******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 37 Number: 118
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Image renaming re-enabled] - Image renaming has been re-enabled for
administrators on all Wikimedia projects.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15842http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/file-renaming-enabled-for-admins/
[LocalisationUpdate deployment delayed] - The deployment of
LocalisationUpdate, an extension meant to keep the localized messages
as up to date as possible, was delayed after it killed the entire
site. You don't have to be a tech to interpret the blog post graph as
"bad news".
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/localisationupdate-deployment-delayed/http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LocalisationUpdate
[Feature deployment updates] - Brion mentioned that the system
administrators are starting to maintain a list of feature & extension
deployments that they're rolling out in the very near future (and
their status) on the Wikitech wiki.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/feature-deployment-updates/http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/DeploymentList
[MakeSysop Removed] - MakeSysop, the old extension for managing user
rights, has been disabled on Wikimedia sites.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20291
[CTO Job Opening] - back in issue #115 we reported that the current
Chief Technical Officer position would be splitting into two, with
Brion's position being changed to something with more of a MediaWiki
software focus. The job opening for the new CTO position has been
posted on the Foundationwiki.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Chief_Technical_Officer --
job opening
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/cto-position-split/ -- reminder
about the details of the split
=== Request for help ===
[Strategic Planning CFP] - the Strategic Planning Team has released a
call for participation. The CFP was distributed through a
CentralNotice with a link to a letter from Jimmy Wales and Michael
Snow, but there is also a blog post giving more details on the process.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/22/help-shape-the-future-of-wikimedia/
=== Foundation ===
[Jennifer Riggs leaves] - Sue Gardner, the Executive Director,
announced on Thursday that Jennifer Riggs would be leaving the
Wikimedia Foundation. Jennifer was the Chief Program Officer and,
although she has made good contributions so far, she and Sue decided
she wasn't the right fit for the job.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-September/055215.html
[Wikimedia and OneWebDay] - September 22 was OneWebDay, a day that
aims to highlight the critical importance of protecting the values and
principles of an open, participatory web. In a blog post, Jay Walsh
used the OneWebDay initiative to thank Wikimedia's huge volunteer force.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/22/wikimedia-and-onewebday/
[New volunteer position] - the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a
local volunteer to help catalog customer service correspondence at the
local office in San Francisco.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Volunteering:Customer_service_clerical_…
=== Agenda ===
[Wikimedia Staff office hours] - after the success of the Strategic
Planning "Office Hours", the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to hold
its own as well. Sue Gardner, the Executive Director, will be online
to answer questions in #wikimedia-office on freenode. The "office
hours" will be between 15:30 and 16:30 PDT (UTC 22:30 to 23:30) on
Friday, September 25, 2009.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-September/055246.html
[Wikis Take Manhattan] - the third Wikis Take Manhattan, a planned
scavenger hunt and free content photography contest in New York City,
will be held on Saturday, October 10, 2009.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia_nyc/2009-September/000105.ht…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan
=== Community ===
[Chapters reports] - Lodewijk Gelauff reminded the community about the
chapters-reports mailing list and highlighted a few of the ones he
thought were the most interesting.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-September/055242.html
[European Heritage Days] - "European Heritage Days" are held in
several European countries. On these days, many buildings not
usually open to the public are open for visiting, as are the workshop
of certain artisans. Some French Wikipedians found a way to take
advantage of this by running a sitenotice mentioning the event and
pointing out that the general public can help Wikipedia get more photos.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Journ%C3%A9es_europ%C3%A9ennes_…
(fr)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2009-September/005106.html
[Wirtualna Polska] - in our last issue we reported that there were a
few problems with the local press when Orange Poland launched its
branded Wikipedia mirror. The Polish Wikipedia community has written
a statement that they hope will clear up the confusion.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:O%C5%9Bwiadczenie_nt._Wikipedii_na_WP
(pl)
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Wpedzich/O%C5%9Bwiadczenie --
English translation
[IRC: GC Review] - the new IRC Group Contacts have published a review
of the last three months, highlighting what they've done, what they
plan to do, and how you can help.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard#3_month_review
[WMFR + Cultural institutions] - David Monniaux gave an update on what
Wikimedia France has achieved with cultural institutions in France.
He also highlighted some issues that they ran into.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/5147
=== Media ===
[Where Wikipedia Ends] - Time Magazine published an article
questioning if Wikipedia is a victim of its own success. The article
includes a few quotes from Wikimedia Foundation representatives.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924492-1,00.html
[Jimmy Guest Blogs] - Jimmy Wales guest-blogged on the Huffington Post
about what the mainstream media gets wrong about Wikipedia and why.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jimmy-wales/what-the-msm-gets-wrong-a_b_29280…
[Small Businesses & Wikipedia?] - Small Business Search Marketing, a
blog about small businesses, published an article about whether or not
"small businesses" should have a Wikipedia article. The article
actually mentions quite a few English Wikipedia policies too.
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/should-small-business-have-wikipedia-articl…
[German courts and wiki] - a German website attempts to teach its
readers how to more accurately cite Wikipedia -- by using the
permanent link to the article.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Wikipedia-korrekt-zitieren--/meldung/145444
(de)
[Wikipedia Falsified from Parliament] - the Swedish media reports that
articles of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia have been falsified from
computers placed in the Swedish parliament.
