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Archive:Past events

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These are events around Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. See also current events.


2009

Wikimedia Foundation receives $500,000 in operational support from Hewlett Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation has received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its work bringing free educational content to everyone on the planet. Read more (20 August 2009)

¡Viva Wikimanía! ¡Buenos Aires los espera! / Buenos Aires awaits you!
Media registration is now open for Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires. Read more (20 July 2009)

NIH and Wikimedia Foundation Collaborate to Improve Online Health Information
Organizations are joining forces to make health and science information more accessible and reliable. Read more (14 July 2009)

Ford Foundation Grant to support Wikimedia Commons
$300,000 will empower individuals around the world to share educational photos, illustrations, videos, and sound. Read more (1 July 2009)

Wikimedia Selects Green Data Center EvoSwitch as Internet HUB for Europe
Evoswitch generously supports reach and access to the Wikimedia projects by providing data center space. Read more (22 June 2009)

Wikimedia Foundation announces important licensing change for Wikipedia and its sister projects
Adoption of Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License will support greater interoperability and re-usability of Wikimedia content. The current GNU Free Documentation License will continue to be supported. Read more (21 May 2009)

Orange forms world’s first mobile and internet partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation
Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation announced a wide-ranging strategic partnership designed to mutually benefit each organization’s users by extending the way people can access free knowledge. Read more (22 April 2009)

Roger McNamee to Become Wikimedia Advisor
Media and entertainment investment pioneer joins non-profit's Advisory Board. Read more (13 January 2009)

Wikipedia fundraising campaign surpasses $6 million USD goal
Over 125,000 donors worldwide show their support for the non-profit encyclopedia. Read more (2 January 2009)

2008

Neeru Khosla to Become Wikimedia Advisor
Philanthropist and education pioneer joins non-profit's Advisory Board. Read more (15 December 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation applauds IWF decision to reverse Wikipedia censorship in the United Kingdom
Removal from Internet blacklist will also allow UK Wikipedia users to resume editing. Read more (9 December 2008)

Censorship in the United Kingdom disenfranchises tens of thousands of Wikipedia editors
Wikimedia Foundation opposes action by internet watchdog group to blacklist encyclopedia article. Read more (7 December 2008)

Wikipedia to become more user-friendly for new volunteer writers
The Wikimedia Foundation has received a grant from the U.S.-based Stanton Foundation to make Wikipedia's writing and editing interface easier to use for first-time authors. Read more (3 December 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation Launches 2008 Annual Campaign to Support Wikipedia
The campaign runs until Jan. 15, 2009 (Wikipedia's eight-year anniversary). In addition to raising funds for the organization, the campaign is also engaging users by asking how Wikipedia has made their lives easier. Read more (5 November 2008)

SOS Children UK and the Wikimedia Foundation announce the 2008/9 Wikipedia Selection for Schools
SOS Children UK, in coordination with the Wikimedia Foundation, has released a complete 2008/9 revision of the Wikipedia Selection for Schools, which is perhaps the most successful "checked content" project derived from the English Wikipedia. Read more (22 October 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation Announces New Appointments to Board of Trustees
Earlier today the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Vice-Chair, Jan-Bart De Vreede announced important changes to the Board, including the selection of a new Chair, and appointment of the newest community-elected member. Read more (17 July 2008)

Wikimedians Around the World Prepare for Wikimania 2008
Next week hundreds of Wikimedia volunteers and enthusiasts will converge at the historic center of global knowledge and wisdom, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, for the fourth annual Wikimania conference. Read more (9 July 2008)

Board of Trustees announces Board Restructure details
Jan Bart de Vreede, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees, today announced the details of the Board's restructuring. The restructure will add new chapter-selected seats and more clearly defines the terms and details of other seats. Read more (26 April 2008)

Board of Trustees announces appointment of new Board Treasurer
The Board of Trustees has appointed Stuart West as the new board treasurer. West brings new financial experience and skill to the Board of Trustees. Read more (22 April 2008)

Wikimedia is hiring!
Three new fundraising and development job opportunities have been posted. The closing date is May 15. Read more (20 April 2008)

Nicholas Hilliard, subject of the 10 millionth article

Wikipedia Hits Milestone of Ten Million Articles Across 250 Languages
The Hungarian biography of a 16th century painter has been declared the ten millionth article. Read more (28 March 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation Receives $500K Donation
The Wikimedia Foundation announces an unrestricted donation of $500K from philanthropists Vinod and Neeru Khosla. Read more (27 March 2008)

Sloan Foundation awards $3 million USD to support Wikipedia's quality and growth initiatives
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced it is awarding $3 million of support to the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates the world's largest and most popular encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Read more (25 March 2008)

Library of Alexandria

Wikimania 2008 calls for participation
The Wikimania 2008 Organizing Committee is accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, posters, open spaces, and artistic artifacts until March 16, 2008. The conference will be held this summer at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The submission guidelines are available online. Visit the official site for further information. (12 February 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation releases latest financial statements
Although a bit later than we would have originally liked, I'm pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has approved the Foundation's 2006/2007 financial statements. The financial statements are now posted on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf Read more (Florence Devouard, 8 February 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation announces new CFOO; Heads of Business Development and Communications
The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of three new staff members: Veronique Kessler, Chief Financial and Operating Officer (CFOO); Kul Takanao Wadhwa, Head of Business Development; and Jay Walsh, Head of Communications. Read more (29 January 2008)

