{{Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-start|Wikipedians' surfing habits explored, Sloan Foundation renews $3M grant; brief news|By [[User:Tom Morris|Tom Morris]] and [[User:Jarry1250|Jarry1250]]| 11 July 2011}}

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The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic funding institution, [[wmf:Press releases/July 2011 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation renews $3 million commitment to Wikimedia|announced]] this week that it will award a grant of $3 million to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is the second grant of this amount awarded to the Wikimedia Foundation from the Sloan Foundation's Universal Access to Knowledge component of its Digital Information Technology program. The Sloan Foundation's [[wmf:Press releases/Sloan Foundation Support|first grant of $3 million]], awarded in 2008 and with effect though to 2010, represents the largest single grant ever received by the Wikimedia Foundation. In announcing its renewal, the WMF described the previous grant as having enabled the Foundation to "grow its core operations to support and sustain Wikipedia as a high-quality free knowledge resource". The Wikimedia Foundation is "delighted to have received this vote of continued confidence in its work".

Speaking for the Sloan Foundation, Doron Weber said that "Wikipedia embodies the ideal values of the world wide web and we are proud to be part of this bold endeavor to use the wisdom and the altruism of the crowd to create the biggest, most up-to-date and most open global encyclopedia in human history", whilst the WMF are confident that the $3 million will help with "increasing Wikipedia's quality, increasing the number and demographic diversity of its editors, and reaching more readers, particularly in the global south".

* '''Milestones''': On July 6, the [[:cs:Hlavní_strana|Czech-language Wikipedia]] reached 200,000 articles and remains the largest reference work ever written in Czech, according to a report on the [http://praguemonitor.com/2011/07/08/czech-wikipedia-offers-200000-articles ''Prague Daily Monitor''] website, and has 679 active editors. The 200,000th article was on the ice hokey goalkeeper [[:cs:Ron Hextall|Ron Hextall]], added by [[:cs:Wikipedista:Gothic2|User:Gothic2]]. The article creation rate for Czech Wikipedia has been around 100 a day for the past three months. There were also important milestones for a number of other projects:

:The [[:ast:|Asturian Wikipedia]] reached 15,000 articles on July 5.

:The [[:ka:|Georgian Wikipedia]] reached 50,000 articles on July 7.

:The [[:hr:|Croatian Wikipedia]] has reached 100,000 articles on July 7.

:The [[:uk:|Ukrainian Wikipedia]] has reached 300,000 articles on July 7.

:The [[:chy:|Cheyenne Wikipedia]] has reached 100 articles on July 7.

:The [[:tt:|Tatar Wikipedia]] has reached 10,000 articles on July 8.

:The [[:kk:|Kazakh Wikipedia]] has reached 50,000 articles on July 9.

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