[Foundation-l] November 2009 Report to the Board of Trustees
James Owen
jowen at wikimedia.org
Fri Feb 19 05:16:56 UTC 2010
Report to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Covering: November 2009
Prepared for: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
MILESTONES FROM NOVEMBER
1. Kick-off of 2009 Annual Giving Campaign
2. Multimedia Usability Meeting in Paris
3. Board meeting in San Francisco
4. Second usability study published
5. New hire: Neil Kandalgaonkar (software developer)
KEY PRIORITIES FOR DECEMBER
1. Annual Giving Campaign
2. Wikimania 2010 planning meeting
3. CTO search continues
THIS PAST MONTH
KEY PROGRAM METRICS
Reach of all Wikimedia Foundation sites:
346 million unique visitors (rank #5)
+23.1% (1 year ago) / +0.4% (1 month ago)
Source: comScore Media Metrics
Pages served:
11.3 billion
+7.7% (1 year ago) / -2.8% (1 month ago)
Active number of editors (5+ edits/month): 96,521
+4.0% (1 year ago) / +0.1% (1 month ago)
Source: November 2009 Report Card
<http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2009_11_detailed.html>
KEY FINANCIAL METRICS
Operating revenue year to date: USD 3.7MM vs. plan of USD 3.93 MM
Operating expenses year to date: USD 3.0MM vs. plan of USD 4.1 million
2009 ANNUAL GIVING CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES
On November 11, the Wikimedia Foundation kicked off its 2009 Annual
Giving Campaign under the theme “Wikipedia Forever”, with a campaign
goal of USD 7.5 million in individual donations (including individual
gifts received year-to-date), out of our budget of USD 10.4 million.
This is the sixth WMF fundraising campaign.
The Wikimedia Foundation was supported by Fenton Communications and
Sea Change Strategies in the development of messaging for the
campaign. After some initial rapid iteration of messaging in response
to both fundraising results and community feedback, daily results
began to outperform previous fundraisers on November 17, and by
November 27, the cumulative total exceeded the success of previous
fundraisers. The full progression of the fundraiser relative to
previous ones can be followed here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics
For the purpose of this fundraiser, several important changes were
implemented:
-The Wikimedia Foundation now offers “white label” credit card
processing. While we still use PayPal to process credit card
information, this can now be done without leaving the Wikimedia
Foundation website. This change is meant to address potential
confusion and fear associated with making payments through a separate
website.
-International Wikimedia chapters are more deeply integrated into our
annual campaign than ever before. An IP address lookup determines the
country-of-origin of potential donors, and gives them relevant chapter
information on the donation landing page. Revenue sharing agreements
are in place with all participating chapters.
-The tracking infrastructure for comparing the success of individual
banners, landing pages, and payment gateways has been and continues to
be significantly improved. Tracking data is publicly shared at <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionTrackingStatistics
>.
-In spite of some hiccups with the first banners, the browser testing
process was significantly improved compared with previous years.
-As a result of the communications support and improved tracking, we
could test more messages more quickly than ever before.
-For the first time, mobile giving was added as an option for US-based
donors.
Press release about the campaign:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_launches_2009_annual_giving_campaign
STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT
The strategy project is almost halfway through: it started in July
2009 and will conclude in July 2010. In October, 14 task forces were
created covering the following areas: increasing reach and
participation in China, India, and Arabic-speaking countries;
stimulating development of smaller “local language” Wikipedias;
increasing Wikimedia project readership among the five billion people
who don't currently have internet access; improving quality; expanding
into additional content areas beyond what Wikimedia currently offers;
increasing participation, particularly from high-potential under-
represented groups; fostering a healthy, productive editing community;
determining what organizational structures are required to support the
Wikimedia movement and how they should intersect; ensuring financial
sustainability; identifying the partnerships that are most critical to
advancing Wikimedia's mission; identifying the ideal technology
infrastructure, and ways to increase usability and foster technical
innovation; and developing recommendations for strategically
supporting high-priority advocacy.
