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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 46 Number: 84
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== 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/21683
http://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.html
http://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=07/11/13/0356203
http://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.stm
http://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
//////////////////////////////////////////
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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
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correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
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(and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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