Cornelia Trefflich und Phillip Wilke, Foto: Michael Jahn, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Obwohl es schon wirklich eng ist in der Wikimedia Geschäftsstelle in Schöneberg, sind im Februar zwei neue Mitarbeiter hinzu gekommen. Unmögliches wird möglich gemacht – und so rückt man zusammen, improvisiert, stellt hier und da noch Tische, Stühle und Computer auf! Die, gefühlt exponentiell wachsende Arbeit, muss ja gemacht werden. Die zwei Neuen, das sind Cornelia Trefflich und Phillip Wilke. Heute möchten sie sich kurz vor:

Cornelia, gerne auch Conny, mag keine Dreien in Altersangaben, ist in Halle (Saale) geboren und hat Englisch, Spanisch und Kulturwissenschaften in Leipzig studiert.

Ich unterstütze den Bereich Bildung & Wissen bei der Restrukturierung. Die Programme ‘Silberwissen’, ‘Wikipedia macht Schule’ und das Hochschulprogramm verfügen über ein gemeinsames Referentennetzwerk und sollen auch inhaltlich enger verknüpft werden. Deswegen übernehme ich gerade viele Koordinationsaufgaben und maile und telefoniere viel mit engagierten Freiwilligen und Referenten. Damit kenne ich mich durch meine Arbeit beim ICJA Freiwilligenaustausch weltweit schließlich aus. Mich reizt besonders die Zusammenarbeit mit hoch motivierten Menschen mit ganz verschiedenen Hintergründen, die sich alle für die Idee des freien Wissens begeistern und einsetzen. Ich freue mich schon darauf, viele engagierte Referenten auf dem im März stattfindenden Camp kennen zu lernen.

Phillip, Jahrgang 1983, gebürtiger Hannoveraner, dessen Namen fast jeder erst mal falsch schreibt.

An der TU Berlin habe ich Geschichte und Kommunikationswissenschaften studiert. Ich bin neu im Team PR- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und arbeite gemeinsam mit Catrin und Michael. Gerade die projektbezogene Pressearbeit werde ich in Zukunft verstärken. Deswegen werde ich auch viel mit Nicole zusammen arbeiten und ihr immer Mal wieder eine helfende Hand reichen. Viele Baustellen also, aber Kopf-Wirrwarr bin ich durch meine Tätigkeiten bei verschiedenen Medien und Verlagen sowie der ehrenamtlichen Pressearbeit beim Kongress atoms&bits ja bereits gewohnt. Schon vorher habe ich die Wikipedia zur täglichen Recherche genutzt. Die Idee des freien Wissens nun hauptberuflich voranzutreiben und publik machen zu dürfen, ist für mich eine große Ehre und anspornende Aufgabe zugleich.

So, dann gehen wir mal Kaffee trinken und das Mate-Lager plündern. Im Anschluss wird wieder gearbeitet. Versprochen!

after the slush, the flush

When new code does not find its way into production for quite some time, it tends to pile up. It is like with snow and when the time comes when it starts to thaw, it starts with a trickle, the trickles become a stream and all the streams rush down the mountain.

For the WMF Localisation team we worked on our documentation, our help system and our tests. We went to conferences in Belgium and India. And we worked on many small iterative improvements. We rolled out webfonts to more wikis. Input methods were improved and deployed as per requests. We have had our translation memory working on translatewiki.net for ages and now it is configured for use on the WMF wikis who use the Translate extension. Actually, we did experiment first with a new algorithm and we did configure one of the labs systems as a host for the memory of all the fine work we did and do.

Over time a lot of work went into things like plural rules. As the number of languages increase and as we support not only PHP but now also JavaScript, we are optimising our code and we are checking it again. We frequently find that a re-factoring is in order. It makes the code more elegant and easier to maintain. With added documentation and tests we ensure that we know it will work well.

Another fine project waiting to get to the stage where it will flow into our codebase is an updated Easy Timeline. The functionality has always been broken when used in many of  the “other” languages, languages written in a different direction, a different script.  The updated Easy Timeline has been given a revamp; it uses SVG to create the image and you can test it at translatewiki sandbox. Amir welcomes bug reports and LOVES to hear your comments

As you know, we use mingle for our project management (user guest, password guest). In it we have stories that explain the functionality that we are going to develop. Story 532 is one such:

As a potential translator, I want to be able to tell translation administrators in a structured way that I am interested in translating to one or more languages and at the same time provide them with some data about me and preferences on how and how often I would like to be contacted, so that translation administrators can more effectively and efficiently target translators.

Together with the acceptance criteria a narrative like this enables the developer to develop and the finished product to be accepted by our product manager. A story comes with tasks and once you have read the stories and the tasks you have a clue of what goes into getting you new functionality.

The conferences were great, we learn a lot from meeting so many wonderful people. Many tests are deployed and they run regularly. The documentation, including user documentation is written and we love you to translate many of them in your language. We feel really pumped up to get cracking and provide you with more functionality in the next sprint.

Thanks,
Gerard Meijssen
Internationalization / Localization outreach consultant

From February 6-12, the fifth Campus Party Brasil took place, hosted in São Paulo, and we (the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Brasil) had the great opportunity to represent the Brazilian Wikimedia community through our attendance. Fifteen volunteers from the community got tickets to attend and worked alongside Kul Wadhwa, Pats Peña, and me (Jessie Wild), who came in from San Francisco. We had and accomplished a few specific goals:

• Motivate Brazilians towards collaborative knowledge! Kul gave a keynote presentation which highlighted the importance of asking why you are choosing the direction of your life.
  

  Wikimedia Brasil @ Campus Party

• Determine the plausibility of a MediaWiki Hackathon in Brazil! The verdict: we should do it! There is obviously a lot of interest across communities in Brazil, and Pats, Mateus, Jonas, and others helped network with key organizations and development communities which were also present at the event. They got many tips, formed some collaborative partnerships, and raised awareness for the upcoming event. So get your hacker-hands ready and stay tuned for details…
• Recruit new editors and member for Wikimedia Brasil! The volunteers led a “Mutirão,” or an activity designed to teach people how to set-up a user account and do a quick one hour editing sprint. As a result, we had three winners who contributed to articles which are part of the “Grand Prix” editing sprint currently taking place on the Portuguese Wikipedia, and were awarded T-shirts.

In addition to the above, we were all able to make a lot of new friends! We had the privilege of sharing a table with the Mozilla community and the Garoa Hacker Club community (we also adopted one Angry Bird). This led to great connections for us all, and we are excited about the potential to work together more, as compatible communities going forward.

Sleepy

There are certainly things we can improve on. Primarily, though we had a lot of volunteers sign up for tickets, unfortunately not all came or did not participate in the outreach event. Next time, it may help us to be more explicit in the different roles each of us can have in supporting Wikipedia/Wikimedia while at the conference, so that everyone knows how they are to be involved in promoting Wikipedia.

But – all in all, another great event in São Paulo (although very exhausting)…

Jessie Wild, Special Projects Manager, Global Development

View of the King's Library at the British Library (taken during a Wikimedia editathon, January 2011)

As the chapter’s Ashley Van Haeften told Wired UK, “the main purpose of the position is to ensure a successful programme of collaboration with British Library staff and curators supporting volunteers with a passion for sharing open knowledge about the library’s collections and projects. I have met many curators that are astonishingly passionate about openly sharing the knowledge that the library preserves.”

The concept of Wikipedian/Wikimedian in Residence was pioneered in 2010 by Liam Wyatt at the nearby British Museum. Since then, it has spread to other venerable cultural institutions around the world. Recently, Dominic McDevitt-Parks, Wikipedian in Residence at the US National Archives, proudly announced that it was releasing a newly discovered audio recording from the John F. Kennedy assassination to Wikimedia Commons.

The deadline to apply at the British Library is February 23.

Tilman Bayer
Movement Communications

The mobile web is growing at a phenomenal pace. According to research, it will outpace the desktop internet web in 2014, when approximately 1.7 billion users will access the net on their mobile phone, many of them from the Global South, compared to 1.65 billion desktop web users. As part of our mission to provide free knowledge to everyone, we are committed to enhancing our mobile platform, and have made several improvements to the reading user experience. But most importantly, we recently launched a partnership with Orange to provide Wikipedia at no data cost to mobile readers in Africa and the Middle East.

To understand our current Wikipedia mobile users across different geographies and prioritize product features, we conducted a survey of Wikipedia mobile readers. You can read more about its methodology on Meta wiki.

Looking at the data from the survey, there is a strong case to be made for making Wikipedia accessible without data charges on mobile devices.  Over half of Wikipedia mobile readers (52 percent) said that having Wikipedia free for their mobile data plans would increase their Wikipedia usage. Moreover, 28 percent indicated that it would increase their likelihood to buy from that mobile provider.  Another 16 percent said that they would be willing to switch their mobile providers to have free Wikipedia access.

Q. If certain mobile phone service providers provided Wikipedia for free on their data plans, how might that affect your actions? Base: 6700 (Those currently pay for a data plan)

Looking globally, we found that Wikipedia readers in the Global South, specifically in Brazil, Latin America and MENA, indicated that they would use Wikipedia more often if no data costs were accrued, and even suggested this as a key motivating factor for switching to or considering alternative service providers.

Q: If certain mobile phone service providers provided Wikipedia for free on their data plans, how might that affect your actions? Base: 6700 (Those currently pay for a data plan)

We found high interest in Wikipedia access without data charges despite a majority of readers (54 percent) stating that their mobile data plan is not a significant monthly expense for their household.  But it should be noted that the data is based on current mobile readers, and doesn’t survey those who don’t have current mobile Wikipedia access, some of whom might not have access to the mobile web due to high cost.  Only 14 percent of respondents stated that their data plan was either a significant expense with their household actively managing usage, or too expensive leading to issues of affordability. In addition, about 32 percent stated that it was a significant expense, but that they were not concerned about it.

