participants from 30 countries came to Berlin for the Berlin Hackathon, co-organized by Wikimedia Deutschland and the Foundation. They included MediaWiki developers, Toolserver users, systems administrators, bot writers and maintainers, Gadget creators, and other Wikimedia technologists. The community also learned more about the Wikidata and RENDER projects.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for May:

(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.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for May:

492.39 million (4.02% compared with April; 19.79% compared with the previous year)

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

Page requests for June:

18.1 billion (+0.2% compared with May; +22.7% compared with the previous year)

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

Active Registered Editors for May 2012 (>= 5 edits/month):

85,200 (+0.38% compared with April / +3.25% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons. Note: In the near future, we will be moving to a metric that takes into account SUL and Wikimedia Commons.)

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

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

Financials

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

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

(Financial information is only available through May 2012 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 – May 31, 2012.

• Revenue for the month is $659K vs plan of $162K, approximately $497K or 306% over plan.
• Year-to-date is $35.6MM vs plan of $29MM, approximately $6.6MM or 23% over plan.
• Expenses for the month is $3.4MM vs plan of $2.2MM, approximately $1.2MM or 50% higher than plan, largely due to catching up on planned capital expenditures.
• Year-to-date is $25.5MM vs plan of $ 25.7MM, approximately $252K or 1% lower than plan.
• Cash position is $29.1MM as of May 31, 2012 which is approximately 12.5 months of expenses.

Highlights

Advisory group discusses future funds dissemination structure

(more…)