You are more than welcome to edit the wiki version of this report for the purposes of usefulness, presentation, etc., and to add translations of the “Highlights” excerpts. |
Contents
- 1 Data and Trends
- 2 Financials
- 3 Highlights
- 4 Engineering
- 5 Fundraising
- 6 Grantmaking
- 7 Human Resources
- 8 Finance and Administration
- 9 Legal and Community Advocacy
- 10 Communications
Data and Trends
Global unique visitors for May:
- 469 million (+0.7% compared with April; -10.2% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects, not including mobile devices; comScore will release June data later in July)
Page requests for June:
- 20.217 billion (-0.2% compared with May; -4.4% 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 May 2014 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):
- 80,131 (+6.5% compared with April / -1.9% compared with the previous year)
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)
Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):
Financials
|
|
(Financial information is only available through May 2014 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date May 31, 2014.
Revenue | 49,972,461 |
---|---|
Expenses: | |
Engineering Group | 15,308,224 |
Fundraising Group | 3,392,468 |
Grantmaking Group | 1,696,721 |
Programs Group | 1,630,409 |
Grants | 4,104,348 |
Governance Group | 909,083 |
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group | 4,066,924 |
Finance/HR/Admin Group | 6,109,383 |
Total Expenses | 37,217,560 |
Total surplus | (12,754,901) |
in US dollars |
- Revenue for the month of May is $0.78MM versus plan of $1.67MM, approximately $0.89MM or 54% under plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $49.97MM versus plan of $48.40MM, approximately $1.57MM or 3% over plan.
- Expenses for the month of May is $3.71MM versus plan of $4.49MM, approximately $0.78MM or 17% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and FDC grants partially offset by higher legal fees, outside contract services, and travel expenses related to community convening events.
- Year-to-date expenses is $37.22MM versus plan of $45.55MM, approximately $8.33MM or 18% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, payment processing fees, staff development expenses, grants and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal fees and outside contract services.
- Cash and Investments – $53.13MM as of May 31, 2014.
Highlights
Revamped Wikipedia app for Android, and new optimized view for tablet users
The new Android Wikipedia app was released in June and is now available in the Google Play store. Core features of the app include the ability to save pages for offline reading, a record of your reading history, and the ability to edit either as a logged in user or anonymously. The app is the first mobile platform that allows anonymous editing.
Also, since June 17, users on tablets are now redirected to the new tablet-optimized mobile site; they were previously being sent to the desktop version of all Wikimedia projects. Early data suggests that this change had a positive impact on new user signup and new editor activation numbers.
Media viewer released on all wikis
In June, the multimedia team released Media Viewer v0.2 on all Wikimedia wikis, with over 20 million image views per day on those sites that are tracked. Global feedback was generally positive and helped surface a range of issues, many of which were addressed quickly. Based on this feedback, a number of new features were developed by the team: view images in full resolution, view images in different sizes, show more image information, edit image file pages, as well as easy disable tools for anonymous users and editors.
First impact assessment of FDC grants (APG)
The results of the first impact assessment for Annual Plan Grants (FDC grants) to Wikimedia organiations were published. Based on the reports of the 9 organizations funded in Round 1 of 2012-2013, the report found that organizations had strength in content-related projects, which benefitted from full time staff and consistent partnership:
- Content development results: 12K articles improved, 168K images on Commons, and 86K other media on Commons
- Participation improvements (new editors; active editors; retained editors) were not recorded by most organizations. But over 9000 people were touched by the programs associated with the activties of the organizations, and Wikidata (a new Wikimedia project developed by Wikimedia Deutschland) saw 3000 new active editors.
Term of Use amended with transparency requirements for paid editing
The Wikimedia Foundation published a new amendment to the Terms of Use to address disclosure of paid editing.
Engineering
A detailed report of the Tech Department’s activities for June 2014 can be found at:
- Department Highlights
Major news in June include:
- the release of the new Wikipedia for Android app, preceded by its beta version;
- the decision to move away from Bugzilla in favor of Phabricator;
- A new tablet view for Wikimedia sites.
