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News and notes

Is no WikiNews good WikiNews? — Election season returns!

Wikinews shutting down?

The Sister Projects Task Force announced two "public consultation[s]" last month: It recommended not to add Wikispore as a new project, and to shut down all Wikinews projects.

The Task Force consists of a mix of Board of Trustees (BoT) members and selected volunteers. It is part of the BoT's Community Affairs Committee and was first announced in 2023. This is the first significant announcement from the Task Force. In a "community consultation on both proposals", comments are invited until July 27 . However, there has been confusion about whether the two recommendations are already considered a final decision, or are still open to revision.

Further information can also be found on the Wikinews Consultation page on Meta. The corresponding talk page discussion has nearly 90,000 words (over 3.3 tomats) at the time of writing, with over 100 editors opining in multiple sprawling threads. The Task Force also held two public calls as part of the consultations (on 16th July and 17th July).

Several community members noted concerns with unilateral decisionmaking, and a seeming lack of prior communication (including with the Wikinews communities themselves) before these recommendations were posted. The proposal currently implies content from Wikinews could be merged into respective Wikipedias, but it is not obvious how much of the English Wikinews content would be merged into the English Wikipedia, what role that content would play on a very different project with radically different policies and focus, or who would be in charge of doing this. — S, H

A question mark about Wikimania

Wikimania will be held this year in Nairobi, Kenya from August 5-9, and the conference program was published earlier this week.

While there’s no reason to panic or to cancel your airplane ticket, attendees might want to be aware that both the U.S. and Canadian governments have recently issued travel alerts or updated their travel advice for Kenya, in the context of the 2025 Kenyan protests. There are areas in the country, particularly northern border areas, that may be unsafe for travellers. Street crime is high throughout much of the country including in parts of Nairobi. This is a return to normal. More concerning are the political demonstrations of June 25 and especially July 7. On the 7th, 38 people were killed across the country, including 11 in Nairobi. The causes for the demonstrations are also fairly normal: economic insecurity, government corruption and other failures of some democratic institutions, as well as over-reaction and brutality by the police.

This is not the first year that the annual Wikimania conference has been held in the global South, nor the first time it’s been held in Africa. It’s not even the first time that concerns have been raised about on-site safety for conference participants — e.g. The Signpost reported about these as early as 2008, and in 2020 Wikimania was postponed because of COVID.

The Signpost requested comment from the conference organizers, and we are publishing their reply at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-07-18/In focus, which was prepared with the help of the WMF. They emphasize that the neighborhood where Wikimania is being held, Gigiri, is physically separate from the areas where the demonstrations were held. They will be monitoring the situation and encourage you to do the same. If you register ahead of time, you can get Airport shuttle buses between the airport and hotels.

So there is no reason to panic. But be careful out there. And online participation remains an option at this year's Wikimania — also for those Wikimedians who did not obtain an in-person ticket in the first place.

Sb, H

Wikimedia Foundation publishes first Form 990 for the $144 million Wikimedia Endowment

As announced in a Diff blog post, the Wikimedia Foundation has presented its first Form 990 for the Wikimedia Endowment, covering the period from September 2023 to June 2024.

The Wikimedia Endowment, previously held by the Tides Foundation, began operations as a standalone tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization on September 30, 2023, "with the mission to act as a permanent fund that can support in perpetuity the operations and activities of current and future Wikimedia projects." It has no employees of its own and pays no salaries; all work is done by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

The Form 990 published now was preceded by an audit report for the same period published last November, showing that as of June 30, 2024, the Endowment’s net assets stood at $144.3 million, made up primarily of cash of $20.1M and investments of $123.4M. Additional takeaways from the Form 990 include:

Part IV of the Endowment’s Form 990 covers topics related to the Endowment’s governance system, policies, and disclosure reporting practices. The Wikimedia Endowment follows governance best practices, such as ensuring that senior leaders on our staff and Board of Trustees do not have family or business relationships with one another, that the Endowment did not discover a major diversion of assets (which would indicate theft or fraud), and that notes are taken at all Board of Trustees meetings. In 2027 after two more Form 990s are submitted, the Endowment will be eligible to receive an overall rating from Charity Navigator since its ratings are based on three years of operations.

