Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-02-01/Sister projects

Provisional new Wiktionary logo chosen
The original Wiktionary logo was an English language version drawn by Brion VIBBER. It was created to mimic a dictionary entry. In 2006, a contest was held in which a logo depicting tiles won. The goal was to replace the textual logo with something more recognizable. "Wiktionary essentially has two logos at the moment. Supported by a straw poll in April 2009, a group of Wiktionary editors began a second logo contest, to unify Wiktionary's visual identity."

The second round of voting for this logo selection process concluded on 31 January 2010. Although the results are not yet official, the puzzle dictionary logo appears to have won with 558 votes, while the tiles logo received 455 votes. Each language Wiktionary will vote on whether to approve the winning logo, with a 60% approval rate required for adoption.

Global sysops
Global sysops are very much like stewards (they have cross-wiki adminship), however, they are meant for small wikis that do not have a large number of administrators.

Proposal
Below are the exact words of the proposal: "Because of a shortage of stewards and the continued abuse of our wikis, a new global user group is proposed: global sysops. These people would be highly trusted users with a strong track record of cross-wiki contributions. Global sysops would be given sysop-like privileges on many small wikis, but would not be simply users with sysop tools on all wikis. In addition to the standard tools, they would have access to global blocking, but would use these tools only in urgent cases of abuse, or for non-controversial maintenance. They would have no editorial control over content or the local community" By default, global sysop would be enabled for every project that meets one of the following criteria: Projects may opt-in or opt-out at their own discretion if they obtain local consensus. Simply inform any steward of the community's decision. A wiki set will be used to give rights on the included wikis only.
 * fewer than ten administrators exist; or
 * fewer than three administrators have made a logged action within the past two months.

Complaints
Some concerns have been brought up, like the fact that for small-language Wikipedias, the global sysops might have to rely on a somewhat clumsy tool like Google Translate. Also, many users are concerned about the possibility of misuse of the global blocking ability.

Voting
For more information about the proposal, please visit the proposal description page. The voting phase, however, has now closed, and a final list of voters can be seen here.

Steward elections
Candidate submissions for the Steward elections 2010 are going on now. A steward is basically a cross-wiki admin. To nominate a user through January 28, visit Stewards/elections 2010. Voting will begin February 7 at the same location.

Strategic planning
The Wikimedia Strategic Planning task force's recommendations for 2010 are up for discussion at the recommendations page. The recommendations are based on strategy and discussion, providing suggestions for the future of Wikimedia.