Fundraiser ends, $500,000 donation received

The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser ended on Tuesday, January 8. At the end of the fundraiser, about 44,600 people had donated at least US$1, and the Foundation has raised nearly $1,500,000. In addition, Erik Möller announced a record $500,000 unrestricted donation, received from an anonymous donor, which along with offline donations brought the fundraiser's total just over $2 million.

Dragons flight (Robert A. Rohde) prepared a series of graphs analyzing this fundraiser as compared to previous fundraisers.

Wikipedian Scott Laws (Dalf) dies

Scott Laws, username Dalf, died of colon cancer on 14 September, 2007. He had been a long-term Wikipedian, editing since before 2005 and accumulating over 3,000 edits. Among the articles he edited were Imperial Japanese Navy, Horcrux, and Nuclear power. Laws was an alumnus of Hickman High School and the University of Missouri; he worked for Microsoft's Hotmail in Silicon Valley until he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. He was 30 years old.

• In cranes, a symbol of hope, The Columbia Missourian, July 17, 2007.
• Terminally ill cancer patient rallied behind ‘1,000 cranes’, The Columbia Missourian, Sept. 15, 2007.

Wikimedia Commons picture of the year contest

The Commons Picture of the Year competition for 2007 is now open. Any Wikimedian with more than 200 edits is eligible to vote. There are two rounds of voting (round 1 is Jan 10-17, the final is 20-24 Jan). Information about the voting method and how to get a voting token is at Commons:Picture of the Year/2007/Voting. (Voting is being conducted on custom software on the toolserver written by User:Bryan.)

Briefly

• January 15 is Wikipedia Day.
• The Crimean Tatar Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia and Greek Wikiversity have been created.
• In discussion is a new speedy deletion criterion. CSD T3 ("Templates that are not employed in any useful fashion, and are either substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days.") is under discussion on the CSD talk page.
• The Editor's index to Wikipedia, developed in userspace by John Broughton, has been moved to projectspace.
• The Romanian Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles.
• The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 20,000 articles.
• The Korean Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
• The Portuguese Wikinews has reached 50,000 edits.
• The Yoruba Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 1,000,000 edits.
• The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 300 users.