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Year: 2006 Week: 15 Number: 21
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Outage] Wikimedia was down from 19:19 UTC on 9th April to around 01:30
UTC on 10th April. The explanation we have at this time is that one of the
800A circuit breakers between the generators/UPS and our servers failed at
our Florida co-location facilities causing obvious problems. Staff at the
datacenter struggled to resume service as soon as possible, and are now
investigating the reason said breaker failed.
Wikimedia sites were unavailable for just over six hours.
Several servers came up with bad clocks. Brion has corrected the times in
the 'revision' database entries for the entries edited from these servers
so 'history' and 'contribs' will be correct, but you might see some edits
listed in your watchlist etc 8 hours earlier than their actual times.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22810/http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22827/
[Parser functions] Tim Starling created a MediaWiki extension supporting
parser functions, along with four new functions: if, ifeq, expr, and rand.
These can replace inefficient templates such as {{{qif}}} and
{{{switch}}} from the English Wikipedia. Parser functions such as
LOCALURL have existed for a while; but including them in an extension has
only been possible since MediaWiki 1.6, released last week.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ed_Poor/subtract&action=edit
-- example of inefficient template
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/tags/REL1_6_1/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
-- MediaWiki 1.6
[Move to Commons] Magnus Manske has made a online tool to make it more
easy to mo move files from a local wiki to commons
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27061/http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/commonshelper.php
[SpamWar-IV] The coming of the Redirects - new way of link spamming
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22799
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania] Needs volunteers and translators. Spanish, French, and
Chinese translators are especially welcome.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimaniahttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Meetings#General_volunteer_me…http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6795/
[en.wikinews] Needs more people to help out with the daily audio recording
of the news. If you'd like to help contact User:Mrmiscellanious
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Mrmiscellanioushttp://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews
=== New project proposals ===
[List of proposals] User:Robert_Harrison is working on a new version of
the new project proposals page on Meta
http://tinyurl.com/z5ek3
=== Foundation ===
[PR] Schwartz Communications, a public relations firm, provides on a
voluntary basis there services to the Wikimedia organization. The are from
now on included to the Communications committee as advisors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartz_Communicationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee
=== Community ===
[EN.wikinews] is now offering a podcast of their daily news briefs on a
daily basis and actively promoting it.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinewshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/AudioWikinewsNewsBriefs
[EN.wp CD] User:BozMo produces a CD with 2006 articles and 8500 images for
use in UK schools to benefit the group 'SOS Children' from the English
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BozMo/2006_Wikipedia_CD_Selectionhttp://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/education-cd.htm
=== Media ===
[no print] the print edition of German Wikipedia is postponed due to lack
of support from the community.
http://tinyurl.com/lhpmn - google translation
[AlistApart.com] Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters - about
registered and anonymous users and Wikipedia
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters
=== Stats ===
[The TOP] The classic traffic ranking is from Alexa where Wikipedia has
the 18the place of all websites of the internet. But there are also
others. According to "Hitwise" Wikipedia is on the 38th place, just after
CNN.com That seems impressive but that is still only 0,17 % market share.
When limited to "Education websites" Wikipedia is the clearly the number
one. Also according Hitwise the visitors of Wikipedia are 47,2 female and
52,8 male and users of all ages are using Wikipedia.
According to the statistics of "comScore" Wikipedia is on the 28th place
and rising. All those reports are nice to know but it is important to
realize that the give an strong English / American POV of the use of the
internet.
http://tinyurl.com/g6uog -- Hitwise data and demographics (USA) for
Wikipedia, March 2006 (doc file)
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?id=783 -- February 2006 'top 50'
list (WP: #28)
[KW.wp] The Cornish Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles. According to EN
Wikipedia there are around 3500 speakers of this language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_languagehttp://kw.wikipedia.org
[jp.wp] The Japanese Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
http://jp.wikipedia.org
=== Did you know ... ===
... that you *can* switch of your computer, go outside in the real world,
leave your phone, iPod and PDA at home, go to a forest of a park and watch
to the movement of the leaves in the wind and the breaking of the sunlight
in those leaves and enjoy its fantastic resolution?
