Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-11-20/News and notes
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WMF audit report published for FY2022–2023
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
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.
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- 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
Some general stuff about the conference...
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
- 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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