The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking out volunteers who are interested in helping with the upcoming election of three members of the Board of Trustees. The terms of Erik Möller, Kat Walsh, and Oscar van Dillen expire 1 July, and their seats will be filled in this election. Wikimedia chair Florence Devouard, the other elected member of the board, earlier had her term extended until 2008, partly to stagger terms for future elections.

The opportunity was announced by Jan-Bart de Vreede, who as an appointed member of the board has been selected to head up the process. Volunteers have only a short time to make themselves known, as the deadline for applications is 13 May. In order to help with election work, they must forgo the opportunity to run, vote in, or openly support candidates in the election.

On 29 April, Wikipedia administrator Grandmasterka proposed a contest in which administrators are awarded points for performing various maintenance tasks, aimed at reducing Wikipedia's growing backlogs. Points would be awarded and deducted in a number of areas, including deletions, blocking, conflicts, and protection. For example, participants would be awarded ten points for properly identifying and dealing with a suspected sockpuppet. Conversely, users would be penalized twenty points for blocking a user who was later reinstated after community discussion. The idea for the contest sparked from discussion here, which concerned inactive administrators.

Though in its very early stages, YechielMan and zzuuzz questioned the feasibility of logging all administrator actions, and the diversion of resources it may create. DESiegel, an administrator himself since 2005, quickly opposed the idea for a contest, nominating it for deletion last Tuesday. In his rationale, he predicted over-zealous administrators developing "adminitis", whereby deletions, protections, and blocks are instituted just because such action is easy to take. Over a dozen editors chipped into the discussion, which concluded with a prominent "keep" result on Thursday. Nearly all disagreed with DESiegel, believing the contest would help reduce the backlogs and initiate friendly competition among administrators where it is sorely needed.

• Wikipedia was featured in the comic Non Sequitur on Sunday, April 29.
• The English Wikiquote has reached 10,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 400 featured articles.
• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
• The Irish Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Czech Wiktionary has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Italian Wikipedia has reached 9,000,000 edits.
• The Icelandic Wiktionary has now an appendix °.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 60,000 edits.
• The Italian Wikiquote has reached 2,000 users.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.
• The Marathi wikipedia has reached 21,000 total pages.
• The Vietnamese Wiktionary has reached 500,000 edits.
• The Norwegian Wikipedia has reached 110,000 articles.
• The Alemannic wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.

The Arbitration Committee opened two cases this week, and closed four cases. One requested case was not accepted, following the desysopping of an involved administrator.

• ChrisGriswold: A proposed case involving the actions of ChrisGriswold. A checkuser request confirmed that ChrisGriswold had been operating sockpuppet Superburgh, in an editing dispute on Taylor Allderdice High School. Unrelated to the dispute, ChrisGriswold also operated sockpuppet Truth in Comedy. Once the allegations were brought to the Arbitration Committee, ChrisGriswold resigned his adminship, and the case was subsequently rejected.

• Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram: A case involving the actions of Certified.Gangsta and Ideogram, both of whom Durova and others alleged to have been involved in edit-warring on Taiwan-related articles. Ideogram, who had also been accused of improper behaviour on the community noticeboard, denied the allegations. Certified.Gangsta presented evidence, in which he alleged that Ideogram has engaged in canvassing, wikistalking, and orchestrating an anti-Certified.Gangsta campaign. He also denies Durova's allegiations. As a result of the case, both parties were placed on revert parole, and Ideogram was admonished to "fully adhere to all Wikipedia policies".

• Betacommand: A case involving the actions of Betacommand. Some of Betacommand's blocks were questioned, and his bot-related actions led to his removal from the bot approvals group. Betacommand noted that he makes numerous username-related blocks, and that most of his blocks were appropriate. Whether Betacommand used his administrative account for bot-related activity, whether he is unique in doing so, and whether such an action should be allowed or not, were also questioned. As a result of the case, Betacommand was desysopped.

• Mudaliar-Venki123: A case involving the actions of Mudaliar and Venki123 on a series of articles. As a result of the case, both parties were banned for one year.

• Freedom skies: A case involving the actions of Freedom skies. JFD and others alleged that he has edit warred to push his point of view. He denied the allegations. As a result of the case, Freedom Skies was placed on revert parole for one year, and limited to one account.

• NYScholar: A case involving the actions of a number of users, including NYScholar (talk · contribs) and Notmyrealname (talk · contribs), in relation to the Lewis Libby article.

• Hkelkar 2: A case involving the actions of Rama's Arrow (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), Bakasuprman (talk · contribs), Dangerous-Boy (talk · contribs) and Sbhushan (talk · contribs), Rama's Arrow alleges that the others acted as sockpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, and blocked them for six months. They deny the allegations, and allege that Rama's Arrow acted improperly in blocking them, and in posting private e-mails to WP:AN/I

• Piotrus: A case involving administrator Piotrus (talk · contribs) and other editors on Eastern Europe related articles. Multiple parties accuse others of edit warring, incivility, unethical behavior and biased editing. (An earlier arbitration case, Piotrus-Ghirla, was dismissed without prejudice in part due to inactivity of Ghirlandajo (talk · contribs), who was listed a party in the new case.)

• TingMing: A case involving the actions of TingMing (talk · contribs). Ideogram (talk · contribs) alleges that he has engaged in "controversial edits", edit warring, incivility, and possibly sockpuppetry. TinMing denies the allegations, and alleges incivility on the part of Ideogram.

• Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards WP:NPOV and WP:ATT, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon.

• Transnistria: A case involving the actions of MariusM (talk · contribs) and William Mauco (talk · contribs) on Transnistria-related articles. MariusM alleges that Mauco (who has not made a statement because he is blocked) has engaged in sockpuppetry, edit warring and other misconduct.

• Tobias Conradi: A case involving the actions of Tobias Conradi (talk · contribs) who, while acknowledged as a productive contributor, has been called incivil on various occasions.

• Zeq-Zero0000: A case involving the actions of Zeq (talk · contribs) and Zero0000 (talk · contribs). Zero alleges that Zeq has engaged in POV-pushing, while Zeq alleges that Zero has misused administrative tools in blocking him, the case in particular involving the question of whether probations, article bans, etc. can be enforced by involved admins.

• E104421-Tajik: A case involving the actions of E104421 and Tajik. The case was opened, but a motion to suspend the case pending a referral to Community enforceable mediation was passed.

• Falun Gong: A case regarding the conduct of various editors on the Falun Gong article. Olaf Stephanos and Asdfg12345 allege that Samuel Luo has edit-warred in removing pro-Falun Gong material from the article, while Luo, Tomananda and others allege that Stephanos, Asdfg and others have edit-warred (including page blanking) in removing anti-Falun Gong material. If passed, Falun Gong would be placed on article probation, Mcconn placed on revert parole, and Samual Luo and Tomananda banned from editing the articles or their talk pages.