=== MediaZilla-IRC Quotes ===
"And so, we don't need a business model, we're just doing it." [Jimmy
Wales, early 21st century]
Sweater: optional piece of clothing applied to child when its mother feels
cold.
"The life is too short, and Wikipedia too slow ..." - Anon
"George Bush is a good president. No really. Please stop laughing."
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 362
Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao, Sj
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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Year: 2006 Week: 13 Number:19 Extra
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== The WMF is closing the French Wikiquote ===
The French language Wikiquote is closed by the foundation.
This notice is placed on the main page of the locked wiki;
<quote>
After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched. A policy requiring greater traceability of quotations will be put in place on fr.wikiquote version II. This action has been taken for the benefit of all Wikimedia Foundation projects.
</quote>
http://fr.wikiquote.org
The new FR Wikiquote is announced to re-open for editing on 1 April with a new empty database.
The origin of the this dates back to August 2005. Wikimédia France received a letter from a company maintaining a
quote database. They claim Wikiquote extracted a substantial part of their database.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closure_of_French_Wikiquote
The closing now of FR Wikiquote seems to be the end result of this.
On Meta a FAQ about this is posted;
*What was wrong with the French Wikiquote?
**Some contributor had apparently inserted material from copyrighted databases and other sources.
*What was the extent of the problem?
**It was sufficient to render the majority of the French Wikiquote database suspect, which is why it was deemed necessary to delete it.
*Was this a legal settlement?
**Yes, we reached an agreement with an outside party, and we are quite satisfied with the outcome.
*Can you tell us who the settlement was with, what the terms were, etc.?
**What we are doing now is fulfilling the terms. Not every precise detail should be or needs to be disclosed, in order to protect future relationships and negotiation strategies, but the terms that matter are reflected in the official announcement. The project should not incur any legal liability as a result.
*What about the French Wikiquote community?
**There isn't really a substantial community there. Activity significantly declined after this problem was discovered. Affected contributors have already been notified.
*Couldn't you have tried to salvage something?
**It would have required extensive work by the community to identify and remove the problems, much like the German Wikipedia recently did in a similar situation, but on a significantly larger scale this time. Since there isn't much of a community, the resources to do this don't exist. That's why we agreed to start it over.
*Are there problems on other Wikiquotes?
**It's possible, and those communities should let us know if they have any suspicions so that the problems can be addressed without involving outside parties. They should also look at adopting policies similar to the French Wikiquote's new citation policy.
*Will this sort of thing happen again? Is my project in danger of being deleted?
**No, not at all. Certainly not if you have an active community that is willing to respect copyright and is capable of responding to problems. Obviously if you're involved enough to be concerned about the welfare of your project, then there should be sufficient community oversight to ensure that problems like this do not arise, or are dealt with long before they reach this stage.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/Press/2006/03/2…
There has not yet been a official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation about this to the community beside the service announcement on fr.wikiquote
//////////////////////////////////////////
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Editor(s): Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Year: 2006 Week: 13 Number: 19
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Community ===
[WP] Fourteen new wikipedias have been created: Dutch Low Sakson, West
Flamish, Ligurian, Kalmyk, Tetum, Papiamentu, Romany, Samogitian,
Ripuarian, Pennsylvania German, Franco-Provençal/Arpitan, Cantonese,
Banyumasan, and Norman.