Wikimedia Picture of the Year 2007, "Broadway Tower in Cotswolds, England" by Newton2

Wikimedia Commmons announces Picture of the Year 2007
The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee has announced the result of annual Picture of the Year competition, 2007. The winner is Broadway Tower in Cotswolds, England. photographed by an English Wikipedia contributor Newton2. Voting was in two rounds and in the first round 665 voted for 514 images. The top 28 made it to the final, where 919 voted. Congratulations to all the contributors who helped create these beautiful works and made them available to the world as free content. See more (27 January 2008)

Wikimedia Foundation and UNU-MERIT announce First Survey of Wikipedians
The Wikimedia Foundation and the Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-MERIT [a joint research and training centre of United Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht University] are pleased to announce a collaboration to conduct the first-ever, comprehensive Wikipedia survey. Read more (24 January 2008)

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration Launched Today
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, launched today, is part of a dynamic effort to make learning and teaching materials available to everyone online, regardless of income or geographic location. The Declaration is supported by an international coalition of foundations, educators, and internet pioneers. Read more (22 January 2008)

Wikipedia Invites Users to Take Part in Open, Collaborative Video Experiment
The Wikimedia Foundation, Kaltura and WikiEducator have announced a beta program to allow users to create collaborative video and other forms of rich media. Under this project, users will be invited to test new functionality that could one day enable Wikipedia articles to include collaboratively created video, audio, animations, and slideshows as well as text and images. Read more (17 January 2008)

Wikipedia Celebrates its Seventh Birthday
It's Wikipedia's birthday!! Founded on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has become one of the world's ten most visited websites, and the fastest growing, most current encyclopedia ever created. Currently, the website has nine million articles in over two hundred and fifty languages. Read more (14 January 2008)

Deputy Director Hired
The Wikimedia Foundation today announced the appointment of Erik Moeller as Deputy Director, effective January 10, 2008. Read more (9 January 2008)

2007

Japanese Wikipedia awarded with nationally famous "Web of the Year" 2007
The Japanese Wikipedia won for the second time the "Web of the Year"-award Grand Prix from Yahoo! Japan. "Web of the Year" is a nationally famous award in Japan. Also today, the Japanese Wikipedia celebrated 450,000 articles. (26 December 2007)

Wikis Go Printable
New open source technology will bring content from Wikipedia, WikiEducator, and other wikis to the world of paper
The Wikimedia Foundation today announced a partnership that will make it possible to obtain high quality print and word processor copies of articles from Wikipedia and other wiki educational resources. The development of the underlying open source software is supported by the Open Society Institute (www.soros.org) and the Commonwealth of Learning (www.col.org), and led by PediaPress.com, a start-up company based in Germany. Read more (13 December 2007)

Wikimedia Foundation improves performance and reduces costs by peering at AMS-IX
Direct interconnection with hundreds of networks in Amsterdam
The Wikimedia Foundation, the international non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, and the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) have joined forces for “the good of the Internet.” As part of this joint program, AMS-IX will give Wikimedia a Gigabit Ethernet connection at no cost, which will enable Wikimedia to deliver up to 10,000 requests per second directly to hundreds of other networks, including many major internet service providers. Read more (12 December 2007)

Analysis Indicates that German Language Wikipedia Better than Brockhaus Online
The German language version of Wikipedia is better than Brockhaus, Germany's commercial encyclopedia, according to an analysis commissioned by Stern Magazine. The popular German publication hired WIND research institute to compare 50 articles from Wikipedia and the Brockhaus online encyclopedia based on their 15 volume edition. On a scale where 1 is the best and 6 is the worst, Wikipedia's average rating was 1.7, while Brockhaus average rating was 2.7. Read more (6 December 2007)

Sue Gardner Hired as Executive Director

The Wikimedia Foundation today announced the appointment of Sue Gardner as its Executive Director, effective immediately. Gardner has worked with the Foundation since July 2007, when she was brought in as a consultant and special advisor to the board of trustees. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Gardner was head of CBC.CA, the website of Canada’s national public broadcaster, and that country’s largest and most popular news site. Read more (6 December 2007)

Wikimedia Foundation has been selected as Technology Pioneers 2008

The World Economic Forum announced 39 visionary companies selected as Technology Pioneers 2008 and the Wikimedia Foundation has been selected as one of these Technology Pioneers. Technology Pioneers 2008 are invited to participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008 that will be held in Davos, Switzerland, from 23-27 January and in the Annual Meeting of the New Champions that will be held in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China from 25-27 September 2008. Read more (29 November. 07)

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales leads South African Wikipedia Academies in Johannesburg
The Wikimedia Foundation will co-host with iCommons the Wikipedia Academy workshops in various locations throughout South Africa on November 10 and 11, 2007 to be lead by Jimmy Wales. Read more (31 Oct. 07)

Library of Alexandria to Host Wikipedia's Annual Conference in 2008
The Wikimedia Foundation announces that it will stage its 2008 Wikimania conference at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The event will take place next summer. Read more or visit official site (31 Oct. 07)

