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Wikimedia Foundation Report, July 2013

Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of July (August 1, 2013)
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Global unique visitors for June:

500 million (-4.25% compared with May; +6.37% compared with the previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release July data later in August)

Page requests for July:

21.2 billion (+0.4% compared with June; +19.8% compared with the previous year)
(Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation content projects including mobile access, but excluding Wikidata and the Wikipedia main portal page.)

Active Registered Editors for June 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

data currently under review
(Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)

Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):

http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

(Definitions)

Financials

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Wikimedia Foundation YTD Revenue and Expenses vs Plan as of June 30, 2013
 
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of June 30, 2013

(Financial information is only available through June 2013 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date June 30, 2013.

Revenue $51,040,795
Expenses:
Engineering Group $15,224,438
Fundraiser Group $3,463,128
Grantmaking & Programs Group $8,830,248
Governance Group $742,435
Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group $3,090,563
Finance/HR/Admin Group $5,865,595
Total Expenses $37,216,407
Total surplus $13,824,388
  • Revenue for the month of June is $0.48MM versus plan of $0.28MM, approximately $205K or 74% over plan.
  • Year-to-date revenue is $51.04MM versus plan of $46.07MM, approximately $4.97MM or 11% over plan.
  • Expenses for the month of June is $3.39MM versus plan of $3.99MM, approximately $598K or 15% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, and grant expenses (FDC grants) partially offset by higher capital expenses, outside contract services, legal fees, and travel expenses.
  • Year-to-date expenses is $37.22MM versus plan of $42.07MM, approximately $4.85MM or 12% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, internet hosting, grant expenses (FDC grants), and travel expenses partially offset by higher capital expenses, legal expenses, bank fees, outside contract services, and personal property tax expenses.
  • Cash position is $39.75MM as of June 30, 2013.


Highlights

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The new mobile editing interface

Mobile editing

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This month, the mobile web team released new navigation features for contributors to all Wikimedia mobile sites, including the existing upload and watchlist star features, as well as an edit button. This means that editing (in the form of section-level markup editing) is now enabled on all mobile Wikimedia sites for logged-in users. The users of our "beta" channel will soon see redesigned mobile notifications, as well as guides for first-time editors and uploaders. (More about the beta channel and how you can opt in.)

Wikipedia Zero comes to India

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The first Wikipedia Zero launch in India gives 60 million mobile phone subscribers free-of-charge access to Wikipedia on their mobile phones. The promotional campaign around this launch, led by our partner Aircel, received broad coverage in print and was accompanied by Twitter and blogging events. Aircel customers now have free access to Wikipedia in English, as well as to the 19 Indic language Wikipedias.

VisualEditor beta launch

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In July we enabled the new editing interface on several Wikipedias as the default editor, first for logged-in editors and then for anonymous users as well. This resulted in a great deal of feedback, and the team responded with several hundred improvements to fix urgent issues. In addition, the team deployed user interface improvements, most notably to the references insertion dialog. Currently, users are making approximately 800 edits per hour using the VisualEditor on Wikimedia sites.

There are continuing discussions with different language communities about the positioning of the VisualEditor beta in the user interface and appropriate notices indicating its beta status. The Wikimedia Foundation is using the beta period to collect and analyze bug reports, feature enhancements, and data, to observe actual user behavior, and to improve the editing experience continuously. Our eventual objective is for VisualEditor to be the default editor for all Wikipedia users, capable of letting them edit the majority of content without needing to use the wikitext editor.

Please help translate the user interface of VisualEditor.

Engineering

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(see also general "Highlights" section)

Editor engagement

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In July, we deployed a few last features and bug fixes for the Article Feedback Tool (AFT5) on the English and French Wikipedias. Matthias Mullie released the auto-archive feature, as well as this list of articles with feedback enabled on enwiki and on frwiki. At the request of the French Wikipedia community, Mullie also developed new feedback notifications to let users know when feedback is marked as useful for a page they watch (or for a comment they posted). The team plans to make the AFT5 tool available to other wiki projects interested in testing this tool, provided that no new development is required to support their needs, as outlined in the release plan.

