Steward confirmations complete, six stewards removed

Confirmation of current stewards is complete. Ausir, Romihaitza, Snowdog, and Suisui were not confirmed due to inactivity. Datrio and Fantasy resigned their stewardship voluntarily prior to these discussions.

Fundraiser continues

The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser continued this week. Seventy-two days into the fundraiser, about 43,300 people have donated at least US$1, and the Foundation has raised about $1,450,000.

Donations this week rose; this may be partially due to the end of the year, where donations traditionally rise as taxpayers seek end-of-year deductions. Donations also were affected by a New Year's Day matching contributions promise; the anonymous donor has offered up to $50,000.

Anonymous donations of $5,000, $2,500, $2,100, $2,000 and JP¥250,000 ($2,183.25), and a $2,250 donation from Francis Hogle led the unusually busy week of donations. Six other large contributions, all of $1,000, were received; four were anonymous, and Michael Webb and Gary Steinmetz each donated $1,000 as well.

Wikimania 2009 bidding continues

Wikimania 2009 bidding continues; one more bid was submitted this week: Buenos Aires. This joins three other official bids: Bogotá, Kathmandu, Nepal, and Toronto. New bids will be open until January 12, at which time the jury will be announced. Bids already created will be open until February 3, when bidding will end, and deliberations will begin. On or before February 20, the host city for Wikimania 2009 will be announced to the public.

Briefly

• Piotr Konieczny has passed Ghirlandajo as the most prolific did-you-know writer, with 175 articles featured on did you know.
• A new page has been created for soliciting freely-licensed photos of celebrities. The page directs celebrities or their agents to e-mail an OTRS queue, suggesting that the photos be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
• On Tuesday, January 8, editor and administrator Jonathan Hochman will give a lecture ( "Wikipedia & Social Media") at the Tumblebrook Country Club in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The event will run from 6:30-9 p.m. The cost is $45 per person; the price includes dinner and cocktails.
• The French Wikipedia has reached 600,000 articles.
• The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 350,000 articles.
• The Arabic Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
• The Interlingue Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
• The Estonian Wikipedia has reached 100,000 total pages.
• The Limburgish Wiktionary gained 750 articles (about 37% increase) in one day.
• The Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia has reached 40,000 articles.
• The Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Divehi Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Limburgish Wiktionary has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Kannada Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Malayalam Wiktionary has reached 1,000 articles.