2014

1. Year in Review

   Top 10 Most Edited Pages on Wikipedia in 2014

   

   Wikipedia is the world’s largest free knowledge resource, but what makes it so unique is its dynamism–it is a living, breathing knowledge network that changes all the time, thanks to hundreds of thousands of editors around the world who keep it growing and current. … Here are the top 10 most edited pages on English-language Wikipedia in 2014. Many of the topics are to be expected, like D... Read more

2. Deployments

   How we made editing Wikipedia twice as fast

   

   The creator of the wiki, Ward Cunningham, wanted to make it fast and easy to edit web pages. Cunningham named his software after a Hawaiian word for “quick.” That’s why the Wikimedia Foundation is happy to report that editing Wikipedia is now twice as quick. Over the last six months we deployed a new technology that speeds up MediaWiki, Wikipedia’s underlying PHP-based code. HipHop Virtual... Read more

3. Community

   A Culture of Kindness

   

   Can we improve Wikipedia by being nicer to each other? In this post, I would like to share some ideas for growing a “culture of kindness” on Wikipedia: “Be nice,” “Help the newbies,” “Be friendly.” […]... Read more

4. Chapters

   Free Professionally-Recorded Christmas Carols by Wikimedia Poland

   

   A few years ago, Polish Wikimedia volunteer Borys Kozielski noticed a lack of musical and audio recordings in many Wikipedia articles. To fill this need, he led a group of musicians to record Polish Christmas Carols and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. Now many families in Poland and around the world can experience — even sing along — these traditional holiday chants. ... Read more

5. Education

   Egyptian students made the most contributions to the Arabic Wikipedia in 2014

   

   Over the last five academic terms, 978 students from the Arab World added more than 42.6 million bytes of content to the Arabic Wikipedia, as part of the Wikipedia Education Program. The highest contributions ever in one term came from the Egyptian students in Spring/Summer 2014, with more than 12.38 million bytes of new Arabic content. (…)... Read more

6. Technology

   Wikimedia Technical Operations joins the Phabricator party

   

   The Wikimedia Foundation Technical Operations team (“Ops”) are moving their processes to phabricator.wikimedia.org, thus joining the merge of multiple developer and project management tools into a single Wikimedia technical collaboration platform. This week, we migrated 5,986 tickets from RT to Phabricator, and now most requests to Ops can be initiated by creating a task there. access-... Read more

7. Chapters

   Interview: Former Swedish Member of Parliament now lobbies for Wikimedia Sverige in Brussels

   

   Swedish politician Karl Sigfrid discusses his lobbying work for digital rights and Wikimedia in the European Union. Sigfrid was a Member of Parliament (the Riksdag) in Sweden for the Moderate Party from 2006 to 2014. He now works as a volunteer for Wikimedia Sverige in Brussels […]... Read more

8. Year in Review

   #Edit2014: Q&A with the producer

   

   Today the Wikimedia Foundation published #Edit2014. This is the Foundation’s first-ever year-in-review video, a look at how the world used and contributed to Wikipedia in 2014. To learn more about how the project came to be, I interviewed the video’s director and producer, and Wikimedia Foundation storyteller, Victor Grigas (User:VGrigas (WMF)). Halla Imam: This is the first time the Wikimedia... Read more

9. Year in Review

   Wikipedia’s first-ever annual video reflects contributions from people around the world

   

   Today, the Wikimedia Foundation released its first ever year in review video, chronicling the celebration, pain, fear, resilience, and discovery that came to characterize 2014. More than anything, it celebrates those who come to Wikipedia to learn and understand the complexity of our world, and those who edit and contribute information so that others might do the same. […]... Read more

10. Mobile

    Introducing lead images to Wikipedia’s Android beta app

    

    Here in the Mobile Apps Team at the Wikimedia Foundation, we’re working to make it easier for the world to experience knowledge on mobile. More and more, users around the world are accessing Wikipedia on the go through their mobile devices, and it’s important that they can easily and quickly get the information they seek. Especially on the smaller, portable screens of mobile, readers n... Read more