The new Pennsylvania German Wikipedia has reached 26 articles. According
to Mark Williamson, the new Cantonese is very active in its first two days.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages#Recently…http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26968
=== (Very) old technical news ===
[Account creation] the number of new accounts that can be created from a
specific IP address is limited to 6 every 24 hours. This is an
anti-vandalism function. It can cause problems for serious users on
larger Wikis. The message that users see when they hit the limit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Acct_creation_throttle_hit
[PDA editions] In addition to the TomeRaider copies of Wikipedia (last
available dump : January 2006), there are a number of commercial
software packages available for viewing Wikipedia on your PDA. The most
recent commercial tool is Quickipedia.
http://download.wikimedia.org/tomeraider/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TomeRaider_databasehttp://palmtops.about.com/od/palmtoppicks/tp/wikipedia_pda.htm
=== Request for help ===
[Slogans] An attempt is made to create a list of all project slogans and
logos in all languages (such as "the free encyclopedia").
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Slogans
[Meta clean-up] A proposal to rearrange meta and make it more useful:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta
=== New project proposals ===
[Wikikernel] A proposal for a project incubator for new Wikimedia
project proposals
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikernelhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_proposals_group
=== Politics ===
[Steward] - A steward temporarily loses stewardship.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6552
=== Media ===
[Britannica Vs. Nature] In December 2005 the famous journal "Nature"
published a news article comparing the science content of Encyclopedia
Britannica with that of the English Wikipedia. The message of the
article was that both Britannica and Wikipedia contain errors, that
there are more errors in Wikipedia then in Britannica, but that
nevertheless Wikipedia is not so much more innacurate than Britannica.
Britannica has finally responded to the article. They find that the way
Nature conducted their inquiry was unfair, and that the results are
invalid. Nature disagrees with Britannica's POV and stands by their
article. This does not directly affect Wikipedia; it is Nature that
claimed that Wikipedia is almost as good as Britannica, not the
Wikimedia Foundation.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html - the
original Nature article, from December 2005
http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf -
Britannica's response
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf - Nature's
reply to the response
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6053754.html - A news.com article about
the matter
http://tinyurl.com/lprbg - A podcast with a Britannica representative
http://tinyurl.com/pz5so - more related content on Meta
=== Stats ===
[Commons] now has over 500,000 files.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/
[80.000 persons alive] the EN Wikipedia has biographical articles on
over 80,000 living people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people
=== Other news ===
[Book] Chinese wikipedian KaurJmeb published his first book about
Wikipedia - ''Wikipedia: Forefront of knowledge sharing'' (維基百科 : 知
識分享最前線) ISBN 9867075064
http://tinyurl.com/l8fvp - A page about it on the new Chinese Wiknews
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:KaurJmeb - The author's userpage
http://tinyurl.com/lq5ks - The book on eslite books
=== Last weeks feedback ===
- The reason that non-sysops get an inactive "block" link in Meta's RC
is: it is included in the summary for the user creation log. This can
be changed by removing the $4 value from [[MediaWiki:Newuserloglog]]. If
you do that there will be no "block" link for that user in the logfile
of new created accounts.
- Not only on EN Wikipedia but also on EN Wikinews can blocked users can
still edit their own talk page. [[meta:User:Eloquence]] knows how to
enable this function.
=== Did you know ... ===
... that you can do free positive promotion for Wikipedia?
A lot of websites give away free stuff or let you register to make a
change to win tickets for something. That is nice but you need first to
have something before you can give it away.
Google Gmail invites. After 2 years, there are still many people who
would like to have an account but do not know how to get one. You can
give these away with the greetings of your language Wikipedia or sister
project.
1# make a "WikipediaXX(a)gmail.com account
2# make additional accounts like wikipediaXX01@, wikipediaXX02@, etc.
for harvesting invites
3# put in the external links section of your gmail signature a
mailto:link . "If you would like to receive free invite Wikipedia can
give you one. Send an empty mail to wikipediaXX(a)gmail.com"
4# give invites to you visitors with the greetings of your project. If
you are low on invites request that they send you one back.
This way you can give a freebie, and your visitors get a positive
association with Wikipedia. The Dutch Wikipedia has been providing this
service since the Summer of 2004, and has sent many hundreds of invites
in that time. If you need a invite yourself, contact Wikizine.