 
Presentation slides about Notifications

Regarding Notifications, in July we released our final features on the English Wikipedia and mediawiki.org and meta.wikipedia.org. Benny Situ completed development of HTML Email notifications, as well as improved notifications, based on designs by Vibha Bamba. Fabrice Florin managed the release of these final features, and prepared this release plan to deploy Notifications on more Wikimedia projects, starting with French and Polish Wikipedias in August. Dario Taraborelli and Matthias Mullie updated our new metrics dashboards, while Aaron Halfaker completed his report on our A/B test of new user activity. To learn more, visit the project portal, read the FAQ page and join the discussion on the talk page.

Language Engineering

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The language team deployed Universal Language Selector (ULS) to most Wikimedia wikis to provide easier configuration options to readers and contributors. ULS provides a flexible way to configure and deliver language settings like interface language, fonts, and input methods (keyboard mappings). Also, ULS allows users to type text in different languages not directly supported by their keyboard, read content in a script for which fonts are not available locally, or customise the language in which menus are displayed. For more information, please see the FAQ.

The Language engineering team also mentored summer interns' projects to improve language support on our sites, and asked for volunteer help translating the VisualEditor interface.

Platform

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Git migration complete: Now that we've helped move the pywikipediabot codebase from our old Subversion repository to our new Git repository, we have been able to switch svn.wikimedia.org to read-only mode. This ends a migration that began in 2012, motivated by a desire to enable more participation by volunteers, and to get improvements to users faster.

Multimedia

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In July, we continued to expand our multimedia team: Mark Holmquist joined as front-end software developer, working with product manager Fabrice Florin and engineering director Rob Lanphier, as well as contractors Brian Wolff and Jan Gerber. We prepared a first multimedia plan for the coming year and discussed our goals with community members in two separate events: a multimedia roundtable and an IRC chat. Based on community feedback, we identified five main areas of activity 2013-2014: improving the viewing experience and upload pipeline in the first half of the year, then focusing on file curation, discovery and placement in articles for the second half of the year. Our overall goals for this year are to increase both the number of contributions and files used in Wikipedia articles. For now, we have started work on a new media viewer to display images in larger size when you click on a thumbnail, as well as display file information and a full-screen viewing option, right on the same page. We plan to have a first version of that feature next month, and will be testing it as part of a beta experiment on a few pilot sites. We will also be hosting more community planning discussions, such as this multimedia roundtable at Wikimania 2013. To participate in these discussions and keep up with our work, we invite you to join this new multimedia mailing list. Last but not least, we are also recruiting for two more positions for our team: a multimedia systems engineer and a senior software engineer. Please spread the word about this unique opportunity to create a richer multimedia experience for Wikipedia and MediaWiki sites!

Mobile

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July brought mobile editing to logged in users on all Wikimedia mobile sites, and saw the first Wikipedia Zero launch in India (see general "Highlights" section for both).

The Wikipedia Zero engineering team also completed our first automated testing work, started implementing the Wikipedia Zero software re-architecture, and fixed problems. During July, we planned for the upcoming year in Wikipedia Zero. Our engineers are first focusing on automating testing of our infrastructure and re-architecting our systems, and will then focus on making Wikipedia Zero easier to use for both the telecom carriers and for the people reading articles via Zero, so as to support the continued growth of the program.

The engineering department also worked on:

  • Improving language support on our sites via summer interns' projects and easier configuration options, and asking for help translating the VisualEditor interface
  • Announcing a future user experience bootcamp focusing on mobile editing
  • Updating the Wikimedia movement on how we intend to protect our users' privacy with HTTPS
  • Signing a contract with longtime MediaWiki contributors to manage MediaWiki releases for the open source community
  • Explaining how we find and gather software problems and deliver the fixes to users

A detailed report of the Tech Department's activities for July 2013 can be found at:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_report/2013/July
 
Mobile fundraising banner
 
Mobile fundraising banner

Fundraising

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Major Gifts and Foundations

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  • Rosie Lewis joined the team as the new Development Research Analyst.
  • Zack Exley has stepped down of his Chief Revenue Officer position and Lisa Seitz Gruwell was promoted to Chief Revenue Officer.
  • Sara Lasner is the new Development Director, leading the foundations and major gifts team.
  • Completed annual reports for the Sloan Foundation and the Stanton Foundation.