VisualEditor
In June, the VisualEditor team continued to improve this visual tool to edit wiki pages. They provided a way to see the context of links and other items when you edit to make this easier, worked on the performance and stability of the editor so that users could more swiftly and reliably make changes to articles, and made some improvements to features focused on increasing their simplicity and understandability. The editor now shows with a highlight where dragging-and-dropping content will put it, and works for any content, not just for images. The citation and reference tools had some minor adjustments to guide the user on how they operate, based on feedback and user testing. A lot of fixes to issues with windows opening and closing, and especially the link editing tool, were made, alongside the save dialog, categories, the language editing tool, table styling, template display and highlights on selected items. The mobile version of VisualEditor, currently available for alpha testers, moved towards release, fixing a number of bugs and improving performance. Work to support languages made some significant gains, and work to support Internet Explorer continued. The new visual interface for writing TemplateData (structured template documentation) was enabled on the Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedias.
Work also continued on Parsoid, the parsing system that works behind the scenes of VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML, and vice versa. The team continued with ongoing bug fixes and bi-weekly deployments; they notably worked on improving the parsing support for some table-handling edge cases, handling nowiki
tags, and making the parsing faster. They also began work on supporting language converter markup.
The Parsoid team added CSS styling to the HTML code to bring Parsoid’s HTML closer to what is produced by the PHP parser (used in MediaWiki). They continued to tweak the CSS based on rendering differences they found, and started work on generating visual diffs between screenshots of content rendered with the two methods. This initial proof-of-concept will serve as the basis of larger scale automated testing and identification of rendering diffs. Last, the LintTrap project (for the detection of broken wikitext) saw good progress and a demo application was made available.
Editor engagement
In June, the Flow team finished an architectural rewrite for the interface, to make it easier to update it in the future. The new feature in the latest release is the ability to sort topics on a Flow board. There are now two options for the order that topics appear on the board: you can see the most recently created threads at the top (the default), or the most recently updated threads. This new sorting option makes it easier to find the active conversations on the board.
We’ve also made a few changes to make Flow discussions easier to read, including a font size now consistent with other pages, dropdown menus now easier to read, and the use of the new button style and the WikiGlyphs webfont.
The Growth team completed analysis of its first round of A/B testing of signup invitations for anonymous editors on English, French, German, and Italian Wikipedias. Based on these results, the team prepared a second version to be A/B tested. Additionally, the team released a major refactor of the GuidedTour extension, as well as design enhancements like animations, a new way of drawing guider elements, updated button styles, and more. The team also launched GuidedTours on three new Wikipedias: Arabic, Norwegian, and Bengali.
Mobile
The Mobile Apps team released the new Android Wikipedia app and it is now available to be downloaded through the Google Play store on Android devices. Core features of the app include the ability to save pages for offline reading, a record of your browsing history, and the ability to edit either as a logged in user or anonymously. The app is the first mobile platform that allows anonymous editing. The app also supports Wikipedia Zero for participating mobile carriers. Additional work done this month includes the start of implementing night mode for the Android app (by popular demand), creating an onboarding experience which is to be refined and deployed in July, and numerous improvements to the edit workflow.
The Mobile web team finished work on styling the mobile site to provide a better experience for tablet users. As of June 17, users on tablets are now redirected to the new tablet-optimized mobile; they were previously being sent to the desktop version of all Wikimedia projects. Early data suggests that this change had a positive impact on new user signup and new editor activation numbers. The team also continued work on VisualEditor features (the linking and citation dialogs) in preparation for releasing the option to edit via VisualEditor to tablet users in the next three months.
During the last month, the Wikipedia Zero team activated the new code for Wikipedia Zero, by replacing replaces one monolithic piece of software by multiple smaller tools. The JsonConfig extension, which allows a wiki-driven configuration system with data validation, received significant enhancements to make it more general for other use cases.
Additionally, the team enabled lower-quality thumbnails for a live in-house Wikipedia Zero operator configuration, and finished a basic version of Wikipedia Zero for the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps. The team also supported the Wikipedia apps development by improving the network connection management in Android and iOS, and with the Find in page feature for Android.
