Wikimedia Highlights, May 2012
Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for May 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
Wikimedia Foundation highlights
New Wikimedia fellows working on dispute resolution and small language wikis
The Wikimedia Fellows Program added two Community Fellows: Steven Zhang (a Wikipedian since 2008) is analyzing dispute resolution on the English Wikipedia. Tanvir Rahman (active on the Bengali Wikipedia since 2009, and elected as a steward by the global community in 2011) is experimenting with on-wiki strategies for growing the number of editors on small-language wikis, with an initial focus on the Bengali Wikipedia.
Another Fellowship project, the Teahouse (where experienced Wikipedians are helping new editors), concluded its 3 month pilot phase on the English Wikipedia and was preparing a full analysis. Initial results indicated that it had a positive impact on new editors. The Teahouse concept is already being adapted to Arabic and Indic language projects.
1 million media files uploaded using Upload Wizard
One year after it was announced, the Upload Wizard has been used to upload more than 1 million freely licensed media files to Wikimedia Commons, and has contributed to an acceleration of its community's growth. Developers are working on a more reliable upload of large files (up to 500MB), on a mobile upload application to support the Wiki Loves Monuments contest in September, and on improving Flickr integration and geolocation support in the Upload Wizard.
Wikipedia Zero launches in Asia
Wikipedia Zero, the Foundation's initiative to enable free mobile access to Wikipedia, became available in Asia for the first time on May 21: Malaysian mobile operator Digi started offering the lightweight, text-only version of Wikipedia free of data charges to its 10 million customers. The program is already live in Tunisia and Uganda, and will launch in many other countries in the coming months.
Data and Trends
Global unique visitors for April:
- 473.38 million (-3.27% compared with March; +24.34% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release May data later in June)
Page requests for May:
- 18.0 billion (3.9% compared with April; 19.0% compared with the previous year)
- (Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)
Active Registered Editors for April 2012 (>= 5 edits/month):
- 78,519 (-1.71% compared with March / -1.60% compared with the previous year)
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons)
Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for April 2012:
Financials
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(Financial information is only available for April 2012 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 - April 30, 2012.
| Revenue | $ 34,904,252 |
|---|---|
| Expenses: | |
| Engineering Group | $ 9,295,397 |
| Community/Fundraiser Group | $ 3,429,034 |
| Global Development Group | $ 3,342,651 |
| Governance Group | $ 809,714 |
| Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group | $ 5,225,408 |
| Total Expenses | $ 22,102,204 |
| Total surplus/(loss) | $ 12,802.047 |
- Revenue for the month is $ 2.8MM vs plan of $ 272K, approximately $ 2.6MM or 947% over plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $ 34.9MM vs plan of $ 28.8MM, approximately $ 6.1MM or 21% over plan.
- Expenses for the month is $ 2.8MM vs plan of $ 2.4MM, approximately $ 374K or 15% higher than plan.
- Year-to-date expense is $ 22.1MM vs plan of $ 23.5MM, approximately $ 1.4MM or 6% lower than plan.
- Cash position is $ 31.6MM as of April 30, 2012 – approximately 13.6 months of expenses.
Other movement highlights
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Two new chapter-selected Wikimedia Trustees
Patricio Lorente (left) and Alice Wiegand (right) have been nominated and confirmed for the two chapter-selected seats on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, taking office in July.
First demo of Wikidata
The Wikidata project launched a demo system, and published a draft specification describing how data from the central Wikidata repository can be displayed on the Wikipedias (e.g. in infoboxes).
Monmouth declared "World's First Wikipedia Town"
The Monmouthpedia project was officially launched on May 19. It aims to cover all notable topics of the Welsh town of Monmouth in as many language versions of Wikipedia as possible. Those Wikipedia articles are linked from QRpedia signs found on important buildings and many other places throughout the town. The project took six months to prepare and is jointly funded by Wikimedia UK and the local county council. Hundreds of global media reports covered "The World’s First Wikipedia Town".
WikiWomenCamp
WikiWomenCamp took place in Buenos Aires from May 23 to May 25. At the women-only conference, female Wikimedians from many different countries discussed the problems facing women who contribute to the free knowledge movement, learned from each other's experiences, and looked at outreach strategies for different countries and cultures.