On 1 May, the fifth annual Picture of the Year Awards at Wikimedia Commons began the first round of voting, which will last until 4 May at 11:59PM UTC. All editors with at least 200 edits before 1 January 2011 are eligible to vote.

Picture of the Year is a contest that celebrates the best content that has gone through Commons' featured picture process over the previous year. Begun by Alvesgaspar in late 2006, Picture of the Year has become a much-loved tradition throughout Wikimedia projects. In 2010, there were 784 new featured pictures, compared with 890 in 2009, and 501 in 2008.

Voters may vote for as many images as they like, and are encouraged to vote in as many of the award categories as they feel able to judge. The final round of voting will begin in the third week of May, once all of the votes from the previous round have been tallied and confirmed.

Winners in previous years

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  2006: Aurora Borealis, by United States Air Force employee Senior Airman Joshua Strang (public domain)
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  2007: Broadway Tower in the Cotswolds, England, by Newton2 (CC-BY-2.5)
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  2008: Horses on Bianditz mountain, in Navarre, Spain. Behind them Aiako mountains can be seen, by Mikel Ortega (CC-BY-SA-2.0)
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  2009: Sikh pilgrim at the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, India, by Paulrudd (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

As reported last month, the local Wikimedia chapter in Sweden started its ""Projekt Internet i Sverige" in March, aiming to improve Swedish Wikipedia articles about the Internet in Sweden. Funded by the Internet Infrastructure Foundation, the operator of Swedish country-code top-level domain .se, the chapter hired long-time Wikipedian Johan Jönsson (User:Julle) to work on the project from March to July 2011. On the Foundation's blog, he described his work: "I try to find articles dedicated to topics covering the Internet in Sweden. I put them on an importance scale and assess for quality". He outlined the project's goals, which include improving the content quality in this significant area, and inspiring "more people to get involved in Wikipedia and make contacts between experts in the field and Wikipedia editors". The project is believed to be the first to employ someone to specifically edit the Swedish Wikipedia, although other Wikipedias have seen such externally funded projects before (see, for example, Signpost coverage: "First state-funded Wikipedia project concludes after three years").

On 29 April Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met with representatives of the Russian internet community, including Stanislav Kozlovskiy (User:Ctac) - executive director of Wikimedia Russia. (Information on the Kremlin's website: Russian, English.) According to the (partial) Russian transcript, the concept of Creative Commons licensing and Wikipedia was discussed. On the Russian Wikipedia, Ctac reported some other conversation topics, such as changes to Russian copyright law, and its lack of a freedom of panorama exemption (cf. Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#Russia).

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  Dmitry Medvedev and representatives of the Russian internet community
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  Maksim Moshkow (public figure of the Russian Internet segment, left) and Stanislav Kozlovskiy (executive director of Wikimedia Russia, right) at the meeting

• New Delhi likely site of Indian Wikimedia office: After a detailed evaluation of several cities, it has been recommended to set up the Wikimedia Foundation's "India Programs" office "in New Delhi (or the NCR / Gurgaon) region". The search for a location has been going on since around last August, and has at times received considerable public attention in India (see e.g. Signpost coverage: "India: Media speculation on country's future 'Wiki-capital'"). Other candidates included Bangalore, which is already the seat of the Indian Wikimedia chapter, and Mumbai.

  

  
  
• Wikipedian in Residence at US National Archives: Wikimedian Dominic McDevitt-Parks (formerly known as Dmcdevit) is to become the first Wikipedian in Residence at NARA (US National Archives and Records Administration) in Washington DC. Beginning in May, Dominic will be working with the archives to chart out a course of projects and cooperative ventures that will help make the records more publicly accessible.
• British Wikimedia: The UK Wikimedia chapter announced the names of new board members elected at the WikiConference on April 16, and summarized results of the board's first meeting.
• Reports by Wikimedia Germany: The German Wikimedia chapter caught up with the English-language versions of its monthly reports, noting that it is "using a new translation service": March, February and January 2011.
• "Malayalam Loves Wikimedia" concludes: On his personal blog, Indian Wikipedian Shiju Alex summarized the results of the "Malayalam Loves Wikimedia" project, which during April contributed around 2155 free images related to the Malayalam language, and the Indian state of Kerala, aiming "to create more awareness about copyleft-licensed images, wikimedia commons, and to attract more Malayalam speaking people to the wikimedia movement".
• Meetups: A community meet-up was held last month in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (April 30).
• Milestones:
  • The Simple English Wikipedia reached 70,000 articles on April 25.
  • The Malagasy Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles on April 28.
  • The Neapolitan Wikipedia reached 15,000 articles on April 29.
  • The French Wikisource has reached 60,000 text units.
• Ombudsman commission: Philippe Beaudette, the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Reader Relations, has announced changes to the membership of the Ombudsman Commission, prompted by the resignation of User:Herbythyme. The Commission is tasked with investigating complaints about violations of the WMF's privacy policy, in particular concerning the use of the CheckUser tool. User:Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia, will replace Herbythyme for the rest of the one-year term, while User:Dweller, from the English Wikipedia, was added as an "alternate, who will serve as a non-voting advisor to the commission this year, and then remain on for another full term", a new concept that is expected to facilitate "knowledge transfer" to the next generation of Commission members.
• Britannica fifth-most linked domain on Wikipedia: User:Emijrp has produced a list of "Top 1000 most linked domains from external links in English Wikipedia pages" (all namespaces), led by Google.com, toolserver.org, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, dx.doi.org and Britannica.com. In a similar study last August (which also produced mainspace-only statistics, see Signpost coverage), toolserver.org had occupied the first place before Google.com.
• Overview of Wikipedians in Residence: The Foundation's "GLAM fellow" Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) gave an overview of the various "Wikipedian in residence" projects that have sprung up around the world since his own residenceship at the British Museum initiated the concept last year.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-02/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-02/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-02/In focus