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyhetssidor/artikel.asp?ProgramID=20…
[Strategic Planning] - the Harvard Business Blogs published a good
post about Wikimedia's Strategic Planning Initiative.
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/09/one_fine_winter_saturday_in.html
[Chinese trademark donation] - Hudong (a large Chinese encyclopedia)
donated the Chinese trademark of Wikipedia to the Wikimedia Foundation.
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20090922/CNTU04822092009-1.h…
[Grass Is Greener on a Million Little Wikis] - a humorous article from
Wired.com explains what the article "Grass" on the English Wikipedia
would look like in different "language" Wikipedias (ranging from
Limerick Wikipedia to "Even More Simple English" Wikipedia).
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/09/alt-text-million-little-wikipedias/
=== Stats ===
[hi.wp] - The Hindi Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
[ca-wp] - The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnaval_de_Solsona
[cbk-zam] - The Zamboanga Chavacano Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
[translatewiki.net hits one million] - Translatewiki, the website for
translating the MediaWiki software, has reached a million
translations. Congratulations to the Translatewiki staff and all of
their translators!
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/09/when-size-is-good-cool-million-…
[Forget articles, it's editors] - Erik Zachte, the maintainer of
Infodisiac (the Wikimedia statistics website), wrote a blog post about
how we should stop focusing on the article count. Instead, we should
be focusing on the number of editors the site has (and other aspects
of community participation).
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/09/partipication-level-a-new-metric/
=== Other news ===
[WikiMarriage] - two Wikimedians got married this weekend: Arne
Klempert (akl) and Delphine Ménard (notafish). Arne is currently a
member of the Board of Trustees and Delphine is the former Chapters
coordinator and current Treasurer of Wikimédia France.
Congratulations to the new WikiNewlyweds!
[PediaPress: Job opening] - PediaPress, Wikimedia's partner in
printing personal "Collections" of Wikipedia articles, is hiring. The
job matches the predominant skills of Wikipedians and is specifically
looking for "wikifriendly" people, you may want to apply.
http://blog.pediapress.com/2009/09/hiring-community-and-communications.htmlhttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikis_Go_Printable -- background
information about the partnership
[FR: GNU GPL Legal Win] - the GNU General Public License, a widely
used free software license, has been held up by a French court. (They
ruled in favor of the author of the content rather than a company who
used it.)
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/09/big-win-for-gnu-gpl-in-france.html
=== Did you know ... ===
...that the Wikipedia Mobile interface provides anonymous statistics
about its use? The stats page provides total traffic, average page
serving speed, and more.
http://stats.m.wikipedia.org/
=== Quote ===
"I am not asking you to explain Wikipedia here, I'm asking for a
vision!" - Femke Halsema
(The Chair of the Netherlands's Green Party interrupted the
presentation of the new government budget to Parliament with that when
the Prime Minister referred to the many committees that are going to
search for potential budget cuts.)
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Alex, Casey
Corrector(s):
Thanks to: Sue, Sage, Brianna, Leinad, Pharos, Dcljr, Hampton, Sj,
Erik Z, Lodewijk, Rjd, Brion, Cary, Submarine, Philippe, Eugene,
Gerard, Janson, Anders, Nihiltres, Frank, Amgine, David
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]].
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
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 32 Number: 114
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Full downtime] - All of Wikimedia's services (sites, mailing lists,
etc.) were down on July 31 at 12:00 (UTC) to allow the primary router
at the Tampa hosting facility to be rebooted.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/pmtpa-router-reboot-scheduled-downtim…http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044406.htmlhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Downtime
[SysAdminDay] - System Administrator Appreciation Day was held on July
31st; it's the day where you appreciate and thank all the system
administrators who make your lives easier!
http://www.sysadminday.com/
[Override this function] - on August 6, users were temporarily getting
the message 'Override this function' when visiting pages on Wikipedia,
due to a server only partially getting an update. The issue was
supposedly fixed but the sysadmins are still getting reports, it needs
further investigation of the problem.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20081
=== Request for help ===
[WikimediaMobile] - Wikimedia Mobile, the mobile interface for
Wikipedia, has started accepting translations on betawiki. Help is
greatly appreciated in localizing it for your local Wikipedia.
http://m.wikipedia.org/http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikimedia_mobile
[Flickr tool maintainers] - Bryan Tong Minh posted a request for
co-maintainers for his flickr tools on the toolserver. The bots are
written in Python and use the mwclient library to edit and upload.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2009-August/004976.html
[Best practices team] - "Best practice in public outreach" is a
collection of articles describing experiences in winning new
volunteers, partners, content and audiences. The group will help
coordinate the creation and enhancement of the best practices
documentation pages on Meta-Wiki, which will help share the knowledge
about engaging new target groups or deepening relationships to new
Wikimedians. Volunteers are needed!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_documentation_team
[BLP task force] - Cary Bass is in the process of launching a new task
force on Biographies of Living People (as a result of the board
resolution on the subject). The task force will be focusing on the
English Wikipedia, but its recommendations and guidelines will
probably be useful on other projects too. Volunteers are needed, see
the blog post for more information.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-August/102667.html
-- call for volunteers
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people --
resolution
=== Proposals ===
[Strategic Proposals (Call)] - the Strategic Planning team has sent
out a call for proposals. They'd like to encourage people to put their
ideas into proposals for what the Wikimedia movement should be doing
over the next five years. What's more is that you can write it in the
language of your choice.
