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
(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.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
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.)
(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)
Hello everyone,
We've today published a call for papers for our GLAM-Wiki conference which
takes place in London in April. We’re looking for proposals for
presentations, workshop proposals, or panel discussions, lasting up to an
hour (which would include questions).
Take a look at our blog post <http://bit.ly/XeBoio> on this for full
details of how to get involved.
Thanks and regards,
Stevie
--
Stevie Benton
Communications Organiser
Wikimedia UK+44 (0) 20 7065 0993 / +44 (0) 7803 505 173
@StevieBenton
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513.
Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street,
London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a
global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the
Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal
control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
*Hi all,
I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new grantmaking program at the
Wikimedia Foundation: Individual Engagement Grants. These grants will
support Wikimedians as individuals or small teams to complete projects that
benefit the Wikimedia movement, lead to online impact, and serve the
mission, community, and strategic priorities. This new program is intended
to complement WMF’s other grantmaking programs as well as the grants that
chapters and affiliate organizations provide.
The first round of proposals will be accepted from now until 15 February
2013. We’re also seeking committee members to help select the first round
of grantees. Please help spread the word to other lists!
To get involved, share your thoughts, submit a proposal, or join the
committee:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG
For more information on all of WMF’s grantmaking programs:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start
Best wishes,*
Siko
--
Siko Bouterse
Head of Individual Engagement Grants
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. *
*Donate <https://donate.wikimedia.org> or click the "edit" button today,
and help us make it a reality!*
Dear all,
As you know, we recently re-named the Global Development department at the
Wikimedia Foundation, as the Grantmaking and Programs department. The
Grantmaking team is committed to supporting our community and meeting our
shared goals at the different levels of contribution - whether individuals,
groups or organisations - and we will be working with you over the next
few months to deepen our strategies for doing so, and for evaluating our
impact.
In the meantime, however, I am delighted to announce some changes to the
Grantmaking team that reflect this commitment. Siko Bouterse [1] needs no
introduction to most of you, having worked at WMF since 2011, most recently
coordinating the Fellowships program. Siko is coming on to the Grantmaking
team as Head of Individual Engagement Grants, a program that will support
individual or small team projects for online impact. This is to be launched
later today... watch out for Siko's announcement and details of the
program, coming soon to a wiki near you. Siko will also shortly be taking
on the responsibility for the Participation Support Program (which WMF and
WMDE fund together), and supporting the documentation and analysis of our
project-based grants. We are really pleased to have Siko's experience and
insights on our team.
Katy Love is new to the team, the organisation and the movement, but I have
no doubt that her experience and insights, as well, will help us be more
effective. Katy has just joined us as the Senior Program Officer for the
Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) [2] with a passion for strategic and
impactful grantmaking, participatory collaborative work, and transparent
decision-making. Her background spans philanthropic activities and NGO
programs, systems, and operations. She spent the last four years at CARE
International with the Emergency Capacity Building Project, a collaboration
between six of the largest NGOs, aimed at improving humanitarian response.
Please join me in welcoming them to our team!
Warmly,
Anasuya
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Sbouterse
[2] http://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=owwHWfwp&c=qSa9VfwQ
--
***Anasuya Sengupta
Senior Director of Grantmaking
Wikimedia Foundation*
*
*
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Support Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
--
***Anasuya Sengupta
Senior Director of Grantmaking
Wikimedia Foundation*
*
*
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
Support Wikimedia <https://donate.wikimedia.org/>
(This press release can also be found online here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_la…)
Wikimedia Foundation launches Wikivoyage, a free, worldwide travel
guide that anyone can edit
Wikivoyage becomes the 12th official Wikimedia project and debuts on
Wikipedia's 12th birthday
SAN FRANCISCO -- 15 January, 2013 -- The Wikimedia Foundation is
excited to announce the launch of its 12th official project:
Wikivoyage (www.wikivoyage.org), a free, worldwide, online travel
guide. Like Wikipedia and its sister projects, Wikivoyage is free to
edit, free of ads, and built collaboratively by volunteers from around
the globe.
Wikivoyage is currently available in nine languages: Dutch, English,
French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
There are already approximately 50,000 articles, which are edited and
improved by a core group of approximately 200 volunteer editors.
"There's a huge global demand for travel information, but very few
sources are both comprehensive and non-commercial. That's about to
change," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation. "Wikivoyage is a great, useful service for travelers, and
I'm expecting that with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and
the global Wikimedia editing community, it's going to get even bigger
and better."
Wikivoyage has been an active wiki-based travel guide since 2006 in
German and Italian, supported by the German non-profit Wikivoyage
Association. The contributors on that site and the non-profit
requested to migrate their content and offered to donate their brand
to the new project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. The proposal
was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in October
2012. The site was moved over to the Wikimedia Foundation servers in
November of 2012, where it was in Beta until today.