A FAQ is available on Meta-Wiki. — AK

U4C Elections conclude

The 2025 elections for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) just concluded. Out of 21 candidates standing for election, only 4 were elected, all for two year terms. This means that U4C will continue to have 8 members seated out of 16, just enough to reach quorum.

The elected candidates were -

Notably, 3 of the 4 elected candidates were re-elected. After this election, three regional seats and five "community at large" seats remain empty. This comes after the 2025 Annual Review which passed 4 reforms for Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and U4C, including removing a "homewiki" restriction. The election results and further reforms can be discussed on the respective talk page.

The U4C was established in 2024, and has since taken a half dozen cases of violations of UCoC in smaller projects, as well as cases of systemic failure. The U4C was last covered by The Signpost in the 1 May issue. — S

Disclaimer: Soni, the author of this section, had applied for U4C in the aforementioned elections.

BoT elections begin — Shortlisting in progress

The 2025 election process for the WMF Board of Trustees has begun, with the application process closing on 9 July. The application process ran for 3 weeks, with the initial 2 week time period extended citing "complex processes" this year. This election will be seating 2 candidates to the Board of Trustees. Notably, no incumbent Trustee is standing for re-election.

Of the 17 candidates who applied, 12 were deemed eligible. As the number of candidates exceeds 10, this will go through a shortlisting process from the Affiliates, which will narrow the candidates down to 6. It is expected that the shortlisted candidates will be announced by the end of July. Voting is expected to be around late August-early September.

This year, there's a dedicated space for community written voting guides. — S

Admin Elections are upcoming

The second admin elections is underway with 18 candidates standing for elections. The call for candidates was open for a week, closing on 15 July.

Discussion will be open for 5 days, from 18 to 22 July. Like the first trial election, discussion will be closed during voting, and voters are discouraged from indicating support or opposition during discussion. Voting begins around 23 July and will last for 7 days. For this election, a number of voter guides have been written by the community.

Admin Elections were first proposed in 2024, with the trial election resulting in 11 candidates out of 32 being elected as Admins. Later RFCs tweaked the process and approved elections permanently, with future elections expected to run every 5 months. The Admin elections were last covered by The Signpost in the 1 May issue.

With this, the number of admin candidates in 2025 has already jumped to 23. Prior to AELECT, there were only 5 RFAs in the first half in 2025, 3 of which were successful (a historical low for the first half of any year). This continues the trend of admin elections causing significantly more candidates to apply than the traditional WP:RFA process, though it remains to be seen how many are successful. — S

Fundraising banner

On July 1st, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the community collaboration process for the 2025 English banner fundraising campaign. The process took the "current best" baseline banner as its starting point, which looked like this:

Lots of feedback and ideas are being explored already on the community collaboration page, so join in! AK

Brief notes

Mijin kwakwa (male mallard duck) from the Hausa Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 Acarpentier
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Board of Trustees elections

That shortlisting process for the Board of Trustee elections is getting ever more restrictive. Compare last year's meta:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Shortlisting process:

  • The Elections Committee and Board of Trustees determined 12 candidates would be a reasonable number for voters to review. If there are more than 15 eligible candidates as determined by the Elections Committee, a shortlisting process will occur. The process will aim to shortlist 12 candidates, and these 12 candidates will be running in the community voting phase. If there are 15 or fewer candidates, there will be no shortlisting process.

