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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 50 Number: 86
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Inspector Gadget] - Our wikis support the function that you can put
in a subpage of your useraccount your own javascript. That is usually
/monobook.js This way you can change the behavior of the wiki or
include specific functionality. In the years several users have
written there own javascript modification. But to use them you need to
tinker a bit, create that subpage, copy the code and so. Not exactly
userfriendly for the no so technical Wikimadians. Now there is the
"Gadget" function. When this function is active on your wiki you have
a nice menu in the "Preferences" section to enable or disable the
extra javascript functionality. And that is all you need to do.
This function is active on the English and French Wikipedia and
commons. Go there and see how it works. To get this function also
active on you wiki; 1) discus it on your wiki and get censuses 2) make
a bugzilla ticket about it and wait 3) after a couple of weeks start
annoying people about it in #wikimedia-tech
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Gadgets
[Move page] - The function to move a page (to change the title) is
one that all logged in users have. On some wikis the restriction is
active that user who have a newly created account are not permitted to
move a page similar to semi-protection restrictions. There is now a
proposal, that seems to have clear support, to restrict page movement
by default on all wikis to non-new user accounts. Wikis can opt-out.
http://tinyurl.com/3avdfd
=== Foundation ===
[World Economic Forum] -- The Wikimedia Foundation is invited to the
World Economic Forum 2008 as Technology Pioneer out of a record number
of applications and nominees. The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a
Geneva-based foundation whose annual meeting is attended by top
business leaders, national political leaders and selected
intellectuals and journalists. As such is this a valuable opportunity
for the WMF to make contacts.
http://tinyurl.com/276asx - Wikinews Report
[Stewards] - the nomination election for stewards is nearing the end.
Your opinion can be given up to 16th December. At present there are 18
candidates for steward.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2007
[Fundraiser update] - the end of the current fundraiser, 22 December,
is coming near. At present about $ 1.1 million is donated. That is
more compared with the previous fundraiser of end 2006. But far below
the budget of 2008.
In an interview with the Wikipedia Signpost the Executive Director of
the WMF Sue Gardner says;"Yes, the online fundraiser will not cover
our operating costs - nor did we expect it to. And that's okay. We
have a couple of major donations coming in within the next few weeks:
they’ve been committed to, and will arrive in the bank before the new
year."
The bot posting the live donations feed in #wikimedia-donations is
down does not seem to come back anymore.
http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/node/22
=== Community ===
[I did not do it] - The main page of the English Wikipedia was briefly
deleted, 2 minutes or less, by an admin account. The user involved was
blocked after one minute and desysoped 5 minutes after the deletion of
the main page. After explanation by the user that it was his sister
who used his account the block was lifted. Moral of the story; logout
when you leave your computer alone, especially when you are a sysop or
higher.
[How Wikipedia works] - Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, Ben Yates and
Samuel Klein are writing a book on how Wikipedia works, and hope to
publish it (GFDL) early 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/35h72j Phoebes announcement on Foundation-l
[Arbcom DE] -- The German Wikipedia voted to keep the arbitration
committee (Schiedsgericht) and elected three new members.
http://tinyurl.com/2p48th - The voting page to keep the arbitration committee.
=== Awards ===
[Puerto Rico] -- The Puerto Rica Senate has honoured Wikipedian Marine
69-71 (Antonio Santiago) in an official resolution for "his dedication
to the cause of helping spread information about distinguished Puerto
Ricans through new media, and in particular, those who have served
with distinction in the military". Santiago is not only active on
Wikipedia, but also in other media.
http://tinyurl.com/2jgpda - The original (Spanish) resolution - see page 4
http://tinyurl.com/3dyhwq - Userpage of Marine 69-71
=== Media ===
[Interview Sue Gardner] - The Signpost has an interview with the new
Executive Director of the WMF, Sue Gardner. Her appointment as such,
she was already managing consultant, has been reported earlier.
http://tinyurl.com/2z7eqz
[Wikinews] -- Wikinews reporter and Wikimedia volunteer David
Shankbone has been invited by the Israeli government to join a (by
them financed) tour through the country, together with other
journalists. This is a nice recognition of Wikinews!
http://tinyurl.com/37dq22 - A blog about this news
[DEwiki rocks!] -- Stern Magazine (A German big Magazine) compared the
German language Wikipedia with Brockhaus, the traditional German
encyclopedia, on 50 articles. Stern concluded that Wikipedia was quite
better then Brockhaus both on Current Events and Correctness.
