gmane.org.wikimedia.announce

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101 Tech flash

EN Wikizine — 2008-11-07T09:22:13

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101

EN Wikizine — 2008-11-05T00:01:48

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Image: => File:] - Brion announced that he will be fulfilling a long-time wish: renaming the "Image:" namespace to "File:" due to the fact that it contains much more than just images. He will be making this change soon, so please update any scripts that rely on it *when* it is live. "Image" will remain as an alias. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/39998 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44 [Ubuntu] - The Wikimedia Foundation tech team decided to simplify things by moving all of their servers to a GNU/Linux distribution: Ubuntu. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/40064 http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116787 [New Search] - Another long-awaited tech improvement: the search feature! Thanks to some work by Robert Stojnic, we are currently migrating to lucene-search 2 which includes new features like much better searching and interwiki matches. When a search matches a title from another project in the same language, a box on right appears which holds the link to the sister project page. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/039861.html http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/152/new-mediawiki-search-features-on-wikipedia (blog post with pictures) [RenameUser] - There are now additional options when renaming an account: automatically recreate and block the old account. Previously, all this had to be done by the bureaucrats themselves -- this process is now simplified. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15181 [CodeReview] - Brion enabled the CodeReview extension on MediaWiki.org. This is an extension that greatly helps with the review of coding and will hopefully allow the sites to be updated with newer code more quickly. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/039569.html http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CodeReview_todo_list http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeReview [Textbook-l] - Wiki-to-print and ODT are now live in all Wikibooks editions. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2008-October/001367.html [EN wp search] - a new search engine is live for the English language Wikipedia. One of the new features is the question "Did you mean ...?" like the one asked by google. Unfortunately, because of hardware problems, migration of the other projects will have to wait. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/40346 === Proposals === [Essentialpedia] - A more concise Wikipedia, containing only the most essential topics. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Essentialpedia === Policy === [GFDL 1.3 released] - A new version of the GNU Free Documentation License, which is used by most of the WMF projects, has been released. The new version makes it possible to migrate to the Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 license. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34061 === Foundation === [Fundraising 2008] - This year, the fundraiser has started discretely. By the time you read this, or soon after it, the classic site notice will be live. The donation pages have been redesigned, the Jimbo video is back, and a new feature is a form to give your answer to the question "How has Wikipedia made your life easier?". Like in previous years, the listing of the donations and their comments remains. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Stories/en http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionHistory/en [Annual Report] - The first annual report of the WMF has been released. This is like a PR publication that contains financial information about the WMF. It may be useful to explain what the WMF actually does. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report [New Chapters] - Two new chapters were approved in the October and November 2008 board meeting. Let's all welcome Wikimedia Brasil, Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia Hungary, and Wikimedia Norway to the group of chapters! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters [Chapter news list] - A new mailing list has been launched. It is meant to be an announce-only mailing list, for those who wish to keep in touch with what the chapters around the world are doing. It will receive regular updates from various chapters about their activities. https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports [Meeting Report] - Michael gave an unofficial recap of the recent October Board of Trustees Meeting. In it, he discussed updates to two policies, update on board calendar, discussions about open standards, file formats, and some changes to the Advisory Board. He also said that the minutes will be posted soon after they are approved. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046554.html [Sub-national Chapters] Another topic of discussion at the board meeting was sub-national chapters. The board supports the development of sub-national chapters where appropriate and is starting a workgroup to figure out how the sub-national chapters will be handled. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046590.html [Wikimedia Argentina] - is going to give the "Wikipedia Academy" conferences and workshops next November 6th. http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Academia_de_Wikipedia === Community === [General Survey] - A multilingual Wikipedia survey has been launched by the Wikimedia Foundation and UNU-Merit. Currently, there are versions available in Dutch, Tamil, and Vietnamese with many other languages (including English) going live in the next few days to weeks. Please complete the survey so that the Foundation can more accurately get a picture of who contributes to the projects! Don't worry, no personally identifiable information will be released by UNU-Merit or the Wikimedia Foundation without permission of the respondents. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046736.html http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/10/24/multilingual-wikipedia-survey-launched/ [Wikipedia Logo Updates] - A project spearheaded by the Foundation and Wikipedia community members to fix the errors on the globe of Wikipedia's logo and to fill in the blanks on the "other side" has begun. This project was started in response to many concerns over the years that there were many errors in the globe. Community and staff members both agreed that it would also be nice to have a full globe for memorabilia and for a 3D prop at events. It is requested that all community members join in on the discussion at Meta-Wiki! http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/comproj/2008-October/000661.html http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia/logo [Wikis Take Manhattan] - A scavenger hunt and free content photography contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and the transportation-oriented Streetswiki (covering sites in Manhattan and New York City) was held. It was coordinated by New York City Wikimedians, Free Culture Columbia, Free Culture NYU, and The Open Planning Project with 23 teams and over 50 participants (the great majority non-Wikimedians). The grand prize winners will be having a free dinner with Jimmy Wales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/wikis-take-manhattan/ [Wikinews Meets Google News] - After a long series of discussions with Google, Wikinews is finally listed in the search results of Google News site: http://news.google.com/. The problem was that Google did not think it was reliable enough to be included (since anyone could edit), but after Wikinews had FlaggedRevs enabled it was finally deemed reliable! http://news.google.com/news?q=source:%22wikinews%22 === Awards === [DE wp] - The German Wikipedia won the audience award "OnlineStar" in the category "knowledge, news & information". http://www.onlinestar.de/gewinner-2008.html?&no_cache=1 === Other news === [Probably off-topic] - nevertheless - A 6-year old, heavily brain-damaged girl is now able to talk to hear parents with a computer that tracks her eye movements. She's also able to browse the internet, and maybe to read Wikipedia one day? http://tinyurl.com/6nokso === Quote === "Wiki is 2/3 of planning, the rest is a loop in the dark" (Napoleon Bonaparte, according to Eric Johnson at Wikimania 2008) ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 720 Editor(s): Cbrown1023, Walter Corrector(s): Oliphaunt Thanks to: Effeietsanders, Pharos, bawolff, Sabata, Gizmo Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 40 Number: 100

