On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Jay Walsh jwalsh@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
In the next day or so Rand and the fundraising team will be sending out an email to all of our donors (about 230,000 - thanks to a tremendous fundraiser) recapping the campaign sharing our 2nd annual report, which you can also read here:
Late to the party -- but just to reiterate what others have said -- this is a really lovely document, nice work. I especially like the article anatomy spread -- it's very well done and could make a nice separate handout on its own (with the timeline cut out). I also really like the choice of quotes on the back... we should get Nicholson Baker to speak sometime at an event :)
A couple notes for next time: * I don't think the photo of Jimmy is identified anywhere? The photo credit is given but it doesn't say who he is :) perhaps this is intentional... stealth founder... like a stealth bomber but so much cooler.
* the timeline is quirky and fun and I like it. But I wonder if some of these events could be tied back to wikip/media better. E.g. there's a note about swine flu; but it could also be noted that our articles on swine flu got over 200,000 hits/hour in the same time period, making wikipedia the 2nd most popular website in the U.S. on the subject.[1] There's a ton of interesting Wikimedia events, meetup dates, project milestones, etc. that could populate such a timeline instead of/in addition to general world events -- such a timeline might help give context to the diversity and scope of the projects better than prose can.
Having just written up an (incomplete!) summary of 2009[2], I am quite aware of how hard it is to keep track of everything going on in Wikimedia-land -- especially after the fact! I think we should create some kind of in-progress history page on Meta -- a place to chronicle milestones and significant events as they happen, and work on filling in a timeline of past events.[3] There was also a suggestion for last Wikimania from user:Henna that we put up big pieces of paper on the wall to create a timeline of wikimedia history in-person. Sadly that didn't happen at Wikimania, but it's still be a cool idea for a future conference -- or maybe an ongoing project at the office, if there's wallspace? Visitors could help edit the timeline -- byom (bring your own marker) :)
-- phoebe
1. According to Erik Zachte, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/News_an... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-01-11/2009_in... 3. there's http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on but it could be usefully expanded to include more stuff, in a different format -- easytimeline to the rescue?