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.org
Year: 2008 Week: 10 Number: 92
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[__HIDDENCAT__] - there is a new magic word __HIDDENCAT__ When used on a
"Category:Foobar"-page it is not listed among the other categories at the
bottom of an article in the category.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/36831
[New dump!] - There is a new database dump of the English language Wikipedia.
The full dump of EN Wikipedia, all articles, full history is 130gb
(compressed).
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20080103/ -- EN Wikipedia dump
http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html -- other wikis dump
[New Skin] - When you go to your "preferences" you have the option
"skin" where
you can select what the interface will look like. The default skin is Monobook.
There are several others to choice from but besides "classic" they are not very
usable. But now is there a new good looking and usable skin: "Modern". Check it
out.
http://tinyurl.com/22gsy6 -- Wikipedia style "Modern"
[RC on IRC] - Recent changes of the projects are posted on IRC by means of a
Wikimedia IRC-server. By request access to this service has been added to the
Wikizine IRC gateway for a selection of projects.
http://chat.wikizine.org
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania 2008] - Call for Participation; Submissions are open until 16 March.
Submissions are warmly welcomed
http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation
=== Foundation ===
[4 new Wikimedia Chapters] - The board of the Wikimedia Foundation approved 4
new chapters. The new chapters are: Wikimedia Česká republika, Wikimedia
Österreich, Wikimedia Australia Incorporated, Wikimedia Hong Kong Limited
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[Wikimanina 2008] - A site risk assessment will be ordered for Wikimania 2008 in
Alexandria, Egypt announced Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue
Gardner. Concern for the safety of Wikimanians in Alexandria has been a topic
on Foundation-l and the assessment will look at various threats.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/26221
[Board elections 2008] - there is a call for election officials
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/25911
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Committee/en
=== Media ===
[Sue on CNET] - Video intervieuw of Sue Gardner (executive director of the WMF)
about the Jimmy Wales buzz and Wikipedia.
http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-32449.html
[Wikipedia in Africa] - story about Wikipedia on DVD in Africa.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23906
[1984] - Japan is considering legislation to "govern top news Web sites"
http://tinyurl.com/2dt26j
[The Economist] - inclusionists versus deletionists
http://tinyurl.com/23agss
=== Stats ===
[WikiWoordenboek] - the Dutch language Wiktionary passed the 30,000 page
milestone.
http://www.wikiwoordenboek.org
[Counts] - The Wikimedia Commons has reached 2,500,000 media files.
[Again new stats] - A site that is using the squid logs to generate Wikipedia
article traffic statistics. You can get the stats for a specific article or get
a list of the most popular pages. There can you learn that for some reason
"Canine reproduction" is very popular.
http://stats.grok.se
[Wikipedia is 2nd in the world!] - at least in the "2008 Web Globalization
Report Card". The number of languages supported is a big factor in this
ranking.
http://bytelevel.com/news/reportcard2008.html
=== Other news ===
[Dirty dishes] - Bad week for Jimmy Wales. His personal life is getting media
coverage. It is reported that Jimmy had a brief relationship with Rachel
Marsden, a conservative blogger who works in the media industry. The
relationship broke off and Rachel Marsden provided private communications
between herself and Jimmy to a gossip site, which published them. Jimmy
published a statement about it on his blog.
And at the same time Danny Wool, ex WMF staff member, published a blog posting
where he writes about his time at the Wikimedia Foundation and requests for
reimbursement of expenses by Jimmy, among other things.
http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/statement/
http://tinyurl.com/22t42g -- Wikinews article
http://allswool.blogspot.com/2008/03/money-for-nothing-chicks-for-free.html
http://tinyurl.com/23f3am -- Signpost article about it
[Encyclopedia of Life] - the EOL has gone live with more than one million
species pages that are mostly minimal articles. Only 25 articles are like the
EOL wishes the articles to be, articles containing rich media with extensive
information.
http://www.eol.org/
[About Wikipedia] - author John Broughton wrote the book "Wikipedia: The Missing
Manual" . A guide to editing Wikipedia. ISBN 0596515162
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-03-03/Book_r…
[CNN goes (a bit) Wikinews] - CNN, an American news network, has started a
website where everyone can submit news and pictures. As it looks now every
article has only one author and people can post comments about it. So it is
more a blog than a wiki.
http://beta.ireport.com/
[Wikileaks] - An attempt to bring down Wikileaks has failed. There was a
DOS-attack, a fire at their web hosting facility and the release of lawyers who
obtained a court order to remove the domain "wikileaks.org" from DNS. Wikileaks
did remain online by means of other domains and by entering the ip-address. The
court order was later revoked.
Wikileaks.org is again online.
http://tinyurl.com/2pbk3q
[Wikirace] -
Wikirace.org is game where you compete with other people to try get
from one "start-article" to try to reach the "end-article" in as few
steps as
possible.
http://wikirace.org
=== Message to the readers ====
Wikizine is there to inform you, readers, about the news related to the
Wikimedia projects or what seem relevant to inform you about.
It has been increasingly more difficult to get a new edition ready for
distribution the last half year. At present the publication rate is below the
necessary frequency necessary to inform our readers in a timely manner about
the relevant news.
Because of this I recommend, as editor, that the readers of Wikizine read the
Wikipedia Signpost as their primary internal news source to keep informed. --
[[meta:user:Walter]] , Editor of Wikizine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
=== Did you know ... ===
... there is dedicated program to browse Wikipedia visually?
The program is called indywiki. (And no, it has nothing to do with Indymedia.)
Basically it is a GUI that displays Wikipedia content in a different way then
your browser. Focus is on the visual aspect. You search for a entry, you get a
selection of pictures related to that article. By clicking on an image you can
browse Wikipedia. Also is there a text box that displays text sections of the
article, a list of sections of the article and a list of external links. The
software runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
Indywiki is young software and the main developer is looking for assistance with
this project. The developer is looking for a python developer to work on
features and people who can work on the GUI to make it better looking.
http://indywiki.sourceforge.net/ -- website
http://indywiki.sourceforge.net/indywiki_fosdem.pdf -- presentation of Indywiki
Contact indywiki: <mgogoulos AT gmail DOT com>
=== Quote ===
"[..] And for the encyclopedia, it turned out
that a volunteer model was able to do quite a reasonable job." -- Bill Gates
reffering to Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/32kpw9
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Number of subscribers: 714
Unique Visitors website last week: 170
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Annabel, Effeietsanders
Contact: reply or
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Website:
http://www.wikizine.org
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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
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Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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