Wikimedia Foundation Begins Search for New Treasurer
The Foundation is looking for a new treasurer to serve on its Board of Trustees. Details (24 Oct. 07)

Wikimedia Foundation Opens Positions
Due to its move to San Francisco, CA, the Wikimedia Foundation is opening several positions. Apply now (15 Oct. 07)

Wikimedia Foundation to Relocate to San Francisco
The Wikimedia Foundation will be relocating its headquarters from St. Petersburg, FL to San Francisco, CA. The move will take place this winter. Read more (9 Oct. 07)

Wikipedia Reaches 2 Million Articles
On September 9, 2007, at 8:21 UTC, the English-language Wikipedia published its two millionth article with the entry "El Hormiguero," about the popular Spanish TV show of the same name. The article was created by registered Wikipedia contributor Zzxc. Read More

2007 Fundraising planning begins
As announced at Wikimania, the Foundation plans to launch our 2007 fundraiser this fall. Read more (22 August 07)

Wikimania 2008 bidding open
The formal bidding has begun today for Wikimania 2008 host city. Bids can be placed on Bids. The candidate city selection jury has been announced, the names can be found here: Jury. (20 August 07)

First Wikimania in Asia a success
As we make our way back home from the hangover and euphoria of Wikimania 2007, I can only imagine the exhaustion but sense of accomplishment of the Wikimania conference team. Congratulations to all the planners for showing us an amazing time. But I wanted to specifically praise the superb Read more...

Finances
During June 2007, the board approved a new audit charter. During July 2007, Sue Gardner, consultant and special advisor of the board, was added to the audit committee by Florence Devouard, chair of the board.
The Foundation's fiscal year end is June 30, which means that it's the time of year where we begin the audit process. In the prior year, the Foundation engaged the firm Gregory Sharer & Stuart. Read more...

New Consultant and Special Advisor to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees
The Wikimedia Foundation is delighted to announce it has engaged digital media executive Sue Gardner as a consultant and special advisor to the board. Gardner is a nonprofit internet executive who was most recently head of CBC.CA, the website of Canada’s national public broadcaster and that country’s largest and most popular news site. Read more...

Wikimedia Foundation Seeking a COO
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently seeking a Chief Operating Officer (COO). The COO is responsible for the overall administration and business operations of the Foundation. Read more

The Wikimedia Foundation Board Elections
The Wikimedia Foundation will be conducting its Board of Trustees elections from June 28 until July 7, 2007, in cooperation with Software in the Public Interest, Inc (SPI). Three successful candidates will be elected to the Board of Trustees for two-year terms, expiring in June 2009.Read more

Wikimedia Foundation participant to the Kronberg Declaration on the Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing
In June 2007, Florence Devouard participated in the meeting of the High-Level Group of Visionaries on “The Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing”, jointly organized by UNESCO and the German Commission for UNESCO, with the generous support of BASF. The High-Level Group of Visionaries met in Kronberg/Taunus, Germany, on 23 June 2007. The outcome of the meeting is a statement on the “Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing” for worldwide dissemination, which, in the future, will guide UNESCO’s work in this field.

 
Wikimania2007

Mark your calendar: Wikimania 2007 in August
The Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, will be hosting their annual conference, Wikimania, in Tapei, Taiwan, from August 3-5, 2007. The event brings together international users from various Wikimedia projects, as well as individuals interested in learning about Wiki technology, free content and free knowledge, and educational and social trends in the internet culture. Read more

Board meeting of June 1st to 3rd
The board of Wikimedia Foundation held a face to face meeting on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of June 2007 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Major topics were hiring new ED and a new legal person, financial issue including audit and fundraising, and revision of Access to nonpublic data policy. Read more

SOS Children UK and the Wikimedia Foundation Launch Wikipedia Selection for Schools
SOS Children UK and the Wikimedia Foundation have launched the Wikipedia Selection for schools. The Selection DVD has the content of a 15 volume encyclopedia - with 24,000 pictures, 14 million words and articles on 4,625 topics. It includes the best of Wikipedia, and many thousands of pages of extra material specifically selected to be of interest to children aged 8-17 who follow the UK National Curriculum and similar curricula elsewhere in the world. Read More

Time is running out! Wikimania 2007 early registration is open until May 15
Early registration and call for participation for Wikimania 2007, the third International Wikimedia Conference, is open until May 15. The conference will be held in Taipei from August 3-5. Please visit wikimania2007.wikimedia.org for further information. (7 May 2007)

English Wikiquote reaches 10,000th article milestone
The English language edition of Wikiquote, a community-built multilingual compendium of quotations reaches 10,000th articles. The article is for quotes by or about Langdon Smith, which was started by the Wikiquote contributor known with the username Kalki. Wikiquote as a whole contains over 60,000 articles in over 35 languages. Read more...(7 May 2007)

Sponsors Sought for Wikimania
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently searching for sponsors for their annual conference, Wikimania. This year, Wikimania will be held in Taipei, Taiwan. The event brings together international users from various Wikimedia Projects, as well as individuals interested in learning about Wiki technology, free content and free knowledge, and educational and social trends in the internet culture. In the past the event has received widespread, international media attention. Read more (PDF). (April 25 2007)