Online Fundraising

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  • The fundraising team began running banners worldwide at the start of the 2013-2014 fiscal year on July 1, 2013. Banners were displayed to 5% of Wikipedia readers for just one impression per reader. The team ran approximately 20 A/B tests of banner messages, designs, and payment flows. In the month of July, we raised approximately USD $2.9 million from 200,000 donors. For more information on testing, please see the fundraising 2013 page on Meta-wiki.
  • Integrated and tested Adyen, our additional payment processor. Adyen will enable new payment options and redundancy for card donation processing.
  • We completed the system upgrades required to display mobile banners and ran a short test of our first mobile fundraising banners (see screenshots).
  • Megan Hernandez was promoted to Director of Online Fundraising.


Grantmaking

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Department highlights
  • The eligibility status for Wikimedia entities interested in applying for Round 1 of the FDC process in 2013-14 (proposals due October 1) was announced. Gaps in eligibility need to be closed by September 15.
  • The IdeaLab redesign is complete, and will showcase dynamic content, highlighting recent and active collaboration on ideas and people in the lab. Use IdeaLab to test out your ideas for grants!

Funds Dissemination Committee

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  • FDC eligibility is announced for 2013-2014 Round 1.
    • Potentially eligible entities must meet all eligibility gaps before eligibility is confirmed on 15 September 2013 in order to be eligible for 2013-2014 Round 1 of the FDC process.
    • Proposals for that round are due by 1 October 2013.
    • All potentially eligible entities have been contacted by the WMF to discuss their eligibility status. Two IRCs were hosted to answer any questions about this process, and support all interested entities.
    • To improve clarify around eligibility status, the WMF has added a column to both checklists to indicate potential eligibility gaps that are ongoing requirements to maintain eligibility throughout the FDC process.
    • See FDC_portal/Eligibility_status/Current_round and FDC_portal/Eligibility_checklist/Current_round for details.
  • FDC Q2 progress reports are all submitted by entities receiving funding in 2012-2013 Round 1 of the FDC process by 30 July 2013. A staff summary of these reports will be available in the first half of September.

WMF Grants

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  • 6 grants funded in July 2013
  • 3 grants not funded in July 2013
  • 8 grant requests currently open

Grants funded in July 2013

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Reports accepted in July 2013

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Participation Support

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Some changes were made to the program pages to reflect changes to the operation of the participation support committee and the administration of this program: Participation:Support.

Grants funded in July 2013

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Reports accepted in July 2013

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Individual Engagement Grants

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  • We launched and are currently testing a redesign of the IdeaLab, to showcase dynamic content, highlighting recent and active collaboration on ideas and people in the lab. The Lab is powered by Percolate, a system of scripts and modules for working with bot-updated templates, which was developed by Jonathan Morgan to meet the needs of this project.
  • The first 5 IEGs have reached their midpoints - all 5 reports were accepted and the projects will continue for another 3 months.
  • Preparations are underway for an open call for Round 2 of IEG, which begins Aug 1. New committee members will be accepted by 31 Aug, and the deadline for new proposals is 30 September.
  • Staff facilitated a small meeting of WMF staffers and Wikipedia community members to discuss the gender gap and brainstorm ideas for how grantmaking may support increased diversity. A writeup on meta is forthcoming.

Midpoint reports accepted in July 2013

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Grantmaking Learning & Evaluation

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  • Evan Rosen left the organization to pursue his interests in machine learning and pure research; we wish him all the best.
  • At the same time, Jonathan Morgan joined the team full time as Learning Strategist, and will be working remotely. Haitham Shammaa also joined the team as Global South Learning Strategist.
  • The team now consists of Jessie Wild (Senior Manager), Haitham and Jonathan, and will support the Grantmaking department's research, reporting and learning needs, in partnership with Program Evaluation and Design.
  • The team worked on Wikimetrics, and analysis for the FDC annual report.

Brazil Catalyst Project

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Institutional Partnerships

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  • Advanced in detailing a project proposal with Ação Educativa
  • Getting together and carrying on meetings at Ação Educativa has been helpful for working together, aiming at the partnership dynamics.

