Two new advisory board members named

Two new members have recently been added to the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board. In December 2008, Neeru Khosla joined the board. Khosla is co-founder and chair of CK-12, a non-profit based in Palo Alto, California which is pioneering the concept of "open source textbooks." In March 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation received a $500,000 donation from Vinod Khosla and Neeru Khosla.[1]

In January 2009, Roger McNamee joined the Board. McNamee is Managing Director and Co-Founder of Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm. According to the Foundation's press release, on the Advisory Board McNamee "will act as a special advisor to the Executive Director on business and strategy issues." [2]

ArbCom coordinator named, one Arbitrator leaves committee

As part of a comprehensive updating of its systems and processes, the Arbitration Committee has decided to appoint one of its sitting arbitrators to act as coordinator. This role is to carry no additional substantive authority but will primarily involve scheduling work flow and setting target dates for completion of tasks. Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin has been offered and has accepted this assignment, effective immediately, with the title of Coordinating Arbitrator. Arbitrator Roger Davies will serve as his Deputy.

On January 15, FT2 announced in an open letter on Jimbo Wales' talk page that he was stepping down from the Arbitration Committee. In the letter, he mentioned recent controversial cases and outlined the work he has done on Wikipedia this year. A request for comment is currently ongoing regarding FT2. The seat is currently vacant, leaving a total of 16 arbitrators. According to a statement posted on behalf of the committee, "the Arbitration Committee believes that FT2's decision to leave the committee was the sensible course of action under all the circumstances, and we appreciate his having done so."

Briefly

• January 15 marked the eighth anniversary of Wikipedia's founding as an independent website, or Wikipedia Day. Over the course of the day, the English Wikipedia passed 2,700,000 articles. Last year at this time the article count was 2,176,875.
• The Wikimania 2009 dates were formally announced. The conference will be held from August 26–28, 2009, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The conference has its own wiki for further information.
• On January 9, it was reported on the mailing list Foundation-l that the Chinese-language Wikinews was blocked in Mainland China. [3] Other language Wikinews editions are not blocked. English Wikinews covered the story.
• A FAQ has been posted on Meta regarding the proposed change to allow Wikimedia content to be licensed under CC-BY-SA as well as the GFDL; this page serves as a forum to raise questions about the proposed change as well.
• On January 14, the Sinhalese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.