Wikipedia Version 0.5 Released
The Wikimedia Foundation announces the release of Wikipedia Version 0.5, a compact disc collection of approximately 2,000 articles from the English Wikipedia. The project paves the way for many such collections, with larger releases planned in a variety of languages. Secure your copy today.(April 18 2007)

Wikimedia Commons supports its RSS feed of Picture of the Day
The picture of the day is now officially available by RSS and email, among other ways. See the press release from the Commons community.(April 9 2007)

Licensing policy is introduced
The Wikimedia Foundation board has now passed its resolution on the media licensing policy. This policy is intended to reflect the principles in the message posted earlier at mailing list and to make the guidelines for acceptable media licenses clearer across all projects.(27 March 2007)

Wikimania 2007 registration is now open
Registration for Wikimania 2007, the third International Wikimedia Conference, is now open. The conference, which will be held in Taipei from August 3-5, is now calling for participation, and scholarships for a limited number of Wikimedia editors are available. Please visit wikimania2007.wikimedia.org for further information. (24 March 2007)

Wikimedia Advisory Board welcomes two new members
The Wikimedia Foundation welcomes two new members to its Advisory Board. The addition of Teemu Leinonen and Debbie Garside brings the number of people in the Advisory Board up to 20 members. Full biographies can be found at Advisory Board. (24 March 2007)

Cary Bass Hired as Volunteer Coordinator
The Wikimedia Foundation has hired Cary Bass as Volunteer Coordinator. Bass is a long time community member, having worked extensively as an OTRS email response team member, as well as on numerous community projects. We welcome Bass, whose skills and experience will be a great asset to the Wikimedia Foundation. He will be working out of the St. Petersburg, FL office. (19 March 2007)

Ménard hired for Chapters
The Wikimedia Foundation continues to establish its basis by hiring long-time contributor Delphine Ménard as a part-time Chapters Coordinator. Based out of Germany, Delphine is Chair of the Chapters Committee, and speaks French, English, German, Italian and Spanish. (1 February 2007)

Wikimedia Foundation signs the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
To order to show that WMF could be a part of the scientific Open Access Movement, WMF signed this month the Berlin Declaration, as well as the EU Petition about Open Access "Petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results".

COO position created for Carolyn Doran
As of today, Carolyn Doran is the full-time Chief Operating Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. Ms. Doran has worked part time in a lesser role, in the months prior. Read about her role. (29 January 2007)

World Economic Forum nominates Wales as Young Global Leader
World Economic Forum has nominated Jimmy Wales and 249 others for "Young Global Leader 2007". The event will take place September 4-8 in Dalian, China. The World Economic Forum selection committee is composed of the world's top media leaders and chaired by Queen Rania of Jordan. (23 January 2007)

Welcome to Sandra Ordonez
The Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of Sandra Ordonez as Communications Manager. Sandy is a public relations specialist living in Tampa, Florida, with prior experience in for-profit and non-profit organizations. Her role will include press relations, written and oral communications, and various other assignments. We are fortunate to have had Sandy approach us about a position, and we are excited to have her start working in the office. Please say hello if you run into her online (her wiki and irc name is "wiki blue") and welcome her to the community. (22 January 2007)

Wikimedia Serbia has hosted an international regional meeting in Belgrade, near the end of 2006. Among others, there were guests from Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, as well as from Germany and the Netherlands. Due to the bad local weather conditions, guests from France couldn't make it, but overall, the meetup went well. On January 7 2007, the 4th General assembly of Wikimedia Serbia was finished, and all proposed resolutions have passed. One of them involves promoting some members of the organization to vice-presidents. On January 2 2007, Miloš Rančić, resigned from his post as a president. However, he will still be active in the organization. The search for the new president is still ongoing. (15 January 2007)

Four wishes for year 2007
Yet another year is over. We’ll soon celebrate our six years of existence. Wikipedia has made an amazing transformation, growing from a grassroots effort to a global resource. A unique community-driven, non-commercial top 10 website, letting people share their knowledge, culture and resources with neighbours near and far.Read more (1 January 2007)

2006

Wikimedia Foundation releases its first audited financial statements
Brad Patrick announces the public release of audited financial statements of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. for fiscal years 2004, 2005 and 2006 inclusive, and appreciates the audit firm, Gregory Sharer & Stuart (http://www.gsscpa.com). Two documents, financial statement and management letter are online available. read more...(9 December 2006)

Wikimedia Board reorganization
Wikimedia Foundation welcomes today 2 new board members, Kat Walsh (known as Mindspillage) and Oscar van Dillen (known as Oscar), reflecting a recent resolution on Board expansion.
Tim Shell has chosen to resign from the board, effective 15th of December. At this date, he will be replaced by Jan-Bart de Vreede, Kennisnet Foundation. read more...(8 December 2006)

Wikimedia Commons reaches 1 million media files
In just over two years since its launch, Wikimedia Commons, a free media repository, has grown to include over 1 million different files. The millionth upload was a photograph of the pygmy hippopotamus exhibit at the Singapore Zoo. The Commons community also created a 1200-picture mosaic representing the Wikimedia logo in honor of the occasion. Read more... (30 November 2006)

