Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-31/News and notes
Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere
Wikimedia Foundation's email fundraising campaign about to kick off
The Wikimedia Foundation will start sending out its English fundraising emails to donors in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US from 6 September. According to samples of the emails provided by the WMF on Meta, each email features a photo of Jimmy Wales and gives "jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org" as the sender's name and email address.
This is what they look like:
The text portions are as follows, respectively:
Email texts
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From: jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org My name is Jimmy Wales, and I'm the founder of Wikipedia. In the past, you donated to keep Wikipedia online for yourself and millions of people around the world. Each year, fewer than 2% of Wikipedia readers choose to support our work. You have been one of those rare donors, and for this I want to thank you warmly. I'm grateful you agree that we can use the power of the internet for good. We will achieve this not as individuals, but as a collaborative movement of knowledge seekers. Together, we can rebuild trust in the internet, and by extension, in each other. Will you renew your solidarity with a donation? This is awkward to admit, but I have to be honest: 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way when we ask for an annual donation. We choose not to charge a subscription fee, but that doesn't mean we don't need support from our readers. We don't send a fundraising email every month. We respectfully ask for just one donation this year so that Wikipedia may continue to move forward and offer knowledge to the world. If all our past donors gave a small amount today, our fundraiser would be over. Unfortunately, most people will ignore this message. We have no choice but to turn to you: please renew your gift to ensure that Wikipedia remains independent, ad-free, and thriving for years to come. We're a non-profit. That means we aren't selling the articles that millions of people read on Wikipedia each day. We don't profit from the knowledge you seek. In fact, we firmly believe that knowledge should exist outside of the realm of supply and demand. That's hardly a given nowadays; so much of the world's digital knowledge is driven by profit. Wikipedia is different in that it doesn't belong to the highest bidder, the advertisers, or corporations. It belongs to you, the readers, editors, and donors. You're our community, our family. You're the reason we exist. The fate of Wikipedia rests in your hands and we wouldn't have it any other way. It's readers like you who safeguard our non-profit mission. You help us maintain our integrity, quality, and accessibility. Today, please consider giving again, or even increasing your gift, to keep Wikipedia free and independent. Thanks,
Where will your donation go? 42% of your gift will be used to sustain and improve Wikipedia and our other online free knowledge projects. 31% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers who share their knowledge with you for free every day. 27% of your gift will give the Wikimedia Foundation the resources it needs to fulfill its mission and advance the cause of free knowledge in the world. From: jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org 
Bronze Badge / Silver Badge / Gold Badge / Platinum Badge When you gave in the past, you were one of those rare donors who kept Wikipedia thriving for yourself and millions of other readers. Ready to earn your next badge? Please match your last gift today. I took the liberty of emailing you a second time on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation (the organization responsible for the protection of Wikipedia), because I wasn’t sure you got a chance to read the first email we sent to nisrael@wikimedia.org, the address we have on file for you since your last gift. I hope this badge will act as a reminder of how crucial your commitment to supporting free knowledge has been and still is to us. At every turn, we have been pressured to compromise our values, but I'll be honest: This isn’t negotiable for us. People always ask us, why not just run ads to make revenue? Or capture and sell reader data? Or make everyone pay to read? While these things seem like the norm online nowadays, we'd like to remind you that there is another way—a way that doesn’t jeopardize the neutrality of our content and threaten your personal data. We just ... ask! Not often, but it works. After 21 years of saying no, I can still say we are proud to have left that money on the table. We’re a non-profit. Only 2% of our readers give, but we manage to serve hundreds of millions of people per month. Imagine if everyone gave? We could transform the way knowledge is shared online. I've been happily stunned by the response from our donors, but we haven't reached our fundraising goal and we don't have a lot of time left. We’re not salespeople. We’re librarians, archivists, and information junkies. We rely on our readers to become our donors, and it’s worked for over 20 years. This year, please consider making another donation to protect and sustain Wikipedia. We know people’s circumstances have changed a lot in
the last year. Some find themselves with less to spare, but
a lucky few happen to have a bit more. If you’re one of
the lucky ones, will you give a little extra to keep
Wikipedia growing?