Q: Which of the following statements best describes how expensive your data plan is relative to other expenses that you have? Base: 6700 (Those currently pay for a data plan)

If you are interested in more data from the mobile survey, please check out the toplines or read our summary report or read key findings.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst, Global Development

Zajímá vás, jak bude soutěž Wiki Loves Monuments vypadat? Co všechno musí být připraveno a zajištěno? I my jsme byli dlouhou dobu na rozpacích, nicméně není důvod k obavám. Soutěž má totiž svůj harmonogram, který je centrální, a kterého se drží víceméně všechny pobočky Wikimedia. I my se se ho hodláme držet. Pokud máte proto zájem pomoci nám s úspěchem akce, neváhejte se přidat, každou ruku přiloženou k dílu oceníme. Především právě ty, kteří mají dost zkušeností z oblastí kultury, ochrany památek a správy našeho kulturního dědictví, které se v létě vypravíme fotit.

V pátek 17. 2. vyšel s pomocí wikipedistů Vojtěcha Dostála a Michala Reitera celostránkový rozhovor s členem sdružení Petrem Brožem o Wikipedii, Wikimedii a spolupráci s VŠ v deníku Právo. S redakcí jednáme o možnosti uveřejnění textové části.

Ve stínu anglické Wikipedie se skrývá řada menších projektů a Wikipedií, co se obsahu i základny editorů týče. Desítky jazykových mutací Wikipedie jsou psány nadšenci bojujícími o přízeň čtenářů, potenciálních editorů, s anglickou Wikipedií. Jedním z menších projektů je i Wikipedie psaná v češtině, která v minulém roce přesáhla hranici 200 000 hesel. I přes jazykovou bariéru, která zabraňuje snadnému přebírání obsahu mezi Wikipediemi, existuje možnost, jak se jednotlivé jazykové mutace mohou obohacovat. Je to skrze sdílení nápadů a idejí nezávislých na hranicích či jazyku. Nápady fungující na jedné Wikipedii, se mohou osvědčit i jinde. A proto bychom vám rádi představili jeden tématický WikiProjekt, který se úzce specializuje na téma chráněných území v Česku.

WikiProjekt Chráněná území je projekt na české Wikipedii, který se primárně zaměřuje na chráněné oblasti na území Česka. Oproti jiným projektům se nesnaží pouze vylepšovat encyklopedický obsah a získávat fotografie, ale klade si větší cíl; motivovat čtenáře, aby se sami stali editory Wikipedie. Potřeba, která je aktuální celosvětově na všech projektech napříč jazykovými mutacemi Wikipedie. Internet dnes nabízí celou škálu různých lákadel, umožňující uživateli seberealizaci skrze psaní či jinou činnost. A proto je Wikipedie v těžkém postavení. O svého čtenáře/editora musí bojovat s dalšími projekty, sociálními sítěmi, on-line hrami a dalším. Pokud chceme nadále růst, musí Wikipedie čtenáři nabízet témata, která ho zaujme natolik, že se sám rozhodne podílet na jejím rozvoji.

Představovaný WikiProjekt Chráněná území vznikl před více jak rokem a od té doby ušel kus své virtuální cesty. Od ryze pragmatické činnosti v podobě revize existujících hesel (sjednocení názvosloví, třídění obsahu, kategorizace, doplnění GPS atd.), přes robotické zakládání článků pro usnadnění editování začínajícím editorům až po vytvoření kategorizačního stromu fotografií na Commons. K začátku roku 2012 sdružujeme přes 2300 článků různé kvality, nicméně stejného vzhledu a základního obsahu. Jak se editace spojené s projektem začaly více ukazovat v posledních změnách a na komunitních diskusích, začali se připojovat další zkušení editoři. Nicméně, česká Wikipedie je relativně malý projekt s přibližně 80 až 100 aktivními editory, byla tedy jen otázka času, než vyčerpáme editory se zájmem o přírodu. Projekt brzy dosáhl svého početního maxima a další snahy o oslovení editorů vycházely na prázdno…

Nafocenost chráněných území v jednotlivých okresech v Česku po roce fungování projektu

Brzy jsme si uvědomili, že množství editorů ochotných participovat na projektu je na české Wikipedii omezené. Editoři jsou po letech přesyceni širokou nabídkou zajímavých projektů, do kterých se mohou zapojit. Proto bylo stále těžší vzbudit jejich zájem. Museli jsme začít řešit otázku, jak pokračovat v rozvoji projektu a přitom získat další editory? Odpovědí bylo porozhlédnout se mimo projekty Wikipedii a aktivně se zapojit do snahy přerodu čtenářů v editory. Tato jednoduchá úvaha skrývá ale nutnost vyřešit těžkou otázku. A to, jak úspěšně oslovit veřejnost? Samotné prostředí Wikipedie není k propagačním aktivitám vhodné a ani přívětivé. Otázka reklamy, včetně propagace vlastních projektů, je téma budící v komunitách emoce. Naštěstí Internet nabízí snadnou platformu současnosti: sociální sítě.

Sociální sítě umožňují snadný přístup Vámi vybraného obsahu ke čtenáři, tedy k potenciálnímu editorovi. Máte jedinečnou možnost cíleně oslovovat zájmovou skupinu zajímavostmi na Vámi zvolené téma a současně přidávat informace o pozadí fungování Wikipedie, které by čtenář obvykle nehledal. Z toho důvodu jsme založili fanouškovské skupiny na dvou v Česku rozšířených sítích (Facebook, Google+), ve kterých sdružujeme zatím okolo 350 fanoušků a toto číslo každým dnem pozvolna roste. Do skupiny dáváme informace o nově rozšířených článcích, o nově nafotografovaných územích či další zajímavosti s touto tématikou. Současně představujeme fungování Wikipedie a vybízíme fanoušky k aktivnímu přispívání na Wikipedii. Neustále je ujišťujeme, že editování je snadné, prospěšné a snažíme se radou i vlastní prací pomáhat lidem, kteří se rozhodnou editování vyzkoušet. A vskutku, pozorujeme kladné výsledky této práce. Samozřejmě jsou pozvolné, ale tyto skupiny již pomohly odhalit řadu chyb v článcích, pomohly získat desítky fotografií dalších chráněných území, kde jsme zatím nebyli, či navázat kontakty na další subjekty pro hlubší spolupráci (možnost provázat s GLAMem).

Nicméně pro úspěšný WikiProjekt nestačí jen provozovat stránky na sociálních sítí. Je potřeba být aktivní a snažit se růst různými směry. Z toho důvodu jsme se pokusili navázat spolupráci se vzdělávacími institucemi. Na začátku zimního semestru 2011/2012 započala spolupráce s institutem Ochrany životního prostředí při Přírodovědecké fakultě Univerzity Karlovy v Praze, významné vzdělávací instituci. V rámci spolupráce se náš WikiProjekt podílel na pořádání semináře, ve kterém se studenti pro získání zápočtu zapojili do rozšiřování české Wikipedie. Celkem 30 studentů v průběhu semestru vylepšovalo články a pořizovalo fotografie vybraného chráněného území. Ke konci semestru jsme byli obohaceni o 30 nadprůměrných hesel, včetně hesla o finské chráněné oblasti Kevo a národním parku Kobuk Valley na Aljašce. Vyjma encyklopedického textu jsme touto spoluprací získali i desítky fotografií, neboť studenti měli své vybrané chráněné území i osobně navštívit a nafotit; fotografie většiny chráněných území přitom dosud na Commons nebyly. Ukázalo se, že pokud se wikipedisté sami podílí na vedení semináře, jsou výsledky kvalitní. Bohužel je ale tento způsob získávání případných editorů dosti nepředvídatelný, jelikož po skončení semestru často studenti přestanou editovat.

Snažíme se využívat i další formy oslovení potenciálních editorů, například účastí na konferencích, přednáškami, rozdáváním letáků, ale i skrze neotřelé nápady jako v podobě tisku malé hry pro všechny věkové kategorie. Společně s dalšími autory a použitím fotografií z Commons jsme vyrobili pexeso s tématikou chráněných území. Do pexesa jsme vyjma našeho loga umístili i text, který pojednává o tom, jak se můžou lidé zapojit do editování Wikipedie a o čem náš WikiProjekt pojednává. První tisk byl v nákladu 1000 ks a do jeho distribuce se nám povedlo zapojit řadu významných ekologických organizací v Česku (Správa KRNAPu, Český svaz ochránců přírody). Připravujeme propagační video, workshopy v přírodě s botaniky pro zlepšení wiki-fotografů a další. Snažíme se být aktivní ve všech směrech a dávat o sobě vědět na veřejnosti. Věříme, že toto je cesta, která může přitáhnout na Wikipedii další nové editory a pomoci tak v jejím rozvoji více, než samotným psaním článků.

(článek byl převzat z adresy, kde lze dohledat i původní autory)

== Foundation & Vereine ==

WMF UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER COMMUNITY IN RECHTSFRAGEN „Legal and Community Advocacy“(LCA)

ANDAUERNDE DISKUSSION UM DIE ZUKÜNFTIGE SPENDENKAMPAGNE

WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION HIGHLIGHTS

WIKIMEDIA AFFILIATION MODELS

== Studien und Statistik ==

MOBILE NUTZUNG

== Technik ==

NEUER SPEICHER FÜR THUMBNAILS

MEDIAWIKI 1.19

PUNE-HACKATHON

== Projekte und Initiativen ==

COMMUNITY-PROJEKTBUDGET

CORPORATE IDENTITY FÜR DAS WIKIPEDIA EDUCATION PROGRAM

== Internationale Medien ==

SOPA UND PIPA

SOCIAL MEDIA

== Termine ==

FINANCE MEETING 2012

WIKIMEDIA CONFERENCE 2012

Wikimedians and cultural professionals collaborate on GLAM documentation during GLAMcamp DC at the US National Archives and Records Administration. Photo by Antaya, cc-by-sa 3.0.

Over a three day session at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC, 25 Wikimedians and cultural professionals worked within yards of America’s most precious documents to galvanize the US GLAM-Wiki community around new tools and resources.

