Wikimedia Highlights, November 2013
Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for November 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
Wikimedia Foundation highlights
New support material for program organizers: Evaluation report about edit-a-thons, and a pattern library
A new report about edit-a-thons includes data from 46 events between February 2012 and October 2013. It starts a series of seven reports about the most common types of programs executed by Wikimedia program leaders around the world, authored by the Wikimedia Foundation's Program Evaluation and Design team. This is the first time that such an analysis compares the outcomes of a specific program to its costs. Among the many findings of this report is that edit-a-thons with a small budget can be as productive as events with a large budget.
In the new learning pattern library on Meta, Wikimedians can share what they learn about organizing activities like edit-a-thons, GLAM collaborations, gender gap outreach, or Wiki Loves Monuments. Each pattern includes a description of a common problem, and instructions for solving it.
"Beta Features" option allows users to test upcoming software changes
A new "Beta Features" section has been added to the user preferences menu, allowing logged-in editors to test upcoming software changes and give feedback to the developers, before these features become available for everyone.
Open Source Language Summit in Pune, India
Together with Red Hat, the Wikimedia Foundation's language engineering team organized the fall 2013 Open Source Language Summit in Pune, India. It was also attended by members of the VisualEditor and Mobile teams. Session topics included:
- improving the support for fonts (in particular in Indic languages)
- input methods for entering characters that are not available on a user's keyboard
- the Language Coverage Matrix Dashboard, which displays how a language is supported on Wikimedia projects
- a prototype for a user interface for translating Wikipedia articles and other content
OAuth extension makes it easier to use third-party editing tools
All Wikimedia wikis now support OAuth, an open standard that allows users to authorize third-party software tools to carry out actions on the wiki on their behalf, without handing over their user password.
Among the first tools that use this new feature is "CropTool", which allows users to crop images on Wikimedia Commons.
- A visualization of the interaction between a third-party tool (left), the wiki and the user under the OAuth protocol
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Data and Trends
Global unique visitors for October:
- 530 million (+4.86% compared with September; +8.62% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release November data later in December)
Page requests for November:
- 19.039 billion (+1.2% compared with October; -6.4% compared with the previous year)
- (Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access. Note: the numbers previously reported for the months of July to October 2013 have been corrected.)
Active Registered Editors for October 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):
- 75,964 (-0.99% compared with September / -3.83% compared with the previous year)
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)
Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):
Financials
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(Financial information is only available through October 2013 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date October 31, 2013.
| Revenue | $11,646,366 |
|---|---|
| Expenses: | |
| Engineering Group | $5,379,535 |
| Fundraising Group | $1,097,830 |
| Grantmaking Group | $556,471 |
| Programs Group | $573,291 |
| Grants | $857,473 |
| Governance Group | $221,061 |
| Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group | $1,058,063 |
| Finance/HR/Admin Group | $2,490,383 |
| Total Expenses | $12,234,107 |
| Total deficit | ($587,741) |
- Revenue for the month of October is $3.78MM versus plan of $4.91MM, approximately $1.13MM or 23% under plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $11.65MM versus plan of $7.88MM, approximately $3.77MM or 48% over plan.
- Expenses for the month of October is $2.84MM versus plan of $3.52MM, approximately $680K or 19% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees, payment processing fees, and travel expenses partially offset by higher grants and recruiting expenses.
- Year-to-date expenses is $12.23MM versus plan of $14.70MM, approximately $2.47MM or 17% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees, grants, staff development expenses, and travel expenses partially offset by higher payment processing fees.
- Cash position is $38.61MM as of October 31, 2013.
Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
Tenth anniversary of Wikisource
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Wikisource on November 24, proofreading contests were held on the Italian, the Catalan and the English Wikisource, contributors answered interviews (here in English and in French). On the same day, the official recognition of the Wikisource Community User Group was announced. Since Wikisource was founded in 2003 (initially named "Project Sourceberg"), its volunteers have proofread 1.4 million pages in 63 languages.
Indian university releases encyclopedia under a free license
The "Konkani Vishwakosh" is a four-volume encyclopedia written in Konkani, a language spoken primarily by people living in Goa and in the neighboring states on the western coast of India.
At the suggestion of Access to Knowledge (A2K, a program supporting Wikipedia in India, run at the Centre for Internet & Society and funded by a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation), the publisher of the "Konkani Vishwakosh", Goa University, released it under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0). This is part of a three-year effort to build the Konkani Wikipedia. The 3632 pages of the Vishwakosh are being digitized by 37 volunteer Wikimedians.
Diversity Conference
On November 9–10, over 80 Wikimedians attended the first Wikimedia Diversity Conference, hosted by the German Wikimedia chapter in Berlin. Many of the presentations addressed Wikipedia's gender gap (the fact that the large majority of contributors are male). But other aspects of diversity were a topic as well, e.g. geographic diversity (the under-representation of editors from the Global South) or LGBT issues.
Photographer receives $17,000 Kickstarter funding to document video games on Wikimedia Commons
Evan Amos (User:Evan-Amos) is a video game enthusiast who has been uploading high-quality photographs of gaming consoles to Wikimedia Commons since 2010. He has now started a project to expand this into an online collection about the history of video games, called "The Vanamo Online Game Museum". He presented the idea on Kickstarter, a fundraising site, and received over $17,000 from more than 1,000 donors in little less than a month. The money is dedicated to buying old video game hardware so that it can be photographed.