=== Quote ===
"A large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - unidentified Britannica
representative, via podcast.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/lprbg
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 337
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter, Sj
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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Year: 2006 Week: 12 Number: 18
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=== Technical news (*)===
[Move page] Normal users can now move back a moved page. Seems to work
on all WMF wikis.
Example; [[user:Tom]] moves page [[Tom's page]] to [[Tom's moved page]].
[[Tom's page]] is a redirect to [[Tom's moved page]].
Any user (non-sysop) can now move [[Tom's moved page]] back to [[Tom's
page]]. [[Tom's moved page]] is a redirect then. This only works if the
redirected page is not edited. If so you need to delete it first.
A sysop has a option to delete the target page directly when moving that
page.
[Blocked/edit] blocked users on the English Wikipedia can still edit
there own talk page. Seems to work only on the EN Wikipedia.
[renameuser] Bureacrats can change the user name of a user. But there is
a ceiling limit of the number of edits that a user can have done to be
able to change the username. That number used to be 6,800 edits. It has
been raised. Possibly to 20,000 edits. Because it is not sure that the
limit is really 20,000. Or even if it is so you can not trust that if
will not change without notice, it is best not to say to users with more
then 20,000 that the can not apply for a renameuser. Try it and you will
see of it works or not.
[SpamCop] the mail server of wikimedia has been blacklisted by spamcop.
The blocked made that emails send out by Wikimedia email handling system
OTRS where bouncing. According to SpamCop spam has been send by
Wikimedias systems. The block is now expired.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22368
[Weird] on Meta normal users get a "block"-link in RC for newly created
users. This block-link does not work. So far as know this behavior is
only on Meta.
(*) Remark: the meaning of the word "news" in the context of Wikizine
does not mean that it is really something new. It can be a new function
but also a function that is (not) widely known. So is the fact the
blocked users on EN Wiki still can edit there own talk page is many
months old. But if you are not from EN Wikipedia, it is news. Also can
it takes weeks before changes to the software are noticed so the report
of it is delayed.
=== Foundation ===
[Meetings] Wikimedia Polska is organizing a meetup at the end of April.
The big international Wikimania is at the begin of August 2006 in
Boston, SA. And the Chinese will hold a meeting in Hong Kong end August
2006. And also end of August or early September a meeting in the
Netherlands, Europe.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6501http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikimania_2006_to_be_held_in_Hong_Konghttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6428http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCN
=== Community ===
[NW] The Chinese Wikinews starts. And the new Wiki seems already full of
live.
http://zh.wikinews.org
[Internal news] On the English Wikisource a local internal news section
is started in the spirit of the Wikipedia Signpost (EN wikipedia). On
the French Wikipedia the have since some weeks also a new internal
news-project. It is called "Wikizine". The seem to have discovered
Wikizine.org and are now voting for a new name.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Wikizinehttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News
=== New project proposals ===
[Proposal] New proposal: One encyclopedia per child.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#One_Encyclopedia_…
[Proposal] New proposal: Wikikernel, a new project incubator for new
Wikimedia project proposals.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikernel
=== Media ===
[Wikia] is the commercial company of Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. The
New York venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners is investing $4
million to help Wikia expand its Wikicities operation.
http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2006/03/13/story1.html?pag…
=== Did you know ... ===
... that we are *all* volunteers?
The core-editors are the people who are sharing there time and knowledge
to work on the projects and really make the product; a encyclopedia, a
dictionary, a free textbook and so more. You have also sysops,
bureaucrats and stewards. The are working on different layers of
management of the projects. The need to take in to account a bigger
picture and take responsibility also in the function as volunteers.
Without the software developers and the system administrators to make to
fantastic software we are all using and keeping it online there would be
no Wikimedia projects. And the are also volunteers (mostly).
And the board of the Wikimedia foundation whit elected community
members, the committees of the WMF, we are all working on the same
project. But on different levels, whit different responsibility's.