GLAMcamp DC was the third in a series of GLAMcamps designed to focus outreach efforts, documentation, and tools to connect cultural organizations (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) with the Wikimedia movement.

While previous GLAMcamps brought together Wikimedians from around the world, GLAMcamp DC specifically focused on coordination within the US. This event served to kick start the GLAM-Wiki US community, which will be supported through my position as US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator this year.

Over the past two years, more and more cultural organizations have expressed interest in establishing Wikimedia partnerships. However, in the US we have lacked the organizational capacity to fully support these projects. With this in mind, GLAMcamp DC was focused on achieving outcomes that would make it far easier for cultural professionals to connect and engage with Wikimedians. The event was organized as a combination of facilitated breakout sessions, orientation presentations (such as GLAM Outreach Basics), and task-focused groups on everything from technical tool development and documentation creation to Wiki Loves Monuments coordination. I was so impressed with how quickly the participants came together to learn from each other and work together to achieve our shared goals.

Outcomes of the weekend included:

• Bulk Upload Documentation: The Walters Art Museum has stepped up as the first cultural organization to directly work with Wikimedians to develop a documented process for uploading images to Commons. What has been called the “bulk upload tool” has been re-envisioned as a set of easy to understand tools and best practices that can be replicated by cultural organizations. The Walters’ collection is being used as a case study for this process, which will continue to be developed over the coming months.
• Wikipedia Citation Tool: A second significant technical development was the creation of a Wikipedia citation engine for MARC library records. Inspired by Trove, this web browser extension will allow users to obtain a citation for the use on a specific language version of Wikipedia from any online library catalog, rather than depending on the database to provide this option to users.
• GLAM US Portal: A team worked to improve the layout and flow of the new GLAM US portal, which will serve as the hub for connecting cultural organizations with Wikimedia volunteers based on location or project type. Emphasis was placed on making the landing page easily digestible for GLAM decision makers, with links to more details for Wikimedia volunteers and cultural professionals looking for deeper resources and case studies.
• GLAM Connect: Ideas were further developed for the GLAM Connect page, which will serve as the space for Wikimedian volunteer sign-up and for cultural professionals to seek out individuals to assist with both online and on-location projects. A state-based system for localized contacts and resources is being piloted, as well as a master list of professional organization contacts. Additionally, the GLAM-Wiki US Facebook page was created in an effort to better share information with specific audiences.
• GLAM Bookshelf: Cultural professionals in attendance assisted with listing documentation needs and reviewing existing resources, while Wikimedians with experience in GLAM projects worked to create and upload high-need documentation. The GLAM Bookshelf will serve as a space to compile these handouts, powerpoints, videos, and on-wiki guides that can assist Wikimedians and cultural professionals with GLAM partnerships.
• GLAM-Wiki One-Pager: In preparation for upcoming presentations at GLAM conferences, a group worked to complete a two-sided handout directed at GLAM professionals. The one-pager provides an overview of GLAM-Wiki information, including case stories on current partnerships, pull quotes from GLAM professionals, and contact information. A side effect of this one-pager was the creation of a GLAM style guide, which will serve to establish clear terminology and branding of GLAM concepts such as “Wikipedian in Residence” and “Backstage Pass.”

We achieved these outcomes only through the inspiring collaborative efforts of the dedicated participants. In organizing this event we aimed to bring together a very specific group that included museum, library, and archives professionals, outreach-focused GLAM-Wiki volunteers, tech-focused GLAM-Wiki volunteers, and Wikimedians from broad backgrounds who were interested in becoming more involved in GLAM.

When they weren’t hard at work, participants had the opportunity to enjoy tours at the National Archives and the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and Lunder Conservation Center.  The tour of the National Archives took Wikimedians through the rotunda housing the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, to the head archivists’ offices in “Mahogany Row,” to the highly-secured stacks where unfathomable amounts of documentation are housed. In addition to these tours, participants attended a GLAM-Wiki meet up, sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation and Creative Commons, which brought together local cultural professionals and interested students to learn more about GLAM-Wiki.

The projects and networking that came out of GLAMcamp DC have contributed greatly to addressing the needs of US GLAM-Wiki collaborations, but this is only the beginning. Over the coming months, we’re looking to further refine this new collaborative framework and to significantly expand the list of volunteers interested in US partnerships.

Ultimately, in addition to these impressive outcomes, the most important result of GLAMcamp DC was the renewed solidarity and energy of US GLAM-Wiki volunteers, who are now looking to better connect cultural institutions in every state with the resources of GLAM-Wiki US and the broader GLAM-Wiki community.

Lori Byrd Phillips
US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation

GLAMcamp DC was funded by a grant from the Wikimedia Grants program, with event sponsorship from Creative Commons. GLAMcamp DC was co-organized by Lori Phillips, Sarah Stierch, and Pete Forsyth.

Hello, MediaWiki developers and users! You may already be aware of this: our community is embarking on a journey to leave Subversion behind and migrate to Git for our source code repositories, starting on March 3rd. This is not an easy task. Here I’ll outline our rationale for this move, as well as our planned process.

What is Git?

Git is a distributed version control system originally developed by Linus Torvalds and others to manage the Linux kernel. In the past couple of years, it has taken off as a very robust and well-supported code repository. “Distributed” means that there is no central copy of the repository. With Subversion, Wikimedia’s servers host the repository and users commit their changes to it. In contrast, with Git, once you’ve cloned the repository, you have a fully functioning copy of the source code, with all the branches and tagged releases at your disposal.

Why switch?

Three major reasons:

To encourage participation: Since Git is distributed, it allows people to contribute with a much lower barrier to entry. Anyone will be able to clone the repository and make their own changes to keep track of them. And if you’ve got an account in our code review tool (Gerrit), you’ll be able to push changes for the wider community to review.

To fix our technical process: Subversion has technical flaws that make life difficult for developers. Notably, the implementation of branching is not very easy to use, and makes it hard to use “feature branches”. Our community is very distributed, with many parallel efforts and needs to integrate many different feature efforts, so we’d like to use feature branches more. Git branches are very easy to work with and merge between, which should make things easier for our development community.  (Several other large projects, such as Drupal and PostgreSQL, have made the same switch for similar reasons, and we’ve done our best to learn from their experiences.)

Some quotes from our community:

“I love git just because it allows me to commit locally (and offline).” – Guillaume Paumier

“[Y]ou can create commits locally and push them to the server later (great for working without wifi), you can tell it ‘save my work so I can go do something else now’ in one command, and it’ll allow us to review changes before they go into “trunk” (master)…. without human intervention in merging things into trunk. Gerrit automates this process.” – Roan Kattouw

And finally, to get improvements to users faster: with better branching and a more granular code review workflow that suits our needs better, plus our ongoing improvements to our automated testing infrastructure, we won’t have to wait months before deploying already-written features and bugfixes to Wikimedia sites.

We had years of discussion before we finally decided to switch, but now we can look forward to more flexibility and power in our engineering processes.

What are we doing?

We’ve now done almost all the back-end work of preparing our repository for the move and are in the final steps of preparation (details). We’ve also written explanations of the new workflow, the migration schedule, issues yet to be addressed, and other related topics. Right now, we’re asking people to stop creating any new extensions in Subversion right now, and to watch the wikitech-l mailing list for more updates.

What are the next steps?

Over the next two and a half weeks, the Git repository that contains MediaWiki core and extensions will be brought in step with Subversion, and at first it will be read-only (no one will be able to push changes). This will allow developers to start cloning it to their local machines and getting used to things.

For MediaWiki core and for extensions that the Wikimedia Foundation deploys on its wikis, the switchover is pencilled in for the weekend of March 3rd. We’ll do core first, and then extensions after, but hopefully all in the same weekend. After the successful migration, the Subversion repository (for the directories that have moved to Git, such as /trunk/phase3/) will be made read-only.

See the full schedule.

I develop for a Wikimedia project. Do I have to switch to Git?

Only two projects are affected immediately: the core of MediaWiki and the extensions that get deployed on Wikimedia Foundation projects.

So, if you work on an extension that the Wikimedia Foundation does not use, or on a non-MediaWiki project hosted at svn.wikimedia.org, you have more time to decide. Talk it over with your community and decide whether you would like to move to Git immediately, move to Git sometime over the next several months, or move to another hosting provider sometime before mid-2013. We would like to gradually migrate all projects currently on Wikimedia’s Subversion repository so that we can make all of svn.wikimedia.org read-only by the middle of 2013, and thus only have to support one source control infrastructure.

More details.

Will training and documentation be available? When?

Yes, we will provide training and documentation to help you use the new workflow. Check our Git page and its links now, and watch that space! There will be more documentation as well as some interactive training sessions before the big switchover in early March.

If you have any questions, please ask in #mediawiki on Freenode or on wikitech-l.  Thank you!

Chad Horohoe
Git migration lead
Platform Engineering department
Wikimedia Foundation

Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Platform Engineering department
Wikimedia Foundation

When good people get together in a friendly, well organised setting like this weekend in Pune, many great things happen. Several MediaWiki developers had come to provide the many people new to MediaWiki with their expertise and guide people into its inner workings.

Many people worked on Wikimedia mobile and the SmartPhone software, others worked on MediaWiki and its extensions. Bugs got fixed and functionality got extended.

One of the surprises was two people working on the localisation for the Mongolian language. The inclusion of a web font that will support the Dzonka language is another.

Dzongkha is the official language of Bhutan and according to Ethnologue, the script used is either Tibetan script, Uchen style or the Tibetan script, Umed style. These scripts and styles are also used for the Tibetan language, it is not only Dzongkha that stands to benefit.

One of the highlights of the work on the SmartPhone app is support for scripts that are written from right to left, this is now “beta” functionality. The result of more people looking at the code was that several bugs received the attention needed to make them go away. Scrolling was one area that got attention; this results in a smoother user experience.