Throughout November, the task forces began their discussions, designed
to culminate in recommendations in January. The strategy project is
the first group using the LiquidThreads extension for these types of
conversations, and its usage has helped drive the further evolution of
the tool. The strategy wiki has had over 150 unique contributors to
its LiquidThreads discussions, and has averaged over 25 posts/day.
In the process of driving towards recommendations, the Task Forces are
synthesizing and generating a lot of their own research. Much of this
research is being captured in the form of “Wikimedia-pedia”, an
encyclopedia about Wikimedia. By the end of the process, the
Foundation not only expects to have a five-year strategic plan, but
also a well-organized body of knowledge about the Wikimedia universe.
This will serve as a collective snapshot of what Wikimedia knows about
itself, as well as open, ongoing questions.
In late November, the strategy team launched a new feature on the
strategy wiki called, "Question of the week," which features a slice
of data collected by Bridgespan along with a provocative strategic
question. This is essentially a large-scale version of the exercise
Bridgespan led the Wikimedia Foundation board through at its meeting
in early November. Additionally, Bridgespan has continued to
aggressively identify and interview key external voices to help inform
the overall process. As of the end of November, 26 interviews had been
posted on the strategy wiki, including ones with Advisory Board
members Angela Beesley Starling and Mitch Kapor, board members Ting
Chen and Samuel Klein, experts Ed Chi and Rima Kupryte, and staff
members Sue Gardner and Frank Schulenburg. The interviews can be found
here:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interviews
Themes extracted from them have been collected here:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interviews/Summary_of_interviews
BOARD MEETING IN SAN FRANCISCO
On November 13-15, the Board of Trustees met in San Francisco. This
was the first Board meeting in the new Wikimedia Foundation offices.
Its agenda included an update from the Audit Committee, a walkthrough
of some major donor case studies, review of an update to the bylaws,
an update on the strategy plan, an update on the advisory board, and
an update on the board seat vacancy appointment process. Summary by
Board chair Michael Snow:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-November/056295.html
TECHNOLOGY - CORE
Significant staff effort was directed toward support of the Annual
Giving Campaign. Hardware purchases and deployments were also in full
swing, with purchases of new media storage servers, transcoding
servers for video, a new mobile server, a new server for PDF
generation, a new payment server. Large orders for new Squid servers,
database servers, and application servers will follow. (New purchases
also necessitate new investments in space, racks, networking
equipment, etc.) Code review for MediaWiki 1.16 continued.
USABLITY INITIATIVE
The report of the second usability study was published by Parul Vora
via WMF's blog [1] on November 18th. The study confirmed that changes
are progressing in the right direction - towards greater ease of use
for novice users. The majority of such users interviewed in this study
showed less intimidation, completed tasks faster and with greater
ease, and employed the tools and features we have implemented without
instruction and with success. By the end of November the usability
beta was visited and tested by close to 380,000 users. The beta has
been drawing roughly 100,000 users every month, and close to 300,000
users have kept the beta enabled by the end of November. The beta
program was adopted relatively well by the beta users of English
Wikipedia (83% retention rate), and in other English language projects
such as the English Wikinews (95% retention rate). Spanish and
Portuguese Wikipedia beta users have the second highest retention rate
at 81%. German, Russian, Chinese, French and Italian Wikipedia beta
users are retained in the range between 70% and 79%. Retention rate
for Polish and Japanese was relatively low, with 65% and 60%
respectively. Analysis on browser dependency and language specific
issues are described in the WMF blog. [2] [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/18/ux-usability-study-take-two/
[2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/03/how-is-the-usability-beta-doing/
MULTIMEDIA USABILITY From November 6 to 8, a group of about thirty
people met in Paris to discuss how to improve the processes and
technologies for contributing multimedia to Wikimedia projects. It was
the first meeting of its kind, sponsored and organized by one of
Wikimedia’s chapter organizations, Wikimedia France, in partnership
with the Wikimedia Foundation. [3] Outcomes of the meeting included a
demo of editable video subtitling on Wikimedia Commons, and a first
test deployment of the GlobalUsage extension that shows usage of
multimedia files across Wikimedia's sites.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/fun-with-subtitles/
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GlobalUsage
Neil Kandalgaonkar [4] joined the multi-media usability team as a
software developer. Neil brings the breadth of experience in software
engineering from major social networking web sites such as Flickr and
Upcoming.org. Neil oversaw improving payment system and performance of
FlickrMail interface at Flickr, integrated Upcoming.org into Yahoo
properties and helped expand the team. Prior to Yahoo!, Neil was with
Google and his main responsibility was to enable Google Checkout
system for non-US markets. Neil holds Bachelor of Arts in
Communication Studies from Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada.