>From the point of view of a blocked user a sysop can be seen as a
tyrant. But it is only a user, a sysop, who doing his job, his function.
Blocking user who hurt the project. A steward can also not please
everybody and that is also not his function. Rules and policies are
there for a reason.
So can it be possible that the Wikimedia Foundation, who needs to deal
whit the real world, needs to take discussions for the good of the
global Wikimedia family. Also when those actions can be unpopular. Do
not attack the Wikimedia Foundation for doing there job. The are also
volunteers working for us all. To keep the projects legally safe and
online. It is only that you can not vote about everything. Assume good
fiat.
=== MediaZilla-IRC Quotes ===
Doesn't "Votes for Deletion" mean we're deleting the votes?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former. -- Albert Einstein
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
is that it has never tried to contact us. [Just a note, that quote is
from Bill Watterson's 'Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip.]
//////////////////////////////////////////
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Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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Year: 2006 Week: 11 Number: 17
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[More anti-spam] On the smaller wikis you need from now on to enter a
word displayed as a image (captcha) if you are an anonymous user and you
are adding a URL to that page.
[Special Page] New option the find the edits done by newbies. use
[[Special:Contributions/newbies]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/newbies
=== Politics ===
[zh.wikinews?] It seems that the Chinese Wikinews finally will be
created soon.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6343
=== Media ===
[BBC Radio Wales] interview with Wikipedian David Gerard. Audio link
will expire so do not wait if you like to hear it.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/41652http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/shows/mousemat.shtmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/wales/mousemat.rpm -
RealAudio stream
=== Stats ===
[BR] The Breton Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles. Breton is a very
small language so 5,000 is a real accomplishment.
http://br.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degemerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_language
[FR] French Wikipedia reaches 250,000 articles.
[Alexa] Wikipedia's Alexa rank rises to 19. And Wikipedia keeps raising
fast. In the draft version of this edition of Wikizine was written that
Wikipedia had the 20th place as the most popular website of the
internet. Only 18 places to go and you, dear reader, will not be bored
anymore with Alexa-updates.
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none
=== Other news ===
[Wikiepic] New proposal page posted for Wikiepic. Wikiepic could be like
a freeform mythology or fantasy world. The Neverending story. Articles
would focus around Characters, Places, Events, ect ect.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiepichttp://novelas.wikicities.com/wiki/The_Neverending_Wiki
[Wikipedia IRL] After showing up in newspapers and other media as a
source for more information about something Wikipedia starts now also
being used in parliaments as information source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-03-06/Politi…
=== Did you know ... ===
... that Jimbo is a real globetrotter?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales
=== Computer quotes ===
To err is human. To really mess things up you need a computer
"Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new
machines to behave like old ones." — Alan J. Perlis.
"Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb ?
A: It can't be done; it's a hardware problem."
//////////////////////////////////////////
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Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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.org
Year: 2006 Week:10 Number: 16
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=== Technical news ===
[E-mail] Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive
Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code,
and follow the link in the e-mail. The reason is that Wikimedias
mailserver is blacklisted by SpamCop, allegedly for sending mail to
spamtrap addresses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Confirmemailhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Confirmemail_texthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Mail_server…
[Conversion] sr WP now start Cyrillic alphabet ←→ Latin alphabet
automatic conversion.
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D1%81%D1…http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_…http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043799.html
=== Policy ===
[OFFICE] New authority level on the EN Wikipedia; "Office actions". The
Wikimedia Foundations receives frequently emails or phone calls with
complaints about articles on the EN Wikipedia. Some complaint's need
swift action on the wiki as a responds to those complaints. To able to
do this to "Office" is created. "Office" members can take actions that
override all other policies. Reverting actions done by the office is not
allowed. Currently all office actions need personal permission of Jimbo.