Data & Experiments

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Education

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  • Onboarding of the new team
  • Planning meetings to define the future of the program and best approches to generate more results in middle/long terms
  • Contacts and meetings with current partners (introducing some of our partners and discussing continuity).
  • Contacts and meetings with potential partners for the program
  • Staff meeting to replan specific objectives and strategies
  • Revision and localization of tutorial materials being done by Faculdades Integradas Rio Branco
 
Presentation "Hackeie a Wikipédia!" at FISL14

Meet-ups and events

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  • Henrique Andrade, Oona Castro and Rodrigo Padula gave presentations at the Free Software International Forum to reach different audiences (developers, researchers, educators, potential editors). Presentations at FISL / English-language blog post at softwarelivre.org
  • Wikisampa 18 - Meetup in São Paulo with volunteers. Main ideas that came out of it include keeping regular meetings taking place, organizing Hackathons and a national meetup (WikiBrasil 2013)
  • Contacts to organize Hackathons - Hacklab and Garoa Hacker Club
  • Rodrigo Padula also spoke in the regional Free Software forum in Rio.


Programs

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The Wikimedia Commons brochure
Department highlights
  • The first Wikipedia Zero launch in India, giving 60 million mobile phone subscribers free of charge access to Wikipedia on their mobile phones (see general "Highlights" section and below)
  • A new brochure, "Illustrating Wikipedia: A guide to contributing content to Wikimedia Commons", has been finalized. The brochure walks new Commons contributors through the basics of what Commons is, how to upload files, how to use files on Wikimedia projects and in other applications, and what free licenses are. It is available both on Commons and in print. The document has been created in cooperation with the global Wikimedia Commons community.

Wikipedia Zero

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  • We had our first official Wikipedia Zero launch in India, with Aircel. Aircel gives us access to 60 million mobile phone subscribers. English and all of the Indic languages that are on Wikipedia are available for free through Aircel. There are currently 19 Indic language Wikipedias: Hindi (hi), Bengali (bn), Marathi (mr), Telugu (te), Tamil (ta), Urdu (ur), Kannada (kn), Gujarati (gu), Sindhi (sd), Bhojpuri (bho), Malayalam (ml), Oriya (or), Punjabi (pa), Assamese (as), Nepali (ne), Kashmiri (ks), Newari (new), Bishnupriya Manipuri (bpy), and Sanskrit (sa).
  • We completed our first cut of automation testing, started the implementation of the Wikipedia Zero software re-architecture, and patched bugs.
  • We are currently focusing on test automation and re-architecture concurrent with SMS/USSD and J2ME releases, and afterward will be focusing efforts on end user UX and carrier-oriented enhancements that will support the continued growth of the program.

Wikipedia Education Program

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Global
  • Sophie Österberg joined the Wikimedia Foundation as the Global Education Program Manager. Sophie previously ran educational efforts for Wikimedia Sweden.
  • Gathering and sorting information about various educational efforts globally. In total, as we know of at the moment, 50 educational efforts around the world, led by chapters and individual volunteers.
  • Conversations with professors, chapter members, and others working in education from Ireland, the Philippines, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and Brazil.
  • Outreach to various countries who previously have shown interest in running a Wikipedia Education Program who are now getting initial support by being directed to material, training and possibility to talk to others running successful Wikipedia Education Programs.
US/Canada Program
  • Preparing classes for Fall 2013 term, beginning August-September.
    • Recruiting/training new Ambassadors for Fall 2013 term.
    • On-boarding new professors for Fall 2013 term.
  • Ambassadors have been hosting workshops for professors and other volunteers at various universities.
  • Began verifying data for English Wikipedia plagiarism research project.
Arab World Program
  • Tighe Flanagan joined the Wikimedia Foundation as Wikipedia Education Program Arab World Program Manager. Tighe took three classes that participated in the pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States, and he looks forward to using the Wikipedia editing skills he gained from that, his background serving in the Peace Corps in Jordan, and his Arabic language skills to encourage the expansion of the program in the Arab World.
  • Students in Egypt and Jordan continued to contribute to Wikipedia, as the end of their terms wraps up in early August.
  • Faris, Tighe, and LiAnna planned a Wikipedia Education Program Arab World meeting, to be held in Amman, Jordan, in August and attended by volunteer leaders from the program.
Communications


Program Evaluation and Design

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Program Evaluation and Design (PE&D) presentation slides
 