=== Foundation ===
[Guidestar] - the Wikimedia Foundation has finally received a profile
on GuideStar, one of the largest American databases for non-profits.
Be sure to visit the profile and write a review!
http://tinyurl.com/wmfGuidestarhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuideStar -- article on the site
[Usability: Babaco] - the Usability team is preparing for its next
release and has some new designs and ideas that need feedback from
users, community members, and interested parties.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/29/the-abcs-of-usability/ -- blog post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Babaco_Designs -- designs
[Transcom newsletter] - the Translation committee (the people whose
job it is to coordinate translations of Wikimedia Foundation-related
items) has released its newsletter, which is a summary of open
requests. If you speak another language, please look and see if
there's anywhere that you can help out!
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-July/000982.html
[LSS: foundation-l] - a new list summary of foundation-l posts between
July 16-31 has been published. Phoebe has also posted a request for
help, reminding others that she's not the only one who can do it and
there are other lists that could be summarized too!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_July_16-31http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS -- main LSS page
=== Legal ===
[EFF&NPG update] - Another update on the National Portrait Gallery
legal issue, the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, Fred von
Lohmann, has posted a legal analysis of the situation.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/eff-defends-wikipedi
=== Agenda ===
[PL: pl.wp meeting] - the Polish Wikipedia is having its annual
working meeting in Sopot, Poland from September 11-13.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GDJ_2009 (pl)
[SE: Book Fair] - Wikimedia Sweden will have a booth at the largest
book fair in Scandinavia with 100,000+ attendees. The fair will be
September 24-27, 2009.
http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Bok_och_Biblioteksmässan_2009 --
WMSE's page about the booth (sv)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair -- enwp article
about the fair
[JP: Conference] - Wikimedia Conference Japan has opened up its
official website and has finalized its details: November 22 at Tokyo
University!
http://www.wcj2009.info/ (ja)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_Japan/en --
summary on Meta (en)
[BE: Fosdem] - FOSDEM, the FOSS conference, has announced the dates
for its 2010 conference: February 6-7, 2010
http://www.fosdem.org/2010/
=== Community ===
[GLAM-WIKI] - GLAM-Wiki, Wikimedia Australia's conference for
galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and how they can collaborate
with Wikimedia, is being held this week (August 6-7) and a live
"play-by-play" can be found via twitter.
https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23GLAM-WIKI -- twitter posts
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/230/glam-wiki-day-one -- blog
post summarizing day 1
[Simple Wikipedia] - this little known Wikipedia works since 2004 on a
encyclopedia that is using fewer words and easier grammar then the
English Wikipedia. The small community has managed to get again at the
54,000 articles mark, after falling down 2000 articles due to a
quality cleanup. For those who find other Wikipedias has become to
large to be happy there a small project like Simple could be attractive.
http://simple.wikipedia.org
[WMNL: Partnership] - just in time for GLAM-WIKI, Wikimedia Nederland
officially announced a partnership with the Tropenmuseum (one of the
largest museums in the Netherlands). This new partnership will bring
over 2100 high quality images to the Wikimedia Commons!
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/05/wikimedia-netherlands-and-the-tropenmu… -- blog post and press
release
[Wiki-Conference NY] - Archive.org is hosting a few videos of the
proceedings at Wiki-Conference New York, so far Jimmy Wales's keynote
and Cary Bass's OTRS presentation have been published but more will
come soon.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Wiki?Conference%20New%20York
[IRC Meeting] - a general IRC meeting was hosted by the Group
Contacts. There was a high number of participants (~80 people) and a
wide array of topics, from contacting the GCs and new cloak options to
public logging and alternate channel management techniques.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Meetings/August_2009
[WMDE: Report from the Office] - the new Executive Director of
Wikimedia Deutschland, Pavel Richter, has published his first "Report
from the Office" on the WMDE blog. He shares his new priorities and
introduces himself.
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/31/1-bericht-aus-der-geschaftsstelle-juli-…
(de)
=== Media ===
[GLAM-Wiki] - As described above in the "Community" section, GLAM-WIKI
is being held this week and it has been covered by a few media outlets.
http://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/b/ba/GLAM_WIKI_-_Media_Release.pdf --
WMAU press release
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/313846/wikimedia_event_seeks_open_u…http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26683/1231/
[Judges & Strippers] - Wiktionary was quoted when defining a lap dance
in a legal case!
http://www.dbs.id.au/blog/law/lap-dance-wikipedia.htmlhttps://twitter.com/Wittylama/status/3102455466
[Anecdote] - there's a nice, thoughtful blog post from a
paleontologist/geoscientist and his experiences with contributing to
Wikipedia.
http://triassiccritters.blogspot.com/2009/08/contributing-to-wikipedia-as.h…
[Experts obliged?] - experts and people who find errors in Wikipedia
are obliged to correct them, a blog post says. "Whether you like it
or not, Wikipedia is the source that people go to for information."
http://blog.k1v1n.com/2009/08/if-tree-falls-in-forest-part-1.html
[We're NC-17] - Apple has rated us NC-17! Wikipanion, an iPhone/Pod
application giving access to Wikipedia (nicely formatted with extra
features), featured a warning when downloading: "Rated 17+ for the
following: Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes".
