On Friday, Jimbo Wales appointed two arbitrators to the Arbitration Committee. Mackensen, a former arbitrator who resigned in the wake of minor controversy (see archived story), will replace Dmcdevit, who retired last week (see archived story). Essjay, a checkuser, bureaucrat and former chair of the mediation committee, will claim an expansion seat on the Committee. Both positions will expire in December 2007.

Due to malicious robot account creation, CAPTCHA images are now required to register a Wikipedia account. To help users who cannot read the images, a new process, request an account, has been created. Administrators are needed to watch the page and create accounts for these users. For more information, contact Ral315.

Alexa ranks for Wikipedia rose again this week. The daily traffic rose to 8th for the first time on Monday, 19 February, but dropped back to 9th on Wednesday. Wikimedia sites traffic ranks (updated Friday, 23 February) include:

Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikiquote showed small declines in rank; Wikinews and Wikiversity showed larger declines in rank. The sharp decline in rank for the Wikimedia Foundation website can be attributed to the end of the fundraiser; indeed, the site's rank had risen to about 1500 during the peak of the fundraiser, then declined sharply.

Wikipedia has again been mentioned on a prime-time U.S. sitcom. On 18 February, the American animated television series American Dad! episode entitled Black Mystery Month centered around the main character, Stan Smith and his son, Steve, discovering a plot involving peanut butter and the Civil War (a parody of The Da Vinci Code and other movies). Near the end of the episode, Stan says, "If only there was a place where you could make outrageous claims, without any proof, and millions of people would accept it as fact...", and the show cuts to Steve adding a Wikipedia article on The Truth about Peanut Butter. The article on Peanut butter was semi-protected shortly after the show aired to combat vandalism.

The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year competition has reached the second and final round. For the second round, which lasts through Wednesday, 28 February, the 321 pictures on the shortlist have been narrowed to the top 11 (due to a tie). Users with at least 100 edits on any local project or Commons can vote on their favorite of the 11 photos. The finalists can be seen below:

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  SS America (1940)
  Photo credit: Wollex
• 
  Blue Jay
  Photo credit: Mdf
• 
  Biological reproduction (hoverflies)
  Photo credit: Fir0002
• 
  Lunar libration
  Photo credit: Tomruen
• 
  Moon over San Diego, California
  Photo credit: Rufustelestrat
• 
  Newton's cradle
  Photo credit: DemonDeLuxe
• 
  Homeless person in Paris
  Photo credit: Eric Pouhier
• 
  Aurora borealis
  Photo credit: Senior Airman Joshua Strang
• 
  San Francisco International Airport
  Photo credit: Andrew Choy
• 
  Match
  Photo credit: Sebastian Ritter
• 
  Barred Owl
  Photo credit: Mdf

• The Asturian Wikipedia has reached 500 users.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 1500 users.
• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 100 Featured articles.
• The Norwegian (Norsk Bokmål) Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500,000 total pages.
• The French Wikipedia has reached 450,000 articles.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 1,000 registered users.
• The Kurdish Wikipedia has passed 8,000 articles.
• The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Arabic Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.