FACTS MATTER What we stand for ikipedia was born of an impossible vision: that every single human W could share in the sum of all knowledge. Over the years, you have supported this extraordinary idea with your contributions: edits to the articles, code for the servers, and financial support for the mission. As we enter Wikipedia’s 16th year, we believe that the Wikimedia vision is more important than ever. The world is a very different place now than when Wikipedia was started. The internet is less open and more commercial. Privacy is increasingly rare. Sources of information are more fragmented and not always reliable. 1 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 1 2/15/17 5:25 PM The window of public discourse is narrowing globally. These changes challenge our vision and Wikipedia will fiercely defend against them. But the world is also changing for the good, and in ways that make it more possible for us to achieve our vision. Literacy is rising globally. Access to the internet, often via mobile devices, is less expensive than it has ever been. More people are connected than ever before. Advances in technology are making free knowledge ever more accessible. And Wikipedia’s community of global volunteers is growing—introducing new voices, generations, and perspectives. This is good news for our mission. This is good news for the world. Right now, many people are grappling with how we connect with common truth, and with each other, in a challenging world. Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects help. They offer context amidst complexity. They satisfy our curiosity and knit us together in knowledge and collaboration. They give us insight into where we come from, and where we might go. They answer existential, mundane, and ephemeral questions. They ground us in 2 3 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 2 2/15/17 5:25 PM the facts we need to take action and make decisions. The world has changed, and continues changing. Our vision is a world in which we are all learning, participating, and creating—a world that is better informed, more inclusive, and more open. Join us. Let’s build that world together. Katherine Maher, Executive Director 2 3 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 3 2/15/17 5:25 PM FACTS MATTER A letter from Jimmy Wales ikipedia is now 16 years old. People entering university today have never W known a world without Wikipedia. It has existed from the time they first started learning to read. I think that in 100 years, when people look back on this era they’re going to point to Wikipedia as a powerful example of human generosity, inspiration, and collaboration. A large group of people came together out of a passion for knowledge and gave an incredible gift to the world. That is an amazing thing and I am proud to have been part of it. 4 5 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 4 2/15/17 5:25 PM The fact that information spreads quickly means that truth can spread quickly—and lies can spread quickly. Wikipedia is there when you need factual information, not opinion or advocacy. You read articles researched by thousands of volunteers. You click the links to check the data sources. You go read the cited news articles. And you verify the actual facts. Facts still matter. Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia 4 5 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 5 2/15/17 5:25 PM FACTS MATTER Our impact n 2016, Wikipedia grew by 5 million articles. Wikimedia Commons—the multimedia Irepository that holds the images used on Wikipedia—added 5 million media files. Across the world, mobile pageviews to our free knowledge websites increased by 170 million. Every month we receive visits from 1 billion devices—laptops, mobile phones, and other internet connected technology—making us one of the world’s most popular sites. READERS AROUND THE WORLD • English Wikipedia, which is our most actively edited and widely read Wikipedia, grew to 5.3 million articles • Swedish Wikipedia reached 3 million articles • German Wikipedia reached 2 million articles • Japanese Wikipedia reached 1 million articles 6 7 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 6 2/15/17 5:25 PM OUR GLOBAL COMMUNITY About 80,000 people actively contribute to Wikipedia each month. These generous volunteers are responsible for much of the new content across our Wikipedia projects. Millions of others have contributed to Wikipedia over the course of our lifetime. The number of Wikipedia’s articles, edits, and pageviews testify to the importance of the Wikimedia projects to free knowledge in the world. Every single day: • 15,000 articles are added to Wikipedia • 390,000 edits are made to Wikimedia sites • People view 520 million pages of free knowledge SUPPORTING GLOBAL GROWTH We fund creativity in our communities through grants that support small, innovative projects around the world. These funds make it possible for experts, researchers, volunteers, and engineers to expand Wikipedia in a fundamental