UN agency APDIP donates 15 e-Primers to Wikibooks
The United Nations Development Program has released the rights of 15 books to the GNU Free License, making them available to Wikibooks, a Wikimedia Foundation project. By letting the public edit the books, the UN agency hopes the technical publications will be perpetually improved and up-to-date. Read more... (16 November 2006)

Florence Devouard elected Chair of the Board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Board met in Frankfurt, Germany on October 22, immediately following a planning retreat attended by the Board and more than 20 members of the Wikimedia community. The Board voted unanimously to elect Florence Devouard as the Chair of the Board, Tim Shell as Vice-Chair, Erik Möller as Executive Secretary, and Michael Davis as Treasurer. Jimmy Wales assumes the title of Chairman Emeritus of the Foundation. Read more... (27 October 2006)

Jimmy Wales visits Bangalore, India
Jimmy Wales attended InfoVision 2006 in Bangalore, India on September 28-29 and gave a speech. (4 October 2006)


Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Election concludes
The election for a position on the Board of Trustees concluded on Thursday, September 21, and results were released the following Sunday. Erik Möller was declared the winner and will serve the remainder of Angela Beesley's term, which lasts until July 2007. Beesley resigned earlier this year. Read more... (25 September 2006)

Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
The Wikimania jury are pleased to announce that Wikimania 2007 will be held in Taipei, Taiwan. Taipei had the winning combination of a dedicated and experienced bidding team, a great venue with centralized accomodation and community areas, and strong sponsorship opportunities. Read more... (25 September 2006)

Vereniging in the Netherlands recognized as a chapter by the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation approved the Vereniging as its chapter in the Netherlands. Read more... (23 September 2006)

Florence Devouard attends Digital World Africa 2006, in Abuja, Nigeria
Florence Devouard and Sj Klein attended the Digital World Africa 2006 Conference in Abuja, Nigeria. Florence gave a presentation about Wikimedia projects, focusing on empowerment, and Sj spoke as a Wikipedian about volunteer motivation. Read more... (17 September 2006)

Wikipedia with five million articles in total
On August 25, 2006, Wikipedia reached five million articles in total.

Jimmy Wales invited to a debate about encyclopedia reliablility
Wall Street Journal Online invited Jimmy Wales and Dale Hoiberg, editor in chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Using email, they discussed their encyclopedias' editing systems and their approaches to ensuring reliability. The discussion is available online. (12 September 2006)

Regional Wikimedia conferences in Europe
On September 2, two European cities hosted their nationwide conferences; Valentano, Italy and Utrecht, the Netherlands. The Italian conference was held for two days and there the third board of Wikimedia Italia was elected and inaugurated. (3 September 2006)

Chinese Wikimedia Conference 2006
CWMC 2006, the first Wikimedia event billed as such to be held in Asia, took place this past weekend, August 26 and August 27, in Hong Kong. Read more...(29 August 2006)

Operations report
Servers are operating quite stable, compared to in previous months, with only an occasional hiccup. Increased budget allows the Wikimedia Foundation to acquire hardware before the systems are completely overloaded, instead of in response. Many changes have been made to system architecture lately as well, the way the systems store data, the way they serve and cache images, and text. Read more...(19 August 2006)

Wikimedia to create advisory board
Wikimedia chair Jimmy Wales announced at Wikimania 2006 the intention to create an advisory board for Wikimedia. (8 August 2006)

One Laptop Per Child Includes Wikipedia on $100 Laptops
Wikimedia announced today that the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) association has chosen to load a snapshot of select Wikipedia articles onto the laptops it is developing. OLPC is an MIT-based project established to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and the opportunity to explore, experiment and express themselves. The announcement took place at Wikimania 2006, a three-day conference focusing on Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the use of wikis to organize knowledge. Wikipedia is among the first content to be featured in OLPC laptops. Read more... (4 August 2006)

MediaWiki to be developed rapidly
MediaWiki, the software that the Wikimedia Foundation runs on, will be developed by full-time employees of private organizations Wikia and Socialtext. Wikiwyg will be the highlight of this update, allowing intuitive editing with a small learning curve. According to Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia projects are expected to upgrade to this version of MediaWiki, at uncertain date. (4 August 2006)

Wikimania hosts second annual free content contest
Wikimania 2006 is hosting the Wikimania Awards in Cambridge, Massachusetts in August. This will be the second annual contest for the best free content writing and media in the world. All are welcome to nominate their favorite media and writing that has been added to Wikimedia projects within the last year. Entries are eligible to win one of three Nokia 770 internet tablets, and print-on-demand books of Wikipedia content.

 
Angela Beesley

Angela Beesley resigns from Wikimedia Foundation board
Last week, on the 1st of July, Angela Beesley announced her resignation from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. She has been a Wikipedia contributor for many years, and was elected to the board in mid-2004. She intends to continue to contribute in an editorial capacity, and to assist in forming the Wikimedia Foundation's Australia chapter. Her vacant seat on the Foundation board will be filled in an election, the details of which will be forthcoming. Read more... (8 July 2006)

New Privacy Policy Is Official
The newly revised Privacy policy became official on July 1. It was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board in June, and now applies to all Wikimedia wikis. The primary modification includes coverage of CheckUser, which had not yet been implemented when the previous version of the policy was introduced. Read more...(1 July 2006)


 
Brad Patrick.

