Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-11-12/News and notes

Fundraiser continues
The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser continued this week. In the first three weeks of the fundraiser, about 21,000 people had donated at least US$1, and the Foundation had raised about $625,000.

The large bump realized from changing the sitenotice displayed at the top of all Wikimedia projects was short-lived; however, over the last few days, donations were still up 1-7% on comparable days of the week. The Monday total of $23,748.94 was also 25% higher than the lowest donation total of this fundraiser, on November 1, when $18,957.87 was donated.

Interestingly, this drive has resulted in a surprising number of small donations. The number of donations below $0.30, often made by users critical of Wikipedia policies who wish to have their comments displayed on the donation website, is about four times that of last year's drive. To combat this, the contributions page, by default, shows only those contributions equivalent to $5 or more, though comments can still be viewed by filtering contributions to view all donations, regardless of value.

WikiWiki WiPlaced
Honolulu International Airport's WikiWiki bus system will be replaced by an air-conditioned moving sidewalk. The bus system, dubbed WikiWiki for "wiki", a Hawaiian language word for "fast", became the namesake of Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb. The word "wiki" soon became synonymous for most types of collaborative editing software, and has since become known within much of the general public as a synonym for "Wikipedia".

Nominations for steward elections open
Steward elections are set to commence on November 26. New stewards will be up for election, and current stewards will be up for re-confirmation. Stewards must be at least 18 years old, and of legal age in their jurisdiction, at the time the elections end (December 16), and must be willing to identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation. They must also have an account on Meta-Wiki, and knowledge of multiple languages, though not required, is usually regarded as helpful. Prospective candidates can apply until the elections begin.

Candidates must receive at least 30 support votes, and at least 80% support, to be among those eligible to become a steward. The final decision rests with the Wikimedia Foundation. Voters, meanwhile, must have at least 3 months experience on their home project, and have a link to that home project on their Meta-Wiki account.

For the re-confirmation discussions, votes are not used. Instead, users can submit complaints about various issues; inactivity, for example, can result in an automatic loss of steward powers. Current and newly elected stewards review the complaints listed, and a majority of stewards requesting removal of a user's status will result in the loss of that status.

Nominations for ArbCom election continue
Nominations for the December 2007 Arbitration Committee Elections remained open this week. This week, Adam Cuerden, JoshuaZ, NHRHS2010, Phil Sandifer, Stifle, and Thebainer nominated themselves for the position, bringing the total number of candidates up to 27.

Of the five current arbitrators, only Raul654 will stand for re-election. Fred Bauder, Mackensen, Neutrality and SimonP have all indicated they will not run for another term. These five seats will expire in 2007; it has not yet been noted whether any other seats will be added or replaced.

Briefly

 * After a heated discussion, the Volapük Wikipedia was officially kept. A proposal to close the Simple English Wikiquote is still under discussion.  The latter proposal was closed earlier this week as a "close" by a non-admin, then re-opened.  The unusual closeness of the discussion, with a near-tie between supporters and opposers, has raised controversy; the proposal is by far the closest discussion of its kind ever held on Meta-Wiki.
 * 100 Wiktionaries have reached 100 entries.
 * All Wikipedias combined have reached 9,000,000 articles.
 * Counting Wikimedia Commons galleries, all projects combined have reached 12,500,000 content pages.
 * The Portuguese Wikibooks has reached 3,000 registered users.
 * The Quechua Wiktionary has reached 300 articles.
 * The Aymar Wikipedia has reached 200 articles.
 * The Galician Wikisource has reached 100 articles.
 * The Ligurian Wikipedia has reached 2000 articles.