way. In the past year, our grants program funded a wide array of projects, including: 6 7 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 7 2/15/17 5:25 PM • Indian hackathons to help Marathi- language editors Wikimedia contributors in Mumbia, India, held a series of hackathons at the Indian Institute of Bombay, where software engineers developed tools to let editors in Marathi—an Indic language spoken by 73 million people—work in that language on Wikimedia projects. Seventy people participated in the hackathons, including 20 new editors, and shared the results on GitHub. • Bringing Wikipedia offline to rural Africa In Senegal, we’re supporting the offline Wikipedia project Kiwix, which provides Wikipedia to schools with limited electricity, phone landlines, or reliable internet. Before the distribution of Kiwix, one student would take a taxi or donkey cart from the school to the main road, get a group-taxi or bus to the internet café in the next largest town, pay for 30 or 60 minutes’ time, print out the relevant Wikipedia article, and start the journey home. Kiwix brings Wikipedia directly to students, letting them focus on learning. 8 9 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 8 2/15/17 5:25 PM • Addressing gender bias on Wikipedia articles From Belgium, a core group of Wikipedia volunteers—under the name Just For the Record—organized nearly 100 Wikipedians to fix gender bias on 157,916 Wikipedia pages. They corrected bias wherever they found it, including articles that referenced women’s first names rather than their surnames, or their relationships to male figures (like fathers, brothers, and husbands) rather than their own accomplishments; and re- balanced the coverage of general subjects, such as “heroes,” that skewed toward male figures. IMPROVING OUR PLATFORM Across Wikimedia’s technology initiatives, 2016 marked a year of milestones. At the year’s beginning, Google lauded Wikipedia’s Android app naming it a best of the year. In May, NASA proudly explained how they use MediaWiki—the collaborative technology that powers Wikipedia—to share information about space suits across their organization. In July, the Content Translation tool powered its 100,000th new article as Spanish editors 8 9 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 9 2/15/17 5:25 PM adapted an English article about a Buddy Holly rock song. We helped readers in countries with high data costs save money, we improved how Wikipedia content is displayed in search results, and we improved searching for content on Wikimedia project pages. Near the year’s end, we also announced Victoria Coleman as the Foundation’s new Chief Technology Officer. Victoria brings more than 20 years of experience to the movement, and first started working on open source software as a student developing projects in Unix. 10 11 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 10 2/15/17 5:25 PM CONSIDER THE FACTS Wikipedia is updated almost 350 times a minute Wikipedia is updated constantly—from breaking news stories to ancient history. Every month, an estimated 80,000 people will make contributions to Wikipedia articles in more than 290 languages. They are all guided by a need to build with facts. Citations from reliable sources are required to back up claims. This separates rumor from reliable information. About an hour after the first terrorist attack in Paris on November 13th, Gareth E. Kegg—a veteran Wikipedia editor from London 10 11 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 11 2/15/17 5:25 PM who has started more than 1,700 articles— wrote a modest draft about the unfolding tragedy. An hour later, the article had ten referenced sources and hundreds of edits. Kegg said he was inspired “to see so many outstanding editors collaborate and develop the initial article and keep off rumors and unsourced material.” Within 10 days, there were articles in 80 languages about the November Paris attacks. The English language article cited 250 sources collected in more than 4,500 edits. Over that same time, the page received millions of visits. The budding information was almost immediately invaluable. 2016 was called the year of “fake news”, but Wikipedia documented the trend of spurious information with its staid fact-driven editorial approach. One month after it was created, the English Wikipedia article, “Fake news website” contained 195 citations from Reuters, the Washington Post, the BBC, CNN, the International Business Times, and many other respected sources. The facts always matter. Visit https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/04/wikipedia-editors-cover-terror/ 12 13 WMF_ANNUAL_REPORT_updated_v11.indd 12 2/15/17 5:25 PM FACT. Half of refugees are school age Half of refugees are school age. That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities, and their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique, but every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many of them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures.