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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 48 Number: 85 Extra
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Policy ===
Most projects of the Wikimedia family, like Wikipedia, Wikibooks,
Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikispecies and Wikiversity, are using the GNU
Free Documentation License.
The GNU Free Documentation License was originally chosen because that
was the available license when the first project, Wikipedia, started.
The GNU FDL is not the most practical licence to use mainly because it
is not designed for what the WMF projects are using it for.
An alternative for the GNU Free Documentation License are the Creative
Commons licenses. Currently the GNU FDL is not compatible with the the
Creative Commons licenses.
The WMF published a resolution declaring that to make them compatible
the Wikimedia Foundation has been working with the Free Software
Foundation and Creative Commons on a solution. The have come to
proposal that would make it possible for the WMF project to migrate to
the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) licence.
The resolution states;
"The Foundation requests that the GNU Free Documentation License be
modified in the fashion proposed by the FSF to allow migration by mass
collaborative projects to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license;
Upon the announcement of that re-licensing, the Foundation will
initiate a process of community discussion and voting before making a
final decision on re-licensing."
So the WMF is asking formally to change the GNU FDL to make a
migration possible and after that there will be a discussion and a
vote about it.
If the projects would migrate to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license
then that means that you are free to share it and to change the work
but you need to give credit to the makers of the work and share the
work under the same or compatible license.
The reason to change to license is that a main objective of the
projects is to create content that can be reused freely by others. The
Creative Commons license would make that more easy to do then the
current GNU Free Documentation License
Jimmy Wales made the announcement of the (possible) move to the
Creative Commons license on a iCommons party in San Francisco. In his
speech Jimmy said;
"What I’m happy to announce tonight is that just yesterday the
Wikimedia Foundation board voted to approve a deal between the FSF and
CC and Wikimedia. We’re going to change the GFDL in such a way that
Wikipedia will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike license.
So this is not as some people speculated on facebook my 58 birthday
party … this is the party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia."
This transcript comes from a blogposting with the title "Breaking
news: Wikipedia switches to Creative Commons!".
This not exactly correct. The WMF is on the track of switching but
first the GNU FDL needs to changed officially and the by the board
announced discussions and community vote needs to be taking place.
So the actual move can still be a wile, like single user login or
flagged revisions, if it ever comes.
Discussion about this has started on Foundation-l.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update -- the
resolution
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/22428 --
Foundation-l discussion
http://blog.jamendo.com/index.php/2007/12/01/breaking-news-wikipedia-switch… -- speech Jimmy +
transcript
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy
news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 48 Number: 85
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[MediaWiki Parser] - There will be (another) attempt on rewriting the parser
which handles the wikitext. A new mailing list has been created for discussion
of what can be done.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitext-l
[New Preprocessor] - Mediawiki's preprocessor (which expands templates and does
parserfunctions) has been rewritten by Tim Starling. The changes include
creating a DOM document, caching template expansion and skipping unused cases.
The pre-expand include size limit has been changed into a "preprocessor node
count". This changes the rules for uncovered
syntax, so having "<ta" on one template and "ble>" on another will create a
table. However, such uses are discouraged. It's not live on wikimedia project
yet.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/35451
=== Request for help ===
[Wikibooks technical] - For a quick grant related to the production of Wikibooks
in Agriculture Florence Devouard (Anthere) is asking for input regarding wished
for technical improvements for Wikibooks.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2007-November/001163.html
[Asterisk] - German Wikipedia OTRS helpdesk and press relations group are still
looking for someone who can support the development and implementation of an
asterisk software solution featuring LRU call management, forced log-off and a
web frontend to display status information. Queue size dimensioning would be
nice, as well as a web/sms front end for the press people to configure call
diversions. Anyone able to help please contact w:de:User:-jha- or, if you can
read German, go to
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OTRS/Asterisk-Projekt
=== Policy ===
[Logo] - Wikibooks and Wikijunior are considering a new logo.
http://tinyurl.com/39txryhttp://tinyurl.com/2j7gpw
[GFDL re-licensing] - On Foundation-l there is a big discussion going on about
the GNU Free Documentation License that most projects are using and the
possible migration to a new license for those projects. Mike Godwin, the WMF
legal counsel, is involved in the discussion.
http://tinyurl.com/2l9thn
=== Foundation ===
[ED] - The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed Sue Gardner as Executive Director.
She was the Management Consultant of the Wikimedia Foundation.
[Ombuds(wo)men)] - Anthere announced that a new ombuds(wo)man committee has been
appointed. It consists of the enwiki users Mackensen and Rebecca and dewiki
user Hei_ber .
[Fundraiser blog] - A blog has been started by Cary Bass (Bastique) to mobilize
potential donators. It is all about answers to the question "Why give to
Wikimedia". The posts on the blog are not official Wikimedia Foundation
statements. Users are encouraged to add their own reasons, moderators are
choosing the best contributions and post them on the blog. This is a test run
for now. Should the blog help in increasing donations, it will be started in
languages other than English, too.
http://whygive.wikimedia.org/ -- blog
http://whygive.wikimedia.org/2007/11/22/why-wikipedia-does-not-run-ads/ --
interesting post
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Why_Give_blog -- give your
answer
=== Community ===
[Stewards] - The stewards nominations (elections) have started. There are
currently 20 candidates. Users active on all Wikimedia projects can vote.
http://tinyurl.com/26fror
[Stewards II] - Also the current stewards are going through confirmation. You
can make remarks on their functioning, and afterwards all stewards together
will decide which stewards will be confirmed. 27 stewards are up for
confirmation.
http://tinyurl.com/26b4ew
[EWW] - December 3 - 8, there will be the first ''Edit Wikipedia Week''. People
are extra encouraged to edit Wikipedia in this week.
http://tinyurl.com/2fejf4
=== Media ===
[Little China] - The Dutch press reports on the Dutch ministry of legal affairs
blocking the website Wikipedia.org . Now it is also for judges impossible to
watch what's on Wikipedia. In total 30.000 civil servants have been cut off
from Wikipedia. The sysops of Dutch language Wikipedia where not contacted
about this by ministry of legal affairs.
http://tinyurl.com/2g3ult
[Burn Wiki, burn!] - Or at least I would be if Wikipedia was in print. In the
USA several schools are uniting in banning wikipedia from the school. Not
everybody agrees with that.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004025648_wikipedia21.htmlhttp://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/chalkboard/archives/126657.asp
=== Other news ===
[Main stream] - A (English) Wikipedia search tool by default included in the
webbrowser FireFox for some time now. Recently several new computer products
are launched the give prominent attention for Wikipedia in there default setup.
Amazon presented there own e-book reader. In there description of there readers
Amazon explicitly writes; "Includes free wireless access to the planet's most
exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org." Viewing other websites
on the device in not free of charge. Wikipedia is here used as a sales argument
because when you get this reader you have free wireless access to Wikipedia
(inside the USA).