EN Wikizine — 2008-10-02T13:34:25

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 40 Number: 100 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Global blocking] - Stewards are now able to block an IP address or range from editing on all Wikimedia projects (except Meta). This option is intended to be used with restraint and for a short time frame. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking [Robots.txt] - this is file that exists to control what pages are allowed to be indexed by a search engine. Basically you can use it to keep stuff out of Google. A recent added magic word __NOINDEX__ gives the same result on a specific page. Until now only the developers could edit the robots.txt for all WMF-projects. But now it there a new MediaWiki-page to control that. There is a central part of the Robots.txt that is not in local control. But on the page [[MediaWiki:Robots.txt]] you specify wiki-specific instructions for the spiders of the search engines. [Global bot] - it is now possible for bots to get a global bot status. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bot_policy#Global_bots [New tools] - Several users have created external tools for analyzing the history of articles. Statistics, a history search function, page view diagrams. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/09/09/more-story-in-wp-history/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Histlegend -- example of how to include the tools to the history function [Flood flag] - only at Meta, but it can be requested for other wikis also, is the now the flag "flood". It is actually exactly the same as the "bot flag" only is it named "Flood". The idea is that when a sysop wishes to do many similar, repetitive and non-controversial changes then that user can ask for the "flood"-flag on a bureaucrat. The result is like with a bot that the edits are hidden by default. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Flood_flag === Policy === [New logo] - Meta, the neutral ground wiki for all Wikimedia Foundation projects and wikis, has a new logo. This was decided after a one week running poll. It used before the WMF-logo and the now changed to a different one but in the same general style. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel/Metawiki_logo_poll [use of global groups] - the function of global groups is used to give certain groups certain levels of global rights. For example WMF office staff and systems administrators have been given certain global rights. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_global_permissions [Delete Wikiquote] - a proposal to close the Wikiquote project was closed without consensus. The argument to delete Wikiquote was that some see it as one giant copyright violation and not compatible with WMF goals. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub/On_disbanding_Wikiquote === Foundation === [Board] - user Frieda of the Italian Wikipedia has resigned from the board of the WMF. The board does not know when she will be replaced for now. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32774 [Wikimedia Nederland] - On November first will Wikimedia NL hold there 4th conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Early registrations are open. http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/ === Community === [Books] - It was announced this week that three books were published relating to Wikipedia. Lennart Guldbrandsson from Wikimedia Sverige wrote a book in Swedish titled "Så fungerar Wikipedia", which translates to "How Wikipedia works". Wikimedia Sweden also has its first WikiReader available (about Swedish Birds). Also, a few English Wikipedians wrote their own book about "How Wikipedia Works" (same title, different book then the Swedish) and they were published around the same time. This book was written by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates. Wikizine is mentioned in it on page 345 in chapter 12. Earlier in 2008 was also published the book the book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual". (ISBN 0596515162) http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32914 for Swedish books http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/95320 for English book http://nostarch.com/wikipedia.htm -- How Wikipedia Works (free chapter download & order info) [EO Wikipedia] - the Esperanto Wikipedia is proud of there new main page design. From a text only layout in 2001 has it grown in several steps to the current modern look that was elected out of 7 proposals. http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do/Nova_aspekto [source:"Wikinews"] - Wikinews is now partially listed on google news (due to flagged revs). The are still working on meeting google's requirement of unique numbers in URLs, so so far only lead articles have been listed. Before this only mirrors of Wikinews where listed. http://tinyurl.com/3prv5u -- view all Wikinews story's in Google News [RU wiki] - On October 18 and 19 Moscow will play host to the second international Russian-language Wiki-conference related to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as well as other Wikimedia projects. Registrations are open. http://tinyurl.com/4y6ll4 === Media === [Sweden] - Recently the former national telephone company of Sweden (and still the biggest telephone company in Sweden) ran a commercial for their mobile internet. The commercial ran like this: three men sit in a outside oak hot tub. One of them tell the others about how a former king planted oaks in Sweden. The others say: "Well, you know a lot." Another goes out of the water, is gone for a few moments, comes back and gives a comprehensive description of oaks, including their Latin name, while the others are more and more impressed. Then we cut to a sign that says: "Wikipedia in your mobile phone." http://media.resume.se/resPlayer.aspx?type=1&id=1250 [Report about wp &win prize] - Wired.com won a $10,000 award for their reporting about Wikipedia and the Wikipedia-scanner http://www.journalism.co.uk/14/articles/532334.php [Jimmy] - A classic item once more; interview of Jimmy Wales on TV, Canadian this time. http://tinyurl.com/3h8ppr === Stats === [No interest?] - after the unblocking of the Chinese language Wikipedia in China the statistics do not indicate a special increase of traffic. http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/09/pretty-much-none-whatsoever/ [ES Wikipedia] - reached 400.000 articles on Saturday, September 22. The Spanish language Wikipedia is the 9th of 256 largest Wikipedias. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias [Special:Statistics] - the statistics page of the wikis now also lists the number of active users of last 30 days. What a lot more meaningful is then the number of user accounts created. For EN Wikipedia is it 153,000 active users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics [If the editors where paid ...] - how much would it have cost? A lot. http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/10/quantifying-volunteer-contribution/ [Bangla Wikisource] - has reached 1,000 pages milestone on 25th September, 2008. http://bn.wikisource.org/ [EN wikinews] - The English language Wikinews has recieved its 700 000th edit. First edit was Tim uploading the draft version of our logo. The 700,000th edit was by 207.108.15.1 commenting about how connecting strongly religious people with "extremists" (aka the type who blow things up is a bad thing) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WN:WC#700.2C000_edits http://tinyurl.com/5yf4n9 -- this is how a 700,000th edit looks like === Other news === [Delitionpedia] - Where do articles go to when the get deleted?" - The go to Deletionpedia. http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/09/21/2342226.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionpedia http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/ [Wikizine] - the good news; Wikizine ID - the Indonesian language version of Wikizine is back after its formal closure in April 2008. This thanks to the effort of [[meta:user:Rex]]. The bad news; DE Wikizine - the German language version of Wikizine is now formally closed because of lack of support. http://id.wikizine.org -- reborn http://de.wikizine.org -- closed [Wikisage] - Wikisage, a "second generation wiki encyclopedia", is founded by Guido den Broeder. The active users have most a Dutch language Wikipedia background. The difference is that users can also write essays, so a personal POV. And some users can become labeled as an "expert" and be in charge of certain articles. Basically the expert voice gets more important than on Wikipedia. The project exists in Dutch and English but the Dutch version is stronger on this moment. http://www.wikisage.org/ [Interwiki sync] - A page on Meta is created to discus interwiki synchronization problems. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_synchronization [681 hits for wikipedia] - to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Google the have put online a dump of google from January 2001. Wikipedia was founded on January 15, 2001. In this google there are 681 hits for "wikipedia", now it is 251 million. http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=wikipedia http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/ -- one of least know WMF-sites ; EN Wikipedia edition December 2001 === Was ist das? === Well, if you not know it you look it up .. and there is a very handy FF extension to do so in Wiktionary. Users of FireFox can install the WikiLook exstension. When installed you just press shift and point to a word in a text. And you get in a small overlay screen the dictionary description of it and a link to look it up in Wikipedia. English language editions only. But due the multi-language nature of Wiktionary the extension remains useful also for non-English language users. http://wikilook.mozdev.org/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7675 === Quote === "If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?" http://wiki.answers.com/Q/If_a_man_speaks_in_a_forest_and_there_is_no_woman_around_to_hear_him_is_he_still_wrong ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 715 Editor(s): Walter, Hannibal, Cbrown, bawolff Thanks to: Platonides, Londenp, Bellayet, Arno Lagrange, Lvova Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe; mailto:request< at >wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 37 Number: 99