The visa application process has started so that Neil can join the
team in San Francisco. [3] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/01/beyond-text-report-from-the-multimedia-usability-meeting-in-paris/
[4]http://brevity.org/
OTHER PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
During November, Frank Schulenburg and Pete Forsyth embarked upon the
development of a model for how to systematically improve articles of a
specific topic areas on Wikipedia. They met with professors of several
U.S. universities (Harvard University, the University of Georgia, the
University of Syracuse, George Washington University, Tufts
University) seeking input to help them plan a large quality-
improvement initiative that is intended to start in 2010. In
preparation for this initiative, Frank worked with the best practices
documentation team on the "Assigning Wikipedia articles as coursework
to students" pages on the outreach wiki.
Frank also attended the Multimedia Usability Project Meeting in Paris
and led documentation of the cooperation between Wikimedia and the
German Federal Archives:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/German_Federal_Archives_case_study
Marlita Kahn interviewed potential vendors, reviewed their proposals
and then hired the Bookshelf core vendor team. She confirmed the
Bookshelf relationship with Common Craft regarding video production,
built the draft schedule and developed a more detailed budget. Marlita
also recruited volunteers from the Wikipedia community to act as
advisers for the Bookshelf materials. Marlita prepared for the
December 1 kick off meeting with the entire Bookshelf team.
Cary Bass opened up the call for invitation to join the Wikimania 2011
Jury and gave ongoing support to the 2009 Annual Fundraiser. Cary also
moderated office hours for Rand Montoya, Naoko Komura and Veronique
Kessler.
COMMUNICATIONS
The communications team with the assistance of contractors Fenton
Communications and Sea Change focused on finalizing the first round of
the annual giving campaign messages, drafting the campaign press
release, offering strategy and counsel on next-steps following the
delayed start of the campaign, and offering strategies to shift lesser
performing messages through the first week of the campaign. The team
has been actively involved in developing later stage messaging as
well, providing the fundraising team with a sufficient supply of
messages to test varied concepts through November and December.
Major coverage during November revolved around the following stories:
1. ComScore/WMF announcement draws coverage (Novmber 4)
Modest, largely positive coverage of the comScore/WMF partnership
announcement in early November. Most outlets re-posted press coverage,
several bloggers and microbloggers highlighted the data points
revealed by comScore, namely the visit time length data in countries
like Colombia.
http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news10801.htm
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=116829
2. German ex-convicts attempt to sue WMF (November 10)
Lawyers, representing two German men released on parole after serving
time in prison for killing a German actor in 1990, attempted to have
their clients' names removed from Wikipedia. The German language
Wikipedia complied with the request, and the English language version
did not. This received considerable attention from American media,
most of whom criticized German privacy law, or used the story to
highlight the difficulty of applying national law to an international
medium.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/murderer-wikipedia-shhh
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10396864-93.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/opinion/28iht-edmorozov.html?_r=1
3. WMF Announces 2009 Annual Giving Campaign (November 10)
Launch of the Wikimedia Foundation's 2009 annual giving campaign
received some coverage.