A large supermarket in the USA is selling a budget computer. On the taskbar of
the desktop there is large Wikipedia-globe icon to query Wikipedia.
Also a new micro laptop of Asus, the Eee PC, includes a prominent icon for
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindlehttp://www.thinkgos.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
=== Stats ===
[Fundraising totals] - After roughly a month of fundraising, USD 835,334 has
been raised by the Wikimedia Foundation on November 24.
http://tinyurl.com/2c3v4h
[FR Wiktionary] - On November 26th, the French language Wiktionary reached
593,000 pages and was therefore larger than the English language version
(592,000). This is as far as we know the first time that an EN project has been
passed by a non-English version in terms of size.
[HTTP Requests] - Also November 26th the Wikimedia servers for the first time
counted a total of 50,000 (fifty thousand!) HTTP requests *per second* on all
WMF projects during peak time. This a five times higher peak of page requests
per second than in May 2006.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-November/035250.html
=== Was ist das? ===
[Free] - There are many definitions of free. Because language is not a perfect
tool, people often confuse different meanings of the word. There is a
difference between "for free" as in beer and "free" as in Wikipedia and Linux.
The latter also means you can re-use the content, change it and spread the
improved version even further, even commercially.
=== Did you know ... ===
[Not for profit] - That the Wikimedia Foundation is a not for profit
organization? And that the WMF is dependent on mainly small donations from
individuals like you? This results in a shoestring budget, especially if the
targets are not being reached.
=== Fundraising quotes ===
"Harnessing a universe of brainpower to make knowledge accessible" -- Anonymous
"Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax ..." -- William Sherman
"Stone by stone we can build the house, says an arabic proverb. I hope that my
humble donation will help to build a free Wikipedia." -- Hicham ben Hassine
"Who would have thought this would work?" -- Anonymous
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 700
Unique Visitors website last week: 106
Editor(s): Effeietsanders, Wikifitz, Londenp, Platonides, Walter
Thanks to: Bastique
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 46 Number: 84
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Wiki moved] - Betawiki, the wiki used to make the default
translations of MediaWiki and therefore also for the WMF-projects, has
moved to a new domain.
http://translatewiki.net
[pyBot] - Plans are currently being made for a major overhaul of the
code of the Pywikipediabot framework. The main goals are to start
using the MediaWiki API and to unify the coding style.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikipedia-l -- place for
discussion
[Anon page creation (not!)] - The announced reactivation of page
creation by anonymous users is cancelled.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21655
=== Foundation ===
[$$$$$] - The fundraiser is going well in the sense that the money is
rolling in. At present around 660,000 US$ is donated. The fundraiser
is intended to run until the 22nd of December. At the current rate of
donations it does not look like the 4.6 million US$, the WMF budget
for 2008, will be collected.
The counter that shows how many people have donated, has dropped a bit
because the deduction of numerous donations of 1$ or less.
http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/node/22 -- current donations totals
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21590 -- do we
get 4,6 million?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007#Suspicious_low-value_d… -- strong increase of tiny
donations
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84986 --
drop of counter
[Legal] - French lawsuit against WMF won in court. An article on the
FR Wikipedia contained personal information of 3 persons who where no
pleased with that. They sued for compensations and the identity of the
anonymous editor. The court ruled that Wikimedia is a hosting provider
and as such does not need to follow up on what the users are writing.
The WMF does need to remove illegal content when they are informed
about it. Because the disputed information was removed after proper
notification the case was dismissed, including the request for damages
and information about the anonymous editor.
Florence Devouard, WMF chair, writes about this case:
"This is very good news for the Foundation. We maintain that WMF is
not the publisher, owner or monitor on any of the Wikipedia projects
(and obviously not the WP FR). We are pleased to have our position
upheld and supported in a court of law."
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21407
[Illustration Project] - The WMF has received a donation of US$ 20,000
to be used for creating and improving illustrations. Around $40 per
illustration will be paid. The idea is to get good illustrations for
topics there are non-existing or in less suitable versions. Brianna
Laugher [[commons:User:Pfctdayelise]] is in charge of this project.
Concerns where raised that this project could undermine the defence of
the WMF that is is only a hoster and not a publisher. Sue Gardner, the
unofficial executive director of the WMF, said that is was not a
problem because technically the Wikimedia Foundation is not paying the
editors but the donor does. The WMF is "just facilitating a
relationship between a donor who wants to see a particular thing
happen in the projects, and a trusted volunteer who shares the same
goal".
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/3016 -- list
announcement of the project
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
-- practical
http://tinyurl.com/3e4leh -- Philip Greenspun-Wikimedia Foundation
illustration project proposal (pdf)
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21457/ --
legal concerns
[Steward elections] - Elections for new stewards will start on the
26th of November. Stewards are users who can change the user level of
any user on a WMF-project wiki. Candidates can nominate themselves
now. To be a candidate you need to be at least 18 years old and be
willing to provide real identification to the WMF. Also the current
stewards are up for confirmation.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21683http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2007
[Chapters] - The chapters committee is looking for new members. The
chapcom is responsible for checking the proposed bylaws for a new
chapter and advises the board for acceptance of the new chapter.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034705.htmlhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
=== Community ===
[DE wp DVD] - A new edition of German language Wikipedia on DVD is
coming out. It will be available either as a basic edition that
contains thumbnail images only (10 €) or a premium edition that will
include higher quality pictures as well as a bonus disc with 1900s
encyclopedia ''Meyers'' (25 €, total 4 DVDs). An image of the DVD will
be available for downloading.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DVD
[EN wp] - Founder Jimmy Wales has personally de-sysoped a user of the
English Wikipedia. This caused very large community responds.
http://tinyurl.com/2e3dfa
=== Reports of Wikinews ===
EN Wikinews has a template that can display an image with a random
text on it. A sort of ad.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Wikinews_ads
Wikinews will possibly change the Wikinews site slogan from "Wikinews,
the free news source you can write!"" to something else to make the
site sound more professional.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:FellowWikiNews/Tagline
On EN Wikinews is the service of providing spoken news is again
restarted. Subscribing by RSS-feed is possible.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews
[Webcomics] - Last time Wikizine reported about the problems with the
EN Wikipedia community and the "webcomics" community. The Wikinews
article about it received a unusual large amount of comments.
http://tinyurl.com/36u43b -- comments about the Wikinews report
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/31/0328239 - /. about it
=== Awards ===
[Wikimedia IT] - The Italian edition of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Italia
have been awarded the "Premio Aretê 2007 - forum per la Comunicazione
Responsabile" (Aretê prize - forum for the responsible communication)
for the "internet" section with the following motivation;
"for the commitment in favour of the diffusion of the universal
knowledge, in a free, collaborative and constructive way, in the real
spirit of the original ideals of the Net."