Wikipedia Zero was launched with Airtel in Bangladesh; this is the third Zero partner in Bangladesh, and the 34th launched partner overall. The team participated in the Wiki Indaba conference, the first event of its kind to be held in Africa. The event, organized by Wikimedia South Africa, brought together community members from Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa. The attendees shared experiences and challenges to work in the region and formulated strategies to support and strengthen the movement’s efforts across the continent. The team also met with local operators in South Africa, and operators and handset manufacturers in India.
Fundraising
The Fundraising Tech team welcomed Elliott Eggleston as software engineer.
Fiscal Year Updates:
- Recognized by GuideStar as the #2 most efficient nonprofit fundraising effort in the US.
- Overall we generated $50.5 million in the past fiscal year.
Major Gifts and Foundations
Fiscal Year Updates:
- Major Gifts hit their individual group goals.
- Major Gifts fundraising events were held in New York City and London.
- A significant legacy gift was received from Jim Pacha.
Online Fundraising
Fiscal Year Updates:
- Moved to a year-round continuous-campaign model for banner A/B testing.
- Launched first experiments with mobile fundraising.
- This was our first year where we sent out emails to donors in multiple languages.
For Next Fiscal Year:
- Continue to localize to reach more donors worldwide
- Expand our mobile fundraising reach
- Improve infrastructure and analysis
- Fine tune continuous-campaign model
- Expand email fundraising
Grantmaking
- Department highlights
- In 2013-14, we funded over 200 grants to over 66 countries.
- 8 new grants were funded in June 2014, and 22 reports were reviewed.
- The first impact analysis for the Annual Plan Grants program (FDC process) has been completed. The first round of funding (Round 1 2012-2013) of ~$4M resulted in lots of new content on Wikimedia projects (12K articles improved; 168K images on Commons; 86K other media on Commons).
- The FDC’s recommendations for 2013-2014 Round 2 were approved by the WMF Board of Trustees on 30 June 2014.
Annual Plan Grants (Funds Dissemination Committee)
- 3 new grants were funded and 12 progress reports were reviewed in June 2014.
- The FDC’s recommendation for 2013-2014 Round 2 was approved by the WMF Board of Trustees on 30 June 2014. Three grants were approved, to Wikimedia Norge, Wikimédia France and the Centre for Internet and Society. Grant terms begin 1 July 2014.
- The WMF Board of Trustees is seeking four new members to join the FDC. Those interested in serving have submitted nominations on Meta, and the WMF Board of Trustees will announce the shortlist of candidates in July.
- FDC staff reviewed Q1 and Q3 progress reports that were submitted at the end of April this month: we can already see that organizations have increased their activity in the new year. Highlights include an impressive increase in program activity across all grantees as well as more targeted approaches to programs. Grantees have already achieved a lot. 792 articles in 92 languages created through Amical’s Culture Challenge, 6,589 uploaded files already supported by Wikimedia Österreich in Q1, 592 new articles created through Wikimedia Norge’s Women’s Day editing workshop, Wikimedia Argentina’s exploration with working with high school students on Wikivoyage, and an exciting partnership between Wikimedia Nederland and the Dutch National Parks. Amical Wikimedia and Wikimédia France are established in new office spaces, and we have welcomed a number of new employees to our Wikimedia community. We hope this will enable increased program activity and results in future quarters. Here are some visual highlights from the Q1 and Q3 reports we reviewed:
Project and Event Grants
- 4 new requests were funded and 10 reports were accepted in June 2014.
- The Grant Advisory Committee is going through a revamp of its process – stay tuned for improved resources and pages!
Grants funded in June 2014
- Producer Prize for Arabic Wikipedia: To support an annual contest awarding the best contributions to Arabic Wikipedia.
- New York GLAM-Wiki Community Fellow: To support an increase in scope for ongoing GLAM-wiki outreach managed by the Metropolitan New York Library Council’s Community Fellow.
- Wiki Loves Monuments Pakistan 2014: To support the new Pakistani User Group with organizing Wiki Loves Monuments Pakistan 2014.
- Wiki Loves Monuments South Africa 2014: To support Wikimedia South Africa with organizing Wiki Loves Monuments South Africa 2014.
