Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-11-20/News and notes

News and notes

YOUR ARTICLE'S DESCRIPTIVE TITLE HERE

By Bri, NightWolf1223, and Red-tailed hawk

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WMF audit report published for FY2022–2023

The Wikimedia Foundation once again had a healthy eight-figure surplus in 2022–2023.

The Wikimedia Foundation has released the audit report for the fiscal year 2022–2023 prepared by its auditors, KPMG. You can read the full report here and a summary on Diff. The main takeaways are slowed financial growth in line with targets, and income came mainly from donations.

• The Foundation took $180 million in total support and revenue, vs. total expenses of $169 million.
• Its net assets grew by $16 million over the year prior, to $255 million at the end of the year.

The Foundation missed their target for banner donations but were able to fill the gap with major gifts and other donation channels. Overall, donations revenue increased from $164.8 million in 2021–2022 to $168.9 million in 2022–2023. – NW1223, AK

Help wanted: Sockpuppet investigations

He investigates socks. You can, too!

A large backlog has developed at WP:Sockpuppet investigations, where there are over 50 cases pending in Category:SPI cases awaiting review and over 140 cases awaiting administrative finalization in Category:SPI cases awaiting archive update figures closer to publication.

Key to keeping this process running are the SPI clerks. Currently, only about a dozen are active. Clerks are an important part of alignment of English Wikipedia with Wikimedia Foundation Access to Nonpublic Personal Data Policy, reviewing cases carefully for evidence and endorsing Checkuser use of tools that can reveal users' IP addresses and other private information. Such review and concurrence prior to use of the tools is important to maintain community trust in pseudonymity and integrity surrounding use of Checkuser tools.

From the SPI Clerks page, this is what the clerks actually do:

Clerks analyze behavior, make findings, and either impose or decline imposing sanctions.

Clerks help to ensure the smooth operation of SPI pages, cases and processes.

• Ensuring SPI cases and processes stay in good order, including obtaining reasonable and productive conduct by participants;
• Endorsing or declining CheckUser requests;
• Ensuring cases have proper evidence (especially for CheckUser requests) and requesting such evidence when not provided; and
• Assisting with housekeeping tasks, including closing, archiving, merging and formatting of cases.

Any user in good standing is considered qualified to apply at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Clerks, and a talkpage discussion there (begun by this Signpost contributor) has indicated interest in new applicants. Applicants go through a semi-formal training process; non-admin trainees usually show good experience and working knowledge of the community's policies and practices at the point they request traineeship, and clerking can be a step on the way to adminship for some. – B

What do you actually have to do to help? It sounds complicated ;_; -jpxg

WikiConference North America held in Toronto

Toronto Reference Library, site of WikiConference North America, and still standing

Some general stuff about the conference...

Program

Twitter thread with brief summaries of some of the talks

The Toronto Reference Library received a bomb threat on the morning of Saturday, November 11. [1] - R

Brief notes

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• New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this month's newest Wikimedia movement affiliate, the .
• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week:
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is ARTICLE. Please be bold in helping improve this article!

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These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try .

• Happy 100 million files of Commons!--Vulcan❯❯❯Sphere! 10:06, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
• When is the Endowmemt expected to be out of Tides? Sandizer (talk) 10:44, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
• See also this informative Twitter thread about Wikiconference North America 2023 with photos and brief summaries of some of the talks. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:36, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
• Maybe somebody good with numbers can come up with how much of the funds are spent on Wikipedia each year and how much Wikipedians get to decide as to direction (Wikipedia is the financial elephant in the room as a fundraising tool), and a breakdown of where those funds go. Apparently many Wikiprojects or user groups need funds, if what I caught between a bomb threat and an Indian buffet in Toronto is accurate, although I don't know the details. When I heard that I thought that should be impossible, given the current state of donations, but, still don't know the details. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:57, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

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