Brockhaus is considered to be better on readability. Although 50
articles is not fully representative, it is a great signal, and worth
a compliment for the German Wikipedia's editors.
http://whygive.wikimedia.org/2007/12/07/can-you-trust-wikipedia/ --
with image Cover of stern + 350 comments
[Nazi] - A German politician has filed charges against the German
Wikipedia because he finds that there are to many Nazi symbols used
in Wikipedia on the articles. In Germany it is illegal to display Nazi
symbols except for educational or artistic reasons. After a talk with
Wikimedia Deutschland the politician dropped the charges. The number
of illustration in the German language article about the Hitler-Jugend
is strongly reduced.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/07/wikipedia_germany_charges/
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL0616923220071206
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL0731501920071207
[Let's run a Wikipedia story] - One of several recent Wikipedia
storeys that made it around the globe was that of "The Secret Mailing
List Of The Evil Elite Administrators Of Wikipedia". Ironically the
"discovered" mailing list is actually a self assistance list for
victims of cyberstalking on Wikipedia. This news started by an article
of The Register.co.uk with user Durova in the spotlight. User Durova
stated that she was not contacted by the register to give here POV.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/04/0333252
http://tinyurl.com/aykjm -- English Wikipedia Village pump about this
[Onion?] - A story that reads more as a report from "The Onion.com".
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3973925
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Main_Page -- more weird stories
=== Stats ===
[7th] - The online research institute Muliscope announced its yearly
list of the top 20 most popular websites in the Netherlands. The Dutch
language Wikipedia is up from the 10th place in 2006 to the 7th in 2007.
http://www.multiscope.nl/top-20-sites-van-2007.html
[Growth] -- In 1.5 years Wikimedia went from 10,000 to 50,000 HTTP
requests per second (peak)! Also Wikimedia handles a 30Tb of data
volume per day.
http://tinyurl.com/yh7t7j - Graph of HTTP requests
http://tinyurl.com/yqtkoh - Help from the Operator with the pocket calculator
=== Other news ===
[Cape Town Declaration] - Advisory Board member Melissa Hagemann
reported that a preview of the Cape Town Declaration is now available.
The Cape Town Declaration is about Open Education.
http://tinyurl.com/yt887x
[Wiki too free?] -- Katina Schubert, vice chair of Germany's radical
left-wing party "Die Linke", claims "to have reported Wikipedia to the
police for the use of Nazi insignia". Display of such is generally
forbidden by law, but perfectly legal for documentation or educational
purposes. The party website declares the charge aims to "introduce
political and ethical standards" in order to get rid of what they
consider extreme right-wing viewpoints. The issue has caused a lot of
press, almost exclusively in support of Wikipedia, and even Schubert's
own party criticises her for the action. She has now openly admitted
that this was not a stroke of genius.
http://tinyurl.com/2me5bv -- Reuters news
[Paper, now in full-colour] - electronic paper is the technology that
currently gives the best hope to give truly everybody cheap access to
the content of the projects. The currently still expensive devices
that support black and withe displaying are in production. Fuji Xerox
presented a prototype of full-colour electronic paper.
http://tinyurl.com/ynlrmn
[Theora Support] - Our projects use for video the format Ogg Theora.
But besides the WMF-projects use of Ogg Theora is not used by main
stream websites. And so are most computers not able to play it. The
Mozilla foundation and Opera are planning to include playback support
of Ogg Theora build in their browsers. This can result in increased
use of Ogg Theora and make the use of video content of our projects
easier for the readers.
http://tinyurl.com/3csgb7
=== Did you know ... ===
... that Wikinews does not show up on Google News? Wikinews does not
fit one of Google's criteria, that it can't that easily be edited? :)
EN Wikinews has because of that a blog where the news is posted and
that is included by Google News. Unfortunately that blog is updated
infrequently.
http://wikinewsreports.blogspot.com/
=== Quote ===
"When you start accusing everyone of being in on a conspiracy, you
shouldn't be surprised if they decide to confirm your paranoia by
banding together against you." — w:en:user:khaosworks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CABAL
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