But this can change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_Actionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-02-27/Office…
=== Community ===
[Close] The Moldovan Wikipedia votes to close its doors and instead use
the Romanian Wikipedia.
http://mo.wikipedia.org/http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043799.html
=== Media ===
[Yahoo!] adds more Wikipedia links, new functionality has been added to
Yahoo searches which return Wikipedia articles in the results.
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000255.html
=== Stats ===
[1 million] The English language Wikipedia has reached 1,000,000
articles. Jordanhill railway station has been certified as the milestone
article. The deleted "One million articles" article nearly made it but
instead came in at number 999,999.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_Publis…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanhill_railway_station
=== Other news ===
[iPod] Wikipedia is now available for the iPod. Currently only EN (753
MB), DE (321 MB) and IT (71 MB). Other languages can be created upon
request. For Win, Linux and Mac. *Use this software at your own risk. It
might damage your iPod, void your warranty or blow up your golden hamster.*
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26639http://encyclopodia.sourceforge.net
[MMN] Abid Ullah Jan - Wikipedia: A tool for expediting the clash of
religions.
"Wikipedia needs to do away with its controversial, biased and
hate-inciting material taken out of the work of hate-mongers. Otherwise,
the only way left for those in search of truth and those working for
peace among people of different faiths is to avoid Wikipedia,
particularly its articles on social and religious matters."
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/27261
[Firefox] It seems the the Mozilla Corporation decides against adding
Wikipedia to Firefox search box.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=269198
=== Wikizine ===
[Announce-l] The digest function of this list is broken. The digests
where not send out automatically. Because of this digest subscribers of
Wikizine have not received Wikizine like it should be. There has come no
responds on the BugZilla ticket about this problem. Because of this the
list settings are now changed. Announce-l does not support the digest
option anymore. All digest subscribers are changed to regular subscribers.
[Licence] The licence of Wikizine is the GNU Free Documentation License
because Wikizine is constructed on Meta and Meta falls under that
licence. GNU/FDL covers all previous editions of Wikizine.
=== Did you know ... ===
... that your computer can do also something for "the good cause" when
your are Wikifying?
We are all volunteers working to the WMF-projects working for whatever
reason, but not for making money. This is not eBay. But when you working
on the wikis is for your computer not really a challenge. You can
donate your CPU-power to be used for something possibly not completely
utterly useless. The BBC Climate prediction project.
A project to do scientific study by using many computers to run
simulations of the evolution of the climate. You need a client for
Windows or linux.
Join this project and the Wikimedia-team;
http://bbc.cpdn.org/create_account_form.php?teamid=420
=== MediaZilla-IRC Quotes ===
- "NPOV is not just our secret sauce, it's a shield. (It's a dessert wax
*and* a floor topping.)" - David Gerard on wikien-l (Feb)
- It was a bad idea. The users made me do it. -- Tim Starling in wikitech-l
- The parser is a little dirty... OK maybe more than a little.
- Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
- [Brion Vibber] A captcha of course is that annoying little thing that
makes you type in a word or code to continue, to prove that you're
probably not an abusive bot. (Or a blind person. Whoops!)
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 319
Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]
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.org
Year: 2006 Week:09 Number: 15
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[capitalize] All Wiktionary editions have been converted to no longer
automatically capitalize entry titles. This change came without prior
discussion in the affected communities.
[Vandal Fighter] A tool for watching "recent changes" and reverting
edits. User Henna has taken over the job of maintaining and improving
the Vandal Fighter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Henna/VFhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CryptoDerk/CDVF
[Wiktionary] German Wiktionary enables sysop patrolling. This is a
option so that certain users can mark an edit as "checked". It can be
useful for vandal fighting. The user right to mar an edits as checked
can be given to all users or to sysops only. To request to get this
option active on your wiki get clear consensus on your wiki and make a
BugZilla ticket about it. And then be patience. The request for the
enabling of this function for Meta is waiting for some time now.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Patrolled_edithttp://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4747
[Thumb] Brion started a process of forcing old rendered png, jpeg and
SCG thumbnails to regenerate. This
will gradually replace old rendered images over the next couple days as
several issues have been fixed recently.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22176
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania] Volunteers needed for the Wikimania Program Team
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26630
=== Foundation ===
[interview] Signpost interviewed Jimbo Wales, asking him questions that
our readers have submitted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-02-20/Jimbo_…http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/21/0658223
=== Community ===
[1000000th] article on the English language Wikipedia will be written
very soon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Millionth_topic_pool
[Wikibooks] has been cited as an authoritative source of information.
