With the addition of over USD $30,000 from Wikimedia Deutschland, the Wikimedia fundraising drive surpassed its mammoth $200,000 goal, with four days to spare.

While a decline in donations was noticed over the past week, with relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in the spotlight, donations still came pouring in from all over the world. Many donors left encouraging comments, like "[to] help on the quest to create the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "This is probably one of the best things the internet has created."

The fundraising drive started on 19 August, and is scheduled to run through 9 September. The drive aims to pay for the significant server costs, which have risen dramatically recently.

• The Polish Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
• The Ido Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles. The 5,000th article is on the number 5,000.
• The Kannada Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Vietnamese Wikipedia now has over 1,000 registered users.
• The Czech Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
• The Dutch/Belgian wikipedians had a local informal meeting last week.

The Arbitration Committee did not close any cases this week. There was no new action taken this week in open cases.

DotSix, the name for an IP address engaged in vandalism, sockpuppeting, and editing of other users' comments in his RFAr, has been banned from all pages except his talk page and his RFAr pages. The case is currently in the evidence phase.

Cases against Gabrielsimon and -Ril- are in the working phase. Cases against Stevertigo and Rainbowwarrior1977 are in the evidence phase.

Requests against Ultramarine and Ed Poor have both garnered four votes, the bare minimum for a RFAr to be accepted.