It's true that last year there were four seats up for grabs rather than two but but with the affiliates eliminating all but six candidates this year it does feel like there is less and less meaningful choice. Andreas JN466 08:18, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well, Andreas, it depends how you view this year's lineup. Maybe the Community voter guides will throw more light. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    One thing I have noticed since writing the above is that this year's arrangement is the same as the 2022 arrangement, which User:Pundit at the time described on the mailing list as a "trial":
    There is a degree of logic here: historically (i.e. before community and affiliate seats were abolished, leaving only "community-and-affiliate seats), the two seats voted for in 2022 were affiliate seats, whereas the four seats voted for last year were historically community seats. This year's seats are again former affiliate seats. So as it happened, the community had no restrictions for the four seats last year (the number of candidates required no shortlisting), while this year, the affiliates have a role for what used to be "their" seats. On reflection, and despite my intense misgivings at the time, I think this has actually worked out quite well so far. Andreas JN466 11:42, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikinews shutting down?

  • "The proposal currently implies content from Wikinews would be merged into respective Wikipedias," -> This is false. The 2024 Wikinews review PDF proposes closing Wikinews, not merging it to Wikipedia, albeit with the option of helping a new partner host it. meta:Public_consultation_about_Wikinews#Options mentions it as an option, yes, but also makes clear that this is simply one option mentioned, and it's an option that is almost assuredly not going to happen given lack of enthusiasm among both Wikipedians and the SPTF itself. I know that it's usually discouraged to edit articles after they're written, but this is kind of a big miss. SnowFire (talk) 15:39, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You are right. In lieu of making substantive changes, I edited it to say content from Wikinews could be merged instead. No comments on whether it will happen or not, the discussions have been long and messy, so it's unclear to me what happens from this point. Soni (talk) 16:29, 19 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that this statement is misleading as there's no support to merge from anyboone; it looks like a clickbait aimed at the wikipedians. I also disagree that this is the first substantial statement from the Taskforce: a year ago we've had a public consultation that lead to the establishing a procedure for the Sister Project Lyfecycle, which we are implementing now. Everyone had had plenty of chances to comment on the Procedure, and the consultations are a test run of it.Victoria (talk) 07:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the comment, @Victoria. I think we'll just have to disagree on what "significant" means here.
    As for the statements you consider misleading, I welcome you to post an accurate summary of what you believe is the status quo. The community cannot read your minds; if the recommendations currently include "may merge into Wikipedia", that's what I'd post. Instead of calling honest attempts at summarisation as clickbait, I request you and the rest of task force to make better statements so people do not misunderstand what your words mean. If there is no chance Wikinews content can be merged into Wikipedia, meta:Public consultation about Wikinews should no longer say Merge content of Wikinews into the relevant language Wikipedias, possibly in a new namespace. Soni (talk) 10:55, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The consultation page lists following options, which cannot be edited post publishing:
    • Restructure how Wikinews works and is linked to other current events efforts on the projects.
    • Merge content of Wikinews into the relevant language Wikipedias, possibly in a new namespace.
    • Find a new home - merge content into compatibly-licensed external projects.
    • Archive Wikinews projects.
    • Take no special action, let Wikinews follow the standard process for opening and closure.
    I can only speculate why from 5 of options anybody would chose option number 2 without mentioning the rest. I shouldn't speculate? You shouldn't pick and chose. Victoria (talk) 05:46, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It doesn't seem like something that needs much speculation: of the five options, only one will have a direct effect on Wikipedia, and this is the Wikipedia Signpost. Sesquilinear (talk) 03:23, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Q.E.D. - a clickbait. Victoria (talk) 07:52, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Victoria Once again, I encourage you and the rest of Sister Project Task Force to summarise what happened, and what will happen, with your preferred wording. The Signpost frequently covers different perspectives and op-eds/opinion pieces.
    I cannot speak for @JPxG but I'm pretty confident we'll be happy to have a separate section in the next issue for you. That way, you can discuss the Wikinews proposal(s) in depth, and what they mean for the various communities, in your own words. I believe it will be much more productive than the current comments. Soni (talk) 09:39, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the invitation, will do, although not urgently as I'm involved in Wikimania organisation. Victoria (talk) 10:41, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The focus of the discussion is now here: m:Wikinews Pulse -- ssr (talk) 04:45, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

















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