New WMF hire, new stats, and more
Project manager for Bookshelf project
It was announced October 7 that Marlita Kahn was hired for a one-year contract as Wikimedia's project manager for the Bookshelf project, which aims to create reference materials and short how-to manuals about the projects. Kahn is an experienced project manager, who was most recently at Design Media. She will report to Frank Schulenburg, WMF head of public outreach.
Statistics available
A public "Wikimedia Report Card" of key metrics produced by Erik Zachte is now available for August 2008-August 2009. The statistics cover measures of reach, including unique visitors, page requests, and rank in web properties; content, including Commons files, articles, new articles per day, and edits; and community, including New Editors Per Month, active editors, and very active editors. The statistics on content and community are from Zachte's own Wikistats, while the statistics on visitors and rank is from Comscore. Meeting targets for reach and participation is one of the conditions for $500,000 of the recent Omidyar grant, although these targets are not public (see previous story).
Zachte described the statistics and the detailed charts available on his blog.
Bing offers Wikipedia search
Bing.com, the Microsoft search engine, is offering "Bing Reference", a way to search "enhanced Wikipedia articles." Results come from a locally-hosted copy of the Wikipedia article database and from Freebase.
Briefly
- English Wikinews debuted a new main page layout this week; comments may be left at the Water cooler.
- The log for IRC office hours with Mike Godwin, WMF general counsel, has been posted. Godwin will also return for office hours this Thursday, Oct. 15.
- Part II of the Wikipedia Weekly's podcast interview with Brion Vibber is now posted.
Milestones
- Wikispecies has just reached the 200k milestone mark. The 200,000th article is about an insect, Zealachertus bildiri, and was written by Stho002.
- The Gujarati Wikipedia becomes the 91st edition to reach 10,000 articles. The 10,000th article was વાટલાવ, created by સતિષચંદ્ર about a locality in Godhra, Gujarat, India.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles, becoming the 58th Wikipedia to do so.
- The Serbian Wikisource has reached 3,000 articles.
This week in history
- 10 October 2005: The French Wikipedia's most active contributor dies at 31 years old
- 8 October 2007: The Signpost's first ever WikiProject Report
- 13 October 2008: Experimental request for adminship ends in failure
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