Foundation reports on research, Kenya trip, Mumbai Wikiconference; Canada, Hungary and Estonia; English Wikinews forked
Foundation report for August published
The Wikimedia Foundation's report covering its activities during the month of August has been published on the Wikimedia blog. Among those items not to have received coverage in earlier editions of The Signpost is the publication of a final list of projects completed as part of the Wikimedia Summer of Research (WSoR) scheme, which ended in August (a Summary of Findings has since been compiled). In similar news, an update was given about the Kaggle Data competition, where teams were asked to "predict the number of edits a Wikipedia editor will make, based on a training dataset" in order to share in a cash prize (see previous Signpost coverage). According to the report, the competition, which is drawing to a close, has attracted "79 teams, 167 participants and 743 submissions".
The Foundation was also active in its pursuit of a more global editor base during August. For example, the report describes how the Head of Global South Relationships, Asaf Bartov, visited Kenya for four days. During the trip he delivered "five public talks on university campuses in Nairobi and Mombasa as well as a tech outreach talk at the Nairobi iHub". He also led a workshop for local Wikimedians and scouted out potential local partners for a more substantial expansion into Kenya. In addition, the WMF Engineering department investigated the possibilities of the USSD protocol in facilitating mobile browsing (an issue also covered in this week's "Technology report"). Meanwhile, the report announced the start of an Education Program in Canada, to which 1700 students are signed up, and a $40,000+ support package for a WikiConference in Mumbai in November (further information is available via foundation-l).
The monthly report also gives publicity to the activities of departments who do not otherwise receive it. For example, the human resources department noted that although it was still behind its target for hiring new staff, it has been able to close the gap, whilst it was also reported that the legal department would be receiving four legal interns, and it was "happy to have their support" in the next few months. According to the report, it has also recently engaged with two external firms: MarkMonitor, to help it track registration of trademark-infringing domain names (for example, cases of typosquatting; see previous Signpost coverage) and Californian law firm Hiaring Smith, to help it manage its existing portfolio of trademarks both in the United States and abroad. The legal teams also finalised the Foundation's internal legal policies during August.
In brief
- Wikinews is forked: In a rare occurrence for a Wikimedia project, a portion of the English Wikinews community has launched a fork of the project, Open Globe. Long-time Wikimedian Tempodivalse, who is one of those involved with the nascent fork cited as the proximate cause a split in the community last year when "about half of Wikinews' userbase left the project .... because of frustration over bureaucratic policy and hostile attitudes". Discussion on the Wikimedia Foundation's mailing list suggested that a lack of technical support from the Wikimedia Foundation and the developer community may have been a contributory factor to frustration among Wikinewsies.
- Wiki Loves Monuments hits 35,000 submissions and counting: On 6 September, the Wikimedia blog carried a post describing Wiki Loves Monuments 2011, the international photograph-contributing competition, which had resulted in some 15,000 uploads at that point. As of time of writing, over 38,500 files have been uploaded as part of the contest, which runs throughout September.
- Image filter discussions continue: The Foundation-l thread discussing the results of the image filter referendum held earlier this month has reached 175 posts. It is still unclear, however, what the next step will be; in the meantime, however, the Foundation is looking at ways "to extract ... data [enabling the results to be broken down by country or project] while still keeping the secrecy of a ballot intact", suggesting that a partial implementation could be on the cards.
- Canadian disease bounty: Wikimedia Canada has announced its Scholarship in Medicine for 2011/2012. It will be awarded to the best improvement to a disease-related article, weighted by the importance of the article and whether or not it achieves featured status; applications are open to those who are enrolled in Canadian secondary-level institutions. The program is backed by up to a thousand Canadian dollars.
- Nearly two thousand more files moved to Commons: The English Wikipedia's "Move to Commons" drive, the first of its kind on the project, has resulted in approximately ten percent of the nineteen thousand files hand picked for a move to Commons actually being transferred there. Participants also check licensing, description and categorisation issues during the transfer; the drive runs until the end of September and has already surpassed its initial target. Not all editors approve of the transfers; some ask that their files not be moved, whilst a handful have historically campaigned against other files being moved due to differences in policy and community between the wikis. The Guild of Copyeditors' September backlog elimination drive is also ongoing.
- Hungarian Wikipedia reaches 200,000 articles, Estonian image donation: As reported by Wikimedia Hungary (in Hungarian), the Hungarian Wikipedia reached 200,000 articles on 10 September when an article about crankshafts was created. Wikimedia Estonia, meanwhile, has negotiated a donation of images of members of the Estonian Parliament, the Riigikogu (blog post in Estonian).
- Wikizine #127 published, format to be tweaked: According to the 127th edition of Wikizine, an "independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community" founded in 2005, its format is to be adjusted slightly by its new overseer User:Millosh over the coming weeks.
- Wikimedia UK seeks new Chief Executive: Following the lead of Wikimedia Deutschland's and others, British chapter Wikimedia UK have recently begun to hire professional staff members. Last week they appealed for local Wikimedians to travel to London to help them select a new Chief Executive at the London Wikimeet of 11 September. Their final decision is yet to be announced.
Milestones
In addition to the Hungarian Wikipedia's 200,000 articles, mentioned above, the following projects also reached major milestones:
- The Avar Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Bashkir Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Armenian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
- The Western Panjabi Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
Discuss this story
Editor's note: The Wikinews news came in very late for this edition, which was therefore delivered to some subscribers under a different subtitle. It will be dealt with in full in next week's issue. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 22:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We at Malayalam wikipedia had made a collective and concerted effort to reach the 20000 article target before Onam, the regional festival of Kerala which was to be on the 9th of September.When we set ourselves the target, it seemed a preposterous and impossible idea. But brick by brick , drop by drop articles started coming in. First a drop, then a trickle and it became a flood . On sixth september we reached the target and still had a few days to spare .The effort should go down in Wikipedia History as a classic example of collective , targeted effort. Yes we admit that the quality of many of the articles leaves something to be desired. We have now set our mind to cleanse the ml wikipedia of one line articles and to clean up the area. Stay tuned . We've just begun :)--Fuadaj (talk) 14:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]