New input methods have been created for Punjabi transliteration and for an Gujarati input method to be included in Narayam. The continued collaboration with RedHat engineers ensures that our work benefits both MediaWiki and RedHat/Fedora. We do realise that there is still a lot to do and it is not only documentation. Additional work was done on the “visual on-screen keyboard” that was started at the previous hackathon in Pune, it still needs more testing and design work.

Thanks,
Gerard Meijssen
Internationalization / Localization outreach consultant

Am ersten Werktag nach den weltweiten Demonstrationen gegen ACTA, einem Vertragswerk zur Durchsetzung von Urheber-, Patent- und Markenrecht, arbeiten alle Beteiligten daran, mit der neuen Situation bisher ungekannter Sichtbarkeit umzugehen.

Insbesondere um dem Vorwurf der Intransparenz entgegenzutreten, hat die EU-Kommission in einer sehr umfangreichen Stellungnahme eine Art Zeitstrahl der Verhandlungsrunden und Veröffentlichungen dargelegt. Zu den Maßnahmen der Informations- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit gehörten 2010 auch zwei “technische Briefings” für die Presse, die als “off the record” deklariert waren.

Offenbar sehr kurzfristig hat die Pressestelle der EU-Kommission am Montag zu einem weiteren technischen Briefing geladen, das in die nationalen Vertretungen der Kommission gestreamt wurde. Auch dieses Briefing lief unter “off the record”, die deutsche Vertretung hat die Regelung dahingehend spezifiziert, dass sie in etwa dem deutschen “unter zwei” entspricht: Die Namen der drei Sprecher durften nicht genannt werden. Zusammen mit einigen Journalisten vom Öffentlich-Rechtlichen Rundfunk waren wir bei dem Streaming in die deutsche Vertretung der EU-Kommission in Berlin anwesend und haben – unter Beachtung von “unter zwei” – den Ablauf des Briefings auf netzpolitik.org veröffentlicht. Die EU-Kommission könnte hier durch eine sinngemäße Wiedergabe der Aussagen der Sprecher der Kommission auf diesem Briefing mithelfen, den Ablauf des Treffens für alle verständlich zu machen, die nicht kurzfristig davon erfahren haben oder zu einer der EU-Kommissionsvertretungen fahren konnten.

Am 1. März wird im Europäischen Parlament ein dreieinhalbstündiger Workshop zu ACTA stattfinden. Uns ist bisher nichts bekannt über angebotene Streams und Onlinebeteiligungsmöglichkeiten an diesem Workshop. Wer bis dahin informiert sein will über die Willensbildungsprozesse im Europäischen Parlament und Ausschuss zu Internationalem Handel, kann in der Parlamentsstudie  The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: An Assessment wichtige Anregungen finden. Leider sind auch hier einige Dokumente für die Öffentlichkeit nicht oder nur über Umwege erreichbar, beispielsweise juristische Einschätzungen des Parlamentsdienstes.

Wir danken allen Lesern für Link- und Terminhinweise über den Fortgang der Diskussion zu ACTA und die Verbesserung des öffentlichen Zuganges zu den Verhandlungsdokumenten.

Anti ACTA demo Cologne 2012, © Raimond Spekking / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Vielleicht wird der 11. Februar 2012 einmal als der Tag angesehen werden, der in seiner Wirkung dem 10. Oktober 1981 gleichkam. Damals demonstrierten ca. 300.000 Menschen im Bonner Hofgarten gegen Pershing-Raketen und den NATO-Doppelbeschluss. Die Fernsehbilder der friedensbewegten Massen, unter ihnen der etwas ungelenk tanzende Joseph Beuys, wurde für viele zum Generationenerlebnis, das sie nachhaltig beeinflusste.

Nach Meldungen der örtlichen Veranstalter waren am Samstag etwa 120.000 Menschen auf Deutschlands Straßen unterwegs, um gegen das Handelsabkommen ACTA zu protestieren. Das ist schlicht erstaunlich. Wer noch vor Tagen prophezeit hätte, dass sich ganze Kohorten von Schülern, Studierenden, netzpolitisch Engagierten und besorgten Bürgern zu einer bunte Regenbogenkoalition zusammenfinden würden, um gegen einen spröden, fast schon hermetischen Vertragstext aufzuparadieren, der wäre wohl für verrückt erklärt worden.

Den zweitstelligen Minusgraden trotzend, machten die lärmenden, hüpfenden und vor allem friedlichen Demonstranten ihren Unmut gegen mögliche Verschärfungen bei der Rechtedurchsetzung im Internet publik. Ein Teilnehmer in Düsseldorf sagte der Tagesschau, das Internet sei sein bevorzugter Lebensraum und der ACTA-Protest schlicht als “Umweltschutz” zu verstehen. Nicht auszudenken, wie sich ein schöner Julitag auf die Mobilisierung ausgewirkt hätte.

Das Besondere an diesem 11. Februar 2012 war, dass sich an ihm sehr öffentlichkeitswirksam ein weit verbreitetes Unbehagen artikulierte: die Sorge, dass die andauernden Copyright Wars das Internet irreversibel verändern könnten. Denn analog dazu, wie Schutzfristverlängerungen den Aufbau einer reichhaltigen Public Domain auf lange Sicht einschränken, könnten auch restriktive Sanktions- und Eingriffsprozeduren schwer wieder zu beseitigen sein, sobald sie einmal etabliert sind.

Wie hier bereits berichtet, gibt ACTA materiellrechtlich nicht allzu viel her. Aber es wird von vielen Menschen als ein Symptom gesehen für einen schleichenden Rückbau des Web 2.0 zu einem reinen Distributionskanal, von dem dann nur noch starke kommerzielle Plattformen und “walled gardens” profitieren. Der Medienrechtler Thomas Stadler prophezeit nun weiteren Druck der Urheberrechtslobby, um “ihre Individualinteressen notfalls auch gegen das Gemeinwohl durchzusetzen”. Dabei habe “gerade das Netz … uns mit großartigen Projekten wie Wikipedia gezeigt, dass die Verbreitung von Wissen und Information nach ganz anderen Spielregeln funktionieren kann, als bis vor kurzem angenommen.”

Als die Initiatoren der Berliner Stop-ACTA-Demo kurzfristig eine Anfrage an die Geschäftsstelle richteten, ob wir einen Redebeitrag für die Kundgebung liefern könnten, sagte ich spontan zu. Angesichts der Irritation bei Teilen der politischen Klasse, die der Wikipedia-Blackout vor einigen Wochen ausgelöst hat, schien der Zeitpunkt äußerst angebracht, ein kurzes Plädoyer für Freies Wissen und die Notwendigkeit einer Urheberrechtsreform zu halten. Das ist im Kontext einer Demonstration nicht gerade einfach. Reden müssen zugespitzt und vor allem knapp sein. Aber selbst jene Wikipedianer und geschätzten Kollegen, die ebenfalls vor Ort waren, dürften aufgrund des brummenden Stromgenerators für die PA ohnehin nicht allzu viel verstanden haben. Deshalb hier nochmals meine Ansprache im Wortlaut:

Die Bundesregierung hat es bislang versäumt, die deutsche Öffentlichkeit über ihre Position zu ACTA ausreichend zu informieren. Dafür bemühte sich gestern ein Abgeordneter der CDU um die phantasievolle Formulierung, ACTA sei ein hilfreicher Weg ‘zu einer globalen Verständigung über den Schutz von Urheberrechten’. Diese Meinung hat der Mann exklusiv.

Ich unterstelle dem Unionspolitiker noch nicht einmal, er handle mit dem Vorsatz der bewussten Täuschung. ‘Asume Good Faith’ ist ein ehernes Gesetz bei uns. Es ist wohl eher so, dass er schlicht kein Verhältnis zu der Kultur des Teilens hat, die gleichsam in die Geburtsurkunde des Internets eingeschrieben ist.

Mit den frühesten Programmierer-Communities und der Open-Source-Bewegung entstand eine Art Kochtopf-Ökonomie, in die jeder etwas hineingeben kann. Im besten Fall entsteht durch das Zusammenwirken unterschiedlicher Zutaten etwas Neues, Besseres, das mehr ist als nur die Summe seiner Teile.

Dieses freiwillige Geben und Nehmen, die gemeinsame Inhalteherstellung und ihre freie Weiternutzung hat globale Freiwilligen-Projekte wie Wikipedia überhaupt erst möglich gemacht. Deren Kultur des Teilens wird vorangetrieben von Menschen, die selbstorganisiert an einem faszinierenden Projekt arbeiten: dem kostenlosen, offenen Zugang zu Wissen für die gesamte Welt.

Haben diese Menschen ein Problem mit dem Urheberrecht? Nein. Im Gegenteil hat die Wikipedia-Community wohl eine beispiellose Kompetenz zu kompliziertesten Detailfragen im Bereich geistigen Eigentums entwickelt. Sie verbringt unzählige Stunden darauf, dass die WP-Seiten frei von rechtsverletzenden Inhalten sind.

Dass der Ruf nach einer verschärften Ahndung von Rechtsverstößen nun aber ausgerechnet von Politikern kommt, die auf ihren eigenen Websiten äußerst lax mit fremden Bildmaterial umgehen, ist ein Treppenwitz der Geschichte.

Wieso maßen sie sich an, ACTA und seine möglichen Folgen ganz durchdringen zu können, wenn sie noch nicht einmal über die Rechte und Pflichten im gegenwärtigen Urheberrecht Bescheid wissen?

Warum kümmern sie sich nicht besser um die Erarbeitung eines zeitgemäßeren Urheberrechts, das für Internetnutzer, also auch sie, zu verstehen und zu handhaben ist?

Eines sei zugestanden: Der Text von ACTA wurde im Laufe der Zeit erheblich entschärft. Trotzdem bedeutet das Abkommen weiterhin eine Gefahr, auch für die Verbreitung Freien Wissens. Denn konsequent weitergedacht, würde der direkte Zugriff durch Rechteinhaber wohl auch Inhalte-Plattformen wie Wikipedia kaputtregulieren.