The prize has been presented by [[w:en:Paolo Gentiloni]], the minister
of the Communications and president of the jury, in Rome on the 5th of
November.
http://www.premioarete.it/forum07.php
=== Media ===
[{{copyvio}}] - A book published in 2006 contains a large section of
text taken from a Wikipedia-article. And this without and reference to
Wikipedia. Ironically the publisher of this book is the same publisher
who recently threatened a blogger who had used a diagram, with full
attribution, from a publication of them on a blog.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/13/0356203http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ydorb/khobar-copyvio -- what
exactly is copied
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84975 --
list discussion
[Jimmy in Africa] - In South-Africa Jimmy Wales has give a keynote at
Wikipedia Academy where workshops where giving about how to edit
Wikipedia. The Wikipedias in the many local languages of South-Africa
are extremely small, even the largest, Afrikaans has only 8600
articles. Because of the work during the workshops the isiZulu
Wikipedia crost the 100 article mark.
http://tinyurl.com/2cvcze -- What has Jimmy Wales been up to?
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_7436295
[eat Wikipedia] - Wikinews has the story that in china, where access
to Wikipedia is mostly blocked, supermarkets now sell "Wekipedia"
bread with a bearded man (= Jimmy?) on the packaging.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikipedia_making_bread_in_China%3F_Not_so%2C_bu…http://sexybeijing.tv/new/eblog/default.asp?view=plink&id=127 --
picture of the bread
=== Stats ===
[Erratum] - Commons has now 1000 featured pictures, not 10,000 as was
reported in Wikizine 83.
http://tinyurl.com/2e4xab -- the 1000th featured picture
=== Other news ===
[£ BBC] - The website of the British public broadcaster, who is funded
by taxes, has started to display a limited number of advertisements to
users who visited there website from outside the United Kingdom.
Concerns where raised about impartiality of the BBC when carrying
advertisement. The BBC explicitly stated that the advertisement will
be clearly separated from editorial content. The BBC hopes to raise
around 100 million euro yearly with the advertisements.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7050625.stmhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/
[Comic] - "...articles on Wikipedia are written [..] by one extremely
dedicated squirrel."
http://tinyurl.com/2l5gfu
[Bye-bye Wiki-Wiki] - A classic part of any interview with the press
is to explain that the name "wiki" comes from a bus service in Hawaii.
The WikiWiki bus system in Hawaii, after which the software concept
Wiki is named, will be soon no more. It will replaced by a
"air-conditioned walkway", a sort of bridge.
http://www.kpua.net/news.php?id=13096
[Wikizine: less short] - A core idea of Wikizine was to keep the items
very short so you can read it very quickly. For more information there
are the external links where you can read the whole story. The problem
is that when you translate Wikizine into non-English editions, those
short items alone contain sometimes too little information to be
really informative. Most external links are in English. For
non-English readers it is then difficult to get the story. Because of
this it will be attempted to include more information in the Wikizine
items. Being brief maybe good but if you end up by (almost) saying
nothing, we are not achieving our goals.
=== Did you know ... ===
... that donating small amounts by PayPal is not a good idea?
* donation 0,01 AUD - 0,01 AUD paypal fee = 0 AUD for WMF
* donation 0,25 USD - 0,25 USD Paypal fee = 0 USD for WMF
* donation 1,20 CAD - 0,59 CAD PayPal fee = 0,61 CAD for WMF (50% fee!)
* donation 1 EUR - 0,38 EUR PayPal fee = 0,62 EUR for WMF (38% fee)
* donation 5 USD - 0,41 USD PayPal fee = 4,59 USD for WMF (8,2% fee)
* donation 25 USD - 0,85 USD PayPal fee = 24,15 USD for WMF (3,4% fee)
* donation 100 USD - 2,50 USD PayPal fee = 97,50 USD for the WMF (2,5% fee)
Be aware that a very small donation means you are making a donation to
Paypal and not to the Wikimedia Foundation. Best you give one higher
donation then several smaller donations.
Verify of one of the other donation channels, like bank transfer (free
inside Europa), is not a better solution for making a donation from
you country.
=== Quote ===
"Hail Wikipedia" -- Anonymous
"Wikipedia, OpenOffice.org, Ubuntu - three things that makes me feel
good." -- Gergely Máté
"to get wikipedia is like to have the Alexandria's library at home!
thanks to the Wikipedia Team." -- eric malbos (editorial note: next
Wikimania will be at the library of Alexandria)
"Wikipedia, une cathédralle informatique" -- roland moreno
"Please do not go commercial." -- Anonymous
"Danke!" -- Anonym
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 700
Unique Visitors website last week: 140
Editor(s): Walter, Effeietsanders, Londenp
Thanks to: Paginazero, bawolff, Andre Engels, Wikifitz
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
*****************************************
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\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2007 Week: 44 Number: 83
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Upload limit] - The upload limit is 20 MB. Now that the recent
changes have resulted in good support for video, it was suggested to
increase this limit. There are concerns for a dramatic growth in
bandwidth and storage need.
=== Request for help ===
[Fundraising translations] - Most translations for the 2007
fundraising have been done, but some still remian. Cary Bass,
volunteer coordinator, requests your help.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007
=== New project proposals ===
[Chain of reasons] - This proposed new project aims to be a reference
for people who simply want to learn about the reasoning behind
particular beliefs -- moral, political, scientific, religious, or
whatever.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chains_of_Reason
=== Policy ===
[Page creation on EN Wikipedia] - Page creation for anonymous users
has been disabled for the English Wikipedia since December 2005. There
will probably soon be a trial of one week during which page creation
is enabled again.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84133http://tinyurl.com/yw6gvj -- discussion at the village pump
=== Foundation ===
[Priorities] - Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation
board of trustees, has stated priorities for her next term as a chair.
She also summarizes the major developments of last year.
http://tinyurl.com/325sjo
[Fundraising] - The 2007 fall fund raising has started on October 22
and will run until December 22. People are encouraged to place web
buttons on their private websites. At present around US$130,000 has
been donated. The live stream of donations from Paypal can be seen in
the IRC channel #wikimedia-donations on freenode.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons and
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007 -- feedback from
the visitors of the projects on the fund raiser
http://chat.wikizine.org -- provides access to #wikimedia-donations
[Budget] - Together with its fundraising, the Wikimedia Foundation has
also published its budget for 2007-2008. The Foundation plans to spend
US$4.6M in total, of which 57% is reserved for technical services. The
rest is going to overhead, staff and other activities such as Wikimania.
http://tinyurl.com/3bxpwa
[New chapter] - Wikimedia Sweden was founded in Stockholm, Sweden.