EN Wikizine — 2008-09-10T10:33:03

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 33 Number: 98

Wikizine — 2008-08-12T12:19:21

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 33 Number: 98 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [New and useful] - it is now possible to insert the magic word __NOINDEX__ into a page. The result of this is that when a search engine spider comes by, it gets the instruction not to index that page. This way, it should for example be possible to keep certain pages out of the search results of google. This only works on pages that are not in the content namespace; for example, on Wikipedia it will not work in an article like [[Michael Shmerkin]]. Note that anyone who can edit a page can insert this magic word in a page. There is also a magic word __INDEX__ now. Its use is not clear. http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=37973 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8068 [Double redirect] - a long-standing problem is the creation of double redirects when a page is moved. The user then needs to click on a redirect link to continue. There is now a "double redirect fixer". It works at the MediaWiki level but it behaves like a bot. Sometime after the move is done, the wiki will check if there is a double redirect. If so, it will be fixed automatically. By default, the correction will be done by [[User:Redirect fixer]]. Those edits do not appear in recent changes. The name of this "user" can be specified by the setting [[MediaWiki:double-redirect-fixer]]. If for some reason you wish the system to not get involved in a double redirect you can insert the magic word __STATICREDIRECT__ . http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-July/038751.html [Wikisets] - Not so long ago, a new functionality was activated to create "global user groups". These groups can be given certain rights (like "grant and revoke bot flags"); when users are enrolled, they have the rights of that group on all Wikimedia wikis. The problem is that those rights are valid either everywhere or nowhere, and not all communities agree with external users having special rights on their wiki. To solve this problem, the "wiki sets" option has been created. This makes it possible to have "global groups" that are not global. Certain wikis can opt out, or a global group can be made opt-in. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_handbook#wikisets [New mail] - Almost (*) all wikis now offer an user the option to receive an e-mail when their talk page has been changed. (*) exceptions are enwiki, eswiki, frwiki, plwiki, jawiki, ptwiki, ruwiki, zhwiki, itwiki and dewiki. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15031 [Download wikipedia] - You are free to download the database dump of wikis, but for most users this is not very useful. As an alternative, you can also download a static HTML dump: a huge collection of HTML files that gives you a local copy of the Wikipedia of your choice. This makes it very easy to bring Wikipedia to places where there is no internet or where it is prohibitively expensive. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/03/new-wikipedia-downloads-available [Ogg support in Firefox] - The fairly popular internet browser Mozilla Firefox now supports the Ogg Vorbis and Theora media formats in its experimental version 3.1. It is considered normal that a webbrower is able to display images by itself; however, for video or audio an external program or a plugin is required. The Wikimedia Foundation projects use Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis for their video and audio recordings. However, besides Wikimedia, these formats are very rarely used by websites for end users. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/31/1752206 === Request for help === [Illustration Project] - In November 2007 it was announced (wikizine 84) that a donation was received of US $ 20,000 for creating and improving illustrations. The "Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP)". It has taken some time to organize but now round 1 is open. Requests for illustrations can now be submitted. People who make a good illustration that is requested can get paid for it. US$ 40 or 15 US$ will be paid. Organizer is [[commons:User:Pfctdayelise]] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32238 === Proposals === [Flood flag] - A proposal has been made for a new sysop function called the "flood flag", that would allow users to hide batches of repetitive edits from recent changes, like a bot flag does. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Flood_flag === Foundation === [Job offers] - Wikimedia is offering several technical jobs; at least a few of the new employees are to work in the San Francisco office, but remote development and system administration is also possible. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/39257 [WMF budget] - The financial plan for the next fiscal year of the WMF has been presented. The WMF plans to spend almost 6 million US dollars and have an income of 7,33 million US dollars. This is a big increase compared to the budget of 2007/2008. The hiring of several new staff members, especially for technical functions, has been budgeted. An extensive "FAQ" on the budget is available. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/01/wikimedia-foundation-2008-2009-annual-plan/ === Community === [EN Wikinews] - has started to use the flagged revisions system on the wiki. The community is working to integrate this function into the publishing procedures. [Move Main Page] - Traditionally, the main page of a Wikimedia project is in the content namespace. This is because the main page was the first page created of every wiki. And for most wikis, that was before namespaces existed. Some wikis have moved their main pages to another name space. For example, the German Wikipedia uses the "Wikipedia:" namespace and the Swedish Wikipedia uses the "Portal:" namespace. The English language Wikipedia is now also discussing a move. http://tinyurl.com/6dvldz === Media === [Hebrew Wikipedia] - an Israeli newspaper published extensively about Wikipedia. Some fragments have been translated in English. It tells the Wikipedia story from the Hebrew Wikipedia point of view. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1005293.html === Stats === [布拉沃] - The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles. Due to the Olympics, the Chinese wikipedia is mostly unblocked in China for now. http://zh.wikipedia.org === Other news === [Wikimania 2008] - More videos of Wikimania 2008 have become available. An overview can be found on a special Wikizine posting and the Kaltura site. WikipediaWeekly also has some new Wikimania-related postings. http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Wikimania_Sessions http://en.wikizine.org/2008/07/special-post-urls-to-wikimania-2008.html http://wikipediaweekly.org/ [Wikipedia.org] - The poll discussing which Wikipedias are to be listed on the central space of the portal Wikipedia.org is now closed. The result is a very simple criterion: a ranking by most visitors, without any further specifications or exceptions. These rankings are to be obtained from Alexa.com. The portal has been updated according the new system. As a result of this the Dutch language Wikipedia has been replaced by the Chinese Wikipedia. According to Alexa, 1% of all traffic to wikipedia.org is to the Chinese Wikipedia. Alexa gets those statistics by monitoring the internet usage of people who have installed the (English language) Alexa toolbar. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll === Did you know ... === ... that the definition of a "community member" can differ strongly between wikis? ... that the Hebrew-language Wikipedia only gives users the right to vote if they have made at least 100 edits in the last 90 days? ... that the idea for using this system is to make it more difficult for users with sock puppets to control votes? === Quote === 'It occurred to me that when the dust settled on the Wikipedia versus Britannica question, the likely conclusion would be 'Wikipedia is more up to date; Britannica has better illustrations.' —Philip Greenspun ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 714 Unique Visitors website last week: 76 Editor(s): Walter Corrector(s): Oliphaunt Thanks to: Yonatan, adambro, pfctdayelise Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe; mailto:request< at >wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 30 Number: 97

