[Wikipedia-l] 300,000 is a much better milestone (was: Preparing for 150,000 articles)

[Daniel Mayer]

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_40_M1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikipedia.org%2F

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)