Renew your donation
Give 5
Give 20
Give 35
Give another amount
Any gift will unlock your next badge. Thank you, DONATE NOW
From: jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org I know you've heard from me twice already, so I'll get straight to the point. In the past, you were among the extremely rare readers who made a donation to invest in the future of free knowledge. If you've made it far enough to open this email, could you take a minute to help us out? Many of our readers see our emails and think they'll get round to it later, but life happens and of course they forget. Our annual email fundraiser is coming to an end, so if you've been holding off until “later”, this is your moment. I'm asking you respectfully: Please, renew your donation; it matters. Around the time our fundraising campaign starts, I hear from friends, family, and long-lost classmates who see our fundraising messages while they're looking something up on Wikipedia. It's a reminder of how many folks, from all walks of life, rely on Wikipedia. This incredible public support is crucial for our organization and our movement to thrive. It allows us to serve the world, and to do so with independence and integrity. We don't belong to anyone, because we belong to everyone. You donated in the past and we sincerely thank you. If you still see value in Wikipedia, please sustain your support in 2022 and keep Wikipedia thriving. This is our biggest fundraising moment of the year. It's when we launch the online campaign that brings in donors who will propel us throughout 2022 and beyond. I'm one of them. I'm a regular donor. We are the non-profit that supports one of the world's most visited websites. We don't generate revenue by selling off our users' data to the highest bidder. We don't run ads that could jeopardize the integrity and neutrality of our content. Though our size requires us to maintain the server space and programming power of a top site, we are sustained by the support of our donors who give an average of about $16. This year, will you take one minute to keep our work going? 5 / 20
35 / Other Renew your donation Give less this yearThank you, DONATE NOW
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(In addition to the texts shown above, each email also has small print explaining how to unsubscribe.)
The English email campaign will run until 20 November. It will be followed by the annual banner campaign for these countries, which this year is scheduled to run from 29 November to 31 December.
- The content of the above emails is currently being discussed at the Village Pump: WP:Village pump (proposals)#Review of English Wikimedia fundraising emails. The discussion was started by the author of this article. – AK
Farsi Wikipedia blocks IP editing for six months; blocks and reversions fell, but so did total contributions
An experiment was conducted on Farsi Wikipedia between October 20, 2021 and April 20, 2022 in blocking IP edits to mainspace.
The study concluded that "the restriction on Farsi effectively reduced vandalism on the wiki. We can say this based on the fact that reverts were down 68% compared to the previous six months and down 70% compared to same time period last year. Blocks were also down by over 50% in both comparisons."
But the restrictions were not without negative consequences: "[T]he restriction also prevented good-faith edits. The total number of content edits was down 24% compared to the previous six months."
See related Signpost coverage, "Portuguese Wikipedia bans IP editing" (November 2020). – B
Administrators up, no down, wait what?
In a Special report almost exactly three years ago, we reported on how a then-new active admin low count of 500 was of concern. Since then, the English Wikipedia community has hit significantly lower counts of active administrators in a calendar year, shown here:
- In 2019, 493 active administrators on 10 December
- In 2020, 493 active administrators again on 25 October
- In 2021, 460 active on 5 December[a]
- In 2022 so far, 449 active on 4 April, an all-time low
When the active count recently fell again to 452 on 13 August, it looked like we were close to hitting another all-time low. However, since then, the active count has rebounded somewhat, and there has been a nearly simultaneous recent run of successful Requests for adminship. 2022 is already up by two from last year's all-time low of just seven successful RfAs in a calendar year. So, is it good that we're not at all-time lows for the admin corps? Or is it bad that we are close? Are we on an improving trajectory yet? Or are we seeing admins "walk away in silence" as it was put by an Administrators' noticeboard commenter on an action by Arbcom this March? Only time will tell. – B
- ^ discounting some data glitches in September
Open letter to WMF asking for PageTriage updates attracts several hundred signatures
An open letter from the English Wikipedia's New Page Review (aka NPP) has attracted well over 400 signatures in support from Wikipedians over the past month. The open letter asks the Wikimedia Foundation to allocate resources to the maintenance of the PageTriage software, something the Foundation has been unwilling to do.