Nun hat Wikipedia ja vergleichsweise gut funktionierende Mechanismen der Selbstkontrolle. Eine Verpflichtung zur stärkeren Überwachung und Sanktionierung der Nutzer/innen würde aber unweigerlich auf Kosten dessen gehen, was User Generated Content eigentlich ausmacht: Kreativität, Offenheit und eben auch Vertrauen. Assume good faith.

Sobald wir IP-Adressen vorhalten, Klarnamen zuweisen oder für sämtliche Rechtsverstöße auf verlinkten Seiten haften müssten, wäre dies zweifellos das Ende eines beispiellosen Gemeinschaftsprojekts. Freies Wissen braucht, um wirklich frei von wirtschaftlicher Einflussnahme und politischer Zensur zu sein, Schutz vor unverhältnismäßigen Eingriffsmaßnahmen.

Wir stehen für die Zivilgesellschaft und ihren Wunsch nach Zusammenarbeit. ACTA steht für die einseitigen Interessen der Rechteverwerter. Diese zeigen gegenwärtig eine Tendenz, die unschätzbaren Möglichkeiten, die das Netz gerade für freie, ungehinderte Meinungsäußerung und gemeinschaftliche Wertschöpfung bietet, durch aggressives Lobbying beschneiden zu wollen.

Ihr Anliegen, mit digitalen Gütern Geld zu verdienen, ist zweifellos legitim. Doch ihr Ansinnen, auf dem Altar bestehender Geschäftsmodelle das gesamte Ökosystem des Netzes nachhaltig zu verändern, ist es nicht.

In diesem Zusammenhang hat die Politik nicht die Aufgabe, bestimmte Geschäftsmodelle gegenüber anderen zu bevorzugen. Sie soll lediglich einen Rahmen für faire Wettbewerbsbedingungen schaffen – zwischen den Kulturindustrien, deren Kunden wir alle sind, und jenen neuen Plattformen, die Informationen bündeln und die unseren Alltag erheblich erleichtern.

Von Berlin aus richten wir deshalb die dringende Bitte an die Bundesregierung und das Europäische Parlament: Die möglichen Kollateralschäden von ACTA müssen stärker gewichtet werden als die Profitinteressen einer sich zunehmend verhärtenden Branche! Und deshalb muss der Ratifizierungsprozess nicht nur ausgesetzt, sondern ganz gestoppt werden! Denn wir verdienen mehr als ein Abkommen, das in Hinterzimmern ausgehandelt wurde und offensichtlich nicht dem Gemeinwohl dient.

Wikimedia sites will gradually be upgraded to version 1.19 of MediaWiki over the second half of February 2012.

This article is available in other languages on mediawiki.org.

Wikimedia engineers are putting the final touches to the latest version of MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia and its sister sites. This version, labeled “1.19wmf1″, will be deployed to Wikimedia sites in stages, starting next week.

We’ve recently set up a Beta cluster, replicating a selection of Wikimedia wikis, where Wikimedians have tested the new version and checked that it worked reasonably well with their local wiki’s specific customizations.

Things are looking good, and the current plan is to run the deployment in five stages between February 15th and March 1st, 2012. The schedule may change based on unexpected issues, so you should refer to the MediaWiki 1.19 roadmap for an up-to-date schedule of when your wiki will be affected.

Many new features and bug fixes brought by MediaWiki 1.19 are back-end, behind-the-scenes changes, for example infrastructure work to support our ongoing move to Swift as our media storage platform.

There are also more visible improvements, like better diff readability for colorblind people, and better support of the user’s gender and language in the interface. A list of all changes is available in the draft release notes.

Check JavaScript and Gadgets compatibility with ResourceLoader

A particular area of improvement in MediaWiki 1.19 relates to JavaScript. While most of the legacy site scripts, user scripts and gadgets will continue to work, it’s also possible that the new version be less forgiving of assumptions and errors in code. For example, faster load times may uncover errors in scripts that don’t explicitly declare the modules they’re using.

Furthermore, a new version of ResourceLoader will be deployed later this year, that will bring improvements specific to gadgets, but will require gadgets to be made compatible with ResourceLoader.

Gadgets maintainers are therefore strongly advised to start upgrading their scripts now, to avoid major disruption later. The migration guide to ResourceLoader is the main document for Gadget developers; a list of JavaScript deprecations and default modules are available as well.

You can also join the 2011 Resource Walker, an attempt to go through all Wikimedia wikis and update outdated JavaScript. An IRC workshop is planned to facilitate the process; more information will be posted later on this blog.

Moving towards transparent upgrades

As we move towards more frequent software upgrades, we expect them to be less and less painful — and ideally, at some point they’ll go so smoothly that users won’t even notice them, except for the new features that will appear. We’re not completely there yet, but we’ve made progress in the past year or so, and we’re committed to continue our efforts, both for the benefits of developers and users.

In the meantime, please bear with us if, despite our efforts, you encounter issues due to the upgrade; we’ll try and fix them as soon as we can. It’s not too late to visit the Beta cluster and report issues there or in our bug tracker. The more people test beforehand, the smoother the deployment should go.

Guillaume Paumier
Technical communications manager

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.

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.

Other movement highlights

Animated group photograph from RecentChangesCamp2012

RecentChangesCamp2012

RecentChangesCamp2012, an OpenSpace unconference focused on wikis and online collaborative practices first held in 2006, took place at the University of Canberra from January 20 to January 22. It was attended by numerous Wikimedians from Australia and abroad.

The Netherlands’ oldest museum starts editing challenge

The “Oval Room” of Teylers Museum (1784)

Wikimedia Netherlands and the Teylers Museum (the oldest museum in the Netherlands) have started “The Teylers Challenge” where participants collaborate on multilingual content related to the museum and its collection.

Zagreb trip explores future Croatian chapter

From January 20 to January 22, Ting Chen — Chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation — and Chapters Committee members Miloš Rancic (Wikimedia Serbia) and Bence Damokos (Wikimedia Hungary) visited Zagreb to meet with local community members and discuss the future of Wikimedia Croatia (a chapter to be approved).

Australian Paralympic Committee and Wikimedia chapter send “Wikimedians to the Games”

The logo of “Wikimedians to the Games”

The Australian Paralympic Committee and Wikimedia Australia launched “Wikimedians to the Games“, a contest for Australian Wikimedians to improve content related to the history of the Paralympic Movement in Australia. The two winners will have the opportunity to fly to London and cover the 2012 Summer Paralympics for Wikinews, Commons and Wikipedia.

First “Public Domain Day” celebration in France

On January 26, the French Wikimedia chapter, together with Creative Commons France, Communia and people from the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) organized a celebration of “Public Domain Day”, accompanied by the creation of a website. “Public Domain Day” events highlight the entrance of copyrighted works into the public domain at the beginning of each year, and this was the first such event in France.

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

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.

Technology

A detailed report of the Tech Department’s activities for January 2012 can be found at:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2012/January

Department Highlights

Major news in January include:

• Tech support for the blackout protesting SOPA & PIPA;
• The release of the official Wikipedia Android app;
• A new beta cluster for Wikimedians to test upcoming software before it’s deployed to production.

Events

• English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout — The engineering team supported this online protest by developing and deploying the blackout code and design, including the CongressLookup extension for helping people find and contact their representative. The Operations team disabled editing during the 24-hour time period, and helped keep other systems up and running, including the temporarily overloaded Wikimedia blog.

• San Francisco hackathon — More than 90 participants learned and hacked during this outreach-focused developers weekend. The teams of participants demonstrated more than a dozen projects.

• October 2011 Coding Challenge — The winners of the coding challenge were announced. They include an Android app for uploading to Wikimedia Commons, a user script for surfacing pages with a lot of recent editing activity, and a user script for displaying relevant images in an article as a lightbox slideshow.

Operations

• Data Centers — Work continued on building up the EQIAD datacenter in Virginia. We added new servers and upgraded the database servers with a new chained replication topology and a heartbeat-based replication monitoring. We have also successfully tested the new thumbnail system and the text squid implementation, that we’ll start rolling out fully in February. At the same time, we have retired 40 old servers from our Tampa datacenter, which will be available for donation soon.

• Wikimedia Labs — To keep up with project growth, we doubled the filesystem storage available and allowed Labs to grow by up to another 30 instances. A number of projects were added or moved to Labs, including incubator, ganglia, deployment-prep, globaleducation, a number of mobile projects, and a bunch more. A number of projects were also created, implemented, and demoed using Labs during the San Francisco hackathon.

Features Engineering

• Visual editor — Plans for the second phase of the editor project were formulated. The team investigated a possible use of contenteditable to help with input methods and text selections on mobile devices. The parser was also extended with the ability to fetch and expand templates in a parallel and asynchronous fashion. The parser now supports most parts of the English Wikipedia Main Page.

• Article feedback — The next round of Article Feedback Tool v5 features was developed, including a new feedback page. The teal continued to collect valuable data from the community about the usefulness of comments coming in from each of the three forms launched in December. A survey to get comments from readers about the effectiveness and attractiveness of each design was also launched. The target date for the full feedback page is Feb. 15 for pre-deployment testing on en-labs, then full deployment on Feb. 22.

• Feedback Dashboard — We implemented a leaderboard of recent top responders on the feedback dashboard. New editor feedback is now added to a dedicated log. When feedback is marked as helpful, that fact is displayed on the feedback dashboard itself. Other than a few other smaller changes, we’re now moving the project into maintenance mode to focus on article creation workflow and mw:New Page Triage.

Mobile

• Android Wikipedia App — The Mobile team released the first version of the Wikipedia Android application into the Android Market. In just over three weeks, we’ve had over 900,000 downloads, became the #1 search result for “Wikipedia”, became the #1 trending app, and received a consistent 4/5 stars in the Android Market. We released two minor updates to fix bugs, and are processing user feedback to guide our next version.

• FeaturedFeeds — We deployed the first version of FeaturedFeeds to production. Wikimedia communities can now make use of these RSS feeds to better surface their content to other applications.

