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.org
Year: 2006 Week: 51 Number: 54
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[(+338)] - New anti-vandalism function is included to the recent changes. When
an edit is made it now shows up in the RC how many characters are removed or
added. This function is also added to the IRC-stream of the recent changes. To
use is conect to
irc.wikimedia.org with a IRC-client and go to #xx.wikiproject
= so FR Wikibooks is #fr.wikibooks
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1085
[Site notice] - registered users have now the option to hide the site notice
messages. It works with a cookie. The cookie expires after one month. To view
the the site notice again or delete the cookie "dismissSiteNotice" or a sysop
must give the site notice a new ID-number. This can be putting in
MediaWiki:Sitenotice_id a number other then the current ID-number. Ad one digit
or use a random number. Translate MediaWiki:Sitenotice_close for the "close"
link.
Reminder; if the site notice shown to the anonymous users must be the same as
for the registered users then you can keep MediaWiki:Anonnotice empty. Then
MediaWiki:Sitenotice will also be used for anonymous visitors.
[Oversight] - this is an technical function that can be used to censor the
history of an article. The difference with a normal dentition is that there is
no undo like for the deletion function. Also also for sysops it is gone if
used. It is actually a function to hide things that also the sysop are not
supposed to see anymore. Using this function to hide a edit is more user
friendly the if you are a sysop; you can hide a specific version without
deleting and restoring the article like you must do as an sysop to hide a
version. It is in use on the English Wikipedia. It is now technical possible
for a steward to grant "oversight" status to any user on any WMF-project.
Discussion is now in process about who can be trusted with this function.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12589/focus=12589
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight
=== Foundation ===
[Pledge] - Jan-Bart de Vreede (the new board member of the WMF since last week)
has posted his pledge of pledge of allegiance to the Wikimedia Foundation
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12476/focus=12476
[Fundraising] On the sixth day of the official Fundraiser, over $USD 100,000 has
been given in donations. There is a special website "Wikimedia Fundraising
C.O.R.E." to see the details of the donations coming in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-12-18/Fundra…
http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/
=== Community ===
[Interwiki] - Report from the German Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-11-06/Interw…
=== Media ===
[Zeitgeist] According to Google's year-end 2006 Zeitgeist, Wikipedia was the
sixth most popular search term. Other common queries included several social
networking sites.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2006.html
[Wikipedia=Wikia?] - Wikia announced recently that the are going to give free
hosting away and also the profit of the ads on those websites. No problem. But
in a fair amount of articles in the press it was presented as if Wikia was the
commercial part of Wikipedia. And, besides incorrect, headlines like "Wikipedia
offers free web hosting" are not good message when holding a fund raiser. A
fair amount of articles have been corrected after there publication. This type
of articles is also been confirmed published in the Dutch and French press.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8027/53/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikia
=== Stats ===
[China] - Wikipedia maybe blocked but is still very popular sites in china. It
is the 1st online encyclopedia and the 3th general reference site.
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2006/12/19/wikipedia-in-china-still-ranks-hig…
[mt.wp] - The Maltese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles. All European main
state languages have now passed this benchmark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language
=== Other news ===
[Name change] - It was started as "The Ultimate Wiktionary", later is was
renamed to "WiktionaryZ" and now it is OmegaWiki. OmegaWiki is a collaborative
project to produce a free, multilingual resource in every language, with
lexicological, terminological and thesaurus information. OmegaWiki is also the
first implementation of the Wikidata technology. Wikidata brings relational
data to MediaWiki. OmegaWiki is not a Wikimedia foundation project. But the
Stichting Open Progress, the foundation running OmegaWiki, and the WMF are
working together.
http://wiktionaryz.blogspot.com/2006/12/last-post-for-this-blog.html
http://www.omegawiki.org/
=== Did you know ... ===
... that no only facts in articles can be false but also pictures or video?
The truth is out there, possible. The lie is out there certainly. Never ever was
it so easy as today to change photographs or video-recordings. Or make totally
fabricated material. The fact that it comes comes from a reputable source is
not a guarantee that is not fake.
Last week the Belgian public television of the French community interrupted the
normal evening programs for a special news bulletin. The normal journalists in
the normal setting reported the news that the parliament of the Northern part
of Belgium just had unilaterally declared its independence, that the King had
fleet the country and picked lines on the border between North and South where
in place. This with live reports and interviews with politicians. It was all
totally and completely false. Most viewers (89%) believed what the television
was reporting. Some other news agencies distributed the "news" the Belgium has
ceased to exist to the world.
Luckily elaborate deception is not the rule. Or can you notice directly that
there is something wrong with this picture ...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ysQzXT_lBWo
=== Quote ===
ST. PETERSBURG -- -Rumors that Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales might be moving to
Silicon Valley from his home here prompted two reactions from Tampa Bay
business leaders.
1. "We can't let this happen."
2. "We didn't even know he lived here."
http://tinyurl.com/yysv8v
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Number of subscribers: 572
Unique Visitors website this week: 387
Editor(s): Gary Kirk, Walter
Sources: Omegawiki
Contact: reply or
http://report.wikizine.org
Website:
http://en.wikizine.org
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validity and especially but not limited to,
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