Reports accepted in June 2014
- Iberoconf 2013: WM Mexico hosted a successful Iberoconf summit, resulting in increased project coordination and knowledge sharing between the 10 chapters.
- Wikimedia Estonia Programs 2013: WM Estonia held over 10 photo and writing competitions in 2013, in addition to successful education, digitization, illustration, and photo expedition projects. Check out the diversity of their programs!
- Wikimedia Ukraine Kolessa Recordings Digitization: Listen to over 60 newly-digitized, early 20th-century Kozbar recordings!
- Wikimedia Ukraine Programs 2013: Check out over 4,000 photos from 11 expeditions supported by WM Ukraine, including a 32-day trek in the Carpathian Mountains.
- Wikimedia Ukraine Wikimedians to the Games: A team of dedicated volunteers increased coverage of Sochi 2014 paralympians and continue to create content in this under-represented field.
- Small Language Translation Tool (“Minority Translate”): A new, easy translation tool being piloted in the Voro and Estonian Wikipedias.
- Wikimedia Mexico Start-up: The organizational foundations were laid for a successful WM Mexico — evidenced by their Wikimania 2015 bid win!
- Wikimedia Philippines Operations 2013: WM Philippines stabilized operations, recruited 36 new members, and broadened their membership base beyond Manila.
- Wikimedia Philippines Cultural Heritage Mapping Project Interim Report: 19 volunteers passed an intense training and certification period and will be headed out across the Philippines to document heritage sites. Follow their progress on the Philippines Heritage Map.
- Wikimedia Finland Wikimaps Interim Report: Provide your feedback and ideas for the Wikimaps project here! More project information on their comprehensive blog.
Travel and Participation Support
- 1 new request was funded, and there were no reports submitted for review in June 2014.
- Request funded for Farish C.V.’s participation at the Google I/O 2014 and Google Developers Community Summit 2014, where his talk and demos on “Developing with Wiki” discussed the many opportunities and resources available for developers on Wikipedia and future scopes for Wikipedia from a developer’s perspective.
- Build is underway on-wiki for the TPS program pages redesign! This first TPS improvement sprint aims to increase usability of this program for more contributors, with a revamped launch in early August.
Individual Engagement Grants
- 9 IEGrantee projects began work this month (with the remaining three 2014 round 1 selected projects aiming to start in July and August). Visit the project pages on Meta for milestones and updates over the coming months!
- User-experience surveys are underway for the latest round of IEG proposers and reviewers. We’ll use the findings to improve the experience for future rounds.
- IdeaLab revamp: We launched version 1 of AddMe, a Javascript Gadget making it easier to endorse and join projects in IdeaLab and other grantmaking entry points. We began developing the Form Wizard, a gadget for easily creating new project and proposal pages. Both gadgets will be implemented on several grantmaking projects on meta-wiki during the coming month, in preparation for live testing at Wikimania in August.
- The Wikipedia Library’s Arabic book grants pilot: Promotions began on Arabic Wikipedia in June. 5 requests have been received so far, and nine books have been purchased. The team is exploring workarounds for issues with shipping and availability of books for editors in a few key countries, as not all requests have been successfully processed so far.
Learning & Evaluation
We closed out the fiscal year in June by solidifying the tools supporting the Grantmaking team (see tools section below). We are now sitting on the first year of reporting information from our new grantmaking systems (IEG, PEG, and APG) and are ready to collect and synthesize! We have done this for both the first round of IEG grantees and APG grantees, and we are in the process of reviewing the ~35 grant reports submitted through the Project & Event grants program to create a consolidated picture of the progress against our strategic goals via our movement partners funded through grantmaking.
Strategically, we are continuing to see two trends underscored:
-
- 1) Grantees are having a tough time measuring outcomes; continued standards, education, and tools for self-evaluation are needed for funded activities.
- 2) Global South continues to see increases in readership and all editor metrics (1+, 5+, 100+); we should continue to focus our efforts on these priority areas both financially but more importantly with supporting research (e.g., understanding editing motivations and populations).
Grants Programs
- For APG, we performed the first impact assessment based on the reports of the 9 organizations funded in Round 1 2012-2013. We found that organizations had strength in content-related projects, which benefitted from full time staff and consistent partnership.
