Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-21/News and notes

As the Wikimedia Fundraiser enters its seventh week, a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales banner is being displayed across all projects, including non-Wikipedia projects, which have not had banners for the majority of this fundraiser. The appeal from Wales, which links to a [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Appeal2/en?referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWikipedia%3APOST&target=Appeal2 short letter and donation page], is doing well; the first day of the appeal led to the highest donation day in Wikimedia history, with $430,893 donated.

In addition to the [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics daily fundraiser statistics], a new [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionTrackingStatistics link] on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki shows the performance of the individual fundraising banners by day. The banners have markedly different results from one another; Rand Montoya, Head of Community Giving, [http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/18/annual-fundraiser-our-best-day-ever/ noted] on the Wikimedia blog that one banner based on a donation comment ("I couldn’t ignore that banner at the top of the site anymore... I use Wikipedia far too often to ignore the need!") did better than any other banner before the appeal from Wales started running.

Also last week, there was discussion over a [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=2009_Craig_Appeal1 fundraising banner] that featured Craig Newmark of Craigslist on both the Village Pump and the [http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-December/056423.html Foundation-l] mailing list, with some questioning whether this banner was advertising for Craigslist. The notice, which raised around 740 donations on December 15, is no longer running.

• [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh/voting Voting is now ongoing] (until December 31) for a new Wiktionary logo. The logos were originally proposed between May and July of this year. If no logo receives a majority of votes, a runoff will be held in January.
• The 2nd Chinese Wikimedia Conference will be held on 26–27 December 2009 in Macau. Links for more information, in Chinese, are available [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikimedia_Conference_2009 here]
• Priyanka Dhanda [http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/priyanka-dhanda-joins-wikimedia-tech-team/ joined] the Wikimedia Foundation as a Code Maintenance Engineer; she will work in the San Francisco office with the development team.
• The U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy is [http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-29322.htm requesting] public comment on public access policies for the published results of federally funded scientific and technical research.

===Milestones===

• The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached {{formatnum:400000}} articles.
• The Portuguese Wiktionary has reached {{formatnum:80000}} articles.
• The Acehnese Wikipedia has reached {{formatnum:1000}} articles.
• The Simple English Wikipedia has reached {{formatnum:57000}} articles for the second time in 2009 after a mass deletion of Stubs.
• The Estonian Wikipedia has reached {{formatnum:70000}} articles.
• The Estonian Wiktionary has reached {{formatnum:35000}} articles.
• The Ido Wikipedia reaches 18,000 articles, with Maro di Marmara.
• The German Wikibooks has reached 15,000 bookpages.
• The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 11,000 articles.
• The Sardinian Wikipedia has reached {{formatnum:2000}} articles.
• The Spanish Wikinews has reached 5000 articles.
• The Bashkir Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.

• 2005: Nature study published, Semi-protection policy passes
• 2006: Time Magazine chooses "you" as person of the year, featuring SimonP
• 2007: Erik Möller resigns Board position, becomes deputy director of WMF

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