Evaluation of the Budapest workshop: Pre/post event survey results
  • Budapest Workshop follow-ups
  • New UserMetrics Opt-In Forms developed by legal with input from Budapest workshop participants and PE&D team
  • First IRC Office Hours hosted. A great group of participants interested in PE&D showed up and the entire team participated in the session. Details here
  • PE&D space launched on Meta
    • Includes an FAQ, a crowdsourced Q&A space, and an extensive growing list of resources about program evaluation and design.
  • Portal development
    • PE&D will be partnering with Learning & Evaluation to develop The Workshop, an all-evaluation encompassing space where Wikimedia community members can come together and discover a "one stop shop" about all things evaluation - program and organizational. This space will be housed on meta.
    • Portal will be launched on October 1.
  • Announcement list launched. Anyone interested in PE&D can sign up here:


Human Resources

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HR has worked to wrap up the annual review cycle and implement annual merit and cost-of-living increases. With F&A, we co-hosted a Wikimania travel brown bag, bringing in guests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org ) to talk about internet security while traveling to Asia. We also hosted a 1-day WMF leadership team retreat with all directors and managers to walk through guiding principles and organizational values, and how they are operationalized. In addition to supporting many new hires and creating a new Careers page on LinkedIn, we implemented PlanSource, a new benefits website which should roll out this month, added a FlexiPass for ease of use for those in the US using the pre-tax commuter benefit, and Benecards that allows payment like a credit card for those in the US using the pre-tax cafeteria plan. The 401k committee met again to improve existing funds, with new index fund selections now available.

The CTCO role was highlighted by Inc magazine online ("The Cat-Herding-est Job on the Planet").

Staff Changes

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New Requisitions Filled
  • C. Scott Ananian, Software Engineer – Parsoid (Engineering)
  • Runa Bhattacharjee, Language Outreach & QA Coordinator (Engineering)
  • Bryan Davis, Senior Software Engineer (Engineering)
  • Rosalind Lewis, Development Associate (Fundraiser)
  • Anna Koval, Community Advocate (Legal & Community Advocacy)
  • Lisa Martinez, Executive Assistant to the Executive Director (ED)
  • Sophie Österberg, Global Education Program International Contractor (Grantmaking & Programs)
  • Dennis Porter, AP Clerk (Finance)
  • Kenan Wang, Product Manager, Mobile (Engineering)
  • Sean Pringle, Database Administrator (DBA, Technical Operations)
New Interns
  • Saumya Chopra (Human Resources)
New Contractors
  • KaMan Bhattacharya (Fundraiser)
  • Arlo Breault (Engineering)
  • David Chan (Engineering)
  • Tighe Flanagan (Grantmaking & Programs)
  • Bryony Jones (continuing as an International contractor for Fundraiser)
  • Marc Ordinas (Engineering)
  • Rebecca Neumann (Communications)
Contracts Extended
  • Christian Aistleitner
  • Emily Blanchard (Human Resources)
  • Andrew Garrett (Engineering)
  • Jan Gerber (Engineering)
  • Michelle Grover (Engineering)
  • Jami Mathewson (Grantmaking & Programs)
  • Heather McAndrew (Human Resources)
  • Kirsten Menger-Anderson
  • Michael Ray (Administration)
  • Max Semenik (Engineering)
Departures
  • Bryony Jones (continuing as an International contractor for Fundraiser)
  • Evan Rosen
Contracts Ended
  • Jeroen DeDauw
  • Tiffany Li
  • Adrian Rounce
  • Jonas Xavier
New Postings
  • Development Outreach Manager
  • Front-End Developer- Analytics

Statistics

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Total Requisitions Filled
July Actual: 152
July Total Plan: 174
July Filled: 9, Month Attrition: 2
YTD Filled: 9, YTD Attrition: 2
Remaining Open positions to fiscal year end
41

Department Updates

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Real-time feed for HR updates

http://identi.ca/wikimediaatwork or http://twitter.com/wikimediaatwork

Finance and Administration

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  • Finance and Fundraising have significantly lowered the cost of foreign exchange for payments, grants and donations.
  • Completed financial review site visits, with the grants team, to Wikimedia Nederland, Wikimedia Österreich, and Wikimedia Sverige. A report on the site visits will be presented to the Audit Committee at its fall meeting.
  • CFA and the Event Coordinator met with the Wikimania 2014 organizing team to begin the process of Wikimania 2014. The meeting inculded working on the contract for the venue and making a decision on the who will be the fiscal sponsor for Wikimania 2014. At this point, it has been decided that the Wikimedia Foundation will serve as fiscal sponsor for Wikimania 2014.
  • The 2013-14 Annual Plan and the Annual Plan Questions and Answers were posted on the Wikimania Foundation web site.
  • The Finance eligibility review of chapters who submitted letters of intent to apply for an FDC grant has been completed and posted on the FDC Portal.

