Wikimedia Highlights, June 2014

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for June 2014, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia Foundation highlights

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Main Page of the English Wikipedia on the new Android app.

Revamped Wikipedia app for Android, and new optimized view for tablet users

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The new Android Wikipedia app was released in June and is now available in the Google Play store. Core features of the app include the ability to save pages for offline reading, a record of your reading history, and the ability to edit either as a logged in user or anonymously. The app is the first mobile platform that allows anonymous editing.

Also, since June 17, users on tablets are now redirected to the new tablet-optimized mobile site; they were previously being sent to the desktop version of all Wikimedia projects. Early data suggests that this change had a positive impact on new user signup and new editor activation numbers.

Media viewer released on all wikis

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In June, the multimedia team released Media Viewer v0.2 on all Wikimedia wikis, with over 20 million image views per day on those sites that are tracked. Global feedback was generally positive and helped surface a range of issues, many of which were addressed quickly. Based on this feedback, a number of new features were developed by the team: view images in full resolution, view images in different sizes, show more image information, edit image file pages, as well as easy disable tools for anonymous users and editors.

First impact assessment of FDC grants (APG)

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The results of the first impact assessment for Annual Plan Grants (FDC grants) to Wikimedia organiations were published. Based on the reports of the 9 organizations funded in Round 1 of 2012-2013, the report found that organizations had strength in content-related projects, which benefitted from full time staff and consistent partnership:

  • Content development results: 12K articles improved, 168K images on Commons, and 86K other media on Commons
  • Participation improvements (new editors; active editors; retained editors) were not recorded by most organizations. But over 9000 people were touched by the programs associated with the activties of the organizations, and Wikidata (a new Wikimedia project developed by Wikimedia Deutschland) saw 3000 new active editors.

Term of Use amended with transparency requirements for paid editing

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The Wikimedia Foundation published a new amendment to the Terms of Use to address disclosure of paid editing.

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Global unique visitors for May:

469 million (+0.7% compared with April; -10.2% compared with the previous year)
(comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects, not including mobile devices; comScore will release June data later in July)

Page requests for June:

20.217 billion (-0.2% compared with May; -4.4% 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 May 2014 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):

80,131 (+6.5% compared with April / -1.9% compared with the previous year)
(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 May 31, 2014
 
Wikimedia Foundation YTD Expenses by Functions as of May 31, 2014

(Financial information is only available through May 2014 at the time of this report.)

All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date May 31, 2014.

Revenue 49,972,461
Expenses:
 Engineering Group 15,308,224
 Fundraising Group 3,392,468
 Grantmaking Group 1,696,721
 Programs Group 1,630,409
 Grants 4,104,348
 Governance Group 909,083
 Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group 4,066,924
 Finance/HR/Admin Group 6,109,383
Total Expenses 37,217,560
Total surplus (12,754,901)
in US dollars
  • Revenue for the month of May is $0.78MM versus plan of $1.67MM, approximately $0.89MM or 54% under plan.
  • Year-to-date revenue is $49.97MM versus plan of $48.40MM, approximately $1.57MM or 3% over plan.
  • Expenses for the month of May is $3.71MM versus plan of $4.49MM, approximately $0.78MM or 17% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, and FDC grants partially offset by higher legal fees, outside contract services, and travel expenses related to community convening events.
  • Year-to-date expenses is $37.22MM versus plan of $45.55MM, approximately $8.33MM or 18% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, payment processing fees, staff development expenses, grants and travel expenses partially offset by higher legal fees and outside contract services.
  • Cash and Investments - $53.13MM as of May 31, 2014.
Video of the monthly Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting covering the month of June (July 3, 2014)

Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement

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From left to right: Itzik Edri and Michal Lester of Wikimedia Israel, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Rabbi Shai Piron, Israel's Education Minister

Israel’s Ministry of Education and Wikimedia Israel agree on initiative to integrate Wikipedia in schools

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The Israeli Wikimedia chapter announced a agreement with the country's education ministry to support the integration of Wikipedia into the ministry's school curricula in the coming years. Through the planned cooperation, history, geography and science teachers will receive special professional training to instruct students on how to contribute to new or incomplete Wikipedia articles for which information is lacking or inadequate.

 
Logo of Wiki Indaba 2014

Wiki Indaba: Africa's first regional conference of Wikimedians

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During three days in June, more than 35 Wikimedians came together in Johannesburg for the first ever Wiki Indaba Regional Conference. All four regions of Africa were represented by at least one country, with West Africa having the lion’s share.

US National Archives announces plans to upload all of its holdings to Wikimedia Commons

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The US National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) announced plans to upload all of its holdings to Commons. NARA hired a Wikimedian-in-Residence in 2011 and had already uploaded over 100,000 images to Commons since then.