http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/covering-your-click/ -- blog
post about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17 -- in case you have no idea what
we're talking about
=== Stats ===
[comScore: down to #5] - Facebook is now the 4th largest site in the
world and has pushed the Wikimedia Foundation down to the 5th largest
web property. Wikipedia is still far above an beyond the most popular
non commercial website. By the way; the ranking of Wikizine is 50% up
to become the 2,983,528th most popular site :) (Source:Alexa)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/04/facebook-is-now-the-fourth-largest-sit…
[African Wikipedias] - Swahili Wikipedia "has raced ahead with great
momentum" and surpassed Afrikaans as the largest African Wikipedia by
number of articles. There's also stats about the other African
Wikipedias and sister projects.
http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=614 -- blog post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa -- African languages
[Wikipedias] - the Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles, the
Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 90,000, and the Latin Wikipedia
reached 30,000 articles with the addition of "Magninovilla".
[EN Wikinews] - Not really a direct goal of Wikinews to have many
"articles" but nevertheless the English language Wikinews has
surpassed 15,000 news stories.
http://en.wikinews.org
=== Other news ===
[wikiHow&MediaWiki] - wikiHow showcased an interesting article (on its
twitter feed) about how to make a MediaWiki skin, worth a read if
you're ever in the need for a new skin. :-)
https://twitter.com/wikiHow/status/3111069632
[Mobile Feedback] - the Mobile Wikipedia site requested feedback from
its users and got a few interesting results, you might get a laugh out
of them!
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/amusing-mobile-feedback/
[Correction: WMUK&Schools] - we previously reported that the new WMUK
schools project was about revisiting its "Wikipedia Version for
Schools" project. This is actually a new initiative, one focused on
going into schools and teaching the staff and students how to
effectively use and contribute to Wikipedia.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project
[Wiktionary users] - Dvortygirl posted an interesting blog post about
the type of users who are attracted to writing a dictionary. She
found that most of the people in the #wiktionary IRC channel all
shared similar characteristics to her (and a Dutch Wiktionary
visitor), more information in the blog post.
http://dvortygirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/wiktionary-type.html
=== Quote ===
"About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love
you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some
won't like you at all." - Rita Mae Brown
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter
Thanks to: Cary, David, Brianna, Phoebe, Bryan, Steve, Brion, Sage,
Hampton, Signpost, Naoko, Bark, ErikZ, Jay, wikihow, Mecredis, Liam,
Jessica, Pavel, Leinad, Mile K., Dvortygirl, St-Lemur
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]].
Wikizine is a nearly weekly 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
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 31 Number: 113
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[arwp: New namespace] - the Arabic Wikipedia Community has agreed to
create a new namespace called "Supplement". It will contain most of
date pages (days, months, years, decades, etc.), disambiguation pages
and lists to give the exactly number of encyclopedic articles. There
are about 6000 pages that will be moved to the new namespace. It may
be possible that your community would like to apply the same idea.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19357 -- bug report
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Supplement -- guideline of namespace
[Commons: Off-site archive] - A off site archive for Commons and the
XML snapshots will be added. Thanks are due to eBart consulting and
User:Milosh for proving a backup server and storage array at their
colocation facility in Europe. This server will store archives of our
publicly available data of Wikimedia Commons and the XML snapshots.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/were-adding-an-off-site-archive-for-c… -- techblog
post
[Passwords plz] - Watchlistr.com was an outside site that asked for
Wikimedia passwords in order aggregate user watchlists across all
projects for them. Although in this case it did not have a malicious
intent, use of external sites asking for passwords place in risk the
accounts used. Users are asked not to share their user password with
any external site. Not even toolserver tools are allowed to request
your password for any service. The site has now been shut down, and
further analysis revealed that it had important vulnerabilities.
Magnus Manske has created an alternative tool for people to use if
they liked this feature.
http://www.watchlistr.com/http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044238.html
-- initial thread
http://magnusmanske.de/MetaWatchlist/ -- alternative proposed by Magnus
[TS: Multi-maintainer tools] - the toolserver is pushing
multi-maintainer tools and will be actively discouraging single
maintainer ones. They want to encourage collaboration amongst
toolserver users and make tools last even when one of the users
disappears.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.toolserver/1515
[SVN account requests] - there's a new process for requesting SVN
accounts to the MediaWiki source code. Brion announced that he'll be
going through the queue every week, so if you have request throw them
up on MediaWiki wiki. ;-)
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/44683 --
mailing list post
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Commit_access_requests -- requests
=== Proposals ===
[Geonotice + Wikinews/Commons?] - Sage Ross recently proposed
something interesting: using an opt-in geonotice (notice that displays
based on the location of your IP) to show local reporting or
photographing opportunities. Hopefully this will help with one of the
great frustrations that inhibit original reporting.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044367.html
=== Foundation ===
[Board elections: Voting] - the Foundation's Board elections has
finally entered into the voting phase (voting is open until August 10)
and translation is continuing. Visit the Meta pages for election
information (including a "Questions" page), the Wikipedia Signpost
also has interviews with the candidates.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009#voters -- voter
requirements
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation --
translation page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Board_… -- signpost
interviews
[More donation buttons] - the second round of donation button designs
has been posted, feedback is appreciated to determine which designs
we'll end up using!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade
[Audit Committee] - the new members of the 2009-2010 Audit Committee
have been announced.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053280.html --
foundation-l post
[wm2009: Registration] - Media Registration for Wikimania 2009 has
opened. For regular registration, there is a new update: it is also
possible to extend your stay past the Wikimania dates, but you need to
contact the hotel directly.
