Wikimedia Highlights, July 2012
Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for July 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
Wikimedia Foundation highlights
Foundation staff report on their work at Wikimania
From July 12 to July 14, Wikimedians from around the world came together in Washington DC for this year's annual Wikimania conference, organized by Wikimedia District of Columbia (see also the this month's movement highlights). Among them were many Wikimedia Foundation staff, fellows and contractors.
The keynote of Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner was titled "Wikimedia Foundation: The Year In Review and The Year Ahead" (slides), and the Schedule included many other presentations by WMF staff, fellows and contractors:
- Fabrice Florin, Howie Fung, Karyn Gladstone, Brandon Harris, Oliver Keyes: Engaging editors on Wikipedia: A roadmap of new features (abstract, slides) / Oliver Keyes: Engaging the Community: What We've Tried and Where We're Going (abstract) - video
- Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw: Life Without Brackets: Visual Editing for Wikitext (abstract,
- Erik Moeller: The purpose-driven social network: Supporting WikiProjects with technology (abstract, slides)
- Steven Walling, Maryana Pinchuk: Welcome to Wikipedia, now please go away: improving how we communicate with new editors (abstract, slides, video)
- Tilman Bayer (with MZMcBride): Stop Spamming' vs. 'Nobody Told Me' – the state and future of movement broadcasting mechanisms (abstract, slides, video)
- Amir E. Aharoni: The software localization paradox (abstract, slides)
- Noopur Raval: GLAM and Outreach in India (abstract)
- Lori Byrd Phillips: State of GLAM-WIKI in the US (abstract)
- James Forrester & Philippe Beaudette: Wikimedia relations with governments, lobbying and public relations (abstract, video)
- Amir E. Aharoni: Supporting languages, all of them (abstract - submitted by Gerard Meijssen - , slides, video)
- Siebrand Mazeland, Santhosh Thottingal, Pau Giner, Niklas Laxström, Amir Aharoni, Arun Ganesh, Alolita Sharma: Ask the Language Support People (abstract, video)
- Leslie Carr, Ben Hartshorne, Jeff Green, Ryan Lane, Rob Halsell: Ask the Operators (abstract, video)
- Brion Vibber: Embedded scripting: creating interactive diagrams, maps, and other media resources in MediaWiki (abstract, slides, video)
- Tomasz Finc, Jon Robson: The Wikipedia Mobile Experience — Where We've Been and Where We're Going (abstract - submitted by Patrick Reilly -,slides, video)
- Oliver Keyes, with other panelists: Eternal December: How Awful Arguments are Killing the Wiki, and Why not to Make Them (abstract, video)
- Maryana Pinchuk, Steven Walling: “This is my voice”: the motivations of highly active Wikipedians (abstract, slides, video)
- Ryan Lane: Wikimedia Labs and the state of our open source infrastructure (abstract)
- Amit Kapoor/Kul Takanao Wadhwa: Reaching the Next Billion Users: Wikipedia on mobile (abstract, slides, video) + panel (video)
- Niklas Laxström: Translating the wiki way (abstract, slides, video)
- Rob Lanphier: Delivering MediaWiki faster, smoother and better (abstract, video)
- Siko Bouterse, Sarah Stierch, Jonathan Morgan, Jon Harald Søby, Peter Coombe, Tanvir Rahman, Steven Zhang: Wikimedia Community Fellows: what we're researching, piloting and building to help the movement (abstract, slides: Introduction, Teahouse, dispute resolution, translation project, help pages, Small Wiki Editor Engagement)
- Sumana Harihareswara, Guillaume Paumier, Rob Lanphier: Transparency and collaboration in Wikimedia engineering (abstract, video)
- James Alexander: The Bad Assumptions of the Copyright Discussion (abstract)
- Sumana Harihareswara: What Does THAT mean? Engineering Jargon And Procedures Explained (abstract)
- Guillaume Paumier: 11 years of Wikipedia, or the Wikimedia history crash course you can edit (abstract, video)
- Lori Byrd Phillips (with Àlex Hinojo and Andy Mabbett): QRpedia and you (abstract)
Beyond these, Wikimedia Foundation staff, fellows and contractors also participated in various other panels.
The fundraising team recorded over 100 on-camera interviews with Wikimedia editors, programmers and volunteers from all over the world. Interviews are inspiring new editor appeals (and a short video about Wikipedia), which we will showcase during the annual fundraiser.
Data and Trends
Global unique visitors for June:
- 469.64 million (-4.62% compared with May; +17.60% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release July data later in August)
Page requests for July:
- 17.7 billion (-1.9% compared with June; +25.3% compared with the previous year)
- (Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)
Active Registered Editors for June 2012 (>= 5 edits/month):
- 82,220 (-3.2% compared with May / -1.3% compared with the previous year)
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects except for Wikimedia Commons. Note: We are in the process of moving to a metric that takes into account SUL and Wikimedia Commons.)
Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects) for June 2012:
Financials
 |
 |
(Financial information is only available for June 30, 2012 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the period of July 1, 2011 - June 30, 2012.
| Revenue | $36,112,711 |
|---|---|
| Expenses: | |
| Technology Group | $12,335,628 |
| Community/Fundraiser Group | $3,769,765 |
| Global Development Group | $4,879,005 |
| Governance Group | $998,443 |
| Finance/Legal/HR/Admin Group | $6,814,021 |
| Total Expenses | $28,796,862 |
| Total surplus/(loss) | $7,315,849 |
- Revenue for the month is $549K vs plan of $162K, approximately $387K or 238% over plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $36.1MM vs plan of $29.5MM, approximately $6.6MM or 22% over plan.
- Expenses for the month is $3.3MM vs plan of $2.2MM, approximately $1.1MM or 49% higher than plan, primarily due to catching up on planned capital expenditures and higher-than-budgeted expenses for professional services and wikimania.
- Year-to-date expenses is $28.8MM vs plan of $28.3MM, approximately $512K or 2% higher than plan, primarily due to higher-than-budgeted payment processing fees (reflecting over-achieved revenue targets), higher-than-budgeted expenses for Wikimania, and an over-spend for Legal to fix issues with our trademark portfolio.
- Cash position is $25.4MM as of June 30, 2012 which is approximately 10.9 months of expenses.
Other movement highlights
Wikimania
In mid-July, over 1,400 attendees came to Washington, DC (US) to participate in Wikimania 2012. The annual global conference of Wikimedians was organized by Wikimedia District of Columbia. The main event from July 12-14 was accompanied by a hackathon, an unconference and various other side events.
The schedule contained presentations by over 275 speakers (see also the Foundation highlights), and videos are being uploaded. In the opening session, Mary Gardiner (co-founder of the Ada Initiative) talked about fostering diversity, and Jimmy Wales gave his traditional "The State of the Wiki" speech. In another plenary session, the Board of Trustees answered questions by Wikimedians.
Wikipedian in Residence for a whole town
Catalan Wikimedian David Parreño began serving as Wikipedian in Residence for the town of Palafrugell on the Mediterranean sea, in Catalonia (an autonomous community of Spain). With the approval of the town council, he is helping several local cultural institutions to improve their international online presence.
Russian Wikipedia blackout
On July 10, the Russian Wikipedia community blacked out their project for 24 hours, to protest a new law about Internet restrictions which had been proposed in the Russian parliament (Duma). Although the bill passed afterwards, some changes were made to it, and according to the head of Wikimedia Russia, Vladimir Medeyko, the blackout gained much media attention in Russia.