EN Wikizine — 2008-07-24T21:42:23

EN Wikizine - Notification of delay of EN Wikizine

Walter Vermeir — 2008-07-15T14:47:16

Dear reader of Wikizine in English, The next edition of Wikizine is delayed. At this time it is still the intention to provide you with this edition. If you would like to help out with the creation of EN Wikizine please contact me at wikizine.org> Greetings, Walter

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 25 Number: 96

EN Wikizine — 2008-06-16T23:31:37

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 22 Tech flash

EN Wikizine — 2008-05-27T21:48:52

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 21 Number: 95

EN Wikizine — 2008-05-21T22:17:40

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 17 Number: 94

Wikizine — 2008-04-24T07:41:51

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 17 Number: 94 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Suggestions] - A function has been enabled on the projects that gives a drop-down menu with search suggestions. http://leuksman.com/log/2008/04/21/suggestion-search-drop-down/ [New search tests] - Testing is underway of a new search system to replace the current wiki-search function. The new system is supposed to give a more "google-like" search experience. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37611 http://ls2.wikimedia.org/ - location of experimental search system [Global blocking?] - A MediaWiki extension has been created that makes global blocking of IP addresses on all WMF wikis possible. Discussion is opened about whether this is a good idea, how it can be used, and by whom. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37704 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking [Global login] - Users who already have a global account for the projects still need to login to every wiki independently. There is a global login but no global session. The developers are working on this. Brion explains a possible way for doing this and the security risks. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37661 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_session_threat_assessment [OpenID] - Regarding the possible implementation of OpenID on the WMF-projects, Brion says: "We may [implement this] at some point, but it's a much lower priority atm, and requires more review to make sure we're happy with how it'll look and behave." http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37671 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID === Foundation === [Board Treasurer] - A non-elected seat on the Board of Trustees has been filled by Stuart West, who is the new Treasurer of the Board. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28722 -- announcement on Foundation-l http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28753 -- "Hello" from Stuart West http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board#Stuart_West [New jobs] - the Wikimedia Foundation has job openings for 3 functions related to the organisation of future fundraising drives. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28517 [Wikimania 2008] - Requests for scholarships (financial support) to go to Wikimania in Egypt were opened but are now cloased again. Sorry. The timeframe was to short to make it in time for Wikizine. http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships [Large donation] - the WMF has received a new large donation. It is US$500,000 from Vinod and Neeru Khosla. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_Releases/Khosla_Gift [WMF blog] - a Foundation blog has been started. WMF staff will post news and information about the work they're engaged in that is not large enough to need a press release, but is still noteworthy. Also, guest contributors, board members and so on can post... but anyone can comment! http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/11/welcome/ === Community === [Wikiportret] - the Dutch Wikimedia chapter presents a service to make it more easy for famous people or there managers to submit pictures for use on the projects. The front-end is a basic website with clear and easy instructions to submit a picture. After this an email is sent to the OTRS team (who need to verify the submission) and if is is accepted they put in on Commons. Currently there is only a Dutch language version of this service in use, but support for more languages is possible and intended. (However, for many languages this already exists by use of a page on the wiki Contact form.) To support this project templates are placed on (Dutch) articles of people who have not yet a picture to point to the special website. Also an advertisement is created that can be used for publication by people who wish to support this project. http://www.wikiportret.nl http://www.wikiportrait.org -- multi-language version (only Dutch works) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission -- English Wikipedia (and four other language versions linked from the sidebar) [EN Wikinews] - a bot active on the English Wikipedia is helping to bring the news articles of the sister project Wikinews to the attention of the Wikipedia readers. This bot will update pages on Wikipedia with relevant Wikinews articles, including the addition of Television portal links to recent Wikinews articles that are about television related topics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikinews_Importer_Bot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Television === Media === [Documentary] - On the Dutch (Netherlands) public television, a 50-minute documentary about Wikipedia has been broadcast at prime time, and uninterrupted by commercials. An English-language version is available on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0 http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/39405191/ === Stats === [By page view] - Overview of how much traffic the different Wikipedias receive. English gets 50%, German 10% and Japanese 9.5%. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27602 [2000th featured articles] - the English language Wikipedia now has 2000 featured articles. The latest Signpost features an interview about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/2000th_FA [Wiktionary] - the Japanese has 30,000 definitions, the French has 800,000 definitions and the English also has almost 800,000. http://ja.wiktionary.org http://fr.wiktionary.org === Other news === [Britannica free!] - ... at least for bloggers. The "Encyclopædia Britannica" is now giving away free accounts for their encyclopedia to "web publishers". Also articles of EB are now free for all to read, if you go to the article by means of an hyperlink posted online. You can only read that one specific article, if you jump to any other article the text is shielded by a subscribe option.... at least if you have javascript enabled. If you disable javascript in your browser, everyone (without the need to login) can read all articles of Britannica. http://britannicanet.com/?page_id=15 http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192818/Wikipedia -- The "Wikipedia" article on EB (if this doesn't work use the online link on en.wikizine.org) http://www.britannica.com/bps/home -- MainPage (disable javascript) [Wikipedia book] - come autumn 2008, the publisher Bertelsmann will publish a German-language printed edition of Wikipedia that contains information on about 50,000 topics on 1000 pages. The price will be EUR 19.95 (US$32). The Wikimedia Foundation will receive EUR 1 for every copy. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/22/wikipedia-in-german-book-form/ http://tinyurl.com/4fx4n2 Slashdot news item [Wikipedia Chemistry] - Yet another book: KnowledgePublications is publishing an English language book about hydrogen (H). It contains large parts of the chemistry related articles of EN wp. The book is titled, "The Chemical Educator: for The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen". The published says it is one of the best books ever written on the manufacture of hydrogen. http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-04-0416-003.shtml http://tinyurl.com/65c49c -- view of the book [ID Wikizine] - the Indonesian language edition of Wikizine has been closed due to lack of interest and assistance. === Did you know ... === ... that even changes that were active during a very brief amount of time can pop up for a long time afterwards as the version a visitor will see? On the first of April was the tag-line changed several times. That is the string of text that normally says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Seven days later, when requesting an article as a visitor, the version of the article displayed contained the version of the tagline that was active for only one minute on the first of April. The reason is that for the servers to be able to take care of the very large volume of traffic the sites get, pages are cached. Anonymous users get a previously saved version to see. The cache of a page expires after 31 days. Moral of the story: even a "joke edit" that is only live for a minute or so can show up to visitors up to a month later. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37598 === Quote === "Spanking or hitting a skunk is not recommended" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/WikiWorld ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 710 Unique Visitors website last week: 86 Editor(s): Walter Corrector(s): Philippe, Oliphaunt, Cbrown1023 Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe; mailto:request< at >wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 14 Number: 93 Extra