Lennart Guldbrandsson was elected Chair. For the board several members
of community were elected as well as persons from the free knowledge
movement of Sweden. One of them is Lars Aronsson, founder of
susning.nu, which was the second largest wiki in the world before it
was closed.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige
[Treasurer] - The foundation is looking for a treasurer who will
succeed Miles Davis on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
http://tinyurl.com/2y9ryy
[Job openings] - As a result of the relocation of the Wikimedia
Foundation's headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San
Francisco, several positions are to be filled.
http://tinyurl.com/24ow5e
=== Community ===
[Dutch Conference] - On October 27, Wikimedia Nederland held a
conference in Amsterdam about Wikimedia, Wikis and Education. Most of
the program was in Dutch; however, a few presentations were in
English. Florence Devouard was one of the keynote speakers.
http://tinyurl.com/2r9e4p -- conference website
http://tinyurl.com/2r2na9 -- Wikinews report on the conference
[Russian Conference] - The Wiki-Conference 2007 was held on October 27
and 28 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
http://tinyurl.com/35axup
[Wikijunior] - It is proposed that stable versions of the Wikijunior
books hosted on the English Wikibooks will be published on
www.wikijunior.org. Also there are discussions on a new logo.
http://tinyurl.com/32vh9bhttp://tinyurl.com/3afhp3
=== Media ===
[Wikicomics] - "Wikimedia fundraiser highlights webcomic community's
frustration with Wikipedia guidelines" reports Wikinews
http://tinyurl.com/2z8mda
[Edit for grades] - Some schools may ban Wikipedia, but the story
about a teacher of the University of Washington-Bothell who makes her
students write Wikipedia articles for grades was in the news this week.
http://tinyurl.com/2hjnmm
[Anons best?] - "Anonymous Wikipedia entries the most accurate" writes
Brockpress.com.
http://tinyurl.com/3c4895
=== Stats ===
[Commons] - Three years have passed since Commons started selecting
their best pictures; now, the 10,000th featured picture has been
selected.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21385http://tinyurl.com/2e4xab -- the 10,000th featured picture
[hu.wp] - The Hungarian Wikipedia just reached 75.000 articles.
http://hu.wikipedia.org
[haw.wp] - The Hawaiian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
http://haw.wikipedia.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language
[simple wp] - The Simple English Wikipedia has reached its 20,000th
article with "Mandurah railway line, Perth". Simple is looking for
editors to write even more articles.
http://simple.wikipedia.org
[Erratum] - Wikizine 82 reported that the Vietnamese Wikipedia had
reached 100,000 articles. This is not correct. The count was 100,000
pages in total, not just articles. The Vietnamese Wikipedia has over
25,000 articles.
=== Editorial ===
Dear readers,
Today, Wikizine has existed for three years. A couple of weeks ago, I
was seriously considering to stop contributing to Wikizine. My reason
was that it became too difficult to continue creating weekly a new and
good edition of Wikizine virtually alone.
At this time, the start of the third year of Wikizine, I want to
inform you, my readers, that Wikizine will continue. This is possible
because of the recent assistance in creating Wikizine that has been
provided to me by users londenp and effeietsanders and a slightly less
pessimistic state of mind.
It will not longer be a goal of Wikizine to have a weekly issue. The
new publication frequency will be "You will get a new Wikizine
whenever one is ready".
The Spanish and Indonesian language edition of Wikizine will mostly be
terminated soon because of lack of activity of the people who started
them. For the German edition there is just a new volunteer so there is
hope that this one can stay.
Thanks for reading Wikizine. That is the reason for existence of a
newsletter. This newsletter is "for the members of the Wikimedia
community". The main purpose of Wikizine is to inform you, the
Wikimedia community, what is going on in the community. That is across
all projects and languages.
Only what is known by the (small) staff of Wikizine can be reported.
Currently Wikizine fails in reporting what is going on in the global
community due to lack of information. Please take a minute to send
notice to Wikizine if there is something of interest to report from
your home-wiki.
Greetings,
[[meta:user:Walter]]
=== Did you know ... ===
... that the income of the Wikimedia Foundation is mainly based on
small donations from individuals who appreciate the Wikimedia
projects? The Wikimedia projects are hence mainly supported by the
large public, not by major organisations.
=== Fundraising quotes ===
"For tripling the number of Elephants in Africa!" US$500 --Anonymous.
"Instead of a banner asking for donations, why don't you just have a
banner with an ad, and skip the middle step." --Anonymous.
"Wikipédia est d'une utilité publique colossale." -- Lionel Bolnet
"Who's that guy? The guy on the banner looks like Osama bin Laden."
--Anonymous
"Your efforts to educate the world are highly admirable. Keep up the
good work." -- Alison Dwyer
"Symbolisch bedrag en mijn hartelijke dank voor jullie geweldige
site." -- Tejo Hoekman
http://tinyurl.com/2rlb39 -- more quotes
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 695
Unique Visitors website last week: 167
Editor(s): Walter, Effeietsanders, Londenp
Corrector(s): Oliphaunt
Thanks to: Tgr, Joakim Larsson, Borgx
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantees of accuracy,
validity and especially correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 42 Number: 82
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[New tool] - Magnus Manske created a tool called WatchFlickr. It runs through a
category, finds articles without images, and searches for relevant free,
Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr. Flickr is a website used for
sharing photos. The tool can help with replacing non-free/fair use images, by
allowing users to easily find free replacements on many related articles at
once. [source SignPost]
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/watchflickr.php
[Diff] - Sysops have now a "diff" option when viewing the history of a deleted
page
=== Request for help ===
[Wikizine] - This current edition of Wikizine is different from all others
before because it is created with the very substantial constructions of a few
other editors besides the editor-in-chief. Nevertheless your help is still
requested with Wikizine. Firstly for writing (parts of) Wikizine. And secondly
to provide information about your home-wiki. If you are interested please
contact the editor-in-chief using the link below or edit the next edition in
construction on Meta.
http://report.wikizine.orghttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine
[Translations] - The upcoming fundraiser needs some translations for the
testimonials, which will be next to "wikilove" a central theme for the
fundraiser. Please follow this link for the translation requests:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translations#Current_requests
[Serbian National Library] - Wikimedia Serbia wants to cooperate with the
Serbian National Library, and Milos Rancic asks for input.
http://tinyurl.com/27zgeo
[Communications] - The "Communication Projects Group" is being reorganized and
is looking for new members. Follow this link:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communication_Projects_Group/Membership
=== Policy ===
[GSFDL] - A new licence by Free Software Foundation is under construction; the
"GNU Simpler Free Documentation License". It is possible that this licence will
replace eventually the currently used GNU Free Documentation License by most of
the Wikimedia projects.