Who would have thought that was possible?
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/columnItem/0,294698,sid14_gci1165662,0…
[proposal] A new project proposal for a genealogy wiki currently at
Rodovid.orghttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rodovid.org
=== Media ===
[Chinese WP] February 20, Washington Post about Chinese Wikipedia
Series, and a letter appealing for an unblock for zh.wikipedia
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/19/AR200602190…http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/19/AR200602190…http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/18/AR200602180…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-02-20/China_…
=== Other news ===
[INSPIRE] new EU directive can put more intellectual property rights on
geographic data in the European union. Wikimedia projects are using data
like this.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6310http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/INSPIRE
[Multilingual] A first draft sorts out which features a future
Multilingual MediaWiki should have.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki
=== Editorial ===
Dear readers,
First I would like to thank you all 300 readers of Wikizine. Knowing
that there are actually people reading this, and I suppose find it
useful, makes it all worth while.
I would like to ask for your assistance for Wikizine. Wikizine exist for
reporting news for the Wikimedia community about the Wikimedia
community. And Wikizine needs your help, the Wikimedia community.
There are three points about with I ask your cooperation;
1th
Report news from your home-wiki or from your personal experience when
using the wiki. Most news can be found on public mailing lists and
specific pages on the main wikis. But frequently I, Walter, find
interesting global-wikimedia news in the village pump of my home-wiki,
WikipediaNL. Or discover by pure luck changes to the behavior of the
software.
If I can find interesting things on my local wiki I suspect that on many
other wikis are also interesting things to find. News that not can be
found on other places. Please share your local news when you think it
is interesting for the global Wikimedia community or when you discover a
modification to the software.
2th
There seems to be still many users who do not know of the existence of
Wikizine. Inform on your wiki the users about Wikizine. Many will not
care about news from the Wikimedia world and only be interested in
working on there articles. But those who are interested should be
informed about it. I think especially about your sysops.
You can put a "Wikizine-banner" on your user page or, if there is no
objection by your community, on some highly visible page like the
"village pump".
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/banners
3th
One of the main problems for informing many users in the Wikimedia
community is the languages barrier. The glue for the communication
between the projects is English. Wikizine is written in something that
is supposed to be English. You, the reader of Wikizine, understand
English. But that is not enough.
It is my hope that you, user of your project, editor, sysop or
ambassador, act as a gateway for the news that you read in Wikizine for
your wiki. Inform your local community about the news in your own
language. If you do that then Wikizine has succeed in his mission.
Thanks for your attention,
Walter Vermeir
Editor-in-chief Wikizine
=== Quote ===
Stan Marsh "I am sorry that I killed your mom but the squirrel told me
that she was evil."
Mountain lion cub "You got tricked by a squirrel? Jee, you are not to
smart, are you mister?"
>From "[[w:en:South Park]]"
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 310
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]
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\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
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.org
Year: 2006 Week:07 Number:13
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[wikidown] due to reasons still under investigation the Wikimedia projects where mostly down during Monday 13 february. Best guess now is due physical hard disk failure. Emails send to Wikimedia (OTRS) and the lists should be saved and arriving soon.
Many of the issues have been sorted but there are still some on-going problems, as such no wikipedia or wikimedia project should be considered as stable for the moment. Please see sources listed here for more and better news.