EN Wikizine — 2008-04-03T20:37:41

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 13 Number: 93

Wikizine — 2008-03-26T15:51:11

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 13 Number: 93 ****************************************** Wikizine ... not yet dead ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === === Single User Login === SUL. Single User Login. Bug 57. Unified login. One login for all wikis. The mythical uberlogin has migrated to The Real World. The migration function is enabled currently for sysops only. The options to migrate can be found on the first page of the account preferences page on the projects were you're a sysop. From there you can follow the instructions to claim all you accounts on all wikis that have the same username. After the migration you can log on all these wikis with the same password. For the migration to work you need to have the same email address or password on all your user accounts. You can claim the rest of the accounts with your name by providing their password. The current sysop-only migration is to collect information for the general user migration later. Sysops who have problems are strongly encouraged to report them so that they can be fixed before SUL is rolled out generally. By migrating now (if you can) you have the advantage that you can use that username to log in to all WMF wikis as long as there is not a local user account with your name that is not yours. Please note that not everhings works yet when you migrate. For example renaming an account can not be done (for now at least). Inform you before you do it. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37290 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37434 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login [Upload auto-confirmed] - upload of files on all Wikimedia sites except Commons is now restricted to auto-confirmed users. That are user accounts older then 4 days. http://tinyurl.com/2vuz8m [Search changed] - the technical side of the search function of the wikis has changed. As a result some wikis who have used javascript to include external search engines may experience glitches requiring an update of the local code. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37379 http://leuksman.com/log/2008/03/21/lucenesearch-is-dead-long-live-mwsearch/ === Request for help === [Stable Versions] - testwikis are setup for tests of the stable versions function. This function makes it possible to rate the quality of an article. Feedback is requested from users who volunteer to test the function. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37372 [Scholarship] - translations are requested of the Wikimania 2008 scholarships information page. http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation/Scholarships === Foundation === [+ $3,000,000] - The board of the "Alfred P. Sloan Foundation" has granted the Wikimedia Foundation 1 million dollars (US) per year for the next three years. This is the largest donation made to the Foundation in its history. Note: 1 million USD = 642302 EUR / 501669 GBP http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27379 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan_Foundation http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17324/53/ [New hire] - the WMF has hired a new accountant, Mary Lou Secoquian, who will work in San Francisco. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27279 === Community === [NotTheWikipediaWeekly] - On the English language Wikipedia a new audio podcast project about Wikipedia has started. They announce a time to meet in a skypecast, talk about Wikipedia topics and publish the recordings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly === Awards === [IT Wikipedia] - The Italian Wikipedia has won the a category award of "PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore" a competition organized by the most important business newspaper in Italy (Il Sole 24 ore). The winners were selected by jury from the shortlist composed by the 5 sites that obtained the highest score through a popular vote. This is the second time that it.wiki wins "PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore". Last time was two years ago. http://premiowww.ilsole24ore.com/vincitori.php === Stats === [Animated stats] - Our grandmaster of statistics Erik Zachte has made a new form of Wikipedia-stats. Animated statistics; bubbles representing the projects floating true time and number of articles. It is available in an interactive format that works currently with FireFox 3.0 release candidate. A flash version that works with any browser (8MB) is also available. http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Wikistats/ http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27393 === Other news === [Schoolbook] - A publisher of schoolbooks in Japan is using a Wikipedia map as illustration. It is the world map of death penalty sentences. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27395 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Death_Penalty_World_Map.png === Did you know ... === ... Microsoft also uses MediaWiki ? Microsoft researcher Steve Ickman said while Microsoft SharePoint is great, MediaWiki has valuable features not found in SharePoint - particularly the ability to archive. http://tinyurl.com/ysbz6n http://tinyurl.com/2ar5jo === Quote === "Do not leave your children unattended. All unattended children will be eaten."