- Content developed by organizations: 12K articles improved, 168K images on Commons, and 86K other media on Commons
- Participation improvements (new editors; active editors; retained editors) were not recorded by most organizations, but we saw over 9000 people touched by the programs associated with the activities of the organizations, and 3000 new active editors on Wikidata (a new Wikimedia project developed by Wikimedia Deutschland)
- For PEG, we performed an exploratory analysis of highly active editors on en.wiki and fr.wiki who are working in priority geographies in Africa.
- For IEG, we started preparing for a survey that targets all Meta-wiki users who commented on or endorsed an IEG 2014 round 1 proposal in order to understand their motivation of participating in the IEG review process; sent post-review survey to all participants.
- For Grantmaking in general, we updated the public reporting of overall grantmaking on Meta, including some core statistics around the grants program.
- For Grantmaking overall, we pulled together a summary of our history and strategic focus areas to help onboard new the new executive director.
Program Evaluation
- Evaluation portal migration to Grants namespace completed and now searchable.
- Development of the evaluation portal redesign plan and mock-ups continued.
- Posted two new blog posts on “A Collaborative Definition of Impact: Building Metrics Together” and Asking the right questions: Resources for your survey strategies
- Hosted Virtual Meet-ups on Survey Tools and Strategies 13 (8 GLEE) attendees live, 29 views as of 7/1/2014 and Annual Plan Grants: Results of Year 1 25 (7 GLEE) attendees live, 64 views as of 7/1/2014
- Prepared for upcoming in-person meet-up sessions surrounding Wikimania 2014.
- Posting to social media: 101 posts to Twitter (97 followers, 2272 views, 21 link visits; 14 retweets); 11 Facebook posts (150 members, 471 views, 36 likes, 8 comments); Google+ events for June (39 followers, 6 new followers, 64 profile views, 15 +1’s 64 comments, 1 shares)
Grants Operations and tools
- Created two new graphs in the internal geo-data dashboard to visualize aggregated editorship data based on location in the global south and global north . See: http://tools.wmflabs.org/grantmaking/geo-data-prototype.html
- Started experimenting with Dedoose a QDA (Qualitative data Analysis) tool in order to explore the possibilities of using it to analyze grants and program reports in a qualitative manner.
- Implemented a few new features on Fluxx such as signals, and automated grant agreements, as well as updating programs budgets for the FY 2014-15.
- IdeaLab revamp is underway! See IEG section above.
- Fixed a few technical issues by the launch of the micro-grants pilot on the Arabic Wikipedia.
Other
- What to look forward to in July:
- First ever evaluation newsletter
- New Evaluation portal
- Revamp of IdeaLab
- Editor survey development for target languages
- Worked with Analytics and UX departments on the development of a research internship program
Wikipedia Education Program
- Rod Dunican, Director of the Wikipedia Education Program, announced his departure from the Wikimedia Foundation. His last day was June 30, 2014.
- Floor Koudijs was appointed the interim Senior Program Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program.
- Sage Ross has transitioned from the Wikimedia Foundation to the Wiki Education Foundation. He had been the Wikipedia Education Program’s Online Communications contractor.
Global programs
- The Wikipedia Education Program team continues to conduct outreach with global program leaders, having spoken with 37 education initiatives around the world.
- Wikipedia Education Program Manager Tighe Flanagan hosted a metrics hangout for a group of education program leaders, discussing the reasons for tracking numbers and walking through the basics of using the Wikimetrics tool for tracking cohorts of users.
- The Wikipedia Education Program convened a call with the Education Cooperative to review the work of the action groups (communications, mentoring, resources and recognition) and to start finalizing plans for a Wikimania 2014 panel.
Arab world programs
- The spring semester ended in Egypt and Jordan, and local volunteers decided to keep the student editing period open through the end of the summer break to allow more time for contributions, especially during the month of Ramadan.
- The Wikipedia Club at Princess Nora University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, expressed interest in formally being part of the local Wikipedia Education Program. This student run club focuses on translating articles into Arabic and added 30 new articles between March and April this year.