PageTriage, the suite of NPP tools comprising the New Pages Feed and Page Curation used by New Page Reviewers, is an important firewall against inappropriate new pages and also used to encourage users to improve their article submissions. NPP volunteers say the software is essentially unmaintained by the WMF, who created it in 2012. Dozens of Phab reports for bugs and upgrades are stalled at "unassigned" or "needs triage". Active reviewers (only around 100 out of about 750) are at present unable to keep the backlog at a sustainable level, and software improvements are urgently required.
Editors interested in helping with NPP can check the criteria, read the tutorials, and apply at PERM for access to the tools. New Page Patrol even provides a school for reviewers. There is a particular need for reviewers who can accurately judge the quality of foreign-language sources.
- The open letter and its signatories to date can be viewed at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination/2022 WMF letter. – AK
Brief notes
- New Movement Strategy Forum: The Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team at the Wikimedia Foundation launched a proposal for a new Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum) on 24 May 2022. The proposal was open for a 2-month community review period, ending on 24 July 2022. During that time, the MS Forum was operational for community members to try it out. A report on the community review is now available on Meta-Wiki. The feedback received on the MS Forum ranged from very supportive to cautiously accepting. The forum's automatic translation capabilities were particularly well received. Outside of the MS Forum, several long-term Wikimedia contributors criticized the creation of a new space, preferring to focus on the use of Meta-Wiki. The MSG team has committed to the long-term maintenance of the MS Forum and its integration into the Movement Strategy processes and will announce a call for new moderators and administrators.
- New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this month's newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Tyap Wikimedians User Group and the Women in Religion User Group
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators: DanCherek (9 August), DatGuy (15 August), Femke (18 August), and Z1720 (29 August).
- Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this month or last:
- 500,000 articles: Turkish Wikipedia
- 50,000 article: Ladin Wikipedia
- 5,000 articles: Tumbuka Wikipedia
- 2,000 articles: Dagbani Wikipedia
- Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in India: This year's edition of the contest runs from 1–30 September.
- Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is cartoonist (29 August – 4 September), to be followed by gender studies next week. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
- Wikipedia for Improvement: The Scots Wikipedia is having a September Writin Drive. Its aim is "to fix all of the bad Scots Wikipedia articles, help out the site's admins by teaching them proper Scots, and generally improve the quality of the Wiki." (See prior Signpost coverage "Scots Wikipedia language quality problems ripple around the Internet...")
Discuss this story
NPP letter
Fundraising emails
tc09:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]Admins
Yeah I think there is barely anyone here these days that really do want to be an admin. RfAs get a bad reputation for a reason. GamerPro64 03:49, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, it seems to me that the most fundamental problem Wikipedia has as a project is dwindling editorship, and the dwindling adminship is an extension of that. It seems to me like fixing this should be one of the top priorities for the project to ensure the long-term success of Wikipedia. Melmann 16:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Farsi Wikipedia IP block experiment
Despite what the study's highlights claimed, it appears that disabling IP edits had no identifiable effect on the total number of good-faith edits—the decline that was observed was also observed on other wikis in the same region that did not disable IP edits.
(I have started a discussion on Meta.) —Emufarmers(T/C) 07:53, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Scots Wikipedia editing drive
I know this isn't the fault of the Signpost because they were just quoting sco:Wikipedia:September 2022 Writin Drive, but "" makes it sound like CiphriusKane (the only active admin) can't speak Scots. They are a native speaker, though. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 23:32, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]