http://tinyurl.com/2s6hwshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSFDL
=== Foundation ===
[Wikimania] - Next Wikimania in 2008 will be held in Alexandria, Egypt. This is
the 4th Wikipedia on a consecutive different continent. Extrapolation means
that the next Wikimania in 2009 might be in Australia or South-America. The
opening and selection of the city to host Wikimania 2009 is expected to be
concluded by the end of 2007. Anyone who would be interested in hosting
Wikimania in 2009 is strongly advised to start the process informally now.
http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids/Alexandriahttp://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-September/033411.html
[WMF Jobs!] - As a result of the move the Wikimedia Foundation world
headquarters from Saint-Peters burg to San Francisco (USA) the Wikimedia
Foundation is looking for several people for different functions for the new
office in San Francisco. These are not voluntary positions, you will get paid.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings
[Board meeting] - The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees held a board
meeting 6-7 October. A few of the conclusions were that the chapters meeting is
suspended, Florence Devouard will stay chair, Erik Möller executive secretary
and that Jan-Bart and Jimbo have been re-appointed for another year term as
board member. It has been decided that no further board members will be added
for now.
http://tinyurl.com/ytj7fa
[Wikimedia NL]- On 20 September, the Dutch chapter held a seminar about free
media (vrije media). Goal of the workshop was to inform organizations about the
possibilities of placing their media-collections under a free license.
Wikimedia Nederland organized the seminar in cooperation with Creative Commons,
and was supported by Kennisnet Ict op school. The organizations that were
invited are mostly organizations that are (partly) financed by the Dutch
national government (university museums, regional archives, etc). Although the
attendance was not very big, the seminar was a success, because of the
enthusiasm of the attending organizations. The following months, Wikimedia
Nederland will further advise those (and other) organizations about using free
licenses.
[Wikimedia IT] - [[:it:Utente:Frieda]] - WMF board member, former WM Italia
president and wikimedia evangelist - was invited by the Ministry of the Public
Education, to help starting a project to improve the diffusion of Wikimedia
projects in Italian schools and to involve more teacher and students to edit
and to produce free knowledge.
[Wikimedia CH] - The Swiss chapter has held their third Wikipediaday on Saturday
the 29th of September. The day made the national news. The main focus was on
people working in education.
=== Community ===
["Wikimania" also in USA?] - Next Wikimania will be in Egypt. One of the
"losers" is the bid of Atlanta in the USA. Because Wikimania will not come to
Atlanta attempts are now made to organize their own separate event for
Wikimedians from America. The "Conference of the Americas". Like the plans are
now the conference will be held in May 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2sko9u
[EN-Wikipedia]] - It seems that the English Wikipedia has reached its peak 8
months ago, since then the amount of edits per day is falling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikipedia_Article_Edits_Minus_Reverts.png
[Deletion] - The deletion of the already closed Siberian Wikipedia is being
considered.
http://tinyurl.com/24np38
=== Media ===
[African Wikipedia] - An interesting inside story on the development of
Wikipedia's in South-African languages can be found on
http://www.icommons.org/articles/afrikaans-wikipedia-a-tiny-giant
[Lists of ...] - the 8 Most Needlessly Detailed Wikipedia Entries
http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=2411
[la.wp] - Veni, Vidi, Wiki: Latin Isn't Dead On 'Vicipaedia'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119103413731143589.html
[About en.wp] - "Delete generation rips encyclopedia apart"
http://tinyurl.com/25kctd
=== Stats ===
[Milestones] - The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles. The
Italian Wikipedia has reached 350,000 articles. Commons hosts now 2,000,000
files and approaches the English Wikipedia as biggest project in term of pages.
The Kazakh Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles. The Piedmontese Wikipedia reached
10,000 articles.
=== Other news ===
[Free view] - After discussion involving some wikipedians, the Italian
parliamentarian Franco Grillini, member of the Camera dei Deputati, proposed to
introduce freedom of panorama in the Italian copyright law.
[Picture permission] - [[:it:Utente:Senpai]] had contacts with the head of
Soprintendenza dei beni culturali of Firenze (the agency legally owning the
rights of reproduction of paintings and arts in the Florence museums) that
resulted in a chance of being authorized to use art related images on Wikimedia
projects. Not much time ago, the Soprintendenza asked firmly to remove all the
images taken in those museums (this applies only to photos made by Italians and
subject to Italian law).
[Fair use] - After a long debate that involved WM Italia, a group of
parliamentarians proposed a law amendment to allow fair use in Italy, "for
encyclopaedic use". This proposal is still being evaluated, but had positive
opinions from the Commissione Cultura and other institutions.
[CC-3.0] - Creative Commons is writing on a new license version, 3.01. The
public discussion has been opened.
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7718
[Veropedia] - Former WMF employee and long time Wikipedia editor Danny Wool
started together with a few other long time editors Veropedia, which wants to
re-use the Wikipedia content by improving it, and locking the good version on
their website.
http://www.veropedia.com
=== Was ist das? ===
[OTRS] - OTRS (Open-source Ticket Request System) is the system which is used
for answering questions and comments about Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia-projects. The teams consist of volunteers representing the different
communities. In order to help out you need to know the ins and outs of your
project. Besides, as the OTRS-members have access to private information, the
Foundation needs to know your identity.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS
=== Did you know ... ===
[Featured article] - There is a page on meta where you can compare the different
Wikipedias regarding featured articles. Featured articles is considered one of
the indicators for the quality of a Wikipedia, although the qualification
process differs per Wikipedia http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Featured_articles
[Extension] - There is an interesting extension which is used by the Wikiversity
projects. It can be used for making tests in order to let the participant of a
course find out if material in the course is understood; it might also be
useful for Wikibooks-projects http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Help:Quiz
=== Quote ===
[From EN-Wikiquote] - "You set up this fantastic site, with people sending
information all around the world, and you don't make any money of it! It's
practically an un-American activity!" from Clive Anderson, 2007-07-24, The
Wikipedia Story, BBC Radio 4.
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 699
Unique Visitors website last week: 148
Editor(s): Londenp, Walter, Effeietsanders
Thanks to: Jollyroger, Fruggo
Exceptional thanks to: Londenp, Effeietsanders
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
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\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2007 Week: 39 Number: 81
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[WebPlayer] - There is now a real web based player for the audio and video
content on the WMF wikis. This was already possible with a player on the
separate toolserver, but it is now displayed on the wiki itself. This
functionality is created by Tim Starling. Because of the use of the not very
popular Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora file formats for audio and video it was for
the end user not always easy to use the content. Now with this web based player
function the source file format is not longer relevant for the end user. It
just works like on YouTube. The use of this function is very simple. Basically
it is [[image:foobar.ogg]] to include a file in a page. To play you click on a
'play' symbol under the thumbnail. See link for more information.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OggHandlerhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:A11v_1094228.ogg -- A classic fragment
[Overwrite] - Overwriting existing files are now distinguished in the logs from
uploading new files with [[MediaWiki:Overwroteimage]]
=== Request for help ===
[Wikilove] - Pictures of Wikimedians expressing there love for the projects are
requested. The will be used in the upcoming fund drive to provide a more
personal impression to the potential donors. See post of Sabine Cretella for
more information or contact here if you have questions.
http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2007/09/wikimedian-of-hour.htmlhttp://pms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figura:GM_Wikilove.jpg -- example
[Quality project] - One of goals of our projects is not only to create free
information but also accurate information. Currently there is room for
improvement regarding the quality. A new quality project is launched. A special
wiki is created and a mailing list to discus the possibilities for improving
the overall quality of our content. Main focus is a software change to support
article/edit verification by trusted users. Also is considered a system that
uses colors to show the level of trust of the user that has done the edit.
