I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's audited financial statements for the years ended June 30, 2010 and 2009 are available on the Foundation wiki at:
In anticipation of any questions, we have also prepared a Question and Answer sheet also posted on the Foundation wiki at:
I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
Veronique
On 26 October 2010 16:40, Veronique Kessler [email protected] wrote:
I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's audited financial statements for the years ended June 30, 2010 and 2009 are available on the Foundation wiki at:
In anticipation of any questions, we have also prepared a Question and Answer sheet also posted on the Foundation wiki at:
I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
Veronique
470K on travel. Quite impressive for an web based organization. At British airways prices that's still over 500 return journeys from new york to london.
"Wikipedia contains more than 16 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people." You are using some non standard definitions of community here.
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM, geni [email protected] wrote:
.. "Wikipedia contains more than 16 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people." You are using some non standard definitions of community here.
I'd like to see how that figure of 100,000 was arrived at.
-- John Vandenberg
On 26 October 2010 23:54, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM, geni [email protected] wrote:
.. "Wikipedia contains more than 16 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people." You are using some non standard definitions of community here.
I'd like to see how that figure of 100,000 was arrived at.
I'm not sure of the exact working, but a quick sanity-check:
Per wikistats, the total "active registered editors" hovers around 85,000 for all Wikipedia "editions". This figure represents the sum of number of active accounts on each project at any given moment; on the one hand, it overcounts, because it doesn't account for duplicate activity (someone who is "active" on both fr and de), but on the other hand, it doesn't account for people who're less active than our five-edits-per-month threshold.
It also doesn't clearly account for people who're active one month and not the next - simply averaging the headline figures will treat twelve people, each active in a different month, as the same as a single person active in all twelve. Similarly, there is an open question as to whether or not our count should be entirely in the present tense. There are plenty of articles contributed by community members who've not edited in the past year or two - they may not currently be part of the community of contributors, but they certainly were then, they certainly wrote that content, and they certainly are among the X thousand people to have done so! It may be appropriate to factor these people in as well to the headline figure; this is a bit more debatable, since "community" implies an instantaneous count, but I think you can make a decent case either way.
So our first estimate is 85k; polyglot users will drive the figure down, whilst "less active" users will drive the total up, as will accounting for past contributors. I don't have any estimates as to the magnitudes of those effects, but a total of 100k seems well within the realm of possibility.
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 1:20 AM, Andrew Gray [email protected] wrote:
On 26 October 2010 23:54, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM, geni [email protected] wrote:
.. "Wikipedia contains more than 16 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people." You are using some non standard definitions of community here.
I'd like to see how that figure of 100,000 was arrived at.
I'm not sure of the exact working, but a quick sanity-check:
Per wikistats, the total "active registered editors" hovers around 85,000 for all Wikipedia "editions". This figure represents the sum of number of active accounts on each project at any given moment; on the one hand, it overcounts, because it doesn't account for duplicate activity (someone who is "active" on both fr and de), but on the other hand, it doesn't account for people who're less active than our five-edits-per-month threshold.
It also doesn't clearly account for people who're active one month and not the next - simply averaging the headline figures will treat twelve people, each active in a different month, as the same as a single person active in all twelve. Similarly, there is an open question as to whether or not our count should be entirely in the present tense. There are plenty of articles contributed by community members who've not edited in the past year or two - they may not currently be part of the community of contributors, but they certainly were then, they certainly wrote that content, and they certainly are among the X thousand people to have done so! It may be appropriate to factor these people in as well to the headline figure; this is a bit more debatable, since "community" implies an instantaneous count, but I think you can make a decent case either way.
So our first estimate is 85k.
I arrived at a similar figure earlier this month, when the WMF gave "100,000" as an estimate of our _current_ community population.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-October/061506.html
My guess is those stats include accounts which never edit content; on English Wikipedia we have many accounts which only create a userpage, and/or create content pages which are deleted immediately because they are vandalism, attack pages, etc.
Also, those numbers include many vandals, many who intentionally make more than five edits in order to be autoconfirmed, and socks. I think I am on safe ground to estimate that English Wikipedia has had over 10,000 confirmed sockpuppets.
polyglot users will drive the figure down, whilst "less active" users will drive the total up, as will accounting for past contributors. I don't have any estimates as to the magnitudes of those effects, but a total of 100k seems well within the realm of possibility.
Including past contributors is a questionable approach, and needs to be done carefully. We know our 'community' changes over time, with people quitting and new people arriving. Many come back with a new username (we even have ex-arbitrators who did this).
