An updated set of the comprehensive statistics produced by Erik Zachte was released last week, after an extended delay due to the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.5. Meanwhile, Wikipedia moves closer to cementing its status as a top 50 site in terms of web traffic.
On Wednesday, Zachte announced that he had produced a new set of statistics for Wikimedia Foundation projects and posted them to the Wikistats sitemap. The statistics cover all projects and languages except for the French and German Wikipedias, as the statistics script failed with those two (in the case of the German Wikipedia at least, the database dump was corrupted).
As Zachte had indicated earlier (see archived story), the database changes in MediaWiki 1.5 required significant alterations in the process of collecting these statistics. As a result, this was the first update to the statistics since May. And even with a new update, the information was already several weeks old, as the most recent dump of the MediaWiki database dated from 13 July.
In connection with this problem, Zachte questioned why the database dumps were being given such a low priority. Chief Technical Officer Brion Vibber explained that he had been working for several days on "getting the dump generation infrastructure up and running in a more consistent, effective fashion." He pointed out that in addition to bugs that needed fixing, the process being used required going through the database twice, once for current files only and once for all revisions. Vibber reported that he was working on a new tool to produce both versions simultaneously, as well as generating filtered database dumps that remove user pages and talk pages. This received its first test run on Saturday.
Wikipedia traffic continues to grow as well, as the site should soon move into the first 50 on the Alexa list of the top 500 global websites. As of Sunday, Wikipedia stood at #51, right behind Mediaplex, whose ranking comes mostly from being an internet advertising provider. This ranking is calculated over three-month periods, and will likely continue moving higher since Wikipedia's daily traffic rank has been fairly consistently in the 40s for a few weeks.
With the addition of over USD $30,000 from Wikimedia Deutschland, the Wikimedia fundraising drive surpassed its mammoth $200,000 goal, with four days to spare.
While a decline in donations was noticed over the past week, with relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in the spotlight, donations still came pouring in from all over the world. Many donors left encouraging comments, like "[to] help on the quest to create the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "This is probably one of the best things the internet has created."
The fundraising drive started on 19 August, and is scheduled to run through 9 September. The drive aims to pay for the significant server costs, which have risen dramatically recently.
A Richmond Times-Dispatch article ran on 3 September, highlighting the pros and cons of Wikipedia. It included a quote from Trlovejoy. The article is quite incorrect in a few spots, however, tending to make Wikipedia sound more like an Internet fad than a collaborative encyclopedia. It also states that the English language Wikipedia is the "U.S. version".
Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:
More requests for bureaucratship were made this week, and both the title and the process came under debate. Meanwhile, 9 users became administrators. 12 articles, 4 lists and 7 pictures were promoted to featured status.
Previously Andrevan pointed out that bureaucrats now had responsibility for changing usernames, and nominated himself (see archived story). He emerged unsuccessful, having garnered 50 support votes, 10 opposes and 1 neutral. Rdsmith4 (nom) also put himself forward and was promoted with 48 supports and 1 oppose. Currently Linuxbeak (nom) and Nichalp (nom) are being voted on.
As requests for bureaucratship are fairly uncommon, they have promoted a flurry of discussion. UninvitedCompany (a bureaucrat himself) proposed a change in title for "bureaucrats". Various suggestions were made (not all of them entirely serious) including "Super-Admins", "Daimons", "Lambies", "user rights administrator" and "Admins on Wheels". So far there is no consensus for changing to any of these names. Andrevan also created a poll to gauge the standard required for promotion of bureaucrats, which has attracted controversy.
Nine users were granted admin status this week - Jtkiefer (nom), Marianocecowski (nom), Nufy8 (nom), JesseW (nom), DanielCD (nom), Sam Hocevar (nom), Scimitar (nom), Asbestos (nom) and Beland (nom).
Twelve articles were featured this week - Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport, Krag-Petersson, Hubble Deep Field, Cerebellum, Asthma, Sociocultural evolution, Witold Lutosławski, Wolf, Phishing, Shrimp farm, San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Jean Schmidt. It was decided not to promote the controversial Terri Schiavo article but another particularly controversial article replaced it on featured article candidates, the second nomination of Gay Nigger Association of America.
Over at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates four lists gained featured status - List of recognised political parties in India, List of Hong Kong ODI cricketers, List of spacewalks and moonwalks and The Oz books.
Seven featured picture candidates were promoted. Also notable was the nomination of the infamous Image:Autofellatio 2.jpg which ended without being promoted.
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The Arbitration Committee did not close any cases this week. There was no new action taken this week in open cases.
DotSix, the name for an IP address engaged in vandalism, sockpuppeting, and editing of other users' comments in his RFAr, has been banned from all pages except his talk page and his RFAr pages. The case is currently in the evidence phase.
Cases against Gabrielsimon and -Ril- are in the working phase. Cases against Stevertigo and Rainbowwarrior1977 are in the evidence phase.
Requests against Ultramarine and Ed Poor have both garnered four votes, the bare minimum for a RFAr to be accepted.