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 10 Number: 92

Wikizine — 2008-03-07T10:59:41

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 10 Number: 92 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [__HIDDENCAT__] - there is a new magic word __HIDDENCAT__ When used on a "Category:Foobar"-page it is not listed among the other categories at the bottom of an article in the category. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/36831 [New dump!] - There is a new database dump of the English language Wikipedia. The full dump of EN Wikipedia, all articles, full history is 130gb (compressed). http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20080103/ -- EN Wikipedia dump http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html -- other wikis dump [New Skin] - When you go to your "preferences" you have the option "skin" where you can select what the interface will look like. The default skin is Monobook. There are several others to choice from but besides "classic" they are not very usable. But now is there a new good looking and usable skin: "Modern". Check it out. http://tinyurl.com/22gsy6 -- Wikipedia style "Modern" [RC on IRC] - Recent changes of the projects are posted on IRC by means of a Wikimedia IRC-server. By request access to this service has been added to the Wikizine IRC gateway for a selection of projects. http://chat.wikizine.org === Request for help === [Wikimania 2008] - Call for Participation; Submissions are open until 16 March. Submissions are warmly welcomed http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation === Foundation === [4 new Wikimedia Chapters] - The board of the Wikimedia Foundation approved 4 new chapters. The new chapters are: Wikimedia Česká republika, Wikimedia Österreich, Wikimedia Australia Incorporated, Wikimedia Hong Kong Limited http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters [Wikimanina 2008] - A site risk assessment will be ordered for Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt announced Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner. Concern for the safety of Wikimanians in Alexandria has been a topic on Foundation-l and the assessment will look at various threats. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/26221 [Board elections 2008] - there is a call for election officials http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/25911 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Committee/en === Media === [Sue on CNET] - Video intervieuw of Sue Gardner (executive director of the WMF) about the Jimmy Wales buzz and Wikipedia. http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-32449.html [Wikipedia in Africa] - story about Wikipedia on DVD in Africa. http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23906 [1984] - Japan is considering legislation to "govern top news Web sites" http://tinyurl.com/2dt26j [The Economist] - inclusionists versus deletionists http://tinyurl.com/23agss === Stats === [WikiWoordenboek] - the Dutch language Wiktionary passed the 30,000 page milestone. http://www.wikiwoordenboek.org [Counts] - The Wikimedia Commons has reached 2,500,000 media files. [Again new stats] - A site that is using the squid logs to generate Wikipedia article traffic statistics. You can get the stats for a specific article or get a list of the most popular pages. There can you learn that for some reason "Canine reproduction" is very popular. http://stats.grok.se [Wikipedia is 2nd in the world!] - at least in the "2008 Web Globalization Report Card". The number of languages supported is a big factor in this ranking. http://bytelevel.com/news/reportcard2008.html === Other news === [Dirty dishes] - Bad week for Jimmy Wales. His personal life is getting media coverage. It is reported that Jimmy had a brief relationship with Rachel Marsden, a conservative blogger who works in the media industry. The relationship broke off and Rachel Marsden provided private communications between herself and Jimmy to a gossip site, which published them. Jimmy published a statement about it on his blog. And at the same time Danny Wool, ex WMF staff member, published a blog posting where he writes about his time at the Wikimedia Foundation and requests for reimbursement of expenses by Jimmy, among other things. http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/statement/ http://tinyurl.com/22t42g -- Wikinews article http://allswool.blogspot.com/2008/03/money-for-nothing-chicks-for-free.html http://tinyurl.com/23f3am -- Signpost article about it [Encyclopedia of Life] - the EOL has gone live with more than one million species pages that are mostly minimal articles. Only 25 articles are like the EOL wishes the articles to be, articles containing rich media with extensive information. http://www.eol.org/ [About Wikipedia] - author John Broughton wrote the book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" . A guide to editing Wikipedia. ISBN 0596515162 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-03-03/Book_review [CNN goes (a bit) Wikinews] - CNN, an American news network, has started a website where everyone can submit news and pictures. As it looks now every article has only one author and people can post comments about it. So it is more a blog than a wiki. http://beta.ireport.com/ [Wikileaks] - An attempt to bring down Wikileaks has failed. There was a DOS-attack, a fire at their web hosting facility and the release of lawyers who obtained a court order to remove the domain "wikileaks.org" from DNS. Wikileaks did remain online by means of other domains and by entering the ip-address. The court order was later revoked. Wikileaks.org is again online. http://tinyurl.com/2pbk3q [Wikirace] - Wikirace.org is game where you compete with other people to try get from one "start-article" to try to reach the "end-article" in as few steps as possible. http://wikirace.org === Message to the readers ==== Wikizine is there to inform you, readers, about the news related to the Wikimedia projects or what seem relevant to inform you about. It has been increasingly more difficult to get a new edition ready for distribution the last half year. At present the publication rate is below the necessary frequency necessary to inform our readers in a timely manner about the relevant news. Because of this I recommend, as editor, that the readers of Wikizine read the Wikipedia Signpost as their primary internal news source to keep informed. -- [[meta:user:Walter]] , Editor of Wikizine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost === Did you know ... === ... there is dedicated program to browse Wikipedia visually? The program is called indywiki. (And no, it has nothing to do with Indymedia.) Basically it is a GUI that displays Wikipedia content in a different way then your browser. Focus is on the visual aspect. You search for a entry, you get a selection of pictures related to that article. By clicking on an image you can browse Wikipedia. Also is there a text box that displays text sections of the article, a list of sections of the article and a list of external links. The software runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. Indywiki is young software and the main developer is looking for assistance with this project. The developer is looking for a python developer to work on features and people who can work on the GUI to make it better looking. http://indywiki.sourceforge.net/ -- website http://indywiki.sourceforge.net/indywiki_fosdem.pdf -- presentation of Indywiki Contact indywiki: === Quote === "[..] And for the encyclopedia, it turned out that a volunteer model was able to do quite a reasonable job." -- Bill Gates reffering to Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/32kpw9 ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 714 Unique Visitors website last week: 170 Editor(s): Walter Thanks to: Annabel, Effeietsanders Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe; mailto:request< at >wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 7 Number: 91