http://deals.venturebeat.com/2009/11/10/wikipedia-seeks-to-raise-7-5m-in-wikipedia-forever-campaign/
http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/top-stories/430382/wikipedia-launches-fundraising-campaign
4. Craig Newmark joins WMF Advisory Board (November 13)
News of Craig Newmark's appointment to the WMF Advisory Board received
highly favorable mentions in mostly online news outlets. Shortly
afterwards, Craig hailed Wikipedia in the Newsweek story "Unknown in
1999, Indispensable today," which received wide coverage in social
media.
http://2010.newsweek.com/top-10/unknown-in-1999-indispensable-now/wikipedia.html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3mMtCWnCOEJ__mrN8MBK9XWJiAQD9BUPCI00
http://www.cnewmark.com/2009/11/wikipedia-is-a-big-deal-so-if-i-can-help-a-little.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/13/craigslists-craig-newmark-joins-wikimedia-foundation-advisory-board/
5. Webby Awards name Wikipedia's launch one of “the top 10 Internet
moments of the decade” (November 19)
The Webbys named Wikipedia's launch as one of the top ten Internet
moments of the decade, which received considerable coverage. CBC.CA in
Canada, the Associate Press, ABC (US), and dozens of blogs highlighted
the story.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ghMwkdsA8fOJBWds1YDhRaLR5RlA
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/top-10-internet-moments-decade/story?id=9116013
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/18/webby-internet-awards-decade.html
6. Sue Gardner: Huffington Post readers' 'media game changer of the
year' (November 19)
Sue Gardner was chosen by Huffington Post readers as 'Media Game
Changer of the Year,' a story which drew considerable attention from
online blogs, microblogs, and media outlets. More than 1.7 million
votes were cast in 10 categories over a period of three months, with
Sue emerging victorious over competitors Tina Brown, Katie Couric, Tim
Westergren of Pandora and Alberto Ibarguen of the Knight Foundation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huffpost-game-changers-yo_b_363624.html
7. Wall Street Journal claims 'volunteers logging off' (November 23)
A front-page story in the November 13 Wall Street Journal ignited a
firestorm of alarmist coverage, much of it wrongly claiming that
Wikipedia's editors were declining in number. The article said that
English Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 editors during the
first three months of 2009, analysis attributed to researcher Felipe
Ortega. In actual fact, editing peaked in late 2007, declined
slightly, and has remained stable since. A follow-up blog post by Erik
Moeller and Erik Zachte challenging the general tone of media coverage
received good blog pickup.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10403467-93.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/editors-quit-wikipedia-as_n_367414.html
and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/26/wikipedias-jimmy-wales-de_n_371810.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/23/is-wikipedia-too-unfriendly-to-newbies/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8379566.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8382477.stm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1231192/Wikipedia-founder-dismisses-claims-site-losing-thousands-editors.html
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/26/wikipedias-volunteer-story/
* Other worthwhile coverage/reads:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hux1AJECDOq8ITPkdeJvetoRUoWwD9BU4IJ00
(Wikimedia at the Vatican)
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS179904+04-Nov-2009+PRN20091104
(Jimmy receives Nokia prize)
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/11/06/jimmy-wales-on-wikipedia-quality-and-tips-for-contributors/
(PR moves and increased coverage of Hudong.com)
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/hudongcom-confirms-expansion-into-overseas-market-invading-wikipedias-territory,1043032.shtml
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704222704574501434029141444.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-11/20/content_9015012.htm
* Blog posts through Nov, 2009
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/11/
* Media interviews and interaction through Nov, 2009
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room/Media_Contact_2008#November_2009
In November, the Wikimedia Foundation put out three press releases.
“Wikimedia Foundation Appoints Craig Newmark to its Advisory Board”
13 November 2009: Craigslist.org founder to share customer service and
public service experience in support of Wikipedia.
“Sixth Annual Campaign to Protect Wikipedia Kicks Off”
10 November 2009: Wikimedia Foundation invites readers, editors and
contributors to show support and help raise over $7.5 million.
“Wikimedia and comScore partner to improve understanding of the reach
and impact of free knowledge on the Web”
3 November 2009: Digital market intelligence leader expands
Wikimedia’s global user research horizon.