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration#Accommodations --
extending stay options
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimania_2009_Media_Reg… -- media
registration
[Strategy: "Office Hours" & Wiki] - the Strategic Planning team has
announced their "office hours" which are teams that they will be on
the channel to answer questions and participate in discussions,
everyone's invited! The team has also "soft-launched" their wiki
(most of its content is also available for translation).
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hourshttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40527 --
soft-launch post
[TS donation] - the Wikimedia Foundation has awarded a US$40,000 grant
to the Toolserver toward improving the toolserver's reliability. With
that money they will buy three database servers, so they can keep two
copies of each wiki database instead of just one. This should greatly
improve the availability of up to date data in the wiki databases.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2009-July/002278.html --
announcement
http://journal.toolserver.org/entry/2009/07/29/wikimedia-foundation-grants-… -- blog
post
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_DE/Improve_… -- original grant
application
[Active ombudsmen?] - there was a discussion on the DE Wikipedia (and
then foundation-l) about whether or not the Ombudsmen commission (the
group that hears privacy violations) is actually fulfilling its
mission actively.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40241
=== Community ===
[NY Wiki-Conference] - the first New York City Wiki-Conference was a
success with more than 100 people attending. The Signpost has a
write-up about the event and there was also a twitter "report" with
the tag #nywikiconference.
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23nywikiconference -- twitter feed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Wiki-C… -- signpost
update
[Institutions editing] - the Tropenmuseum, a Dutch museum, was
preparing to upload images to the Dutch Wikipedia until it's account
was blocked due to its name. Erik Möller (User:Eloquence, Deputy
Director WMF) suggested on Commons-l that this is something we want to
avoid -- "these institutions are helping expand our content, we should
Assume Good Faith and let our first impressions be friendly and
professional".
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/07/tropenmuseum-is-blocked.html --
Gerard's blog post on the museum
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/5006 -- Erik's
commons-l post
[WMUK: Schools project ML] - Wikimedia UK has started a new mailing
list for its schools project, dedicated to creating a Wikipedia
version with selected articles for schools. Interested parties are
welcome to subscribe.
http://wikimedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/schools-project-l_wikimedia.org.uk
=== Media ===
[Wikipedia flawed, but that's okay] - Wikipedia is a flawed and
incomplete testament to the essential fallibility of human nature. An
interesting blog post from the BBC about Wikipedia being okay. ;-)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/07/wikipedia.shtml
[Mobile Wikipedia tips] - Wikipedia Expert Tips: How to Keep the Facts
at Your Fingertips. The article talks about different ways to serve
Wikipedia content, from tweaking the skin to a random article
screensaver to mobile phone versions.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/168655/wikipedia_expert_tips_how_to_keep_the…
[NIH] - a few more media outlets have covered the National Institutes
of Health Academy with article titles ranging from "Should you trust
health advice from the web?" to "NIH Gets Schooled on Wikipedia".
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327185.500-should-you-trust-health-…http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/07/nih_gets_schooled_on_wikipedia.phphttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR200907270…
[CK-12 Foundation] - Jimmy Wales joined the Advisory Board of the
CK-12 Foundation, a Silicon Valley non-profit organization with a
mission to provide online up-to-date and standards-aligned textbook
content to K-12 students around the world.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/jimmy-wales-joins-advisory-board-of…
[NPG] - the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has
sided with the National Portrait Gallery *against* Wikipedia, as the
NPG incident continues.
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=866109http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40549
[Jimmy on CNN Money] - Jimbo did a piece on "CNN Money" where he
talked about Wikipedia's non-profit status and it's usability and
stategic planning projects.
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2009/07/28/n_co_wikipedia_wales.cnnmoney/
[Rorschach censors] - the New York Times covers the Rorschach
controversy: whether or not we should include the ink blot tests in
our articles (for "ethical reasons").
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/internet/29inkblot.html
[WP has poor photos?] - the NY Times ran an article a few weeks ago
called: "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It?s a Desert for
Photos" which pointed out that Wikipedia has some trouble with good
quality pictures in its articles (especially ones of celebrities).
This caused a bit of controversy on the mailing lists, with image
contributors complaining that the Foundation didn't steer the article
in the right direction -- highlighting good works instead of bad ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/20funny.html -- article
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053282.html --
mailing list thread
=== Stats ===
[50k] - the Galician and Nynorsk (Norwegian) Wikipedias have both
reached 50,000 articles.
http://gl.wikipedia.org/http://nn.wikipedia.org/
[mhr.wp] - the Meadow Mari Wikipedia is less than a month old and
already has over 500 articles (almost 600)!
http://mhr.wikipedia.org/
=== Other news ===
[Facebook] - the Wikipedia fan page on Facebook, managed by Cary Bass
(Bastique) Volunteer Coordinator WMF, now has a URL. If you use
Facebook, make sure to add yourself as a fan.
http://www.facebook.com/wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Privacy
[Wikipedia Art] - some awesome posters/t-shirts from last year have
resurfaced, they display people with a common theme: "I [edit]
Wikipedia". They show ordinary people surrounded by words that
display their editing interest depending upon their personality.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeeperez/sets/72157604803121347/
[Attracting newbies?] - David Gerard pointed out an interesting
article with tips about attracting newbies and making them effective.
