Looking back on 2016
The Wikimedia community's shared history took center stage in 2016. On January 15, Wikipedians and news media around the world celebrated the site's 15-year anniversary with cake and reflections. Two other important milestones were greeted with less fanfare: the Wikimedia movement's five-year strategic plan—produced in 2010 at an expense of US$1 million and with the input of 1,000 individuals—had expired; and an endowment fund was finally established following years of discussion, with high ambitions but little in the way of published governance structures. Neither received much attention from either external media sources or the Wikimedia world.
The celebratory mood surrounding the anniversary was diminished by unprecedented turmoil in the Foundation's leadership. As former Signpost editor Gamaliel wrote on January 13,
The celebration of Wikipedia's 15th birthday threatens to be overshadowed by debates concerning governance of the various Wikimedia projects and how much of a voice the community will have in the future direction of the Wikimedia movement. These debates also threaten to overshadow another debate we should be having about the future of the community, regarding what lies at the heart of the movement and its community: the encyclopedia itself.
Upheaval in the organization, of course, need not directly impact volunteers' work of building an encyclopedia and other online resources. The curation of all human knowledge into a free repository continued without apparent interruption. Our projects continued their perpetual growth; the English Wikipedia, for instance, grew to exceed 5.3 million articles. However, some trends offered less cause for celebration: there was no substantial change in the overall decline in Wikipedia contributors that began in 2007, (inaccurate; note comment below) or in the various demographic skews, like the oft-noted "gender gap", among our ranks.