Community feedback and cooperation is requested.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19980http://quality.wikimedia.org/http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiquality-lhttp://enwiki-trust.cse.ucsc.edu/index.php/CPL
[Wikizine] - Your help is urgently requested with Wikizine, which may affects
its chances of continuing. If you are interested, contact the editor-in-chief
using the link below.
http://report.wikizine.org
[Buttons] - and also banners are requested to be used for the upcoming fund
drive. So that websites who like to support the Wikimedia projects can use them
to advertise for it.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons
[Pop-up] - There has been received several reports from readers of EN Wikipedia
that the get a pop-up that says the need to "donate to Wikipedia" to use
Wikipedia. This is naturally not so. It can be that those users are confused
but also that there some sort of spy-ware or virus behind this. If you see this
or know someone who complains about this let them make a screenshot and send it
in to info-en AT wikimedia DOT org or Wikizine.
=== Policy ===
[Draf: Software Policy] - A proposal for a WMF "Principles Regarding Software
Use" has been drafted by WMF board member Erik Möller. Feedback is welcome.
The result could become a WMF resolution proposal.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Software_Policy_Drafthttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19547
=== Foundation ===
[Moving headquarters] - The Wikimedia Foundation is moving its offices from St.
Petersburg in Florida to San Francisco in California, both in the United
States, this winter. That is timezone UTC-8/UTC-7 Summer time. The servers are
in Tampa, Florida, and will not be moved. The announcement says the original
location was chosen in 2003 because the founder Jimbo lived there when he
started the foundation, and that being in a larger city brings the Foundation
closer to potential staff, partners, services, and media. Probably this means
that most of the current office staff will not able to move with the office and
new people will need to be hired. The board will enjoy its last board meeting
in sunny and warm Florida at the office in Saint-Petersburg on the 6th and 7th
October.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/20090 -- announcement by
Sue Gardner + discussion
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/20218 -- more discussion
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2007-10-01#Foundation_to_move…
[New hire] - The WMF office staff expands with the arrival of Ingrid as
executive assistant. She will work at office for time it is still in
Saint-Petersburg.
[World WMF meeting] - Like last year there will be meeting of board of the
Wikimedia Foundation and representatives of all the Wikimedia chapters. To
purpose of the meeting is to clarify the relationships between chapters and
Foundation. At present it looks like the meeting will be in Frankfurt, Germany
on December 7, 8 and 9.
[Fund raiser] - The Wikimedia foundation has started to plan its 2007 fund
raiser. The last one ended Currently it looks like the fund raiser will start
on October 22 and go until December 22. Help is needed in the following ways:
to collect compelling human stories that show why the projects matter,
translation help, lots of help designing and implementing the message, and to
help plan and carry out plans as they are being developed.
[New chapter] - A new Wikimedia chapter, Wikimedia Hong Kong, is now
officially registered in Hong Kong.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19996http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hong_Kong
[Wikimania 2008] - To procedure for choosing the location for next Wikimania is
in its final stage. Currently are in the running 4 cities; Africa with
Alexandria and Cape Town and North America with Atlanta and Toronto. The winner
will be known by 6th of October.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
[IT Wikimedia] - On 1st and 2the September IT Wikimedia had its annual Italian
chapter meeting and wikimeet in Rome, featuring a wide presence of wikimedians
and journalists from press and TV. The news published by all of the main
national newspapers. During the meeting some new board members where elected,
others confirmed. Frieda Brioschi, former president of IT Wikimedia and now WMF
USA board member has been given honorary board membership of IT Wikimedia and
is appointed Wikimedia evangelist (PR person).
[FR Wikimedia] - is organizing its first conference. It will be in Paris on
October 19 and 20, organized by the French WMF chapter. Subscriptions are open.
http://colloque.wikimedia.fr/2007/
[NL Wikimedia] - In the Netherlands there will be on the 27th October in
Amsterdam a local Wikimedia conference organized by the dutch chapter. The
topic of this years conference is "wikis and education". Most presentations
will be in Dutch, some in English. Registration is open.
http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/english/
=== Community ===
[EN Wikiquote] - The English language Wikiquote is trying out a new policy for
page deletion. It is a simplified deletion process invented on the English
Wikipedia, which allows users to place a template on a page and it will be
deleted after seven days if nobody removes it. After 3 months the community
will decide if the policy will be implemented longer.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:PROD
[EN Wikipedia] - is the flagship of all WMF projects. So making a good first
impression with the layout is important. The EN Wikipedia, like other wikis,
has a huge collection of templates. Some page have many templates that gives a
global very ugly impression. On the EN Wikipedia those templates have been
redesigned to be less ugly and make a significant difference in the ugliness of
that articles where the are used on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-09-17/News_a…
=== Media ===
[Wikipedia 2.0] - "Now with added trust". Article about plans of Wikipedia to
improve the quality of the articles. Important it to realize that the plans
that are described in this article as of the will be implemented very soon are
in reality only ideas. The implementation of a automatic rating of "trust" of
edits by users is nothing else then a possibility, a concept.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19526226.200-wikipedia-20-%C3%…http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/1340207
=== Stats ===
[When new stats?] - Since many years there are very nice statistics of the
projects created by Erik Zachte. Those statistics are not updated since long
for some projects and because people keep asking why Erik explains it in a
posting to Foundation-l. The core problem is that database dumps the the WMF
must provide to be able to making the statistics are failing very frequently,
especially for the larger projects. When there is no recent database dump then
no statistics can be made from them. Also it becomes more and more difficult to
process the data because of the huge amount of data of such a database dump of
a large wiki like the English language Wikipedia.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19880/focus=19937http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm
[Alexa] - Wikipedia.org has reached a rank of 9 on alexa.com, which means
Alexa's statistics show it as the 9th most visited web site on the Internet.
The 10th and 11th positions are Facebook (a social networking site) and Baidu
(a Chinese search engine).
[Articles and edits] - The Swedish Wikipedia has reached 250 thousand articles.
