Posted today on the Wikimedia Tech Blog:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/19/wikimedia-sites-move-to-primary-data-…
Wikimedia sites to move to primary data center in Ashburn, Virginia
Next week, the Wikimedia Foundation will transition its main technical
operations to a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia, USA. This is intended
to improve the technical performance and reliability of all Wikimedia
sites, including Wikipedia.
Engineering teams have been preparing for the migration to minimize
inconvenience to our users, but major service disruption is still expected
during the transition. Our sites will be in read-only mode for some time,
and may be intermittently inaccessible. Users are advised to be patient
during those interruptions, and share
information<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_maintenance_notice>in
case of continued outage or loss of functionality.
The current target windows for the migration are January 22nd, 23rd and
24th, 2013, from 17:00 to 01:00 UTC (see other
timezones<http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Wikimedia+data+cen…>on
timeanddate.com).
Wikimedia sites have been hosted in our main data center in Tampa, Florida,
since 2004; before that, the couple of servers powering Wikipedia were in
San Diego, California. Ashburn is the third and newest primary data center
to host Wikimedia sites.
A major reason for choosing Tampa, Florida as the location of the primary
data center in 2004 was its proximity to founder Jimmy Wales’ home, at a
time when he was much more involved in the technical operations of the
site. In 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Technical Operations team started
to look<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/07/wmf-needs-additional-datacenter-space/>for
other locations with better network connectivity and more clement
weather. Located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Ashburn offers
faster and more reliable connectivity than Tampa, and usually fewer
hurricanes.
The Operations team started to plan and prepare for the Virginia data
center in Summer 2010. The actual build-out and racking of servers at the
colocation facility started in February 2011, and was followed by a long
period of hardware, system and software configuration. Traffic started to
be served to users from the Ashburn data center in November 2011, in the
form of CSS and JavaScript assets (served from “bits.wikimedia.org“).
We reached a major milestone in February 2012, when caching servers were
set up to handle read-only requests for Wikipedia and Wikimedia content,
which represent most of the traffic to Wikipedia and its sister sites. In
April 2012, the Ashburn data center also started to serve media files (from
“upload.wikimedia.org“).
Cacheable requests represent about 90 percent of our traffic, leaving 10
percent that requires interaction with our web (Apache) and database
(MySQL) servers, which are still being hosted in Tampa. Until now, every
edit made to a Wikipedia page has been handled by the servers in Tampa.
This dependency on our Tampa data center was responsible for the site
outage in August
2012<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/08/06/wikimedia-site-outage-6-august-2012/>,
when a fiber cut severed the connection between our two locations.
Starting next week, the new servers in Ashburn will take on that role as
well, and all our sites will be able to function fully without relying on
the servers in Florida. The legacy data center in Tampa will continue to be
maintained, and will serve as a secondary “hot failover” data center:
servers will be in standby mode to take over, should the primary site
experiences an outage. Server configuration and data will be synchronized
between the two locations to ensure a transition as smooth as possible in
case of technical difficulties in Ashburn.
Besides just installing newer hardware, setting up the data center in
Ashburn has also been an opportunity for architecture overhauls, like
incremental improvements of the text storage
system<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/18/nobody-notices-when-its-not-broken-ne…>,
and the move to an entirely new media storage
system<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/09/scaling-media-storage-at-wikimedia-wi…>to
keep up with the growth of the content generated and curated by our
contributors.
Wikimedia’s technical infrastructure aims to be as open and collaborative
as the sites it powers. Most of the configuration of our
servers<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/19/ever-wondered-how-the-wikimedia-serve…>is
publicly accessible, and the Wikimedia
Labs <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/16/introduction-to-wikimedia-labs/>initiative
allows contributors to test and submit improvements to the
sites’ configuration files.
The Wikimedia Foundation currently operates a total of about 885 servers,
and serves about 20 billion page views a month, on a non-profit budget that
relies almost entirely on donations from readers.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org
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Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Dear Wikimedians,
Wikimedia Commons is happy to announce that the 2012 Picture of the Year
competition is now open. We're interested in your opinion as to which
images qualify to be the Picture of the Year for 2012. Voting is open to
established Wikimedia users who meet the following criteria:
1. Users must have an account, at any Wikimedia project, which was
registered *before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000*[UTC].
2. This user account must have more than *75 edits* on *any
single*Wikimedia project
*before Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000* [UTC]. Please check your
account eligibility at the POTY 2012 Contest Eligibility
tool<http://toolserver.org/%7Epathoschild/accounteligibility/?user=&wiki=&event=…>
.
3. Users must vote with an account meeting the above requirements either
on Commons or another SUL-related Wikimedia project (for other Wikimedia
projects, the account must be attached to the user's Commons account
through SUL <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login>).
Hundreds of images that have been rated Featured Pictures by the
international Wikimedia Commons community in the past year are all entered
in this competition. From professional animal and plant shots to
breathtaking panoramas and skylines, restorations of historically relevant
images, images portraying the world's best architecture, maps, emblems,
diagrams created with the most modern technology, and impressive human
portraits, Commons features pictures of all flavors.
