Wikimedia Highlights, February 2013/eu
Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for February 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
Wikimedia Foundation highlights
Legal victory for Wikivoyage and free knowledge
The Wikimedia Foundation's legal team announced a settlement in the legal proceedings between the Foundation and Internet Brands, relating to issues stemming from the creation of Wikivoyage, our community’s newest free knowledge project.
Last year, Internet Brands (owners of a for-profit wiki-based travel project) sued two Wikimedians involved in supporting the travel wiki project. The Foundation supported the legal defense of the volunteers and the court ultimately dismissed Internet Brands’ lawsuit.
The Foundation also went on the offensive and filed its own separate lawsuit against Internet Brands seeking a declaration from the court that Internet Brands had no proper basis to block the travel wiki project. That suit was resolved in an out of court settlement on February 14, 2013. In that settlement, Internet Brands released the Foundation and Wikivoyage e.V. (the German non-profit organization who worked hard to make the travel project a success) from all claims related in any manner to the creation and operation of the travel wiki project. In return, the Foundation agreed to dismiss its suit.
Mobile watchlist available
Facilitating contributions to Wikipedia on mobile devices is an important goal for the Foundation's mobile team. As one of the first results of these efforts, mobile Wikipedia users are now able to log into their account, and to view and modify their watchlist. On the mobile version, the star symbol for the watchlist is shown to all users, to encourage them to log in or create an account. Experienced contributors can use the watchlist as usual: To track changes to the selected pages and fix problems if necessary. But to make the watchlist more newbie-friendly, the mobile version also offers a full view of all selected pages, which can function as a reading list.
Language engineering team attends open source conferences in India
The Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team participated in two conferences in Pune, India: GNUnify 2013, a major open source conference, and the Second Open Source Language Summit, co-organized by the Foundation with Red Hat. The team aims to make Wikipedia a website that can be used by anyone on the planet in their own language. India's many different languages make it a natural location for the team to see the effect of their work. At the Language Summit, the engineers from the Wikimedia Foundation collaborated with attendees from Red Hat, KDE, Google and other groups. The work areas included the following:
- Input methods (enabling typing in a certain language), bringing the number of supported languages to 140.
- Translation tools, including a demonstration of the new design and features for the translation editor in MediaWiki's Translate extension
- The "language coverage matrix", a detailed overview of language support in different projects and platforms (with 285 languages currently supported by Wikimedia, and more than 100 in the Fedora Linux distribution)
Data and trends
Global unique visitors for January:
- 488.5 million (+3.37% compared with December; +1.31% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release February data later in March)
Page requests for February:
- 21.8 billion (–2.1% compared with January; +20.2% compared with the previous year)
- (Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects, including mobile access)
Active registered editors for January 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):
- 84,848 (+8.60% compared with December / +2.03% compared with the previous year)
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects)
Report card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for January 2013:
Financials
 |
 |
(Financial information is only available for January 2013 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date January 31, 2013.
| Diru-sarrera | 33.756.118 $ |
|---|---|
| Gastuak: | |
| Ingeniaritza Taldea | 7.393.053 $ |
| Fundraiser Group | 2.223.577 $ |
| Grantmaking & Programs Group | 2.617.926 $ |
| Governance Group | 413.747 $ |
| Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group | 1.818.707 $ |
| Finance/HR/Admin Group | 3.249.731 $ |
| Guztizko Gastuak | 17.716.741 $ |
| Guztira: superabita/(galerak) | 16.039.377 $ |
- Revenue for the month of January is $2.84MM vs plan of $276K, approximately $2.56MM or 927% over plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $33.76MM vs plan of $30.19MM, approximately $3.57MM or 12% over plan.
- Expenses for the month of January is $2.26MM vs plan of $4.13MM, approximately $1.87 or 45% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, timing of FDC grants disbursement, and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and outside contract services.
- Year-to-date expenses is $17.72MM vs plan of $21.90MM, approximately $4.18MM or 19% under plan, primarily due to personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, timing of FDC grants disbursement and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal expenses and bank fees.
- Cash position is $41.47MM as of January 31, 2013.
Other movement highlights
Commons Picture of the Year 2012 contest results announced
After 3990 Wikimedians had voted, the results of the seventh annual Picture of the Year contest on Wikimedia Commons were announced on February 22. The winning photo (right) features two birds of the species Merops apiaster (European Bee-eater). The photographer explained that it shows a mating ritual: The male bird, on the right, is about to feed the bee to the female, on the left. The photo had been provided by "Project Phoebus", a collaboration between the museum of Toulouse and Wikimédia France.
New ombudsman commission
The members of the 2013 Ombudsman commission have been announced:
- User:Deskana from the English Wikipedia
- User:Erzbischof from the German Wikipedia
- User:FloNight from the English Wikipedia
- User:Huji from the Farsi Wikipedia
- User:Levg from the Russian Wikipedia
- User:Sir48 from the Danish Wikipedia
- User:Thogo from the German Wikipedia
The ombudsman commission investigates complaints about violations of the privacy policy (in particular concerning the use of CheckUser tools) on any Wikimedia project for the board of trustees.
Open database of public art in Sweden
Wikimedia Sweden has started work on a freely licensed database on public art in Sweden, populated with data from public institutions and municipalities. The project is funded by a grant from the government agency Vinnova. The database was motivated by the international Wiki Loves Public Art photo contest, planned for May 2013.