Although the author is talking about software development, it
definitely could relate to our projects.
http://denise.dreamwidth.org/23600.html
=== Did you know ... ===
... parody is the highest form of flattery?
[Bigipedia] - BBC Radio launched a "broadwebcasting" show parodying
the internet by mocking pop-ups, search boxes and other aspects of
online activity. Produced and directed by Pozzitive, the four-part
series is called 'Bigipedia' and has taken its inspiration from
Wikipedia. If you can appreciate British humor, check it out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lpr29/Bigipedia_Episode_1/ --
first episode (30 min)
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Platonides
Thanks to: OsamaK, Rand, Stu, Sage, Daniel Kinzler, Skenmy, Frederic,
Brion, Jay, Philippe, David, River, Roan, Galio, Cary, Signpost, Gerard
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]].
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
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 30 Number: 112
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Media server problems] - there were some media load problems on all
the sites, which caused "extreme slowness or temporary
inaccessibility". The sysadmins took advantage of this downtime to
redo the way we access media files internally which will help reduce
the impact on the rest of the site when load problems on the file
servers occur, and also spreads out the load among multiple servers to
improve things even more. They had to shut off all uploads for a
while to get this done!
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/intermittent-media-server-load-proble…http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/uploads-temporarily-offline-for-site-…
[Wikipedia Weekly interviews the Usability Team] - Wikipedia Weekly, a
podcast for and by Wikimedians, interviewed the Usability team.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikipediaWeekly/Episode76http://wikipediaweekly.org/2009/07/09/episode-76-usability/
[MediaWiki:Sharedupload change] - MediaWiki:Sharedupload became
MediaWiki:Sharedupload-desc-here. Admins in other projects should
rename the first one to the second in order to customize messages for
images from Commons. (That's the text shown when a Commons image is
shown on another project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doorknob_buddhist_temple_detail_amk.jpg
)
=== Request for help ===
[Translation of the week] -- the Translation of the Week needs help!
If you speak another language and would like to translate "History of
pizza" into your language, TOTW is for you. ;-)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_of_the_week
=== Foundation ===
[Board elections] - the candidate deadline for the elections to the
Board of Trustees has been extended to July 27 due to some technical
issues for which the CentralNotice had to be turned off. The
questioning of the candidates has also begun and translation is ongoing.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates -- candidates
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/Questions --
questions
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation
[New "Strategic Planning" Staff] - the Foundation announced that they
filled two positions for their Strategic Planning project.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053165.html --
project manager
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053168.html --
facilitator
[National Portrait Gallery] - the English National Portrait Gallery
(NPG) in London (UK) has threatened to sue a U.S. citizen, Derrick
Coetzee. The legal letter followed claims that he had breached the
Gallery's copyright in several thousand photographs of works of art
uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, a free online media repository.
More information in the extremely detailed Wikinews article.
*Update*: The WMF and NPG have entered into good-faith negotiations,
according to Erik Moeller.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/U.K._National_Portrait_Gallery_threatens_U.S._c…http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/16/protecting-the-public-domain-and-shari… -- WMF blog
post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-13/Copyri… -- summary by the
signpost
[Academy: NIH] - the Wikimedia Foundation announced and had its first
Wikipedia Academy (outreach event to teach people to become
contributors) in the United States this week.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/NIH_and_WMF_announce_fir… -- press
release
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23nihwiki -- twitter coverage from the event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy/NIH_2009 -- project writeup
[Advisory Board changes] - Angela, chair of the Advisory Board, has
updated the "Advisory Board" page to show that 8 members have left,
bringing the current total to 15 advisory board members.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/?diff=39660
[Fundraising 2008: Post-Mortem] - Rand Montoya, the Foundation's Head
of Community Giving, has posed a post-mortem (basically "what went
wrong, what went right and what can we do better?") on the 2008
Fundraising Drive.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008#Post_Mortem_for_the_2008_An…
=== Community ===
[Board elections: Inspiration] - some Wikimedians suggested that it
might be better if prospective candidates knew *why* they should run
for board member; what's it really like to be one? Stu West
(appointed member, treasurer) responded and explained why serving on
the Board is rewarding.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053211.html
[wm2009: schedule & flu] - the Wikimania 2009 team posted two updates
this week where they created a draft schedule for the conference on
their wiki and posted a message about swine flu concerns to a few
mailing lists.