Platform Engineering

• MediaWiki 1.19 — A new Beta cluster, replicating the production environment, was set up to allow Wikimedians to test upcoming software (including MediaWiki 1.19) on Wikimedia Labs before deployment. A preliminary schedule was drafted, according to which deployment of MediaWiki 1.19 will start on February 13th and complete on March 1st.

• Volunteer coordination and outreach — In preparation for the San Francisco hackathon, the team prepared training materials and documentation on gadgets and the MediaWiki API. Nine developers got commit access in January, among which seven volunteers.

• Wikimedia blog maintenance — The new WMBlog plugin (which brings functionality specific to the Wikimedia blog independently of the theme) was deployed in January, as well as tweaks to the theme. Due to the SOPA/PIPA blackout-related traffic, the Operations team moved the blog to a newer, more powerful server and added caching layers (Varnish & Memcached).

Research

• Daniel Mietchen lead the drafting and submission of a response to the White House RFI on Public Access to Scholarly Publications.
• The open data consultation we launched in December closed with 100 responses. The results will be published this month.
• Several Research Committee and community members worked on the English Wikipedia article for the Research Works Act, a proposed bill that would undermine open access mandates for publicly funded research in the US. The bill would affect our research policy as it would make it hard for RCom to enforce any OA and open data requirements for research collaborations. The article made it to DYK on January 15, 2012.
• Dario Taraborelli gave a podcast interview with Michael Cervieri for the Future Journalism Project, discussing what Wikipedia can do to support data journalism.
• Dario Taraborelli co-hosted with APS cognitive psychology professor Greta Munger a session on Scientists and Wikipedia at Science Online 2012 in Raleigh, NC (slides).
• We set up a Wikimedia group on the DataHub, an open data repository powered by CKAN. The repository is for testing purposes but all data deposited will be preserved and migrated once we’ve finalized the configuration of the repository.
• Mayo Fuster Morell circulated a call for papers calling for contributions on “Academic research into Wikipedia: Beyond English Wikipedia and towards comparative perspectives”. The submission deadline is March 1, 2012.
• Tilman Bayer led the publication of the first 2012 issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

Community

Department Highlights

• Lots of clean up/ wrap up work from the fundraiser; Lots of planning work already done for the 2012 fundraiser
• 23 fellowship project proposals and suggestions received for the Fellowship program.
• Community & reader relations team supported SOPA work and fundraising and funds dissemination discussion.
• Wrapping up template testing pilot project, beginning analysis of results

Projects

Editor Retention

• Other than new community requests to test on the Wikimedia Incubator and Commons, the majority of template A/B tests have been wrapped up. Ryan Faulkner, formerly part of the fundraising team, has joined our group as the Community Research Analyst to further understand template testing results, and the group is now publishing test results on Meta as they come in.[1]
• The Community Dept. is hosting the first 2012 meet-up of California Wikipedians at the Foundation offices on Saturday, Feb 4 — coinciding with the Board of Trustees meeting. [2]
• We are planning a series of meet-ups with Brazilian editors in early March to better understand their community and its dynamics, and give those authors a place to voice issues that the Foundation may be able to assist with. [3]
• Collecting resumes and scheduling preliminary screenings of candidates for the 2012 Community Summer Analysts, whose work will focus on providing working data and actionable recommendations for community change programs. [4]
• Wrapping up a proof-of-concept analytic project with Odiago, who has provided some insight into authorship questions with big data analysis of our diff data.

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_A/B_testing

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/San_Francisco_17

3. https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Convenings/Portuguese_Wikipedia

4. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Summer_Community_Analytics

Fundraising

Fundraiser

• Gathered all fundraising staff and contractors in San Francisco for the 2011 Fundraiser Retrospective. We recapped accomplishments, and identified pain points and successes in communications and process so that the next fundraiser can be run more smoothly with a leaner team.
• Began writing the 2011 Fundraiser Report which will be publicly posted in 2012.
• Held a planning session for the 2012 Fundraiser. Over two days, the team set priorities for this year and focused on mapping out a division of responsibility, communication and tracking processes, ways to improve localization, testing, donor experience, and analytics systems.
• In conjunction with the Brazilian author meet-ups, we are planning focus groups and storyteller interviews in both Brazil and Argentina.
• Created a testing calendar to plan out regional tests throughout the year. These tests will focus on the localization of our forms and appeals in different countries.
• Started our global research on currencies, payment methods and personal information fields to integrate to the regional tests.
• Began researching new payment methods requested by Wikipedia users during the 2011 fundraiser.

Major Gifts and Foundations

• Received a 3-year grant from the Teterev Foundation
• Completed a new grant proposal for our mobile work

Fellowship Program

Program Activities

• Fellowship recruiting continues – the community generated 23 fellowship project ideas [1] in January and applications have been submitted by candidates from 18 countries. The deadline to apply for this round of fellowships has been extended until February 15th, and review of existing applications is underway.

Fellowship Projects

• The fundraising translation project report is complete,[2] and Jon Harald Søby hosted a brown bag presentation at WMF to discuss lessons learned. A survey of the fundraiser translators is also in progress, with nearly 300 responses so far. Feedback will be incorporated into future fundraisers as well as an upcoming project to improve the meta translation request process, which is in the planning stages.
• The Teahouse project has recruited 23 Wikipedians to serve as Teahouse hosts – they’ll be inviting new editors to the space, answering questions, and facilitating discussions during the pilot.[3] Design of the space is in progress.

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Process#Open_project_ideas

2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Translation/Project_Report

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse/Hosts

Community relations

• Supported the Fundraising/Funds Dissemination discussions on meta [1].
• Actively supported SOPA, and all the madness that came with it (see also general “Highlights” section. More SOPA pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victorgrigas#SOPA )
• Developed job descriptions for new hires (new “Maggies”) from around the world to support our global capacity.

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Recommendations

Global Development

Department highlights

• Communications supports WMF’s blackout on 18 January (see also general “Highlights” section)
• Mobile: Partnership with Orange was announced on 24 January to supply free access to Wikipedia to more than 70 million customers across 20 countries in the Middle East and Africa.
• Arabic-speaking Initaitive: Arabic-speaking Wikipedians met in Tunisia this month beginning a regional outreach effort to create new connections in the Arabic Wikimedia community..
• India program: Six outreach workshops in January in partnership with the community as part of an effort to increase outreach and improve conversion to editing
• Education Program: Published program plan for Cairo pilot and new standards for participation in the global education program are put in place
• The Global Development team midyear report is now available: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Global_Development_Midyear_report_2011-12

Announcements

• Wikimania Scholarships are open! Encourage your networks to apply! https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships

Grants

Policy Discussions

• Ongoing discussion of proposed procedure and criteria for unrestricted operating grants based on annual plans.
• Ongoing discussion of Grant Advisory Committee’s membership terms, appointment procedures, and form of review.

Wikimedia Grants Approved

• Grants:WM_PH/Open_Web_Day
• Additional $1000 for scholarships for Grants:WM_RS/Open_Wiki_GLAM_of_Serbia#Scholarship
• Grants:WM_CL/Start-up

Participation Grants Approved

• Grants:Jonas_Xavier/Campus_Party_2012

US Cultural Partnerships

• US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator begins work
• Preparation has continued for the Wikipedia session and table at the American Association of Museums conference in April. The Wikipedia session will now also be part of the exclusive online conference as well.
• GLAMcamp DC, which will take place in early February, is in its final stages of preparation. This has included establishing a proposed framework for GLAM:US collaboration, which will be presented at GLAMcamp and finalized as a goal of the event alongside other documentation and tool development.
• Initial coordination talks have begun with Europeana and others who will be collaborating on GLAM tools over the coming year.
• There has been ongoing follow-up on leads and expressions of interest from GLAM institutions, as well as consolidation of interested parties and contacts into a single, master list. This streamlining of information will continue at GLAMcamp DC.
• In February, the US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator will be publishing a number of GLAM-related blog posts for various organizations , including the Center for the Future of Museums, the Open Knowledge Foundation, and the New Media Consortium.

Research

• Kicked off work on the outreach tool. Further details can be found at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Outreach_evaluation (early-stage UI mockups will be added soon)
• Read more about the mobile readers survey analysis here: http://prezi.com/foyok1qpfxqa/wikipedia-mobile-readers-survey-2011/
• Successfully completed the second editor survey, data cleaning to start soon.
  

Mobile page views across the last few months

India Programs

• We concluded an exercise on distilling learnings from all Indic communities and started the process of seeding ideas with communities. All ideas are centered around community building (and not content creation or improvement), the rationale being that content will follow community. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages
  • Ideas have been customized by the community and are a combination of what individual volunteers or volunteer groups can do independently as well as potential pilots that the India Program team can build and run collaboratively with local communities.
  • There appears to be interesting progress in at least 6 languages : Hindi, Odia, Assamese, Kannada, Tamil & Malayalam.
• The India team is supporting outreach by sharing best practices as well as making a central repository of outreach material. In addition, the team is personally taking part in out outreach sessions to provide additional momentum to existing community efforts. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs
• The team is analyzing the findings of the study and quantitative analysis of the India Education Program and listening to additional feedback from the community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Independent_Report_from_Tory_Read , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Quantitative_Analysis
• We are finalizing a contract for Communications consultancy, which closes the loop on the India consultancy team.

Brazil Catalyst

“Wikisampa 11″ meetup in São Paulo

• We have been working hand and hand with the community to hire the Brazil National Program Director. The recruiting process has been innovative in that we have engaged with an unprecedented level of community involvement. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-the-community-moves-forward/
  1. We posted the role in November, and in parallel with an executive search firm which was screening applicants, we asked the Brazilian community to nominate two community members to participate in the interviews with us. They selected two great folks – Everton and Castelo – to interview 10 finalists on a panel with Barry in Sao Paulo.
  2. The next phase for the top 4 finalists was a unique assignment to be done on the br.wikimedia.org wiki: engage the Brazilian community and your fellow candidates on the wiki to address the question of how to grow the PT:WP community? The assignment went well and was a great learning experience for the candidates and for us.
  3. Following the assignment Skype and interviews with Jessie, we brought in a top candidate to SF at the end of the month and are in the final stages of of the process.
• We are also starting a small Brazil Education Pilot (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_Brazil_programs/Education_program) in March 2012. We are targeting about 5 professors (one of whom – Juliana – pioneered this program in Brazil in 2011). Contractor Everton Zanella Alvarenga is leading this effort from Sao Paulo.