Legal, Community Advocacy, and Communications Department

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LCA Report, July 2013

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Contract Metrics

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  • Submitted : 22
  • Completed : 14

Trademark Metrics

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  • Submitted : 18
  • Approved : 1
  • Pending : 14
  • Denied : 1
  • Approval not needed: 1

Domains Obtained

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wikimedia.is, wikimedia.ae, wikipedia.ae

Coming & Going

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  • LCA says goodbye to one of our summer legal interns, Jenny Bloom (Harvard), and wishes her all the best!

Other Activities

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  • LCA worked hard with the rest of the Wikipedia Zero team to close the partnership agreement with Aircel to offer 60 million mobile users in India free access to Wikipedia (free as in beer, as well as in speech!).
  • LCA is engaging in a community discussion on trademarks to get the community’s thoughts on our trademark policy and practice. So far, we have received around 100 comments, based on which we have started preparing a new trademark policy draft.
  • The month-long initial community consultation about privacy and what we can do to improve our current privacy policy ended. We got a lot of great ideas and suggestions from the community and have been working on crafting a first draft of a new privacy policy that embodies that feedback. We hope to present drafts of this new privacy policy as well as a draft of a new access to nonpublic information policy to the community for feedback in early September.
  • The selection procedure for deciding the new Wikivoyage logo was finalized by the community and the submission period (10-24 July 2013) resulted in lots of great ideas. The first round of voting began on 26 July 2013 and ended today, 01 August 2013.
  • LCA has continued monitoring of the PRISM situation, including signing a letter with CDT, EFF, etc., and kept in contact with activist groups.
  • Geoff will give a Wikimania talk titled “Our Legal Strategy Going Forward: A Talk with the WMF General Counsel”. It will include the entire legal team on a panel, to discuss our work with the community. We welcome you to join this and the other Wikimania talks given by LCA.
  • Luis and Stephen will present a Wikimania talk titled "Open Culture, Open Data, Open Source".
  • Philippe will give a Wikimania talk titled "Working together, alone: A gathering of functionaries".

Communications Report, July 2013

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July was a busy month for the communications team, with three major announcements, preparations for Wikimania 2013, and an increase in communications support for launches in the month, including the beta roll out of VisualEditor. The team also prepared several presentations to be held at Wikimania 2013, which you are welcome to attend:

Major announcements

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Aircel partners with Wikimedia Foundation to offer free mobile Wikipedia access through Wikipedia Zero (25 July 2013)

Aircel subscribers to be the first in India to have free access to Wikipedia on their mobile phones.

Wikimania 2013 comes to Hong Kong, August 9–11 (16 July 2013)

Wikimania 2013 is coming to Hong Kong this August 9–11. Wikimania has been, since 2005, the premier annual international gathering of the Wikimedia community, with participation from experts, academics, and Wikimedia enthusiasts.

Ana Toni Announced as New Wikimedia Foundation Board Member (8 July 2013)

Ana is currently the CEO for GIP (Public Interest Management), a consultancy firm based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which works for foundations, non-profit organizations and businesses on social and environmental issues.

Major Storylines through July

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Wikimedia Foundation and Aircel launch first Wikipedia Zero partnership in India (July 25)

WMF launched its first major Wikipedia Zero partnership in India in July, partnering with Aircel to bring free access to Wikipedia to 60 million customers. The launch received immediate and positive response on Twitter, where Aircel announced an #IwikiWhen promotion. More than 150 media outlets in India published almost all positive-tone stories.

http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/07/25/wikipedia-zero-arrives-in-india-dropping-mobile-data-charges-for-60m-aircel-subscribers/
http://www.themobileindian.com/news/13297_Aircel-users-can-now-access-Wikipedia-for-free-on-mobiles
http://www.medianama.com/2013/07/223-wikipedia-partners-aircel-to-offer-free-access/
Editing on Mobile Wikipedia launched (July 25)

WMF's Mobile Web team enabled editing on mobile Wikipedia in late July, resulting in a large number of positive-tone coverage in tech and media blogs. Almost all of the coverage was triggered by a single tweet from the mobile team, followed by a detailed blog post.

