Wikimedia Highlights, February 2014

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

Frank Schulenburg named executive director of the new Wiki Education Foundation, which supports Wikipedia courses in the US and Canada

The Wikipedia Education Program, where university students contribute to Wikipedia as a course assignment, began in 2010 as a pilot project run by the Wikimedia Foundation (the “Public Policy Initiative” which focused on the subject of US public policy). Since then, the program has expanded worldwide. In the United States and Canada alone, more than 6,000 students have contributed to Wikipedia as part of the program, adding the equivalent of 36,600 printed pages to Wikipedia and significantly increasing the amount of high-quality content.

The global Wikipedia Education Program will continue to be supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. But in 2012, the Wikimedia Foundation began a process to hand over cooperations with educators and institutions in the US and Canada to a new non-profit organization, the “Wiki Education Foundation“, created in late 2013. In February, the new organization appointed its first executive director: Frank Schulenburg, a long-time German Wikipedian and Commons contributor who left his position as head of the Wikimedia Foundation’s program department for the new job.

New Media Viewer: A better way to view images

The Multimedia Team invited community members to test a beta version of Media Viewer, a new tool for viewing images and other multimedia content. Currently, when a reader clicks on a thumbnail in an article, they are taken to a separate page showing the image in medium size, surrounded by a lot of text information which can be confusing. Media Viewer shows images in a larger size, as an overlay on the current page.

At the end of February, when the invitation was made, over 12,000 beta testers had already activated Media Viewer as part of the Beta Features program. The rollout of Media Viewer to the first wikis was scheduled for April.

Discussion about disclosure requirements for paid editing, and about the new privacy policy

The Wikimedia Foundation’s Legal Department is drafting a proposed amendment to the Terms of Use to address further undisclosed paid editing. Contributing to the Wikimedia projects to serve the interests of a paying client while concealing the paid affiliation has led to situations that the community considers problematic. The LCA team published a draft for a community discussion. The discussion received significant response, and continued through March 21, 2014.

The department also announced the conclusion of the community consultations about the new Privacy Policy (after discussions that lasted over 8 months), together with the accompanying Data retention guidelines, and the Access to Nonpublic Information Policy, whose consultation lasted over 5 months. These policies will be reviewed by the Board in April 2014.

Data and Trends

Global unique visitors for January:

495 million +1.05% compared with December; +1.41% compared with the previous year)

(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release February data later in March)

Page requests for February:

21.001 billion (+1.6% compared with January; -3.5% 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 January 2014 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

81,821 (+8.24% compared with December / -2.92% compared with the previous year)

(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of January 31, 2014

Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of January 31, 2014

(Financial information is only available through January 2014 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date January 31, 2014.

Revenue	38,169,215
Expenses:
Engineering Group	9,278,563
Fundraising Group	2,535,021
Grantmaking Group	951,930
Programs Group	1,044,778
Grants	2,378,690
Governance Group	415,129
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group	2,057,675
Finance/HR/Admin Group	4,084,665
Total Expenses	22,746,451
Total surplus	(15,422,764)
	in US dollars

• Revenue for the month of January is $3.42MM versus plan of $0.01MM, approximately $3.41MM or 58,335% over plan.
• Year-to-date revenue is $38.17MM versus plan of $45.04MM, approximately $6.87MM or 15% under plan.
• Expenses for the month of January is $3.97MM versus plan of $4.53MM, approximately $559K or 12% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees, grants and travel expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services and payment processing fees.
• Year-to-date expenses is $22.75MM versus plan of $27.39MM, approximately $4.64MM or 17% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees, payment processing fees, staff development expenses, grants, and travel expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services and recruiting fees.
• Cash position is $54.67MM as of January 31, 2014.

Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedians visit European Parliament to take photos of politicians

In a project called Wiki Loves Parliaments, 50 Wikimedians from nine countries visited the European Parliament during four days in February. They took photographs of 319 of the parliament’s 764 members, in addition to some members of the EU commission. The project was financially supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and several regional chapters. It built on similar activities that have been conducted at German and Austrian state parliaments since 2009.

New video intends to motivate GLAM organizations to open up their collections

Wikimedia Germany has produced a promotional video that intends to motivate GLAM institutions to open up their digital collections for reuse. It was shot at a GLAM conference in Berlin, and is titled “Den Zugang öffnen” (“open up the access”). The chapter intends to provide a version with English subtitles so that others can use it in their work too.

“Art+Feminism” editathons address Wikipedia’s gender gap

On February 1, “Art+Feminism” editathons took place at around 30 locations in North America, Europe and Australia. Motivated by Wikipedia’s gender gap, participants worked to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia. It is estimated that the event was attended by 600 people, who together created at least 101 new articles and improved at least 90 existing ones.