Arabic Language Initiative

• Visited Tunisia as part of our outreach regional program, more details are found here: [1]
• Updated and localized some of our bookshelf material. (Printing is currently in process.)
• Preparing for upcoming events in Egypt and Jordan
• Helped develop the Cairo education pilot – see Global Education Program section

Global Education Program

• Frank Schulenburg published the program plan for the Cairo pilot to start in spring 2012. The document outlines the core design elements as well as the success criteria and the questions the pilot project is supposed to answer: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Pilot_program_plan
• Frank Schulenburg and Annie Lin documented the measures put in place based on the learnings from the pilot project in Pune, India. (More than 10 different actions have been taken in order to immediately apply the learning points to the Cairo pilot. Among others, these include a longer preparation phase, a heavy involvement of the local community of Wikipedians, a strict limit on the number of participating students, and mandatory professor orientations. More differences on https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Comparing_the_Pune_and_the_Cairo_Pilot_%E2%80%93_what_we_are_doing_differently )
• Professors joining the Wikipedia Education Program in the spring 2012 term are finding a new set of participation requirements in place, designed to ensure that all participating professors and students receive adequate support on Wikipedia.
  • These new participation requirements are largely based on the feedback given by members of the English Wikipedia community.
  • The requirements set standards for the maximum number of students per Wikipedia Ambassador and the number of Wikipedians involved in the program, and they require instructors to go through a faculty orientation.
  • Currently, the requirements affect the programs in the U.S., in Canada, and in Egypt during spring 2012, although individual programs may enact stricter requirements as well (for example, the Cairo Pilot will have an even smaller ambassador to student ratio).
  • So far, community reactions to these new requirements have been very positive. More information: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program/Participation_Requirements

Faculty workshop for the Cairo pilot (more photos on Wikimedia Commons)

• Volunteers from the Arabic Wikipedia – supported by Education team members Frank Schulenburg, Annie Lin and Georgetown University professor Rochelle Davis – kicked off the Cairo pilot with workshops for faculty members and Campus Ambassadors. These workshops were almost 100% in Arabic.
• In late January, seven community members of the Arabic Wikipedia completed an Online Ambassador orientation organized by other Arabic-speaking Wikipedians and supported by Annie Lin.
• LiAnna Davis worked with Leigh Thelmadatter, who is an English as a foreign language teacher in central Mexico, to document her learnings with advanced English students who edited Wikipedia as part of their class. Read more: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/27/wikipedia-as-a-foreign-culture/
• Rod Dunican published three online training modules for instructors who are planning to participate in the Wikipedia Education Program:
  • (1) Global Education Program Overview: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Professor_Orientation/Module_One
  • (2) About Wikipedia: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Professor_Orientation/Module_Two
  • (3) Syllabus and Assignment Design: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Professor_Orientation/Module_Three

Mobile

• We announced a partnership with Orange on January 24 — free Wikipedia access (i.e. no mobile data fees) for 70+ million customers across 20 countries in the Middle East and Africa https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/24/free-mobile-for-wikipedia-starts-with-orange/
  • The announcement of the partnership got a lot of positive press attention: 50+ articles including Mashable, GigaOM, Wired UK, and Guardian
  • There is much work ahead to implement these partnerships from a technical and marketing standpoint: helping define how the service is marketed by operators and how we measure it.
• “Selling in” free Wikipedia continues to be the main objective, and we plan to announce another big partner — and new countries — in Feburary.
• Project planning on further USSD/SMS testing in Africa with the Praekelt Foundation began.

Communications

The Wikipedia blackout is January 2012′s standout story, possibly the story of the year for WMF and Wikipedia, and maybe the most important story in our history. The days before and after January 18, 2012 were almost exclusively focused on supporting WMF’s work around the community mandate to bring about a blackout, including consulting on messaging, design, implementation, community outreach and media relations. January also saw the cap-off of our most successful fundraising campaign ever, and saw the introduction of Matthew Roth to the Communications team as Manager, Global Communications.

Major news

The English Wikipedia as seen by readers during the blackout

Wikipedia blackout (January 18)

Undoubtedly one of the biggest stories in the US and the world in January 2012 was the Internet protests on January 18, which largely centered around the Wikipedia community decision to blackout English Wikipedia internationally for one day. Aside from publishing three separate press releases leading up to and after the blackout, the Communications team worked closely with Jimmy Wales on both advance press interviews and a deluge of interview requests the week of January 16.

In total, WMF responded to over 260 separate media inquiries from around the world. News.google.com reports over 11,000 media stories on the topic of our blackout and the Internet protests, many of which focused primarily on Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales had over a dozen television appearances, effectively positioning the blackout story as the leading story around the world on January 18. Major newswire stories were syndicated interntaionally and in dozens of languages.

Social media activity around the blackout was extraordinary. Users followed the CongressLookup system and tweeted their Representatives to urge action around SOPA/PIPA. #WikipediaBlackout and #SOPA were trending topics for the day. #wikipediablackout was tweeted almost 1 million times, and SOPA was mentioned 2.3 million times.

Media interest continued well after the week of January 16 and Communications continues to support inquiries. We’re also working on a series of feature stories about the blackout in major magazines and placed OpEd stories in either the New York Times or Washington Post.

Wikimedia’s global network of chapters also fielded dozens of requests in their own regions and languages, further augmenting the world-wide footprint of the blackout. Media coverage was largely positive and supportive of the efforts of Wikipedia’s community. The bill supporters have since withdrawn both SOPA and PIPA, shelving them indefinitely, based largely on a historic level of constituent reaction and Congressional contact in the US.

Meta-wiki consolidation of the major coverage:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout/Media

(and great quotes about the blackout)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout/Quotes

Social media stats:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SOPA_social_media

Wikipedia Signpost:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-01-23/In_the_news

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-01-23/News_and_notes

Orange/WMF partnership for free Wikipedia mobile (January 24)

WMF returned to one of its early business partners in January, announcing a major partnership to make Wikipedia available at no charge to mobile subscribers in dozens of their territories throughout Africa and the Middle East. This was the first major partnership announced regarding WMF’s efforts to dramatically increase access to Wikipedia through mobile channels around the world. Coverage was largely positive and supportive of the effort.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/24/orange-wikipedia-mobile-devices-free

http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2012/01/orange-to-provide-free-access-to-mobile-wikipedia/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/01/how-will-free-wikipedia-access.php

Press releases

Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation partner to offer Wikipedia in Africa and the Middle East at no extra cost, 24 January 2012

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_WMF_partner_on_Wikipedia_mobile

Statement from the Wikimedia Foundation regarding developments in Washington on SOPA and PIPA, 20 January 2012

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Statement_on_Jan_20_events_in_Washington

Wikipedia blackout affirms overwhelming support for free and open Internet, 18 January 2012

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia_blackout_supports_free_and_open_internet

English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA, 16 January 2012

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_to_go_dark

Wikimedia Foundation Rings In New Year With Record-breaking Fundraiser, 2 January 2012

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_Rings_In_New_Year_With_Record-breaking_Fundraiser

Blog posts

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/

Wikipedia Signpost

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01-02
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01-09
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01-16
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01-23
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archives/2012-01-30

Media contact

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#January_2012

Human Resources

Staff Changes

New Hires

• Fabrice Florin, Product Manager – New Editor Engagement (VP of Engineering & Prod Development)
• Joady Lohr, Director of Human Resources (Human Resources)
• Christopher McMahon, Quality Assurance Lead Engineer (Engineering)
• Gayle Karen Young, Chief Talent and Culture Officer (Human Resources)

New Other Roles Filled/Conversion

• Subhashish Panigrahi, Consultant Community & Program Support (India)
• Jon Robson, Contractor Software Developer-Mobile (Engineering)
• Matthew Roth, Global Communications Manager (Global Development)

New Contractors

• Christian Aistleitner
• Andreas Engels
• Andrew Otto
• Lori Phillips
• Sarah Stierch

Contract Extended

• Pavel Andreev
• Jeroen de Dauw
• Erek Dyskant
• Roan Kattouw
• Niklas Laxstrom
• Yusuke Matsubara
• Diederik Van Liere
• Susan Walling

Departed

• Neil Kandalgoankar
• Cyn Skyberg

Contract Ended

• Farhan Chaudhary
• Aislinn Dewey
• Tracey Fleming
• Stacey Merrick
• Heather O’Malley
• Neel Punatar

New Postings

• Senior Software Engineer Frontend
• Operations Engineer (Labs)

RFP

• Recruiting Engineer
• Mobile QA

Statistics

Total Employee Count

Actual: 95

January Plan: 110, January Filled: 7, January Attrition: 2

YTD Filled: 29, YTD Attrition: 10

Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end: 22

Department Updates

Joady Lohr has joined us as the new Director of Human Resources. Joady handles aspects of human resources related to compensation, benefits, policies, etc. and is already an indispensible part of our team. She comes to us with years of experience at IDEO and Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), both of which speak to her experiences working in HR with global organizations.

In recruiting, we are iterating changes to http://jobs.wikimedia.org , and hosting a focus group with community members to ensure that the page communicates that we welcome community members applying for roles with the Foundation. Feedback on the page is welcome. We are also rolling out Jobvite as our recruitment and applicant tracking software to streamline our recruiting process.

We have also begun redesigning some of our internal processes, such as onboarding and hiring, including a revision of our hiring contracts and agreements with heavy and wonderful support from Legal.

Real-time feed for HR updates: http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork

Finance and Administration

Chip Deubner joined our Office IT team and Nathan D’Annibale joined our accounting team.

