Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes

The Sister Projects Task Force announced two "public consultation[s]" last month: It recommended not to add Wikispore as a new project, and to shut down all Wikinews projects.

The Task Force consists of a mix of Board of Trustees (BoT) members and selected volunteers. It is part of the BoT's Community Affairs Committee and was first announced in 2023. This is the first significant announcement from the Task Force. In a "community consultation on both proposals", comments are invited until July 27 . However, there has been confusion about whether the two recommendations are already considered a final decision, or are still open to revision.

Further information can also be found on the Wikinews Consultation page on Meta. The corresponding talk page discussion has nearly 90,000 words (over 3.3 tomats) at the time of writing, with over 100 editors opining in multiple sprawling threads. The Task Force also held two public calls as part of the consultations (on 16th July and 17th July).

Several community members noted the lack of prior communication before these recommendations were posted. Other concerns included the unilateral decisionmaking, and not actually consulting Wikinews communities first. The proposal currently implies content from Wikinews would be merged into respective Wikipedias, but it is not obvious how much of the English Wikinews content will be merged into enWiki, and by whom. — S, H

Wikimania will be held this year in Nairobi, Kenya from August 5-9, and the conference program was published earlier this week.

While there’s no reason to panic or to cancel your airplane ticket, attendees might want to be aware that both the U.S. and Canadian governments have recently issued travel alerts or updated their travel advice for Kenya, in context of the 2025 Kenyan protests. There are areas in the country, particularly northern border areas, that may be unsafe for travellers. Street crime is high throughout much of the country including in parts of Nairobi. This is a return to normal. More concerning are the political demonstrations of June 25 and especially July 7. On the 7th, 38 people were killed across the country, including 11 in Nairobi. The causes for the demonstrations are also fairly normal, economic insecurity, government corruption and other failures of some democratic institutions, as well as over-reaction and brutality by the police.

This is not the first year that the annual Wikimania conference has been held in the global south, nor the first time it’s been held in Africa. It’s not even the first time that concerns have been raised about on-site safety for conference participants - e.g. the Signpost reported about these as early as 2008, and in 2020 Wikimania was postponed because of COVID.

The Signpost requested comment from the conference organizers and we are publishing their reply at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In focus which was prepared with the help of the WMF. They emphasize that the neighborhood where Wikimania is being held, Gigiri, is physically separate from the areas where the demonstrations were held. They will be monitoring the situation and encourage you to do the same. If you register ahead of time, you can get Airport shuttle buses between the airport and hotels.

So there is no reason to panic. But be careful out there. And online participation remains an option at this year's Wikimania - also for those Wikimedians who did not obtain an in-person ticket in the first place.

— Sb, H

As announced in a Diff blog post, the Wikimedia Foundation has presented its first Form 990 for the Wikimedia Endowment, covering the period from September 2023 to June 2024.

The Wikimedia Endowment, previously held by the Tides Foundation, began operations as a standalone tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization on September 30, 2023, "with the mission to act as a permanent fund that can support in perpetuity the operations and activities of current and future Wikimedia projects." It has no employees of its own and pays no salaries; all work is done by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

The Form 990 published now was preceded by an audit report for the same period published last November, showing that as of June 30, 2024, the Endowment’s net assets stood at $144.3 million, made up primarily of cash of $20.1M and investments of $123.4M. Additional takeaways from the Form 990 include:

Part IV of the Endowment’s Form 990 covers topics related to the Endowment’s governance system, policies, and disclosure reporting practices. The Wikimedia Endowment follows governance best practices, such as ensuring that senior leaders on our staff and Board of Trustees do not have family or business relationships with one another, that the Endowment did not discover a major diversion of assets (which would indicate theft or fraud), and that notes are taken at all Board of Trustees meetings. In 2027 after two more Form 990s are submitted, the Endowment will be eligible to receive an overall rating from Charity Navigator since its ratings are based on three years of operations.

An FAQ is available on Meta-Wiki. — AK

The 2025 elections for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) just concluded. Out of 21 candidates standing for election, only 4 were elected, all for two year terms. This means that U4C will continue to have 8 members seated out of 16, just enough to reach quorum.

The elected candidates were -

• BRPever (talk · contribs) (Simple English Wikipedia, South Asia seat)
• Civvì (talk · contribs) (Italian Wikipedia, Community at Large seat)
• Barkeep49 (talk · contribs) (English Wikipedia, Community at Large seat)
• Luke081515 (talk · contribs) (German Wikipedia, Community at Large seat)

Notably, 3 of the 4 elected candidates were re-elected. After this election, three regional seats and five "community at large" seats remain empty. This comes after the 2025 Annual Review which passed 4 reforms for Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) and U4C, including removing a "homewiki" restriction. The election results and further reforms can be discussed on the respective talk page.

The U4C was established in 2024, and has since taken a half dozen cases of violations of UCoC in smaller projects, as well as cases of systemic failure. The U4C was last covered by The Signpost in the 1 May issue. — S

Disclaimer: Soni, the author of this section, had applied for U4C in the aforementioned elections.

The 2025 election process for the WMF Board of Trustees has begun, with the application process closing on 9 July. The application process ran for 3 weeks, with the initial 2 week time period extended citing "complex processes" this year. This election will be seating 2 candidates to the Board of Trustees. Notably, no incumbent Trustee is standing for re-election.

Of the 17 candidates who applied, 12 were deemed eligible. As the number of candidates exceeds 10, this will go through a shortlisting process from the Affiliates, which will narrow the candidates down to 6. It is expected that the shortlisted candidates will be announced by the end of July. Voting is expected to be around late August-early September.

This year, there's a dedicated space for community written voting guides. — S

The second admin elections is underway with 18 candidates standing for elections. The call for candidates was open for a week, closing on 15 July.

Discussion will be open for 5 days, from 18 to 22 July. Like the first trial election, discussion will be closed during voting, and voters are discouraged from indicating support or opposition during discussion. Voting begins around 23 July and will last for 7 days. For this election, a number of voter guides have been written by the community.

Admin Elections were first proposed in 2024, with the trial election resulting in 11 candidates out of 32 being elected as Admins. Later RFCs tweaked the process and approved elections permanently, with future elections expected to run every 5 months. The Admin elections were last covered by The Signpost in the 1 May issue.

With this, the number of admin candidates in 2025 has already jumped to 23. Prior to AELECT, there were only 5 RFAs in the first half in 2025, 3 of which were successful (a historical low for the first half of any year). This continues the trend of admin elections causing significantly more candidates to apply than the traditional WP:RFA process, though it remains to be seen how many are successful. — S

On July 1st, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the community collaboration process for the 2025 English banner fundraising campaign. The process took the "current best" baseline banner as its starting point, which looked like this:

Lots of feedback and ideas are being explored already on the community collaboration page, so join in! AK

• Following the start of a (now moot) recall petition, David Gerard (talk · contribs) resigned his admin tools at BN.
• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects have reached milestones:
  • Bengali Wiktionary has reached 100,000 entries.
  • The Hausa Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
  • The Central Bikol Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Next week's is Human behavior. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
• DIVINE and Tulsi are banned by WMF. See also Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive361#DIVINE_and_Tulsi:_COI/UPE/quid-pro-quo_editing,_association_with_threats_and_harassment for issues related to these two users.