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.org
Year: 2008 Week: 33 Number: 98
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== 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-…
=== 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
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Editor(s): Walter
Corrector(s): Oliphaunt
Thanks to: Yonatan, adambro, pfctdayelise
Contact: reply or
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