Amazon donates $1,000,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation has acknowledged Amazon's recent donation of one million dollars. Describing the reliance of Alexa on the free content available on Wikipedia: "As recently as six months ago, Wikimedia expressed that they'd like to see more companies who were using Wikipedia to give back", Justin Bariso of Inc. explains.

"Amazon's digital brain, Alexa, uses Wikipedia as one of many sources to answer questions", says Nat Levy on GeekWire. "Amazon has added the ability to donate to Wikipedia through voice commands. After saying the phrase, 'Alexa, donate to Wikipedia', the digital assistant walks through the steps and verifies how much the user would like to give."

Brief notes

• New and returning administrators: The Signpost welcomes two new administrators, and returning admins to the English Wikipedia in October.
  • Justlettersandnumbers whose RfA closed at 215/3/9, joined Wikipedia in 2010 and – with over 33,000 edits to the mainspace alone – is a prolific content contributor, also serving as an OTRS agent.
  • Sir Sputnik, whose RfA closed with a round number of supporting votes at 200/6/8, is an SPI Clerk and hails from Germany. He joined the English Wikipedia in 2008 and has made a total of over 121,000 edits.

    Neither of these highly successful bids for adminship were devoid of the infighting between voters, trolling, and sockpuppetry, which have become regular features of the process in recent times. See The Signpost's May 2018, June 2018, and July 2018 op-eds.

  • Liz regains her tools after procedural desysopping following an almost total absence from Wikipedia of over two years.
  • Lourdes now takes on adminship duties after declining their successful promotion (207/3/1) in February this year.
  • Two administrators were desysopped in accordance with the admin inactivity policy.
• Returning editors:
  • Dr. Blofeld, the editor with the most article creation and DYKs, returns from retirement.