Wikimedia Highlights, July 2013
Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for July 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
Wikimedia Foundation highlights
Mobile editing
This month, the mobile web team released new navigation features for contributors to all Wikimedia mobile sites, including the existing upload and watchlist star features, as well as an edit button. This means that editing (in the form of section-level markup editing) is now enabled on all mobile Wikimedia sites for logged-in users. The users of our "beta" channel will soon see redesigned mobile notifications, as well as guides for first-time editors and uploaders. (More about the beta channel and how you can opt in.)
Wikipedia Zero comes to India
The first Wikipedia Zero launch in India gives 60 million mobile phone subscribers free-of-charge access to Wikipedia on their mobile phones. The promotional campaign around this launch, led by our partner Aircel, received broad coverage in print and was accompanied by Twitter and blogging events. Aircel customers now have free access to Wikipedia in English, as well as to the 19 Indic language Wikipedias.
VisualEditor beta launch
In July we enabled the new editing interface on several Wikipedias as the default editor, first for logged-in editors and then for anonymous users as well. This resulted in a great deal of feedback, and the team responded with several hundred improvements to fix urgent issues. In addition, the team deployed user interface improvements, most notably to the references insertion dialog. Currently, users are making approximately 800 edits per hour using the VisualEditor on Wikimedia sites.
There are continuing discussions with different language communities about the positioning of the VisualEditor beta in the user interface and appropriate notices indicating its beta status. The Wikimedia Foundation is using the beta period to collect and analyze bug reports, feature enhancements, and data, to observe actual user behavior, and to improve the editing experience continuously. Our eventual objective is for VisualEditor to be the default editor for all Wikipedia users, capable of letting them edit the majority of content without needing to use the wikitext editor.
Please help translate the user interface of VisualEditor.
Data and Trends
Global unique visitors for June:
- 500 million (-4.25% compared with May; +6.37% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release July data later in August)
Page requests for July:
- 21.2 billion (+0.4% compared with June; +19.8% compared with the previous year)
- (Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation content projects including mobile access, but excluding Wikidata and the Wikipedia main portal page.)
Active Registered Editors for June 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):
- data currently under review
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)
Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):
Financials
 |
 |
(Financial information is only available through June 2013 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date June 30, 2013.
| Revenue | $51,040,795 |
|---|---|
| Expenses: | |
| Engineering Group | $15,224,438 |
| Fundraiser Group | $3,463,128 |
| Grantmaking & Programs Group | $8,830,248 |
| Governance Group | $742,435 |
| Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group | $3,090,563 |
| Finance/HR/Admin Group | $5,865,595 |
| Total Expenses | $37,216,407 |
| Total surplus | $13,824,388 |
- Revenue for the month of June is $0.48MM versus plan of $0.28MM, approximately $205K or 74% over plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $51.04MM versus plan of $46.07MM, approximately $4.97MM or 11% over plan.
- Expenses for the month of June is $3.39MM versus plan of $3.99MM, approximately $598K or 15% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, and grant expenses (FDC grants) partially offset by higher capital expenses, outside contract services, legal fees, and travel expenses.
- Year-to-date expenses is $37.22MM versus plan of $42.07MM, approximately $4.85MM or 12% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, grant expenses (FDC grants), and travel expenses partially offset by higher capital expenses, legal expenses, bank fees, outside contract services, and personal property tax expenses.
- Cash position is $39.75MM as of June 30, 2013.
Other movement highlights
Winners of "Wiki Loves Public Art" announced
At the end of July, the winners of Wiki Loves Public Art were announced. Similar to Wiki Loves Monuments, "Wiki Loves Public Art" is an international contest to take photos of artworks that are accessible to the public. It took place for the first time this year, in Austria, Finland, Israel, Spain (Barcelona) and Sweden. 225 participants uploaded more than 9,250 images.
New Board of Trustees member: Ana Toni
Ana Toni was appointed to the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees in July for a two-year term. Toni is the CEO of a consultancy firm based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which works on social and environmental issues. She serves as the chair of Greenpeace International, and previously worked in leading positions for the Ford Foundation and ActionAid.
Buenos Aires edit-a-thon in former military prison
On July 20, a "Memorial Edit-a-thon" was held in Buenos Aires, at ESMA, a former "black site" (illegal military prison) during the Argentine military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, and today a human-rights museum. Besides experienced and new Wikipedia editors, it was also attended by survivors of the black site. The Argentine Wikimedia chapter interviewed one of the attendees, a photographer who dedicated most of her career to political activism and owns an archive of 45,000 photographs that she intends to upload to Wikimedia Commons after digitization.