For your convenience, we have sorted the images into topic categories. Two
rounds of voting will be held: In the first round, you can vote for as many
images as you like. The first round category winners and the top ten
overall will then make it to the final. In the final round, when a limited
number of images are left, you must decide on the one image that you want
to become the Picture of the Year.
To see the candidate images just go to the POTY 2012 page on Wikimedia
Commons <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012>
.
Wikimedia Commons celebrates our featured images of 2012 with this contest.
Your votes decide the Picture of the Year, so remember to vote in the first
round by *30 January 2013*
Thanks,
the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year committee
Hello, all.
Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, is doing an IRC
office hours on Saturday January 19 at 18:30:00 UTC. There is not currently
an agenda set for the meeting, but I will update the particulars on Meta if
that changes. Please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours for
particulars.
Thanks!
Maggie
--
Maggie Dennis
Community Liaison
WikimediaFoundation.org
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given
free access to the sum of all human knowledge."
Now image a world where a company will have the sum of all human knowledge.
http://youtu.be/1vxIveocxjMhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt2551516/
Tom
Congrats to everyone who worked on the Knight grant!
As someone who applied three years in a row for a News Challenge grant, I can assure you this is no small feat. ;o)
The News Challenge contest is very competitive, with thousands of applications submitted in each round from some of the top names in nonprofit journalism. So it's a testament to all your hard work that we were named a winner this year.
Nicely done, you guys!
Fabrice
On Jan 17, 2013, at 11:09 AM, wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 08:20:45 -0800
> From: Matthew Roth <mroth(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: press-release(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] [PRESS RELEASE]
> Wikimedia Foundation named Knight News Challenge winner
> Message-ID:
> <CAHNo=vbY2SF0JWpeG3nMEyY4KWaAhv-mZHn5xb6+1abNnSRpjA(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> (This press release is also available online at:
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_Kn…)
>
> Wikimedia Foundation named winner of Knight News Challenge
>
> $600,000 in Knight Foundation funding supports innovation across
> Wikimedia mobile initiatives
>
> SAN FRANCISCO, CA - January 17, 2013 - The Wikimedia Foundation was
> named a winner in the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight
> News Challenge for its efforts to expand and improve Wikimedia's
> mobile projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is enhancing the Wikipedia
> mobile experience and making it easier to access Wikipedia,
> particularly for readers in developing countries.
>
> As mobile technology is increasingly the primary opportunity for
> billions of people around the world to access the Internet, the
> Wikimedia Foundation is working to remove the two biggest hurdles to
> access free knowledge: cost and accessibility. The News Challenge
> grant will be utilized in four areas:
> *Improving the way that users experience our mobile platform on feature phones;
> *Expanding Wikipedia Zero, which gives mobile users free access to
> Wikipedia on their phones;
> *Developing features to improve the mobile experience regardless of
> how feature-rich the device is, including new ways to access Wikipedia
> via texting;
> *Increasing the number of languages that can access Wikipedia on mobile.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation is one of eight mobile projects to receive a
> total of $2.4 million today through the Knight News Challenge, which
> accelerates projects with funding and advice from Knight's network of
> media innovators. A full list is at knightfoundation.org.
>
> "Knight Foundation's funding will support us making the mobile version
> of Wikipedia easier to use, as well as enabling us to expand Wikipedia
> Zero, our project with mobile operators that lets their customers
> access Wikipedia for free," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of
> the Wikimedia Foundation. "I'm very happy Knight has chosen to support
> us; it's an important affirmation of our mobile work."
>
> Knight Foundation, the nation?s leading funder of journalism and media
> innovation, is committed to promoting democracy by supporting informed
> and engaged communities. Founded by newsmen John S. and James L.
> Knight, the foundation launched the Knight News Challenge in 2007 to
> find the next generation of innovations that help communities get the
> information they need.
>
> "Wikipedia has helped define the way that people collaboratively
> create content. Making the site available to more people across the
> world will help foster and spread that culture," said John Bracken,
> director for journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation.
>
> The $600,000 News Challenge grant is for two years and follows a
> general support grant of $250,000 that Knight Foundation awarded to
> the Wikimedia Foundation in December 2012.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation and the other winners of the challenge will
> present their projects via live Web stream at 12:30 p.m. ET/ 10:30
> a.m. MT Friday, January 18 at knightfoundation.org/live, from a
> gathering on the future of mobile at Arizona State University. (Follow
> #newschallenge on Twitter.)
>
> About the Wikimedia Foundation
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org
> http://blog.wikimedia.org
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
> Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
> Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
> receive more than 483 million unique visitors per month, making them
> the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, November
> 2012). Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 24
> million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of
> roughly 80,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the
> Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded
> primarily through donations and grants.
>
> Press contact
> Jay Walsh
> Senior Director, Communications
> Wikimedia Foundation
> Tel. +1 415-860-8166
> jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
>
> About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
>
> Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality
> journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster
> the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people
> and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit
> knightfoundation.org or newschallenge.org
>
> Press contact
> Andrew Sherry
> VP for Communications, Knight Foundation
> Tel. 305-908-2677
> sherry(a)knightfoundation.org
>
> (To unsubscribe from Wikimedia Foundation press releases, reply with
> "unsubscribe" in the subject line.)
