Erik wrote:

Yes, I know what you're thinking -- not another "x articles" press release.

I thought we had well over 200,000 articles... I just checked en.wiki's Multilingual statistics page; the number is 270,616 as of July 31. So why not wait until we have 300,000 articles? That seems like a better milestone and it includes the /whole/ Wikipedia project, not just the English version. We already had a press release just for the English version earlier this year anyway.

NOTE: The growth of the non-English versions of Wikipedia since January of this year has been /far/ more impressive than has the growth of en.wiki during the same time period; ~35,000 total articles in January to ~120,000 total articles in July. So, I think it is about time we had our first Wikipedia-wide press release and try to stop mentioning the success of the other languages only in passing.

Well, I think for the next time we should think of some other news to announce:

1. Wikimedia Foundation set up as an umbrella

organization for applying the wiki idea to a wide set of problems

Yep.

2. Basic Wikimedia homepage set up

I would like to help with that as soon as I get a chance to see the by-laws... We can work things out on meta (all Wikimedia pages should also be exactly translated into as many languages as possible).

Speaking of which, I think that meta should be moved to the Wikimedia.org domain and for it act as a place to plan current and future Wikimedia projects and also figure out ways for them to interoperate (in fact it is already starting to perform this role). A Wikimedia mailing list would also be nice.

Since we have project-specific namespaces (such as wikipedia: or wiktionary:) there is no need for each project to have its own meta (historical note: Meta was created as a place to move Wikipedia-specific pages in order to not "pollute" the article space but that role has been largely replaced by project namespaces). But we do need a neutral place outside of each Wikimedia project to coordinate all of our activities.

What about a Wikimedia logo? Perhaps one of the runner-ups for the Wikipedia logo contest could be voted on.

Oh, and we do not own Wikimedia.com - a cyber-squatter got that. So we may want to use WikimediaFoundation.org in the announcement (I own the .com as well) so that people won't get lost when some of them instinctively type .com (I really don't care if Wikimedia.org or WikimediaFoundation.org is the actual home of the Foundation's website, so long as all three links work - we can deal with the squatter per ICANN trademark policy later).

3. Wikimedia starts taking donations

Yes - I think this is the most important part of such an announcement even though we are going to wrap it into an article count milestone statement.

4. Wikibooks launched

Wikibooks needs to localize its language.php file and put up at least a temporary logo first. Not to mention a move from the Wikipedia subdomain to Wikibooks.org (I also own the .com as well as the singular .com/.org).

In addition, Wikibooks has some fairly important software needs that should be addressed before such an announcement and inevitable increase in contributors (major need: the porting over of pyWiki's php/GPL WikiGroup functionality). However, there might not be enough time if a developer isn't really interested in that (I'm willing to learn php just to do the port, but that will take some time).

5. Wikiquote launched

Jimbo owns Wikiquote.org/.com so a move would be nice for Wikiquote as well.

6. Two week fundraising drive to allow us to buy new hardware etc.

Yep. Although last I heard there really isn't room for more than one more machine. Upgrades to our existing hardware would be nice though.

We'll have 150K articles in about 3 weeks. Can we get this stuff sorted out until then? E.g. have wikibooks.org set up, and have an account for donations? Jimbo?

I wanted to start localizing the language.php file for Wikibooks yesterday but Brion said on his talk page that he was working on a nifty new interface for that type of thing. I'll still do it the old fashioned way if Brion's new interface isn't going to be running in time (see above though - we can get more time by waiting for the 300,000 article announcement).

Brion already has the password to access Wikimedia.org but I'm the only one that has the passwords to access WikimediaFoundation.org/.com, Wikibooks.org/.com and Wikibook.org/.com. I'll offlist email this information to whichever developer needs them as soon as they ask. Of course I plan to donate all these domain names to Wikimedia as soon as there is a legal means to do so (Wiktionary.org and Wikimedia.org also have to be legally transfered from me to the Foundation).

This might well be one of the biggest announcements in Wikipedia's history, and we should prepare it well.

I agree. Let's get to it.

Oh, and just for fun we might want to mention, mostly in passing, that according to Alexa.com we are clearly ahead of Britannica.com in terms of daily hits. I would not, however, be boastful about that - just informative.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=wikipedia&p=Det_W_g_...

Type in Britannica.com into the Compare Sites field. Wow - try Slashdot.org too (we seem to be gaining on them - maybe we will pass them the next time we get Slashdotted ;).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)