Wikimedia announcements, Wikipedia advertising, and more!

Briefly

• The British Board of Film Classification has reached an agreement with filtered ISP Tibboh to apply film-style ratings to the web; the English Wikipedia has been rated as "Parental guidance".
• Wikimedia Norway had its annual general assembly on 19 April, and elected a new board.

An announcements-only mailing list has been formed for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a mechanism for those who want to keep up with major Wikimedia and project news but don't want the traffic of Foundation-l in their inboxes.

The new list is called wikimediaannounce-l, and can be subscribed to here. To date there have been no postings beyond initial testing. The list in future will include press releases and major announcements from the Foundation, Wikimedia Chapters, and the community.

The types of posts to be accepted are detailed in the list guidelines on Meta, which were initially developed by Wikimedia Foundation Head of Communications Jay Walsh based on community ideas. This is the first announcements-only list for the Wikimedia community, although the general idea of an announcements list has been proposed several times in the past; the idea was brought up again last November during the discussions about moderating and improving Foundation-l, the open discussion list for the WMF (see previous story).

The announcements list is fully moderated; Walsh is the initial moderator. Replies sent to the list will go directly to Foundation-l, which is open participation. Everyone interested in Wikimedia news is encouraged to subscribe to the new list.

Advertisements featuring Wikipedia and Wikimedia began appearing on Berlin subways last week, in a project run by Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany). According to Catrin Schoneville, press contact for Wikimedia Deutschland, the ads were produced by TV production company Berliner Fenster GmbH, who were contacted by Wikimedia volunteer Juliana da Costa.

The ads feature short "did you know" clips and information about Wikimedia. The spots are showing on 3768 double screens in 1106 wagons, approximately 8 spots per hour, with an average of 1.5 million viewers per day. The advertisements are worth approximately 150,000 €/month. Wikimedia Deutschland hopes to expand the program to more cities' subways as well.

Some more pictures of the ads can be found on Commons.

A Head of Office Administration job has been added to the list of current job openings at the Wikimedia Foundation; this job opening closes 1 May. In addition to the office administration position, which will manage "the administrative services support team" and functions related to the physical office, several core leadership and management positions are currently open at the Foundation. These including Chief Human Resources Officer (will manage issues related to HR), Chief Global Program Officer (will manage the Programs department, including outreach and communication), and Chief Development Officer (manages the fundraising plan), all of which are "open until filled." The Chief Human Resources and Chief Development officer positions are newly created positions.

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26 April 2010 (all comments)

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• I will admit, with much embarrassment, that my heart stopped for a second when I saw the headline "Wikipedia advertising (and more!)" ALI ^{nom nom} 16:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I must admit, mine did as well. Can someone clarify the purpose of these? --Ouro (blah blah) 17:08, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• As a Signposter (that sounded way to much like composter), we create article titles to grab reader's attention and get them to read the story. In newspapers around the globe, the same hype system works quite well.--mono^{National Pretzel Day} 04:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• My error. I meant - why were the advertisements ordered in the first place. What is their purpose? Sorry for the mix-up! --Ouro (blah blah) 06:35, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Maybe the Foundation has more money than they know what to do with? Naw, that couldn't be it. -- llywrch (talk) 05:13, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Are the subway and the production company doing this gratis, or does Wikimedia Deutschland have money to burn? ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:50, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Unless the advertisements are geared toward attracting donations or new contributors, I really don't see the point. Don't we already get like 80 bazillion hits per minute? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:14, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• I like the idea of Wikipedia advertising, but can't imagine that "we" would pay for it. Maybe this is a way for the transit system to attract readers to its other ads: having something identifiable, interesting, and essentially free might be worth it to them. Smallbones (talk) 01:17, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I think they're free (if I understand Google's translation correctly). 160.39.221.164 (talk) 06:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that there was apparently only a test run of the Wikipedia subway "ads", and the project hasn't progressed further since April, according to this recent posting on the mailing list of the German chapter. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]