>
>
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Donate to keep Wikipedia free:
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
(this announcement is also posted online at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Sue_Gardner_joins_Global…)
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner named to the Board
of Directors at Global Voices
SAN FRANCISCO -- January 16, 2013 -- The Wikimedia Foundation is happy
to announce that Sue Gardner has been named to the Board of Directors
at Global Voices. Global Voices is a community of more than 1300
authors and translators in dozens of countries around the world that
publishes reports from global citizen journalists, with an emphasis on
voices that aren't ordinarily heard in major international media.
“Global Voices does great work, and I’m really looking forward to
sharing experiences and expertise with the people involved there.”
said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “The
Wikimedia Foundation and Global Voices hold a lot of the same values,
and for me the most important is our shared commitment to freedom of
expression. The world needs strong voices advocating for internet
users’ right to express themselves and to access information without
impediment.”
Global Voices works at the intersections of citizen media, information
production, and volunteer communities. It was founded in 2005 by
anti-censorship advocate and former journalist Rebecca MacKinnon and
technologist and Africa expert Ethan Zuckerman, while they were both
fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
University.
“Sue brings to Global Voices a unique combination of knowledge and
experience that is particularly beneficial to the organisation. We're
really happy to be working with Sue, learning from her experience at
the Wikimedia Foundation,” said Ivan Sigal, Executive Director of
Global Voices. “We're also looking forward to having her presence and
creative thinking enlivening our board conversations.”
The Global Voices nine-member board meets four times per year, and has
been an active, engaged and vital part of their community since its
inception. The board is composed of its two founders, three community
representatives and four external members.
About Global Voices
http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/board-of-directors/
Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global
conversation online - shining light on places and people other media
outlets often ignore. Our international team of volunteer authors,
regional editors and translators are guides to global citizen media.
Every day, they provide dozens of links to interesting blog posts,
social networks, podcasts, photographs and videos from their regions,
and translate, analyze, and explain what’s happening around the world
in citizen media.
Press contact
Ivan Sigal
Executive Director
ivan(a)globalvoicesonline.org
Tel: +1 202 361 2712
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 483 million unique visitors per month, making them
the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, November
2012). Available in 285 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 24
million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of
roughly 80,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the
Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded
primarily through donations and grants.
Press contact
Jay Walsh
Senior Director, Communications
Wikimedia Foundation Tel. +1 415-860-8166
jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org
(to stop receiving press releases from the Wikimedia Foundation, reply
with "unsubscribe" in the subject line)
_______________________________________________
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
_______________________________________________
WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Do you guys think it makes any sense to use Meta to help handle the
workflow for both the blog and social media messages? See the item for
tomorrow where I've added proposed social media message for the two blog
posts I'm publishing tomorrow:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Blog/Calendar#January_2013
I don't know how we can make Meta work for this kind of thing, but it seems
to make sense to me to try to consolidate the tool we use for seeking and
giving feedback on these.
thoughts?
M
--
Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org
*https://donate.wikimedia.org*
Tom,
I too like that work of Catherine. I have it on my userpage also.
Pine
-
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:41:26 -0200
From: Everton Zanella Alvarenga <ezalvarenga(a)wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Mailing
list do Cap?tulo brasileiro da Wikimedia.
<wikimediabr-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] This is an encyclopedia
Message-ID:
<CAEXLhE_d2mYLT5Bhj75mOgAQe24yJkGCQCQrGoD9ox_Y1sX+mA(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
THIS
IS AN
ENCYCLOPEDIA
One gateway to the wide garden
of knowledge, where lies
The deep rock of our past,
in which we must delve
the well of our future,
The clear water we must leave untainted
for those who come after us,
The fertile earth, in which
truth may grow in bright places,
tended by many hands,
And the broad fall of sunshine,
warming our first steps toward knowing
how much we do not know.
*Catherine Munro*
inspired by *This is a printing
office<http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/rbsc2/ga/unseenhands/labels/wardePrintOffic…>
*,
by Beatrice Warde <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Warde>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CatherineMunro
Just discovered from a wikipedian friend from Kenya.
Tom
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful
than a life spent doing nothing."
Philippe Beaudette wrote, in response to:
>>...
>> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Reporter_Reimbursement_Program
>...
> I'm not sure that link makes the point you wish to make, James.
> For instance, you note that it has NO supporting signups?
Per http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposals_by_level_of_discussion
only three of the nineteen proposals which are listed in the first
through fifth level of discussion attained signups: "Wikimedia social
networking platform", "Stop using wikis for tasks for which wikis are
not suitable", and "Brand name consolidation", which each got exactly
one signup, some of which appear to be from the proposals' authors.
What we really need to know is how the Foundation measures support for
community proposals. Could you please explain that?
My informal tally suggests that the Foundation gives its most serious
consideration to community proposals which are discussed on this list.