[Open Access News] Wikipedia in 2009
Gavin Baker
2009 was Wikipedia's ninth year, and the sixth year for the Wikimedia Foundation. ... 2009 saw major growth of the Wikimedia Foundation, global outreach and partnership activities, and more major grants and fundraising than ever before. At the same time, questions were raised over the health of the Wikipedia community, and debates over quality, content and sustainability continued.
The number of Wikipedia articles continued to grow, with the English Wikipedia passing 3,000,000 articles in mid-August, and the German Wikipedia passing the milestone of 1,000,000 articles in December. Commons also passed 4,000,000 files in March and then 5,000,000 files in September. ... Several new projects were also created, including the Pontic Greek Wikipedia, the Finnish Wikiversity, the Sorani Wikipedia, the Western Panjabi Wikipedia, the Mirandese Wikipedia, the Acehnese Wikipedia and the Turkish Wikinews. ...
Several new chapters were founded in 2009 ...
One of the largest and furthest-reaching debates this year was over the future of licensing on the projects. ... The switch [to Creative Commons] was approved ...
2009 saw a new focus on partnerships with cultural organizations, or "GLAM" organizations (short for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). Following on the heels of the German Bundesarchiv donation in late 2008, there were several large donations of images in 2009 from external organizations, including the Deutsche Fotothek, Antweb, and the Mary Rose Trust. The Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam also partnered with the WMF.
Relationships with archives took on a negative tone in July, when the National Portrait Gallery in the UK threatened a lawsuit towards an individual Wikipedian over images from the NPG that had been placed on Commons. ...
Also in 2009, there were several dedicated outreach activities put on by teams of Wikimedians around the world. One of the largest was the Wikipedia Academy at the NIH in July, where Wikipedians worked with scientists to teach editing. ...
Outside organizations continued to use Wikimedia content for new applications as well, for instance for the iPhone "augmented reality" app, Amazon's public data sets, Wikipedia articles in Google News, and the Openmoko Wikireader. The Wikimedia Foundation also negotiated a deal with Orange Telecom to display Wikipedia content on mobile phones. ...
Two major grant-funded projects to improve the usability of MediaWiki began in 2009, the usability project and a multimedia usability project. The usability project was funded with a $890,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation, while the multimedia project was funded by a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and focuses specifically on improving workflows for image uploading. ... Another $100,000 grant was also given to the Foundation by the Mozilla Foundation, specifically to improve Ogg Theora audio and video support.
In other technical news, the mobile gateway for Wikipedia, mobile.wikipedia.org, was launched and refined. ...
The Wikimedia Foundation grew this year, taking on new projects and hiring a number of new employees ...
The Foundation received several major grants in 2009, including a $500,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation, a €300,000 donation of in-kind support from Dutch data center EvoSwitch, and a $2,000,000 grant from the Omidyar Network, along with the usability grants mentioned above. ...
At the end of 2009, the annual fundraiser was held. ... [T]he fundraiser resulted in over $8,000,000 in donations ...
Florence Devouard, former Board chair, was honored for her work on the Board with a Knighthood from the French government. ...
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Posted By Gavin Baker to Open Access News at 1/13/2010 02:08:00 PM