The Indonesian Wikipedia has made 1 million edits. The Vietnamese Wiktionary
has reached 1 thousand users.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_News&oldid=679817
[EN Wikipedia] - The English Wikipedia has passed 2 million articles with "El
Hormiguero", an article about a Spanish television program. The English project
is by far the largest Wikipedia, with the second-largest project being the
Deutsch Wikipedia with about 600 000 articles. However, the tech site zdnet.be
reports that the English Wikipedia is missing articles about many topics about
non-English languages and cultures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Hormiguero
=== Other news ===
[Must read] - Rethinking fund raising (1): SWOT & more. Post by Erik Möller
about fund raising
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19842
[Wiki closed] - The Siberian Wikipedia is closed after nearly one year of
procedure. Currently the wiki is still online but the database is locked.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SIBhttp://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/
[New wikis] - A Wikisource in the Bengali language and a Wiktionary in Upper
Sorbianis is approved and created.
http://bn.wikisource.org/http://hsb.wiktionary.org/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/
=== Did you know ... ===
... the internet is for porn?
Porn is a huge part of the Internet, and that interest is also reflected in the
use of Wikipedia. For as long as we have kept statistics, articles about sex
and sexuality were among the most popular.
According the data from the video-player hosted on the toolserver, that now is
replaced by the wiki-player, the correctly labeled video file "Ejaculation
Educational Demonstration.OGG" was the most poplar video. The file on the
second place was only requested almost the half of the first one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sNGgo-soSc
=== Quote ===
The "Web 2.0 model"
1. Make a cool site
2. Slap up some ads to look like you have a business plan
3. Sell out to Google,Y!, or Microsoft
cha-ching!
The "Wikipedia model"
1. Make a cool site
2. Incorporate as a not-for-profit, keep the site non-commercial and ad-free
3. Beg for money
Hey, at least we’re honest about it!
-- from presentation by Brion Vibber
http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/09/13/news/sfcc/wikipedia.txthttp://leuksman.com/images/e/e1/gatorjug-2007-09-12.pdf
//////////////////////////////////////////
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Unique Visitors website last week: 229
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Corrector(s): Pathoschild
Thanks to: Jollyroger, gattonero, dracotheimpaler, Aphaia, Pathoschild
Special thanks to: WikipediaWeekly.org, Gray B., ++Lar
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
******************************************
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\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2007 Week: 38 Special edition
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Request for help ===
Dear readers,
Almost two years ago I started with Wikizine. The very first message
send out about it was also a "special edition". That was to present
Wikizine, what it was all about.
http://en.wikizine.org/2005/10/year-2005-week41-special-edition.html
This one now is not to explain what Wikizine is.
Wikizine is not totally unsuccessful. The number of readers has only
go up since its existence, slowly yes, but up nevertheless. The rare
feedback has been positive.
It was my intention to create a platform with Wikizine to bring
together the most relevant information, news, from all Wikimedia
projects and languages. I felt, and still do, that there is a need for
that.
I hoped that after some time a network of reporters of the various
wikis, languages, projects, would form who could bring there news to
the larger community by means of Wikizine. And also that the would
people step up to join me in creating Wikizine.
This largely did not happened. In the last two years some people have
volunteered and helped with making Wikizine. But that where far to
few, who did not a lot and only for a to short time to have any real
impact.
Wikizine was and is still a one man show. I have made all editions
until now of Wikizine. I can not continue like this. It has become
more difficult with every edition for me to bring myself to get the
next one ready. The time it was fun is long gone. The frequency of the
editions has become more and more erratic. And the quality is falling.
I need people who are willing to work substantially on Wikizine. And
not only today but on the long term. Finding news, writing it in the
draft; constructing Wikizine. If you like to help please contact me;
walter AT wikizine.org
Request for help for Wikizine has been send out before, only not so
explicit like now. This is also the first time I send it to
non-Wikizine channels.
The responds the previous times was always nearly zero. I do not
expect anything else this time. Surprise me.
Greetings,
Walter Vermeir
The editor-founder of Wikizine
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Editor(s): Walter
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 36 Number: 80
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Map function] - A javascript plugin is created that can provide an interactive
map to an article and jump to other articles. This system is already in use on
several Wikipedias.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiMiniAtlashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument
=== Foundation ===
[Fundraiser] - A new fundraiser is coming. Like it looks now it will be from
September 23 to
November 22.
[Wikinews Foundation?] - A proposal has been raised on Foundation-l to found a
Wikinews foundation for the Wikinews project. This mostly to be able to provide
accreditation for wikinews reporters.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19300
[Wikimania 2008] - Bidding for the location of next Wikimania opens formally ...
and is already closed by now.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
=== Community ===
[Support Wikipedia] - A few Wikipedias show since long a small note to anonymous
users to suggest a donation to the WMF. One of those is the English language
Wikipedia. That notice has now grown a fair deal larger on that wiki. Also a
second, small, anon notice is included to draw attention of the visitors about
the way wikipedia differs from other websites and how one should use wikipedia.
Currently that is "Researching with Wikipedia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia
=== Media ===
[Wikiscanner] - has turned out as perfect topic for many newspapers around the
world to fill there paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-09-03/WikiSc…
[WikipediaWeekly] - A new edition reflecting about the last Wikimania and next
Wikimania
http://wikipediaweekly.org/2007/09/04/wikipedia-weekly-28/
=== Stats ===
[EN Wikinews] has written 10,000 news articles since its creation.
http://en.wikinews.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Stevenfruitsmaak
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
******************************************
__ __ _ _ _ _
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2007 Week: 33 Number: 79
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Single User Login] - also known as SUL - is again a step closer to
implementation. For the newer readers; Single User Login is exactly
what it sounds like; one login for all WMF wikis. Because many users
have accounts on many wikis, at not always with the same username,
making a system to support one login and not breaking to existing
accounts is complex. This is in the works for several years now. The
merge function is now live on the test-wiki in demonstration modus for
testing. (demonstration -> testing = does not really work yet). Brion
says that beta-testing could start in a couple of weeks.
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical
[pywikipediabot] - The "pywikipediabot" framework, which has been
hosted at sourceforge for the last almost 4 years, has recently been
moved to wikimedia servers. This means that robot users will need to
go to a different server to update their version of the robot software.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikipedia-l -- New mailing list
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/98876 -- A message
announcing the move
[Redirects] - The now work with URL-encoded page titles (like
"#REDIRECT [[foo%20bar]]").