Communications
- The June 2014 edition of the This Month in Education newsletter was the biggest to date, featuring 21 articles from 13 programs from around the world.
- Additional improvements to the monthly community-led newsletter, This Month In Education, including Signpost-style article teasers, featured on the main page of the newsletter and in a new highlights edition and a new way to submit articles, called the Bullet points page, where community members who may struggle with English skills or writing skills, can provide basic information about their news and newsletter volunteers will write a brief article for them, resulted in another significant increase in page views.
- Anna Koval posted an update on recent improvements to the education portal on Outreach wiki.
Human Resources
Work this month was focused on conducting an executive retreat with our new Executive Director and team, and also supporting the entire organization in the process of our annual reviews. We have also completed hiring for our recruiting team, and onboarded both our Benefits and Wellness Coordinator and our Recruiting Coordinator.
June Staff Changes
- New Requisitions Filled
- Smriti Gupta (Product/Strategy)
- Jenn Suzuki (HR)
- Elliott Eggleston (Engineering)
- Conversions (Contractor to Requisition)
- Janet Renteria (F&A)
- Tighe Flanagan (Grants)
- Requisition Departures
- Rod Dunican (Grants)
- Leslie Harms (F&A)
- Kul Wadhwa (Product/Strategy)
- New Interns
- Ralph Torres (F&A)
- Consuelo Jimenez (F&A)
- Mark Verstraete (LCA)
- New Contractors
- Shai Nisan (Fundraising)
- Papaul Tshibamba (Engineering)
- Neil Kandalgaonkar (Engineering)
- Contracts Ended
- Angelica Tavella
- Janet Go
- Anthony Byrd
- Teresa Cho
- Ambrosia Lobo
June Statistics
- Total Requisitions Filled
- June Actual: 178
- June Total Plan: 196 (full req#, with stage-gating and out of plan)
- June Filled: 5, Month Attrition: 3,
- FYTD Filled: 63, FYTD Attrition: 30
- Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end
- 18 → reflects 4 total out of plan req#s 193-196 (for finance)
Finance and Administration
- With the approval of the updated investment policy at the last Board of Trustees meeting, WMF will be sending out an RFP (Request for Proposal) for Investment Advisory Services.
- Successful site visit to Mexico City to review the proposed venues for Wikimania 2015.
- Start of upgrades to the 6th floor space, which will include improvements to HVAC, the addition of “phone” rooms and new paint.
- Receipt of final Wikimania 2013 report from the Hong Kong team and chapter.
- Approval of the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan by the Board of Trustees. The approved plan will be published by July 7, 2014.
Legal and Community Advocacy
- June was a transition month for LCA, with the team refocusing its energies on traditional workflows and new projects after wrapping up work on the new Privacy Policy and Access to Non-Public Information Policy. We anticipate being able to report on these new projects in more detail in the coming months.
- The Legal team was involved in publishing a new amendment to the Terms of Use to address disclosure of paid editing. The Legal team worked extensively with the community to answer questions and help individual communities (like Commons and MediaWiki) prepare new alternative policies in light of the amendment, like the one on Commons.
- To protect our trademark portfolio, we worked with outside counsel to obtain withdrawals of third party attempts to register trademarks for a puzzle globe clone logo with the word Milipedia (in Spain), Vidipedia (in Germany), Willipedia (in Germany), Winipedia (in France), and Wikymedia (in the UK).
- The CA team transitioned responsibility for the Community Liaison (Product) team to Rachel di Cerbo, Director of Community Engagement (Product). CA will now refocus its energies on traditional workflows and building out training methods for OTRS agents.
Contract Metrics
- Submitted : 20
- Completed : 26
Trademark Metrics
- Submitted : 10
- Approved : 1
- Pending : 6
- Approval not needed : 3
Domains Obtained
wikimedia.community, wikimediacommons.community, wikimediacommons.uk, wikimediauk.uk, wikinews.community, wikiversity.community, wiktionary.community
Coming & Going
- There were no comings and goings this month for LCA.
Other Activities
- Yana did a panel presentation on the new generic top level domains (such as .wiki) being rolled out by ICANN at the Stanford E-Commerce Conference.
