Commons hit six million files last week, with themass upload of images from theGeograph website. Geograph is a site containing about 1.5 millionCC-by-SA-2.0 licensed images of the British Isles. The Isles are divided into squares of 1 × 1 kilometre (0.62 × 0.62 mi), and the goal of the project is to get at least one photograph ofevery square. More than 250,000 of these images have been uploaded.
According to Mike Peel of Wikimedia-UK, one of these images—a picture of sailing on Ullswater in the Lake District—became the six-millionth file on Wikimedia Commons.
This milestone comes less than five months after Commons hit five million files. In response to this rapid growth, the storage space on Commons was recentlytripled, according to a recent blog post by Erik Möller, deputy director of the WMF.
In the post, which discusses the "virtuous circle" in which cultural institutions upload freely licensed content to the Commons, Möller highlighted other recent large uploads of collections, and noted two toolserver scripts by Magnus Manske that track usage of Commons files:Glamorous, which tracks where files are used within the Wikimedia projects, andAmalglamate, which tracks comparative collection usage data over time (starting 12 January).
The Biographies of Living People taskforce starts work 8 February with part one, board recommendations and proposal. This will run for two months, with the second half on community focus, beginning in April. The project has a global focus, and encourages worldwide participation in discussion.
More information can be foundon the Strategy wiki page.
Another MediaWiki developer's meetup will beheld in Berlin 14–16 April, just before the annual meeting of the chapters. Wikimedia Deutschland will again host the conference. According to the post, "all MediaWiki developers, Toolserver users, Gadget hackers, and other people interested in the technical side of Wikimedia projects" are welcome. Last year's developer meetup was also held in conjunction with the chapters' meeting.