During November, the Wikimedia Foundation participated in interviews
with the Associated Press (New York, New York, USA); Heise (Germany);
the New York Times (New York, New York, USA); San Francisco Chronicle
(San Francisco, California, USA); The Aquinian (Fredericton, New
Brunswick, Canada); the Canadian University Press (Fredericton, New
Brunswick, Canada); the Fredericton Daily Gleaner newspaper
(Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada); CBC Radio New Brunswick
Afternoon Show (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada); CBC Radio Ideas
(Toronto, Canada); VentureBeat (San Francisco, California, USA);
Poynter Online (St. Petersburg, Florida, USA); Nextgov.com (Washington
DC, USA); Sunday Mirror (London, United Kingdom); CNN (Atlanta,
Georgia, USA); WGN Radio (Chicago, Illinois, USA); the Wall Street
Journal (Chicago, Illinois, USA); Nikkei (Tokyo, Japan); the Financial
Times (San Francisco, California, USA); Diamond Publishing (Tokyo,
Japan); NHK (Tokyo, Japan); New York One News (New York, New York);
Bloomberg (Atlanta, Georgia, USA); Spanish Wire Press (San Francisco,
California, USA); and the Associated Press (Washington DC, USA).
FUNDRAISING, GRANTS, & PARTNERSHIPS
The Wikimedia Foundation received 36,794 donations in November,
totaling approximately USD 1,270,246. Year-to-date, the Foundation has
raised USD 1,792,177 in donations, 24% of its annual goal of USD
7,500,000. This puts it slightly ahead of plan. Including revenue from
restricted and unrestricted gifts the foundation has raised USD
3,342,177, 36% of the USD 9,297,000 goal.
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
In November, the Audit Committee and Board of Trustees approved the
Foundation's 2008-09 audited financial statements. The statements are
accessible on the Foundation's wiki at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4f/FINAL_08_09From_KPMG.pdf
.
In November, Veronique Kessler created for the Audit Committee an
analysis of major risks facing the Wikimedia movement. It assesses
major internal and external risks threatening the continued success of
Wikimedia, including the following: serious decline in participation;
a failure of the movement to evolve structurally; a lack of innovation
(technical and otherwise); the risk of scandal; the inability of poor
people to contribute to Wikipieda due to lack of leisure time,
creating a context in which rich people write an encyclopedia for poor
people; erosion of the Wikimedia readership by competitors; a shift in
the policy landscape that doesn't favour Wikipedia; a plateauing of
donations; decline in core editing community, and a destruction of our
core legal protections. The full analysis is available here: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_risks_2009
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Erik Zachte attended a Wikipedia Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. This
was the second Wikipedia Academy hosted by the Swedish Chapter. During
his visit to Sweden, Erik also gave a presentation at the FSCONS
conference in Gotenburg.
Jay Walsh was invited by the organizers of the first-ever
Wikiconference Japan (WCJ 2009) to be their keynote speaker. This was
the first official gathering of Wikimedians in Japan, with a specific
focus on discussing the work of Japanese Wikimedians across all
projects, and inviting academics and enthusiasts in the Foundation's
projects to discuss research, theories, and ideas for new projects and
initiatives. The full-day seminar, held at the Department of
Engineering, at the Hongo campus of the University of Tokyo, on
November 22 brought in over 300 attendees, almost double the original
number planned for by the organizers. Major media attended the event,
in the form of Nikkei business on-line and NHK, the national public
broadcaster.
On November 12, Sue Gardner was the inaugural speaker for Google's
women's speaker series.
On November 18, Sue gave the Dalton Camp memorial lecture at St.
Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, in which she
argued that – contrary to the conventional wisdom and to what we're
often told by the media – we are actually experiencing a golden age of
information. The volume of information available is greater than ever
before, censorship is less prevalent and less effective, and
information is cheap and easy to get. The lecture was later broadcast
on the CBC Radio program Ideas, and is available here:http://castroller.com/podcasts/Ideas/1386039.g
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