The community is being defined in terms of 'people', rather than 'users'. There are also people with more than one account; iirc, one 'crat on English Wikiquote had ~hundred accounts with more than five edits (Kalki).
-- John Vandenberg
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:24 PM, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote:
The community is being defined in terms of 'people', rather than 'users'. There are also people with more than one account; iirc, one 'crat on English Wikiquote had ~hundred accounts with more than five edits (Kalki).
There are also another ~75000 IP accounts generating at least 5 edits per month. It would be even harder than the username case to figure out how many unique people this represents. However, it would still seem likely that there is a non-trivial fraction of the contributor community who only edit anonymously.
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Robert Rohde [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:24 PM, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote:
The community is being defined in terms of 'people', rather than 'users'. There are also people with more than one account; iirc, one 'crat on English Wikiquote had ~hundred accounts with more than five edits (Kalki).
There are also another ~75000 IP accounts generating at least 5 edits per month. It would be even harder than the username case to figure out how many unique people this represents.
Sage Ross suggested in todays IRC office hours that it would be interesting to look at anon members of our community , and I hadn't thought about this cohort.
Are you sure these are not accounted for in stats.wm.org?
A consideration with these is how often do they become a named account, and therefore would be counted twice if we simply add accounts+anons.
However, it would still seem likely that there is a non-trivial fraction of the contributor community who only edit anonymously.
Indeed.
-- John Vandenberg
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:06 PM, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote: <snip>
Are you sure these are not accounted for in stats.wm.org?
<snip>
Yes. The current Wikimedia Stats (stats.wikimedia.org) do not count anons towards any of the metrics that measure "Wikipedians" or "active contributors".
-Robert Rohde
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:06 PM, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote:
On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Robert Rohde [email protected] wrote:
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:24 PM, John Vandenberg [email protected] wrote:
The community is being defined in terms of 'people', rather than 'users'. There are also people with more than one account; iirc, one 'crat on English Wikiquote had ~hundred accounts with more than five edits (Kalki).
There are also another ~75000 IP accounts generating at least 5 edits per month. It would be even harder than the username case to figure out how many unique people this represents.
Sage Ross suggested in todays IRC office hours that it would be interesting to look at anon members of our community , and I hadn't thought about this cohort.
Are you sure these are not accounted for in stats.wm.org?
A consideration with these is how often do they become a named account, and therefore would be counted twice if we simply add accounts+anons.
However, it would still seem likely that there is a non-trivial fraction of the contributor community who only edit anonymously.
Indeed.
This is why we Wikimedians are awesome.
The Foundation's audited financial statements are posted, and our main point of discussion is the accuracy of a tidbit of background information in the introduction.
:-)
I thought the very same thing. Sometimes I think about Dirk Gently's couch stuck in the stairwell. In a good way, that is. Any discussion that isn't the big picture is great, because it means we see the picture, at least. That doesn't happen a lot.
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 11:44 PM, Andrew Garrett [email protected]wrote:
This is why we Wikimedians are awesome.
The Foundation's audited financial statements are posted, and our main point of discussion is the accuracy of a tidbit of background information in the introduction.
:-)
-- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/
foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM, geni [email protected] wrote:
On 26 October 2010 16:40, Veronique Kessler [email protected] wrote:
I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's audited financial statements for the years ended June 30, 2010 and 2009 are available on the Foundation wiki at:
In anticipation of any questions, we have also prepared a Question and Answer sheet also posted on the Foundation wiki at:
I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
Veronique
470K on travel. Quite impressive for an web based organization. At British airways prices that's still over 500 return journeys from new york to london.
Assuming our staff sleep on sidewalks and beg for food when they travel.
Veronique Kessler, 26/10/2010 17:40:
I am pleased to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation's audited financial statements for the years ended June 30, 2010 and 2009 are available on the Foundation wiki
Thank you. I see (p. 5, 11): *Special event revenue, net: 11,995/0 (2009/2010) *Special event expense: 0/70,407 (2009/2010) *Temporarily restricted net assets, Restricted to scholarships for Wikimania: 60,237/0 (2009/2010) The "special event" is only Wikimania, isn't it? How are costs and income shared between WMF and organizers? (I don't understand how costs and income are split between years, but this is not so important.)
«Contributions receivable represent gift amounts due from various entities» (p. 8): does this include chapters? With regard to the WMF share on donations to chapters under the fundraising agreement, is this amount considered a donation even if chapters are more or less (it's complicated) obliged to transfer it to the WMF? I guess that the taxation would be different if e.g. you invoiced the chapters.
Nemo