Wikizine — 2008-02-14T21:24:17

EN Wikizine - Year: 2008 Week: 3 Number: 90

EN Wikizine — 2008-01-16T23:53:24

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2008 Week: 3 Number: 90 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [User rights] - it is now possible for the developers to selectively assign groups permissions to grant/revoke other groups, either to themselves or to all other users. An implementation is don on some wikis, including English language Wikipedia, by creating the new group 'rollbacks' with right 'rollback', and giving sysops the ability to grant/revoke this group to any user. Wikis who also wish to have that option need to get consensus about it and make a bugzilla ticket for it. The page Special:Userrights is now also listed in the special pages overview. Eventually the pages like MakeSysop will be removed and all changes to status will need be done by use of the page Special:Userrights. [Page move restricted] - Since the 2nd of January 2008 it is no longer possible to move/rename pages if a user is not autoconfirmed (Users are autoconfirmed after a specified time and after specified amount of edits). There is a opt-out policy, which means that individual projects can decide to make page moves possible for new users as well. http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12071 [Title blacklist] - the new function "Title blacklist" announced in the previous edition of Wikizine is again disabled. The comment in the log about the disabling was "domas: removing titleblacklist. there's certain level of crap beyond which I won't fix stuff. " === New project proposals === [Wikibooks multilingual] - A new wikibook-project is proposed aimed at writing multilingual books, which means the usage of several languages within one book; at languages without a own wikibooks, i.e. incubator function; and to courage translations and cooperation between the several Wikibooks-projects. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilingual === Policy === [Bot generated articles] - A proposal for a policy regarding (heavy) bot-generated articles in certain Wikipedias is discussed on Meta. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Proposal_for_Policy_on_overuse_of_bots_in_Wikipedias === Foundation === [Business development] - Executive Director Sue Gardner announced that a new head of Business Development has been hired. Vishal Patel will not join the Wikimedia Foundation in there move to the Westcoast, and Kul Wadhwa will join the staff in his position as head of business development. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/036927.html [Head of communications] - Jay Walsh from Canada is the new head of communications and takes over this job from Sandy Ordonez, who will not relocate to San Francisco with the WMF. The job includes press relations, written and oral communications. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037233.html [Fundraiser result] - The fundraiser has resulted in the biggest amount of money donated during a fundraiser ever: over 2 million dollars. The biggest donation of half a million dollars was made by an anonymous donor and almost 45,000 donors have donated about $33 on average. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037230.html [Concerns on transparency] - Following a leakage of information from a private list used within the Foundation, which resulted in articles on the en.wikinews it is being discussed if the foundation is communicating transparent. There are opposing views on the subject, saying that the WMF is the most transparent organisation and opposing views, which state that it becomes less transparent. The discussion is going-on, but everyone values transparency up to a certain point. Some opinions are telling that the WMF is too far away from the local communities and so that representatives of those communities have no feeling to issues on WMF-level. A Wiki-council as a council made up of representatives of all communities might be a solution to channel issues from local communities to the WMF board and the WMF office. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037273.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037255.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037344.html [Meta-arbcom?] - A meta-arbcom is being discussed. There are projects which have an arbcom, but many projects don't. Arbcom is short for arbitration committee: if there are problems or disagreements in a certain community with an arbcom, and the people involved in the arguments don't find a solution themselves, these people can asked the appointed or chosen arbcom to mediate and even rule (including corrective actions) over the dispute. For communities without an arbcom sometimes stewards are asked to decide for certain actions. Steward rules prevent them from taking decisions: a steward serves the different communities. Fur such cases and also for cases which exceed the specific community a meta-arbcom is being discussed. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/036985.html [Wikimania 2009] - 6 bids have been submitted for consideration for the Wikimania 2009 venue, which are listed below. * Bogotá (Colombia, South America) * Toronto (Ontario, Canada) * Kathmandu (Kathmandu, Nepal) * Buenos Aires (Argentina, South America) * Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) * Karlsruhe (Germany, Europe) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids#Bids for more details === Community === [Looking back and forward] - Florence Devouard, chair of WMF, has evaluated her wishes made for Wikimedia beginning of 2007 and has specified 10 wishes for 2008. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Summary_of_a_year-_2007 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/036818.html [One administrator projects] - Following an incident on Russian Wikibooks, where the only administrator removed the banners referring to Wikimedia and MediaWiki, it is being discussed if a policy should be created which states what every Wikimedia project can or cannot change to the appearance of the site, and what to do when projects have only one administrator, with the risk of hijacking the project. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/036930.html [Moratorium on deletion of smaller projects] - A moratorium on the deletion of language projects was proposed. This is mainly about smaller, almost inactive, projects. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/036923.html [Picture of the Year] - On Commons is there are again the election of the picture of the year. The first round of nominations will close soon on the 17th. Voting takes place this year by means of special software hosted on the toolserver. To use it you need to enable the email function of your user account. The second round of the election will be the 20th and 24th of january. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2007 http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Picture_of_the_Year [New projects approved] - The langcom has approved requests to start a Wikipedia in Saterland Frisian, a micro language spoken in the Saterland commune in Germany, and a Wikiversity in greek language. Both have already been created. === Stats === [Traffic] - Domas Mituzas has made an excellent review of operations. Amongst others he mentions that traffic and requests doubled in 2007. The WMF spend $279k on hardware; hardware was also expanded at Amsterdam facility with 15 squid servers bought by the German chapter. The software was upgraded so that performance is faster. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/036944.html === Other news === [The Economist] - In "The World in 2008" published by "The Economist" the Wikimania 2008 is mentioned in the "Diary for 2008" Scholars, journalists, geeks and other fans of Wikipedia, an open-access encyclopedia meet in Taipei for Wikimania 2008 . Too bad that they mentioned the wrong place: Taipei was in 2007; Wikimania 2008 will be held in Alexandria. Also they failed to mention that it is not only about Wikipedia. [Correction] - Wikipedia is not 8 years old this year but only 7. === Was ist das? === [patrol] - A lesser known feature of MediaWiki is the patrol-function. Every change on any article can be patrolled, which means there on the difference page there is a button, with which the controller can mark the change as patrolled. In the recent-changes list there is an option to show only non-patrolled changes. This function is only available for logged-in users and is active on the Dutch Wikipedia/Wikibooks/Wikiquote. Already many years now it works with a high success rate to counteract on vandalism if this is missed during live patrolling. == Quote === Computer; what was that? -- Constable Odo "A temporary loss of stability resulting of the impact of a concentrated plasma charge." We are being attacked???? -- Constable Odo "Affirmative." -- computer From Star Trek DS9 ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 713 Unique Visitors website last week: 115 Editor(s): Londenp, Walter Corrector(s): IDRex Thanks to: pfctdayelise, Steven Fruitsmaak, SPQRobin, Splarka, MZMcBride Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe; mailto:request< at >wikizine.org?subject=unsubscribe