[WP offline] - Building a (fast) Wikipedia offline reader; a user who
wanted to have Wikipedia on his hard disk to take along explains how
he done it.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/13/1939231http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/buildWikipediaOffline.html
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania 2008] - Suggestions are requested for locations where to
organize the next Wikimania in 2008.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
=== Policy ===
[CC 3.0 licence] - Wikimedia commons, our media files project, has
accepted the 3.0 Creative Commons licence after long discussion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-13/CC_3.0
=== Foundation ===
[Wikimania 2007] - In Taipei Wikimania has accrued like planed. It is
considered to be successful. At this time only very limited video
recordings of the events are available. Photographs are present on
commons and Flickr. The best way of getting the feeling of being there
are the audio reports of the "Wikipedia Weekly World Service" about
Wikimania.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.wikimania/309 --
Refection Wikimania by Ant
http://wikimania.tw/streaming/ -- the available video
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2007 -- images
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/wikimania2007/ -- and some more pictures
http://www.wikipediaweekly.org/ --- start with "Wikimania Day 1:
Morning Update"
[Wikimedia USA?] - Options are explored about creating chapters inside
the USA. Until now chapters are created on the national lever of a
country. For chapters inside the USA the situation is different. There
is no need for an organization for tax reasons because Wikimedia
Sint-Petersburg covers that already. It is considered to organize the
USA chapters by city and not by state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/US_cha…
=== Community ===
[EN Wikinews] - A wikinews reporter was able to get an exclusive
interview with Tony Benn on U.K. politics.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews:_Tony_Benn_on_U.K._politics
[PL wiki on DVD] - In April was announced in Wikizine 68 that very
soon a DVD of the Polish language Wikipedia would be on sale in shops
in Poland. That "soon" is now. It is available for purchase in shops
in Poland as well as online. The release contains 239 000 articles, 59
000 images and the dedicated Java software WikiMiner. The DVD costs 39
PLN (~ 10 EUR, $14). Soon the 8 GB image of the DVD will be available
for download as well.
http://tinyurl.com/33c8xs
=== Awards ===
[Wikimania Awards 2007] - The Wikimania Awards where awarded. There
where 7 categories in where people could nominate pictures. On the
presentation of the winners only winners for 4 categories where
announced. Jury member [[User:Cspurrier]] explained that the reason
was that the intended prices for the winners for the other categories
did not seemed to exist. And because of that there where no winners
for the other categories.
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Awards --- And the
winners are ...
=== Media ===
[Wikimania] - Whats Next After Wikimania 2007?
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/08/11/taiwan-whats-next-after-wikima…
[Wikitracker] - See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a
Campaign. About the results that you get from "Wikiscanner", a
(public) database of edits done by anonymous users. And how company's
and organisations edit there own articles.
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_trackerhttp://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/vote-on-the-top.htmlhttp://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/
=== Stats ===
[All wp] - All Wikipedias together have reached 8 million articles.
[ja wp] - The Japanese Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles.
[commons] - The Wikimedia Commons has reached 1,750,000 files
[ps wp] - The Pashto Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles.
=== Other news ===
[Wikipedia on stage] - In New York City a small theatre company has
preformed a play with the name "The Wikipedia Plays" inspired more or
less on certain articles. The play was made up of 17 very small plays.
The Signpost has written detailed reporting about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipe…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipe…
[Wikizine about underweare??] - When Wikizine was started there was so
far as could be found nobody else using or had been using the name
"Wikizine" for an online activity. But that has changed. There is now
a website the provides a sort of blogs that anyone can edit and those
blogs are called "Wikizines". The can be about anything.
http://www.zimbio.com/http://www.zimbio.com/Men's+Underwear+Wikizine+by+UndiesDrawer
[Similpedia] - This is not again yet an other wiki-project. Similpedia
is a website the finds articles inside the English language Wikipedia
that are related to the url or text you past inside the search box of
Similpedia.
http://similpedia.org/
=== Editorial ===
The community of Wikimedia exists on the internet. But sometimes there
are large gatherings of Wikimedians in the real world; Wikimania. Even
when Wikimania is a great success with a high numbers of visitors
there remains a group of very interested Wikimedians who want to
follow the events but are not physical present. In these modern times
of one global digital village that can not be a problem. Especially
for an online technological community as Wikimedia.
The first Wikimania, in 2005 (Frankfurt), there was no live-streaming
nor archives. But that was very first Wikimania, time to learn and
grow is necessary, so that is understandable.
For the second Wikimania in Boston, in 2006, there was live-streaming.
Yes, it was a RealMedia stream but it worked and also for all
operating systems. The archives of the recordings where a problem.
During that Wikimania and at several times after it was announced that
the video archives would come available soon. The never did came
available.
Now for this Wikimania in 2007 I expected that the online experience
would be better then in 2006. It was not. It was even significant
worse. The live-streaming was provided by a sponsor. So far no
problem. But to see the live-stream you needed to go a website that
contains advertisement. There you could see the stream on a web-based
player that starts with a commercial.
For any other organisation or community that would be totally normal.
But when you consider that the Wikimedia community, with the English
language Wikipedia on the first row, is fundamentalistic against even
the smallest form of advertisement or suggesting of commercial
activity, then it is very weird that the official live-stream of
Wikimania is so clearly commercial.
Even worse; the live-stream solution provided was Windows-only! By day
2 I had installed Windows XP in an emulator. The stream was not very
stable, frequent buffer under-runs and this together with no working
function to get a full screen video made the user experience not very
good to say the least.
Video archives where announced to be available be the end the day. One
week after the end of Wikimania; are not yet available.
Wikimania 2007 was a success, but the online experience was not. Will
next year be better? Maybe the people who where providing the on the
spot put together Ogg Theora streams could do that. Considering that
it was an ad hoc solution the did a great job.
Walter, Editor of Wikizine
=== Did you know ... ===
... that you can buy a listing in Wikipedia on eBay?
Ebay user diremine, who has a 99,9% positive feedback, provides the
service of getting an article about you business inside Wikipedia, 10
interwiki links to your article and 2 external links to your website.
The comments in his feedback indicate that has sold successful several
of these packages and the his customers are satisfied. This suggests
that there are spy's and traitors on Wikipedia who assist with this.
http://tinyurl.com/yqyr78 -- article on sale for only US $99.99
http://myworld.ebay.com/diremine
=== Donation Quotes ===
"gott sei dank fur Wikipedia -- Anonym
"Knowledge is Fun" -- Eugene Demeter
"I don't google as I used to, it has thankfully been replaced by
Wikipedia" -- Anonymous
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 675
Unique Visitors website last week: 342
Editor(s): Walter, me and myself
Thanks to: Pathoschild, Rob Hooft
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
New: Wikizine Auf Deutsch and en Español
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a 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
During Wikimania, what is now going on, you can find on the EN
Wikizine website very frequently updated information about Wikimania.
This information consist of links to live-stream solutions when
available during the different sessions. Links to video and/or audio
recordings of past presentation when the exist, links to photographs.
Podcasts about Wikimania.
Basically an overview of everything there is to be found about
Wikimania that helps to provide the best possible online experience
for everybody who is not at Wikimania.
Visited Wikizine frequently to get the latest information about
Wikimania content.
http://en.wikizine.org