Wikimedia Foundation Announces Interim Executive Director
The Wikimedia Foundation has hired Brad Patrick as general counsel and interim executive director, where he will oversee its staff and operations. In this capacity he will lead the search for a permanent executive director to be in charge of administering the Wikimedia Foundation's activities, after which he will settle into his permanent role as general counsel. Read more... (12 June 2006)

 
The star articles display when they reach featured status.

English Wikipedia Announces Thousandth Featured Article
The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the 1000th featured article on the English Wikipedia. Featured articles are the best articles on Wikipedia, and are required to be comprehensive, factually accurate, and written from a neutral point of view. Read more... (8 June 2006)

Power outage on the 9th of April 2006
PowerMedium had some sort of network and/or power outage for about an hour from circa 19:20 UTC. Brooke and their team restored the site as quickly as possible. The total editing-time outage was of 6 hours, 15 minutes. More technical information here from Brooke Vibber. (Anthere 14:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC))

English Wikipedia publishes millionth article
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. The article is about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. Wikipedia is a free, multilingual, online encyclopedia with 3.3 million articles under development in more than 125 languages. (N. Moreau, 8 March 2006)

Mediawiki software: the mythical Universal Login soon a reality
Brooke, our head developer, visited Berlin to drop in on the 22C3 conference and get some face-to-face chatting done with some of our European folks (such as Magnus and JeLuf). They posted a report about that on Meta. (Anthere, 02 January 2006)


2005

December & November 2005

  • Wikipedia wins two Awards in Italy
    At the Premio WWW event of the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore Wikipedia was honored as "best website" in the category Education and Work. The free encyclopedia also received a special award from Il Sole 24 Ore in cooperation with the Italian ministry of Technology and Innovation. (elian, 14 December 2005)
  • Wikimedia Foundation supporting non-profit medical research....
    The Wikimedia Foundation is supporting non-profit medical research by participating in the Folding@Home program, donating

computer-time on servers when these do not have any other work to do.

  • The Wikimedia Foundation is honored by a World Technology Award in Communications Technology
    This week, the Wikimedia Foundation was honored by a World Technology Award in communication, joining the ranks of other World Technology
    Network members. See http://www.wtn.net/2005/summit/ (Florence Devouard, 15 November 2005)

October 2005

  • Wikimania 2006 will take place in Boston, USA
    After a very tight vote (5 to 4 and 1 abstention), Boston has been chosen to host Wikimania 2006, the second International Wikimedia Conference. All information about the location can be found on this page. We wish to thank all participants for the work they have put into their bids, and especially the supporters of Toronto whose city made it to the shortlist. Definite dates and agenda to be confirmed shortly. (Delphine Ménard, 22 October 2005)
  • Vote over the creation of a new project: Wikiversity
    The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, has started a vote to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will last until November 1. Wikimedia Foundation board of Trustee will have the final decision over the creation of that new project after the community gave its opinion (a two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period). The potential project was presented at the Floss Workshop in September by Florence Devouard. (User:Anthere)
  • End of fall fundraising
    The Wikimedia fundraising drive ended late Thursday, with the final tally of $243,930 USD, more than 20% over the initial goal. A decline in donations was noticed over the last third week, with relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in the spotlight, however, donations still came pouring in from all over the world. A minor edit war resulted at some point when the administrators of the English wikipedia argued over whether linking to the Red Cross or other charities from the fundraising sitenotice was prudent, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The argument ended when Jimbo Wales removed the links, and ordered other users not to add it back.
    The 3 weeks long fundraising drive started on August 19, aiming to pay in particular for the significant m:server costs, which have risen dramatically recently. Next fundraising should probably be expected at the end of 2005. (Florence Devouard)
  • New license for Wikinews
    The Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License [CC-BY 2.5] was the favored license in the recent poll at meta:Wikinews/Licensure Poll. 31 people supported the license, which was an 82% supporting vote; including over 87% of the Wikinewsies who voted. Many other options had few voters. Of the options with more than 12 voters, the GFDL was supported by 21% of voters, and Wikinews License 0.2 by 60% of its 17 voters (64% of Wikinewsies).
    CC-BY 2.5 has now been agreed upon by the Wikimedia Foundation to be the new license for all existing and future versions of Wikinews. Any edits made previously remain public domain - only new edits will need to be under this Creative Commons License.
    The license can be read at creativecommons.org (that page links to other language versions of the license, and the full legal code). (Florence Devouard - 8 October 2005)
  • Boston and Toronto shortlisted as host cities for Wikimania 2006:
    After a long debate from the jury to chose among 4 excellent propositions, namely Boston, London, Milano and Toronto, the shortlist for host cities for Wikimania 2006 comprises Boston in the US and Toronto in Canada . The second round of deliberations will elect the host city for the conference in mid-October. (Delphine Ménard), 5 October 2005