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Wikipedia_Statushttp://www.thewritingpot.com/wikistatus/https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Server_admin_loghttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/21992
[Anon!] There is a new field to give a warning to anonymous users that their ip-address will be exposed if the edit. It appears above the edit box. Default is English if you have not translated it.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning
[Larousse] (2003-2006) - the oldest Wikimedia server still in service has gone offline. Larouse came to serve Wikipedia in may 2003 as the second server ever that Wikipedia acquired. Larouse started to work as THE webserver of Wikipedia with its companion Pliny, the long gone first server, acting as the database server. In his later life cycle Laurouse was used for various light tasks, including nagios, DNS, some IRC services and web serving for kohl.wikimedia.org. Larouse expired at the age of 2 and 10 months, without warranty, because of hardisk failure at the Wikimedia hosting facility in Tampa, Florida.
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Larousse
[No Tinyurl] On Meta there is a global blacklist of domains. Url's of domains listed there can not be posted on any Wikimedia wiki. This is an anti-spam function of Wikimedia. The widely used domain "tinyurl.com" is now added to the blacklist. Tinyurl.com is a free redirect service to make a very long url very short. This service has been abused by spammers to link sites already on the blacklist. But it is also used by Wikimedians to point to a specific page or revision. Below the item you find a tinyurl to the discussion page about this. Wikizine is constructed on Meta so this short url could not be saved in this form on Meta. To compare you find the long tinyurl target also included.
http://tinyurl.com/exp3thttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#Homepages_of_URL_hiders_…
[Robots.txt] the page "Articles for deletion" and similar of the EN Wikipedia are added to Wikipedia's Robots.txt file. This will prevent them from being indexed by search engines like google.
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4776 - request for adding AFD & co to robots.txt
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4787 - feature request to make a wikitag to specify this for a specific page
=== Request for help ===
[Grants] Wikimedia Germany has been offered to participate in the Google Grants
International-Programm. We can kindly use Google AdWords to promote Wikimedia sites.Final deadline for suggestions is February 14th.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_Grantshttp://www.wikimedia.de/spenden
=== Legal ===
[TRON] Judgement in the TRON case; Wikipedia wins in the name controversy - wikimedia.de points again to de.wikipedia.org - Tron's parents said they would appeal the ruling.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,400028,00.html
=== Foundation ===
[Meeting 2006-02-05] A open Wikimedia meeting was held and also a follow-up meeting. The full log of the open Wikimedia meetings is online.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Board_meeting%2C_February_5%2C_2006http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
=== Community ===
[Questions for Jimbo] the English language Wikipedia approaching one million articles. The Wikipedia Signpost is organizing a interview with Jimbo about this and is accepting questions for him now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-02-06/From_t…
=== Media ===
[The Cartoons] - also on Wikipedia EN are those a hot topic. The article about it is created on 27th January. The article is already edited about 4500 times in that time. Even more impressive is the discussion page of that article. Notice too the long archive section. You can print a book with all those talk files. And because we live now in the year 5 A.W. (after Wikipedia) somebody has actually done that and made some sort of book of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-02-06/Cartoo…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controv…http://i-newswire.com/pr56324.htmlhttp://www.baghdadmuseum.org/
=== Stats ===
[Alexa] Wikipedia has risen into top 25 most popular sites on the web according to Alexa Internet.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=www.wikipedia.org
=== Other news ===
[WikiPubs] New project proposal; a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide pub guide.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6155http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipubshttp://wikipubs.org/index.php/Wikipubs
=== Did you know ... ===
... that the website "copyscape.com" is ideal to see if newly created articles aren't copies?
http://copyscape.com/
=== Computer quotes ===
My computer goes down on me more often than my girlfriend. -- Robert Paul
The only way to make your PC go faster is to throw it out a window.
The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. -- Edsgar Dijkstra
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. -- Thomas Watson
How many Visual Basic programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? They don't know how. They have C++ programmers to change their lightbulbs. They make wonderfully decorated light switches, though.
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 298
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]