"The purpose of the Wikivoyage Association is to promote education and
knowledge of all countries and regions in the world, as well as
understanding among nations," said Stefan Fussan, Chairman of the
board of the Wikivoyage Association. "We're very excited about the
launch of Wikivoyage as a Wikimedia project, and about the future role
of the Association in supporting the Wikivoyage community through its
programs."
Wikivoyage is published under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, which allows anyone the right to
read, copy, print, save, download, modify, distribute, sell, and
update its content in any way, provided the terms of the free license
are respected. This includes giving proper attribution to the creators
of the content and ensuring that any reuse or derivative works are
also freely-licensed.
"As contributors to Wikivoyage, we work hard to create high-quality
content, written by travelers, for travelers, in their own language,"
said Peter Fitzgerald, an administrator on Wikivoyage. "We're very
excited to be part of the Wikimedia community, and we invite travelers
to join us in creating an independent, non-commercial, online travel
guide for the world. We are confident that it will become the number
one travel resource on the web."
The Wikivoyage launch coincides with the 12th anniversary of the
founding of Wikipedia on January 15th, 2001.
Official Wikivoyage logo:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikivoyage-logo-en-TTO-attempt.svg
Visit the Wikivoyage portal site here:
http://www.wikivoyage.org/
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
Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel. +1 415-839-6885 x6635
mroth(a)wikimedia.org
Hi all,
the new bulletin from Wikimedia Italia (#43) is available.
This time we write about participation of Wikimedia Italia to a new Italian
initiative for high school students, and the videos of the presentation of
our members at Wikimania 2012. Moreover, a doctoral dissertation about the
use of Wikipedia as a "collective memory" is reviewed.
As usual a link has been added to meta, at
Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Italia ; raw text of the bulletin
follows below.
ciao, .mau.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
*WikimediaNews* - no. 43 - January 9, 2013
Official bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.
Happy New Year to all our volunteers, members and donors!
Wikimedia Italia attends the presentation of Dai una voce alla democrazia
*Dai una voce alla democrazia* (*Give voice to democracy*) is born. The
initiative is a digital literacy project developed in the context of 2013
edition of Biennale Democrazia <http://biennaledemocrazia.it/>, with the
collaboration of Nexa Center, Wikimedia Italy and Centro Servizi Piemonte;
it is aimed at students who, together with their teachers, are invited to
choose an article of Wikipedia related to the concepts of utopia,
participation and civil society, and to develop it. The staff of Wikimedia
Italia will take part in the public presentation of the initiative, which
will be held on Thursday, January 17, 2013 from 14:30 to 17:30 at Avogadro
Institute in Turin. In addition, they will support the classes throughout
the creation process. Participation to the initiative is still open: the
classes can register to the project until 31 January 2013.
Videos of Wikimania 2012 talks are online
Videos of the talks from members of Wikimedia Italia at Wikimania 2012 are
now online.
- In session "GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums)": The
Power of Wikipedia: Legitimacy and Territorial
Control<http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_Power_of_Wikipedia:…>(Iolanda
Pensa from min. 43:00). Link
to video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVoFS_cJWho>.
- In session "Wikis and the Public sector": The 2011 Italian Wikipedia
Blackout<http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/2011_Italian_Wikipedia_…>(Niccolò
Caranti from min. 0:00, Luca Martinelli from min. 5:00, Lorenzo
Losa from min. 11:00). Link to
video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35T7ceVT5jU>.
- In session "WikiCulture and Community; Research, Analysis, and
Education": What we've done, what we could do
better<http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikisource:_what_we%27v…>(Andrea
Zanni from min. 0:00). Link
to video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVHW20njYUg>.
- In session "Technology and Infrastructure": Wikicaptcha: a
re-captcha-like solution for
WikiSource<http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikicaptcha:_a_ReCAPTCH…>(Cristian
Consonni from min. 0:58). Link
to video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVHW20njYUg>.
News in brief
(Note: in this translated version only the news regarding Italy are shown)
- Michela Ferron, member of the research group on social networking at
Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, wrote a doctoral dissertation about
Wikipedia as an element of collective recollection, especially in the case
of traumatic events. Read abstract and
dissertation<http://eprints-phd.biblio.unitn.it/830/>.
- The list of most viewed articles on Wikipedia
2012<https://toolserver.org/%7Ejohang/2012.html>in the various
editions was issued. For the Italian language Wikipedia, the
article most viewed has beed Grey's
Anatomy<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey%27s_Anatomy>,
followed by Italia <http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italia> and
Roma<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma>.
- Last December 30, element no.
2.000.000<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2000000>has been published on
Wikidata. It is about Stasina Americana, a species of huntsman
spider <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparassidae>. In the meantime,
Sven Manguard published a guide about how to contribute to Wikidata; a
wikidatian has prepared an Italian
version<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Come_contribuire_a_Wikidata.pdf>.