September 2005

  • New Wikimedia Foundation appointment
    Danny Wool has accepted the offer of a job at the Wikimedia Foundation to be the Executive Assistant for the foundation. This job will primarily entail removing work from me so that I (Jimbo Wales) can better focus on the parts of my job that I am best at.
    Danny has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector and has been our (volunteer) grant co-ordinator for some time. I have worked with Danny on many projects and we are an excellent working team with a fine personal relationship.
    It is envisioned that Danny's staff role as my assistant will be temporary as he comes in and sets up professional systems for our work and begins to look for a replacement Executive Assistant (sometime within a year, depending on the flow of events) so that he can focus more and more over time in writing grant proposals.
    This page has a very cursory look at the position. (Jimmy Wales) 19:50, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
    See also. current staff
  • Database crash
    The disc subsystem on Adler, one of the two main database servers, crashed a week ago, decreasing our database power. It has been fixed and re-synced, restoring most of the power. We currently have issues with the other main database server, Samuel, but hope to resolve them soon. Three new database servers have been ordered and should be deployed within two or three weeks. (Domas) 08:33, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
  • New servers - 15 September 2005
    In the past few days, we have set up a few Squid servers on the newly installed Yahoo! cluster in Seoul, South Korea. They have started serving requests from several Asian countries last night, as can be seen on our stats (yellow = yahoo, blue = florida, green = amsterdam, purple = paris)
    Work is underway to experiment with using the remaining boxes in the Yahoo cluster as Apache/mediawiki application servers, to offload the Florida cluster and make things more redundant. As this will create many complex problems and management overhead, we are not sure if and when

that situation will be used in production.(Mark Bergsma) 08:33, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Chapter Coordinator appointed
    To keep in touch with the current local chapters and help the creation of new chapters, the Wikimedia Foundation has appointed Delphine Ménard as chapter co-ordinator. The position, defined during a board-local chapters meeting during Wikimania 2005, includes the following tasks: working with the Chief Financial Officer on financial matters concerning the chapters, and acting as a liaison between the Foundation Board and local chapters by ensuring information flow. (Florence Devouard, 14 September 2005)

August 2005

  • Budget for the third quarter of 2005 released for public scrutiny
    Daniel Mayer published the last approved budget on 14th of august. The total amount of the budget is $198,000.00, 63% of this amount being dedicated to hardware. The next main expenses are planned for hosting costs (8%), and a financial reserve (10%). The Chief Technical Officer will now be employed full-time, and the board is looking for a Hardware assistant as well as an Executive assistant. (Anthere)
  • Chief Research Officer resigns
    Erik Möller, the Chief Research Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation has submitted his resignation to the Board, stating that fruitful collaboration is no longer possible due to personal differences and a fundamental disagreement about the nature and scope of the role. (Angela Beesley)
  • Wikimania 2005: The First International Wikimedia Conference
    Wikimania 2005 was held between August 4 and August 8. This was the First International Wikimedia Conference and was attended by around 400 Wikimedians. See the official Wikimania site at wikimania.wikimedia.org for more information. (Angela Beesley)

July 2005

  • Wikimedia Board of the Trustees election 2005.
    After two weeks' of voting, from 28 June to 11 July, the Wikimedia Board of the Trustees has seen its two user representatives re-elected with a large margin, in an election involving over 1400 active Wikimedia project contributors. The final results of the 2005 elections to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees are as follows, along with the number of votes received:
    • Angela (Angela Beesley) - 1044
    • Anthere(Florence Nibart-Devouard) - 823
    • Sj (Samuel Klein) - 487
    • Cimon avaro (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen) - 374
    • Arno Lagrange - 306
    • Francis Schonken - 178
    Congratulations to both of the re-elected representatives, and the other candidates, who all made a strong showing and brought many important issues to the forefront.
    The Elections Officials wish to thank everyone who voted in the elections, noting that they found no evidence of fraud after a week's review, and wish the new Board a successful and productive two years. Danny and Datrio

June 2005

  • At the Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, Germany, Wikimedia and the KDE project announced a cooperation.
    Wikimedia will develop an API which will allow developers to integrate Wikimedia content in their programs. In his keynote on the 23rd of June at Linuxtag, Jimbo Wales presented first examples of Wikipedia content integrated in the KDE applications AmaroK and the Wikipedia offline reader Knowledge which is currently developped. Read more... (Elian)
  • Wikimedia Italia, the Italian chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, has been formed on Friday 17th June, 2005,
    in Canino by 18 wikimedians (some photos are available on here).
    The day after they had their first assembly, which confirmed their first board:
  • Wikimedia servers gets a new facility
    On June 7, 2005 (UTC), Wikimedia cluster was moved to another facility, as there would be more space. The newer facility is better designed and in the same city of former one, in Tampa, Florida. Moving had to be done all at once, with all network and servers turned off and moved across the street. It took nearly 11 hours from 07:00 UTC, 03:00 at the local time. Domas Mituzas
  • New appointements on the Foundation team
    On the 25th of June, Jimbo Wales has announced the appointement of the following people on official positions within the Foundation organigram
    • Chief Financial Officer : DanielMayer (renewal)
    • Chief Technical Officer (servers and development): Brooke Vibber
    • Hardware Officer: Domas Mituzas
    • Developer Liaison: Jens Frank
    • Chief Research Officer: Erik Möller
    • Grants Coordinator: Danny Wool
    • Press Officer: Elisabeth Bauer
    • Lead Legal co-ordination: Jean-Baptiste Soufron
    As Jimmy Wales best put it, the board encourages these people to work closely with, and even helps to formulate committees within Wikimedia. These appointed positions do not have any special power within any of those groups, but serve as a point of contact to the Board, and to the community, to ensure that information is flowing between all concerned parties within their own fields of xpertise. The appointment is a reflection of the work these people are already doing in these areas, and should not be seen as a disincentive to others to become involved. Florence Devouard

