Financial statements, discussions, milestones

The Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year Financial Statements (covering the period 1 July through 31 December 2009) are now posted to the WMF website. An FAQ replying to questions has also been posted.

According to Veronique Kessler, posting on Foundation-l:

The upshot is: The Wikimedia Foundation's financial situation continues to be strong; we have met our overall revenue goal for the year and projections say that we will exceed plan by about 50%. Expenses were underspent at the beginning of the year but are catching up and we project expenses to be close to the original plan, maybe a little higher.

A Request for comments on the implementation of Community de-adminship is currently ongoing.

A heated discussion was held recently about the status of flagged revisions on the mailing list Foundation-l.

Following the discussion, Jimmy Wales started a poll in his userspace about "whether we should ask the Foundation to simply turn on flagged revs in the form that the Germans use it."

For six hours on 2 March, the "Did You Know" section on the main page presented a fake biography manufactured as a breaching experiment by one of the writers of the "On Wikipedia" blog, as part of their examinations of BLP issues. (Last month, the Signpost reported on their survey among the subjects of 26 randomly selected BLPs.) Jimbo Wales commented: Fascinating and sad. I'm really proud of some aspects of the saga, and obviously not at all happy with others.

Phase II of a Request for Comment on Biographies of Living Persons (BLPs) was closed this week. The Wordsmith originally closed the RfC, but his closure was reverted by Coffee, as he felt that The Wordsmith was too involved to close the RfC. Father Goose nominally re-closed the RfC, affirming The Wordsmith's earlier closure.

The close found a consensus that a PROD-like system be created to deal with unreferenced BLPs. The Wordsmith also found consensus that mass deletions of the sort that precipitated the RfC (see archived story) were discouraged, as well as any automated deletion of old unreferenced BLPs or speedy deletion of new ones. Finally, he suggested that the details of the PROD-like process be finally crafted within two weeks of the closure; that a message be sent to all active WikiProjects urging them to participate in cleanup; and that a taskforce be created to organize efforts of clearing the backlog. The Sticky Prod Workshop was created to hammer out the final details of the BLP PROD process.

• Registration is now open for the MediaWiki Developers' Workshop in Berlin on 14–16 April; registration is open until 21 March, but is limited to 50 people.
• The Strategy Project's Living People task force held an IRC meeting on 8 March (log), discussing a draft for its Recommendations to the Board of Trustees.
• A recording of User:Steven Walling's talk at Ignite Portland 2010 has been uploaded to YouTube: Why Wikipedians are the Weirdest People on the Internet
• Jimmy Wales has started to answer user-submitted questions at the "Ask me anything" site Formspring.me, many of them about Wikipedia.
• The Polish Wikimedia Conference will be held on 27–28 March.

In the past month:

• The English Wiktionary has reached 1,600,000 entries.
• The Egyptian Arabic (Masry) Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Serbian Wikinews have reached 30,000 news articles.
• The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles with Dako nga Tagapagpabunggo hin Hadron.
• The Hungarian Wikinews has reached 500 articles.
• The French Wikiquote has reached 2,000 articles with Wajdi Mouawad.
• The Russian Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles with Ys.
• The Ossetian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Malayalam Wiktionary has reached 40,000 entries.
• The Romanian Wikinews has reached 500 articles.
• The Czech Wikipedia has reached 5000000 edits.
• The Portuguese Wiktionary has reached 140,000 articles.
• The Azeri Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
• The Irish Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles with Ivan Bunin.
• The Czech Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
• The Malayalam Wiktionary has reached 35,000 entries.
• Wiktionary has reached 40,000,000 edits.
• The Portuguese Wiktionary has reached 130,000 articles.
• The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 5,000 files.

• 2005: Fundraiser ends early, having exceeded goal with $100,000 donated
• 2006: 1 Millionth article reached on English Wikipedia, with Jordanhill railway station
• 2007: Essjay resigns after New Yorker correction controversy
• 2008: Marsden-Wales media flap
• 2009: Commons reaches 4,000,000 files

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-03-08/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-03-08/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-03-08/In focus