- The legal team revised the forthcoming WMF staff handbook and worked on making it user-friendly using techniques previously applied to the Wikimedia Trademark Policy.
Communications
The biggest Communications stories in June were about paid editing on Wikipedia. WMF announced an amendment to its Terms of Use in the middle of the month, generating significant media coverage about the relationship between Wikipedia and paid editing. This came one week after a pledge by leading US public relations to respect Wikimedia’s terms of use generated numerous press hits. The EU’s right to be forgotten ruling remains in the news, with speculation about what it means for Wikipedia. Wikipedia Zero launched in Rwanda, generating local press. The Product team launched its new Android App, generating coverage in the tech press. Throughout the month, the Communications team worked to finalize its Q1 goals, supported the rollout of the Terms of Use and the Android App, and on preparations for Wikimania.
Major announcements
The communications team supported the launch of the Android app in June.
Major Storylines through June 2014
Right to be Forgotten – Jimmy Wales
- Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says Google EU ruling “won’t work.”
- In The Capital (02 June, 2014) [1]
- BBC News (01 June, 2014) [2]
Wikipedia Zero and MTN
- “MTN gives its customers free access to Wikipedia via Wikipedia Zero”
- Inya Rwanda (03 June, 2014) [3]
- All Africa (03 June, 2014) [4]
Wikipedia in schools – Israel
- Public schools in Israel to integrate Wikipedia into curriculum
- Isreal Hayom (10 June, 2014) [5]
- Israel National News (10 June, 2014) [6]
- JNS (10 June, 2014) [7]
PR firms and Wikipedia
- PR firms vow to abide by Wikipedia’s rules
- Business Insider (11 June, 2014) [8]
- Wall Street Journal (10 June, 2014) [9]
- Advertising Age (10 June, 2014) [10]
- Harvard Business Review (10 June, 2014) [11]
- PR Week (10 June, 2014) [12]
- TIME (10 June, 2014) [13]
New Terms of Use
- Wikimedia announces changes to terms of use, adds requirement for disclosure of paid contributions
- Slate (17 June, 2014) [14]
- The Next Web (17 June, 2014) [15]
- The Washington Post (17 June, 2014) [16]
- Aljazeera America (16 June, 2014) [17]
- AD Week (16 June, 2014) [18]
- Info Docket (16 June, 2014) [19]
- Wall Street Journal (16 June, 2014) [20]
US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) & Wikimedia
- “US National Archives to upload all holdings to Wikimedia Commons”
- Gigjets (30 June, 2014) [21]
- Tech Crunch (30 June, 2014) [22]
Other worthwhile reads
- ”Women and Wikipedia: Science and engineering’s forgotten labour”
- Open democracy (23 May, 2014) [23]
- ”Fighting censorship in Uzbekistan, one entry at a time”
- Radio free Europe, Radio Liberty (17 May, 2014) [24]
See also the June press clippings
WMF Blog posts
Blog.wikimedia.org published 28 posts in June 2014. Five posts were multilingual, with translations in Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Romanian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic and Algerian Arabic.
Some highlights from the blog include:
- Wikimedia Bangladesh completes its local registration after a five-year journey (June 27, 2014).
- New and improved Wikipedia app for Android (June 25, 2014).
- Wikipedian Ram Joshi has contributed over 6,000 edits to Wikipedia only using his feature phone from his remote village in Nepal (June 24, 2014).
- Change to the terms of use (June 16, 2014).
- Blog post from Board of Trustee member Bishakha Datta (June 13, 2014).
Media Contact
Media contact through June 2014: wmf:Press room/Media Contact#June 2014
Wikipedia Signpost
For detailed coverage and news summaries, see the community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for June 2014:
- Volume 10, Issue 21, 04 June 2014
- Volume 10, Issue 22, 11 June 2014
- Volume 10, Issue 23, 18 June 2014
- Volume 10, Issue 24, 25 June 2014
Communications Design
We helped the Administration team to make some decisions for the 6th floor reconstruction. Started talking with various teams about swag for Wikimania and the Allhands meeting. We also worked on adding page creation to a new Meta gadget with the IEG team.
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