March 2005

  • The second issue of the Wikimedia Quarto was released.
    Wikimedia Quarto, covering the last quarter of 2004, was released last Saturday, March 19. The Wikimedia Quarto was begun in September 2004 as the official newsletter of the Wikimedia Foundation. For this issue, Quarto editor-in-chief Samuel Klein tracked down Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, founder and chairman of w:en:Creative Commons, for an exclusive interview. In a whirlwind session, Lessig talked about copyright, copyleft, barriers to free culture, legal pitfalls for Wikipedia, and fighting the good fight. Florence Devouard.
  • Wikimedia server was down for several hours on 17 March.
    On 17 March there was read only service for several hours after a disk drive used for logging on the master database server became full. Monitoring tools showed combined space for all drives and the last human check of that drive alone showed apparently sufficient space available. Improved montoring and larger disk drives are being obtained. James Day
    More downtime analysis.
  • Wikimédia France launches officially.
    Wikimédia France, the French chapter of Wikimedia, has been officially created and recognized as a non-profit entity. The chapter can now open bank accounts, be brought to courts by disgruntled trolls, and offer tax breaks to donors. A vote for membership fees has been completed. Amendments to the bylaws are being written for next month's General Assembly, at the end of the intiial 6-month transition period. -Nicolas Weeger
  • Jimmy Wales asked for more developers at the FOSDEM 2005 conference in Brussels.
    As the opening speaker at the FOSDEM conference, Jimmy appealed to the development community for support in running the technical side of Wikipedia, and his remarks were published in several places last week. read more... -Michael Snow
  • Thank you for your generosity - first fund drive of 2005 a phenomenal success.
    After all sources were added together, we had brought in the equivalent of US$94,648.70 (26% more than our goal of $75.000). We reached this amount in 11 days. 21% of the total (15,254.66 Euros, or US$20,046.15) was via Wikimedia Deutschland. For detailed fund drive statistics, see Fund drives/2005/Q1.
    Thank you for your generosity. Daniel Mayer, Wikimedia CFO.
    More fund drive analysis.

February 2005

  • On February 22, two circuit breakers blew, removing power from most of the Wikimedia servers and leading to the loss of all service for several hours, no editing for most of a day and slowness for a week. Full recovery of database robustness took the better part of a month. Uninterruptible power supplies could have reduced the effect of this incident (but not all power incidents; law requires an emergency power-off switch, which has caused outages for other sites, most notably for LiveJournal not long ago). Additional UPS systems will be used for key systems, fire code willing. -James Day
  • The Foundation began its second global fundraising drive on February 18. It was planned to continue until March 11 or until the goal of 75,000 USD was reached. The fund drive was stopped after 11 days, but donations continued to come in, exceeding the goal by 26% once all were totalled up. Thanks to everyone who contributed! Details and daily breakdowns are available: Fund drives/2005/Q1.

January 2005

  • On January 15, Wikipedia celebrated its 4th birthday. English Wikipedia celebrated this day with its 450,000th article.
  • Dutch, French, Spanish and Swedish Wikinews were created.
  • Several wikimedia projects set multilingual portals.

2004

December 2004

  • All Wikimedia project has been powered by MediaWiki1.4beta
  • A completely rewritten spam filter has been incorporated into MediaWiki, which blocks URLs containing certain domains and words. The new filter comes with a greatly expanded blacklist, derived from the publically available Wikiblacklist (now moved to [1]).
  • All Wiktionaries became unaccessible because its domain name was expired. The problem was solved on December 17 and Wiktionary regained its connectivity.

November 2004

  • In Rotterdam the first Wikipedia Symposium was held. It was a great success, with over 40 people present, among which were three trustees, Jimmy Wales, Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart Devouard.
  • Wikipedia.org is the 172nd most visited site on the Internet according to Alexa.com.
  • The English Wikipedia reached 8.00 average edits per page, suggesting increasing quality even with increasing quantity.
  • The English Wikipedia has over 1 million total pages (over a third are legitimate articles).

October 2004

  • We have exceeded our goal of raising 50,000 dollars in two weeks. Thanks to all who donated!
  • The location of Wikimania 2005 was determined to be Frankfurt am Main.
  • The French chapter had its inaugural meeting ([2]) in Paris and via the Wiki and IRC and elected its board members.
  • Vala, a user of the Italian Wikipedia, graduated in sociology with a thesis on Wikipedia. She graduated "summa cum laude". This is the first time in Italy that a thesis on this subject has been discussed.
 
The 1000th WikiCommons file
  • Images on Wikimedia Commons can now be linked to like local images.
  • Wikipedia.org's daily Alexa rank hits 218 - a new record.[3] See m:Wikipedia.org is more popular than....
  • There has been a huge spike in traffic over the last two days leading to slower than normal load times. Our previous Alexa ranking record was 349 on September 22nd; we climbed to 260.
  • WikiCommons reached 1000 uploaded files (mostly images, but also over 100 sound fragments and 1 movie).

September 2004

  • Wikipedia reaches a total of one million articles across all languages. See the international press release.
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