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule -- schedule on wiki
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2009-July/001433.html
-- mailing list post (swine flu)
[Open Source Schools] - Wikimedia UK's secretary is presenting a piece
on the subject of "using Wikipedia in schools" at the Open Source
Schools "un"conference in Nottingham (UK) next Monday 20th July. If
you're in the area, it sounds like it'll be interesting! (Conference
admission is 55 pounds.)
http://opensourceschools.org.uk/node/11659 -- presentation
http://www.ncsl.org.uk/lcc-map.pdf -- venue
[Spotlight] - Many projects must have there projects to improve the
quality if an article. The English Wikipedia has there project
"Spotlight". It not a new thing, the started end of 2006. But the
news is that it has lost it {{historical}} - label. The spot is again
on!
http://en.wikipedia.orgwiki/Wikipedia:Spotlight
=== Media ===
[Rorschach Test Censorship] - English Wikipedians had an interesting
argument about whether or not to include the Rorschach ink blot tests
in the article on the subject. No, it's not because of licensing, the
files are in the public domain. It's actually about ethics, people
are worried it will ruin the validity of the tests. The Wikipedia
discussion was picked up by blogs/news outlets.
http://blog.heebie.co.uk/interesting-rorschach-test-censorshiphttp://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/14/1829231/Wikipedia-Debates-Rorschach-…
[WikiWars Conference] - the first conference to be held in Bangalore
(India), called WikiWars, invites participation from users, scholars,
academics, practitioners, artists and other cultural workers, to share
their experiences, ideas, experiments, innovations, applications and
stories about Wikipedia.
http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/wikiwars
[NPG Coverage] - the user who was threatened with legal action by the
National Portrait Gallery is keeping a list of media coverage.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_threat/Coverage
[WLA/NL] - The Dutch Wiki loves art initiative by Wikimedia Nederland
ended and gained a total of 5447 photos of art objects from 45 museums
photographed by no less than 292 enthusiastic volunteers. In a few
weeks the pictures will become available on Commons, but the pictures
can already be viewed on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/wikilovesart/
=== Stats ===
[en.wp] - Erik Zachte, Wikimedia status guru and owner of
infodisiac.com, has published new wikistats data for the English
Wikipedia for the first time since October 2006. This also allows
publication of much wanted totals for all wikipedias combined, and
trend forecasts.
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/new-statistics-for-the-english-wikipedia/
-- blog post #1
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/new-statistics-for-the-english-wikipedia…
-- blog post #2 (in-depth technical post)
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm -- new tables
(click "charts" on the upper right to see pictures too)
[sv.wp biographies] - LA2 posted some research on the breakdown of
articles on the Swedish Wikipedia. The Wikipedians found out that
26.6% of articles are biographies and that the overall ratio of
biographies is 1 woman to 4 men (but that ratio gets worse as you go
back in time).
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044149.html
-- mailing list post
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA2-gender-age.png -- gender
vs. age graph
=== Other news ===
[New Book] - a new freely licensed book has been launched about wikis
in the workplace.
http://WikiWhileYouWork.com
[LSS: foundation-l] - two new list summaries for the foundation-l
posts have been posted, covering the second half of June and the first
half of July.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_June_15-30http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_July_1-15
=== Did you know ... ===
... that there is an easy solution to Wikipedia's vandalism problems?
According to one humorous website, "ALL WE NEED TO DO is direct our
vandalism entirely to the article about chickens. Imagine a Wikipedia
free of vandalism!"
http://www.everytopicintheuniverseexceptchickens.com/
Note: that is a humorous website. It does not mean you are allowed to
... with Wikipdia's chickens.
=== Quote ===
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about
something." - Thomas H. Huxley
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter
Thanks to: Sue, Anoop, Patricio, Galio, Effe, Brianmc, Signpost,
Andrew Turvey, Angela, Sage Ross, Philippe, Phoebe, Chzz, MarkW
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
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2009 Week: 28 Number: 111
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Proposals ===
[Logo Wiktionary] - End of 2006 a winner of a new logo selection
process was declared for Wiktionary. Some Wiktionary accepted and
used the new logo, others did not. (like the English Wiktionary). In
any case once more a new logo selection process is in motion on Meta
for Wiktionary.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo -- "we have a winner (2006)"
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh -- new logo
Wiktionary 2009
=== Foundation ===
[Board elections] - the Wikimedia Foundation Board is holding its
community elections again, this time for 3 board seats (the next
regular election will be in two years). Candidates are being accepted
until July 20. Help is needed with translating many pages for the
election. (including the CentralNotice displayed all over Wikimedia's
sites)!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/en --
candidates
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation
[Annual Plan] - the Foundation has published its 2009-2010 Annual Plan
and a set of Questions & Answers to go along with it.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a3/2009-10_Wikimedia_Fou… -- annual plan
(pdf)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2009-2010_Annual_Plan_Questions_and_Ans… --
Q&A
[wm2009: Registration] - registration for Wikimania 2009 in Buenos
Aires is now open! If you register before July 30, it's US$15
cheaper. (= US$45)
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration
[Orange] - In April the Wikimedia Foundation announced a partnership
with the telecommunications company "Orange". The Spanish Wikipedia is
now being showcased on the Spanish Orange site.
http://wikipedia.orange.eshttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_Wikimedia_ann… -- original press
release
[New chapters] - the Board recently approved three new Wikimedia
chapters: Wikimedia Danmark (Denmark), Wikimedia Portugal, and
Wikimedia Ukraine. This brings the total number of chapters to 24.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/052936.htmlhttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2009
=== Agenda ===
[fossevents] - a new site (run by the same people who run IRC network
Wikimedia uses, Freenode) just opened up that showcases FOSS (Free and
Open Source Software) Events around the world, big and small. Be sure
to add your upcoming Wikimedia events and look for others that
interest you!
http://fossevents.org
=== Community ===
[New Wikipedia] - The founding of "Wikipedia", the large Western
language Wikipedias, may seem to lay in the distant past, new
Wikipedia's are still founded. The Mari Wikipedia is the newest family
member.
http://mhr.wikipedia.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_language
[GLAM] - in the lead up to GLAM-WIKI (August 6-7), Wikimedia Australia
is holding an editors' challenge (like a friendly competition) with
the overall theme of "Australian GLAM" (GLAM stands for "Galleries,
Libraries, Archives & Museums"). The idea is to pick your own editing
theme and submit it, along with the edits you make related to it.
