The number of candidates for the Board elections doubled this week as seven new candidates announced their intentions to run. Joining the previous seven candidates are Cartman02au, Eloquence, Hadraj, Jon Cates, Mindspillage, Ross.Hedvicek, and UninvitedCompany. Wikimedians have until August 28 to join the race.

Editorial note: The Signpost will begin an in-depth look at the candidates and the elections beginning next issue.

Even as Wikimania 2006, held in Boston, was just wrapping up (see related story), preparations started for Wikimania 2007. Bidding to determine the host city for the annual gathering officially opens Tuesday; however, several preliminary bids, ranging from Chicago to Istanbul, have already been started. The timetable for host city bidding calls for all entries and bids to be submitted by 10 September, 2006.

An effort to make translation and inter-language cooperation easier resulted in a series of new translator-combination "Babel" boxes on Meta. These boxes indicate that the user can translate from a certain language to another language; intended to "streamline the translation process", there are currently 20 such templates available.

• The English Wikipedia has reached 2,000,000 accounts.
• The Russian Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 800 articles.
• The Urdu Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Dutch Wikibooks has reached 1,000 modules.
• The Haitian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Ripuarian Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The Bengali Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The Tagalog Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The Maltese Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
• The Georgian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
• The Croatian Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
• The Tibetan Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Vietnamese Wikisource has reached 500 edits.
• The Thai Wikipedia has reached 9,000 registered users.