EN Wikizine - Anno Domini MMVIII Week I Number LXXXIX

EN Wikizine — 2008-01-01T19:30:56

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Anno Domini MMVIII Week I Number LXXXIX ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Page protection] - It is now possible to protect unborn articles and deleted pages, with the normal protection levels: only sysops or semi-protection. Also, auto-expire of the protection is available. To protect a non-existent page (as sysop), you only need to request the page and hit the "protect" button. [Title blacklist] - A new extension is live on the wikis. The Title Blacklist extension allows wiki administrators to block the creation, movement and upload of pages whose title matches any among a list of regular expressions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Titleblacklist http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Title_Blacklist [Special:Userrights] - Bureaucrats now have access to the special page "Userrights". At this time this page is listed in the special pages overview, but not yet in the sysops section. Manually enter "Special:Userrights" in the location bar of your browser or in the search box of Wikipedia to request this page. In the current form this does not give extra rights to bureaucrats. The new special page only combines the functionality of "MakeSysop" and "Makebot". === Request for help === [Fundraising] - The Fundraising website's layout and usability have been enhanced. However, this also implies that new translations are required. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/en - The English version of the new donations page http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Cbrown1023/Donate - More information about the translation request === Policy === [Stewards] - A rewrite of the steward policy is in progress. Comments are welcome on the talk page. A vote is expected around the 15th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Rewriting/Stewards_policy === Foundation === [Fundraiser] - Now at the very end of the fundraiser, a modest matching donation of $50,000 has been made by an anonymous donor. The current total balance is $ 1.43 million. === Community === [Image service] - A project on the English Wikipedia provides a really quick and easy way to add an image to a person's biography article in various language Wikipedias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BOTijo/Images_for_biographies [Wikimania dates] - The dates for Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria have been changed after a request by a group of people. The conference now covers Thursday-Friday-Saturday, and is held 17 - 19 July 2008. This way, the conference will fall into a single week, so that people have to take less days off from their work to attend. http://www.wikimania.org - The Wikimania website [Photo submission] - Many Wikipedia articles about a person don't feature a photograph yet. A new project on the English language Wikipedia has started to ask people whose articles have no pictures to submit one. A request for people to submit their images by email, together with usage permission, has been included on the contact page of the English Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission [Stewards] - The confirmation of the "old" stewards has been concluded. Four stewards did not make it, all due to inactivity: Ausir, Romihaitza, Snowdog and Suisui. === Media === [Video] - Sue Gardner and Erik Moeller gave a presentation at Stanford's Open Source Lab about Wikimedia and the Wikiversity project, and shot a video of it. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Stanford_Open_Source_Lab http://blip.tv/file/551254 === Stats === [Stats for all] - On the English language Wikipedia, an extensive statistical overview of all the Wikipedias is included. In this overview, you can see for example that the Volapuk Wikipedia (the 15th largest) has grown by a stunning 18634% in 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics [WP numbers] - The Arabic Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles and the French Wikipedia has reached 600,000 articles. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News -- more on this subject === Other news === [Reminder] - Soon, it will be the most important holiday of the year: Wikipedia Day. On January 15, Wikipedia will be 8 years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_day === Did you know ... === ... you can add a extra link to the upper right menu? By including the code below on your [[User:Your_Name/monobook.js]] page you get an extra link between "My talk" and "My preferences". You can define the page it points to, and the name of the link, yourself. It can be used, for example, to easily access a page where you collect links to pages or websites you find useful. The code: /*Personal links*/ addOnloadHook(function() { addPortletLink('p-personal','/wiki/User:Your_Name/Link_Target','Link_Name','pt-links','Link title','!', document.getElementById('pt-preferences')); }); Note: change "Your_Name" to your account name; change "Link_Target" to the page you want to link to; change "Link_Name" to the link name that is to be shown. The shortcut key for this link is alt-shift-!. === Quotes === "An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." -- Bill Vaughan "It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets." -- William Thomas http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art27040.asp -- More New Year quotes ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 706 Unique Visitors website last week: 157 Editor(s): Walter, Effeietsanders Corrector(s): Oliphaunt Thanks to: Adrian M. H., pfctdayelise Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org ////////////////////////////////////////// Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

Wikizine - number: 88

EN Wikizine — 2007-12-24T00:52:04

Wikizine - number: 87

EN Wikizine — 2007-12-16T23:51:12