(related blog post: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/25/edit-wikipedia-on-the-go/ )
http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/25/wikipedia-mobile-editing/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57595593-93/wikipedia-rolls-out-editing-tool-for-mobile-devices/
http://www.rappler.com/life-and-style/technology/34871-wikipedia-mobile-editing-wikimedia-foundation
Most controversial topics on Wikipedia study (July 18)

A research paper ("The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis") released in May and widely circulated in July received considerable international coverage. The paper studied edit wars from 10 different language versions of Wikipedia, and aimed to understand "convergent and divergent social-spatial priorities, interests and preferences." Global media mostly relayed the English top 10 list of the articles most susceptible to edit warring, with a neutral tone.

(link to original study: http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.5566)
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517101/edit-wars-reveal-the-10-most-controversial-topics-on-wikipedia/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23354613
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/491979/20130718/wikipedia-edited-articles-9-11-israel-hitler.htm
VisualEditor beta launch garners media attention (July 2)

VisualEditor's big July beta roll-out wasn't driven by a major press push, but the blog post and overall increased visibility of the interface resulted in important coverage in mostly tech blogs. Media coverage has been mostly positive, generally highlighting the historic importance of the roll-out.

(related blog post: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/01/visualeditor-beta-rollout/)
http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/02/wikipedia-visualeditor/
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/07/02/wikimedia-rolls-out-its-wysiwyg-visual-editor-for-logged-in-users-accessing-wikipedia-articles-in-english/
http://tech2.in.com/news/web-services/visualeditor-rolling-out-to-all-loggedin-english-wikipedia-editors/906680

Other worthwhile reads

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Is This the Most Interesting Opening Paragraph Wikipedia's Ever Published? | Foreign Policy | July 11
Hebrew Wikipedia Celebrates 10th Anniversary | Arutz Sheva 7 | July 9

(also in Globes.co.il)

With a Prized Base of 80,000 Global Volunteers, Wikipedia Looks Ahead Cautiously | Nonprofit Quarterly | July 2
Internet account believed to be Adam Lanza's shows early obsession with mass murder | BoingBoing.net | July 1

WMF Blog posts

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Blog.wikimedia.org ran 52 posts in July 2013. Twelve posts were multilingual, including French, Swedish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Italian, Dutch, French, Catalan. Some highlights:

Media Contact

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Media contact through July 2013: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact#July_2013

Wikipedia Signpost

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For lots of detailed coverage and news summaries, see the community-edited newsletter “Wikipedia Signpost” for July 2013:

Visitors and Guests

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Visitors and guests to the WMF office in July 2013:

  1. Simon Knight (PhD candidate, Open University's Knowledge Media Institute in UK)
  2. Holger Müller (German counsel, Schlüschen Müller Rechtsanwalte)
  3. Mark Matta (Pager Duty)
  4. Scott Anderson (Pager Duty)
  5. Jason Asbahr (Monstrous)
  6. Mike Meighan (CB2)
  7. Sarah Pearson (Creative Commons)
  8. Brett Somers (Education Transformation Through Technology)
  9. Lee Eckert (Vital)
  10. Nancy Rose (KPMG)
  11. Monica Opoku (KPMG)
  12. Jared Lopiccola (Noble)
  13. Bill Drendorff (PPT)
  14. Randall Benson (Benson Consulting)
  15. Marco Berliri (Hogan Lovells)
  16. Neal Katyal (Solicitor General)
  17. Virginia Sutton (J & D)
  18. Valerie Aurora (TAI)
  19. David Peters (Exbrook)
  20. Alex List (Domo)
  21. Kent Phelpy (CB2 Builders)
  22. Adam Abeles (TalentBin)
  23. K. Adam White (Bocoup)
  24. Lopez Hugo (Wikipedia: Map Lab)
  25. K McCormick (Brown-Bigelow)
  26. Greg Brown (Automattic)
  27. Marco Berliri (Hogan Lovells)
  28. Neal Katyal (Hogan Lovells)
  29. Adrian Dogar (Yuzz)
  30. Courtney O'Callaghan (TAI)
  31. Jane Park (Creative Commons)
  32. Chandra Agarud (Walk SF)
  33. Paul Cabral (Integrated Services)
  34. Hannah Song (LiNK)
  35. Sokeel Park (LiNK)
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