We are continuing our search for a Head of Office Administration and will begin interviews next week.

Work was completed on an update to conference room R 33 to improve its usability for the Tech team. Our thanks to Leslie for facilitating this project.

Legal

• New proposed terms of use have been sent to the Board for review and potential approval. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use#The_terms_of_use_are_now_before_the_WMF_Board_of_Trustees_for_consideration

• Like the rest of the WMF office and community, Legal provided strong support to the SOPA/PIPA blackout strategy, including advising the community on the SOPA Initiative page, helping coordinate cross-functional issues, and reviewing various legal issues associated with the blackout. We are now engaged in post-blackout strategy with other departments. Our present thinking is to leverage the positive response following the blackout to support messages that explain and advocate the open and free knowledge movement as it applies to Wikimedia values.

• White paper on ACTA ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/ACTA ) and OPEN ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/OPEN_Act )

• Filed challenge against German Loriot injunction, which we will post shortly. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Loriot_Signature_Background#Conclusion

• Reviewing present privacy policy for possible revision and review with community.

• Strong support of global development: India and Brazil.

• Strong daily contract, trademark, community, governance, international, and content-defense support.

• Stats
  • # contracts signed – 10
  • # trademark requests – 11
    • approved – 4
    • denied – 2
    • approval not needed – 1
    • pending – 4

Visitors and Guests

1. Daniel Long (Community member)
2. Wendy Hanamura, Cassie Gruenstein, Merin Mathew, Taylor Hadfield, Andrea Jones, Lili Polastri (Link TV)
3. Philip Neustrom (LocalWiki)
4. Julian Nachtigal (pariSoma)
5. Victor Lobo and two colleagues (ADP)
6. 30 Harvard/Stanford students for cross dept talk
7. Steve Devetter (KPMG)
8. Daniel Kinzler (Wikimedia Germany)
9. MetaMarkets CEO Mike Driscoll and team, for a brown bag presentation on analytics
10. Product Design Guild (hosted meet-up)
11. Derk-Jan Hartman
12. Various visiting engineering contractors

Mobile Wikipedia readers in Brazil

As part of our commitment to provide free knowledge to everyone, the foundation has been redesigning our mobile platform (m.wikipedia.org and mobile.wikipedia.org) to enhance the reading experience and allow editing.  As a first step towards the redesign of the mobile gateway to better meet the needs of our users in the Global South, we conducted user experience research in India and Brazil among current and future users of Wikipedia mobile last summer.  We also carried out user experience research in the US to have a comparison with a mobile market which is more mature in terms of smartphone and 3G penetration, and has a more widespread adoption of tablets.

Our research in India and Brazil brought forth the following three opportunities with the greatest perceived impact for the mobile platform:

1. Improving our search:  Our research revealed that there was a need to provide search suggestions, autocomplete, autocorrect and other tools that ease typing and search burdens on mobile devices; support search in all language Wikipedias as well as allowing users to chose and switch between languages; incorporate transliteration tools for languages with fonts and characters that have poor mobile support; support and even enhance users’ existing habits to use Google to reach Wikipedia articles; and enable users to search within a Wikipedia page. We are happy to report that drawing from the research our mobile team has already implemented some of these opportunities like full page search, autocomplete  and inter-wiki links into our mobile beta site.
2. Optimizing our reading experience for mobile devices and generalized use.  Through our research, especially in India, we found that we were not redirecting a large breadth of devices in use to our mobile site. The mobile team quickly fixed this issue with the adoption of the open source library tera-WURFL for detecting mobile devices.  After speaking with respondents in India and Brazil, we found that there was a desire among users to modify or set one-time preferences for the display of images, the font size, and any element that affects page loading time and size. Similarly, there is an opportunity for allowing  preferences for language and navigation; the ability to watch or bookmark articles; or save content offline; offer content in more digestible pieces, or with quicker access (i.e. preview or easy access to the first paragraph, or a new “mobile summary”); search offline, i.e., while in transit or without a data plan; and generally follow expectations set by mobile web interactions and standards.  Some of these recommendations have been incorporated into our mobile product strategy.  Through this research we felt it was crucial to offer both an official iOS and Android app (which was officially released in January) that offers at minimum a simple and easy search and reading experience.
3. Using the mobile platform to both increase user engagement and awareness of features on Wikipedia as well as providing new opportunities for participation. The mobile site and potential apps provide many new pathways for both engagement, participation, and contribution.  At present, the mobile site can be used to build awareness around existing features on the site that current users are blind to (i.e. watchlists, accounts, editing, inter-language links, history); to provide features that make opening a Wikipedia account worth having, something that the majority of our participants do not currently see any reason to have; increase visibility of local language Wikipedias, especially in India since many English readers were not aware of the existence of Indic Wikipedias; prompt users to download an official app when possible; and interface with other web content on mobile devices (Google, news, entertainment, and sports content, for example “Wikitap”).  The contributions that showed the highest potential for adoption were adding photographs, “flagging” or “marking” something that needs to be edited, removing or marking vandalism, adding links, adding location or geodata, and potentially making small typing or formatting edits.
4. Mobile Editing. And finally, the mobile site can support the editing practice of existing editors by first offering those features in a mobile friendly format which are currently in high use on the site.  Those with the highest demand and potential are the “recent changes” page, which is consumed like an update feed or email; accessing watch lists; making reverts, especially with respect to vandalism; logging in and accessing account and user pages; and serving discussion pages and article histories.

If you are interested in reading about our research in India and Brazil in detail, we have compiled the insights in a report which is available in PDF and wiki format. You can also watch video highlights from the interviews and check out some photographs from the field work in India and Brazil.

Mani Pande, Head of Global Development Research

Kommentaare veel pole.

A half day Wiki Academy  was held on 28 January 2012 for the students of MA Communication in Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore. Arranged by The Amrita School of Communication, it was meant to “create awareness about Wikipedia and enable participants to use and contribute to the sum of human knowledge, with special relevance to Journalism& Communication Students”. It was an opportunity to give back to the Wikipedia  from where they had always gained so much.

Arjuna facilitating Wiki Academy

Mr. Arjuna Rao Chavala, President of Wikimedia India was the key facilitator imparting the know-how of this often visited, free, multilingual, collaborative internet encyclopedia. Mr. Arjuna started off by giving an overview of Wikipedia and other sister projects. Students were briefed on the Wikipedia interface and different parts of the site. He then guided them in the intricacies of contributing to the site.

Within a short time, Wikipedia got richer by many articles, thanks to the newly empowered young contributors.

Many queries were raised regarding content quality, plagiarism concerns and recognition for contributors. The program ended with the students giving their feedback on the workshop. Many felt it was an essential workshop that revealed the simplicity of editing and contributing to Wikipedia. They felt they could now join the elite list of ‘contributors’ at the top of the content creation pyramid, rather than being just a part of the content consuming population at the bottom. A few students however expressed concerns about contributing to one of the biggest encyclopedias that seemed to have something on everything.

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Wil je een actieve bijdrage leveren aan de ontwikkeling van Wikimedia Nederland en aan het verspreiden van vrije kennis? Overweeg dan eens een bestuurslidmaatschap. Wikimedia Nederland is op zoek naar kandidaten voor een bestuursfunctie per 24 maart 2012.

Bekijk de vacature op onze wiki.

Wikipedia is huge. Almost four million articles in English alone — but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words (actually, it’s usually closer to several million). In terms of raw bits on disk, the largest project is clearly the Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository integrated with all of the Wikimedia projects. In addition, many projects allow their own local media uploads. As a result, across all wikis, Wikimedia stores millions of images, sounds, and other media files.

We’ve been able to manage the load for quite a while by using two servers with lots of local storage — (10 and 30TB), but we’re pushing against that limit and we would like a more fault-tolerant option. So, for the last few months, we have been working on replacing the infrastructure that holds all that data.

Our goal is to have a storage system that will allow us to scale more easily, and accept large collections of media from projects like Wiki Loves Monuments, and the U.S. National Archives’ donation of their collection of photographs by Ansel Adams.

After evaluating a number of options, we chose to pursue OpenStack Swift. Swift is a distributed object storage system with automatic replication, so that if one host has problems the requseted file is retrieved from another server with no interruption of service. Aside from meeting our needs around performance, reliability, and scalability, it is a good fit considering we are also using OpenStack products for Wikimedia Labs.

We have just completed the first milestone along the road to replacing our existing storage systems with Swift: all image thumbnails (scaled images such as a 320px version of a picture) are now stored on Swift. Our current production Swift cluster is made up of 4 back-end storage nodes with 22TB each and 2 front-end proxy nodes that handle user web requests. This new architecture provides us the scalability and reliability we need going forward.

Over the next few months we will build a second Swift cluster in our Virginia data center, then work on migrating all of the original media over to Swift as well. For more detail on the implementation and plan for Swift, you can read up on the documentation on Wikitech, ask questions in the comments below, or come and visit us in #wikimedia-tech on Freenode in IRC.

Ben Hartshorne
Operations
Wikimedia Foundation

== Foundation & Vereine ==

STELLUNGNAHME DES WMF-VORSTANDS ZUR NEUORDNUNG DES SPENDENWESENS

MEETINGS DER FOUNDATION AUF VIDEO

BERICHT DES LANGUAGE COMMITTEE

WIKIMÉDIA MAGYARORSZÁG (WIKIMEDIA UNGARN)

NEUES CHAPTER: WIKIMEDIA KENYA

WIKIMEDIA UK

WIKITREFFEN IN SAN FRANCISCO

WIKIMEDIA DEUTSCHLAND

WIKIMEDIA INDIEN

== Studien und Statistik ==

LESERUMFRAGE DER WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION

== Technik ==

SAN FRANCISCO-HACKATHON

== Projekte und Initiativen ==

GLAM

WIKIWOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

FREE SOFTWARE COMMUNITY TEILT ERFAHRUNGEN IM “OPEN ADVICE BOOK”

== Termine ==

STEWARD-WAHLEN

OFFICE-HOURS

== Internationale Pressestimmen ==