Prizes will be awarded for the most extensive, creative, impressive,
novel, broad, deep, etc. edits.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/GLAM_challenge --
GLAM challenge
http://glam.wikimedia.org.au/ -- GLAM wiki
[WMDE: ED/Vision] - we previously noted that Wikimedia Deutschland was
looking for a new Executive Director; they've finally found one after
a year! The new director is Pavel Richter (w:de:User:Schreibvieh) and
he was the unanimous choice of both the search committee and the
board. Sebastian, chair of WMDE's board and the current director, also
published a blog post describing the newly defined vision for
Wikimedia's first and largest chapter.
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/02/neuer-geschaftsfuhrer/ -- blog
announcing ED (German)
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/06/eine-vision-fur-wikimedia-deutschland/ --
blog discussing vision (German)
[ENWP: 3 million?] - What will the 3 millionth article on the English
Wikipedia be? A few community members are making guesses on what
article that will be, be sure to add your guess too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three-millionth_topic_pool
[India: Meetup] - everyone seems to be linking to a report on the
third Bangalore, India meetup. The meetup seems like it was pretty
successful and the agenda included a large number of topics, these are
discussed in the meetup report.
http://tinucherian.blogspot.com/2009/07/indian-wikipedians-meet-in-bangalor…
[Wikinews] - the English Wikinews is doing good. It has an active
community, does exclusive interviews, is indexed by Google News and
now the have almost 15000 news story's written. But not all Wikinews
editions are so. On Meta is there now a proposal to close down the
dutch language Wikinews due to a structural lack of activity.
http://en.wikinews.org/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Du…
=== Media ===
[WP: Accurate enough] - everyone always has something to say about us,
at least this time it's a favorable article from the Kansas City
Examiner.
http://www.examiner.com/x-13637-Kansas-City-Social-Media-Examiner~y2009m7d7…
[Wiki Goes to War] - the U.S. Army is creating MediaWiki-based sites
for seven of their 550 manuals. There will be a 90 day experiment,
where troops can edit manuals, and leave comments.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htcbtsp/articles/20090702.aspx
[Egocentric introverts] - a study by Israeli psychology researchers
say that their study shows Wikipedians are egocentric, disagreeable,
socially awkward and closed to new ideas. Australian Wikipedia have
"hit out" at this report.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikipedians-are-a-bunch-of…
[Sued Over Wikipedia] - a county commissioner and political consultant
have filed a defamation lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court against
three men for allegedly editing false and defamatory information into
a biographical entry on Wikipedia.
http://michiganmessenger.com/22336/grebner-files-libel-suit-over-wikipedia-…
=== Stats ===
[MJ] - another analysis of the Michael Jackson+Wikipedia problems was
made by Erik Zachte, Wikimedia's statistics analyst, with graphs and
comparisons between different Wikipedia language versions.
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/michael-jackson/
[Commons Uploads] - Ilmari Karonen has been collecting image
statistics for a while now (how many bytes we have per file type) and
now he has graphs illustrating the changes too.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:MIME_type_statistics -- raw stats
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commons_MIME_statistics_bytes_2008-1… --
graph
[Going for he 8th place] - the Spanish and Portugees Wikipedia are
very, very close in the number of articles and are so competing for
the honour of being the 8th largest Wikipedia..
http://pt.wikipedia.org -- 491 671 artigos
http://es.wikipedia.org -- 491.663 artículos
=== Other news ===
[Image Search] - this should make searching for images to upload to
Commons a lot easier: Google adds Creative Commons Selection to
Advanced Options.
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-07-09-n80.htmlhttp://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15691
[Serious reading] - a doctoral thesis, by Jos ? Felipe Ortega Soto,
that analize quantitatively the evolution of the top ten Wikipedias.
An their problems (in English, 228 pages).
http://libresoft.es/Members/jfelipe/thesis-wkp-quantanalysis -- pdf download
=== Did you know ... ===
... what a "sock puppet" is?
No??? - Strange, are you sure that you are a Wikimedian? - In any
case, you can look it up now. No, not (only) in "the dictionary the
anyone can edit", but also in the more traditional "Merriam Webster's
2009 dictionary of English". It says it is "a word to describe a false
account used for deceptive purposes".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords09.htmhttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sock_puppet
=== Quote ===
There is a world market for maybe five computers ? Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Casey, Walter
Corrector(s): Alex
Thanks to: Veronique, Sebastian, Kul, DarkoNeko, Ziko, Mathias, David,
Gnangarra, the Wikipedia Signpost (Erik Zachte), Steve Bennett, Brion,
Peter, Cary, Crazy Lover
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]].
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
and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
