[Announce-l] EN Wikizine - number: 48

Tue Oct 31 09:51:59 UTC 2006

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                                    .org 

Year: 2006  Week: 44  Number: 48       

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An independent internal news bulletin 
for the members of the Wikimedia community

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=== Technical news ===

[Reminder Spam] - Users who have an easy username, like "Walter", frequently get
a password reminder. Probably from someone trying to make an account with that
name. But there are also weirdos who are using this function to spam users with
reminders. There are users who receive hundreds of that type of emails a day. 

To stop this type of abuse the password reminder function now has limits. There
is a limit of one password reminder per user per 24-hour period, and 5 password
reminders per IP per hour.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/27534/focus=27534

[Accesskeys change] - the function of the accesskeys and tooltips will be moved
soon out of the Monobook.js and and implement them server-side.  This may
affect personal scripts that implement custom accesskeys. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/27592/focus=27592

[wikipedia.be] - has been offline form Friday until Sunday evening. This domain
is only used for redirecting traffic to a country-portal and limited services.
Indications suggest that the bill for this domain was not paid. This domain was
also offline some time in 2004 for the same reason when the fee for two years
was not paid. 

=== Request for help ===

[Wikizine] requests more feedback form the readers about news from there
home-wikis, especially the non-English language communities.
http://report.wikizine.org

[Wikimania2007] - Request for cooperation from the technical people for setting
up the Wikimania 2007 Hacking Days
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/27576/focus=27576

=== Foundation ===

[WMF-board change] - The board decided to change the positions of the board
members. For now on and for one year at most is this the configuration of the
board; Anthere (Florence Devouard), chair of the board of trustees. Tim Shell
(who announced to step down from the board) is Vice-chair, Eloquence (Erik
Möller) Executive secretary, Michael Davis is the Treasurer. Jimbo remains
board member and has the title of Founder and "Chairman Emeritus". Despite his
new title it is not expected that Jimbo will retire.

In an interview on "Wikipedia Weekly" Jimbo said that it seems likely that the
board will decide in November to expand the board and this to probably 9
members. That means 5 new members. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/11426/focus=11426
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/11430/focus=11430
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/emeritus

[Report from Frankfurt] - the members of the board & officer and also
representaives of the different chapters has come togther in Frankfurt. This to
discuss the futhere of the Wikimedia Foundation. meta:user:Oscar, chair of
Wikipedia Nederland has written a report about it. 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Report_from_Frankfurt_-_October_2006
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/11402/focus=11402 -
comments on Foundation-l
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/11451/focus=11451
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/11446/focus=11446

[Sep11] - The "In Memoriam" sep11-wiki, recently closed, has been cleand-up and
moved outside the Wikimedia Foundation umberella. 
http://www.sep11memories.org/
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/11464/focus=11464

=== Community ===

[Mosaic] - the people on Commons are working on a Wikimedia logo made from many
different pictures on commons, a mosaic. The to commemorate the one millionth
uploaded file at Wikimedia Commons. The are now around 60,000 files away from
that. The fun thing is that the mosaic is live. You can click on the tiny
images to so them in large.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_logo_mosaic

[Success] - "Wikipedia Weekly", the new project for providing Wikipedia-related
news in the form of an audio recording, has taken a good start. In less then 2
weeks are already 3 editions published. Wikipedia Weekly includes interviews
with Wikimedia celebrities like Notafish (episode 2) and Jimbo (episode 3).
According to w:en:user:Tawker episode II and III has been downloaded arround
120 times each until now. 
http://www.wikipediaweekly.com/

[Summary] - From this weekend the mailing list summary of foundation-l that was
started at the beginning of this month will be expanded to cover the
wikipedia-l list too.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/28627/focus=28627

=== Media ===

[Radio] - Interview of Jimbo on the National Public Radio of the USA program
"Talk of the Nation", serious radio program, about Jimbo's idea about buying
copyrighted works and set it free.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6387888

[Not found] - A piece by an student who discovers you can not find everything in
Wikipedia
http://www.statepress.com/issues/2006/10/26/opinions/698470

[Telegraph.co.uk] - Very long article in the "The Daily Telegraph", a very
popular British newspaper. This article also appeared in the printed edition on
several pages and illustrations.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/10/28/ftwiki28.xml

=== Stats ===

[W$k$ped$a dot com] - Very recently  Google, Inc. bought the very popular video
website "YouTube.com". Google paid 1.65 thousand million US dollars for this
website. YouTube has a lower traffic ranking than Wikipedia and has very high
operatioals costs because of the video storage and needed bandwidth. That can
make you think what Wikipedia would be worth if it was commercial. Ashkan
Karbasfrooshan, President and Founder of Mojo Supreme and knowledgeable of the
online advertisement business has made an post on his blog about that. Going
from non-profit to for profit would hurt the page ranking and traffic of
Wikipedia and the number of editors but, according Mr. Karbasfrooshan
assumptions, still be a very profitable move. 

Nevertheless Mr. Karbasfrooshan writes in a follow-up post that ads for now on
Wikipedia are not a good idea. He concludes with the words; "Right now,
methinks that Wikipedia is doing fine, and it has a business model: its
fundraising efforts."
http://www.watchmojo.com/web/blog/?p=626 - Part I
http://www.watchmojo.com/web/blog/?p=637  - Part II
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/10/larrying_wikipe.php - related other
blog posting

[Wikimedia.org] is now the 499th most-visited website on the Internet according
to Alexa.

[Wikipedia.org] - ComScore published new numbers of the traffic of the most
popular worldwide websites for the month of September. Again has Wikipedia
grown. 12% since August. Wikipedia is according these stats now the 6th most
popular website on the internet. That is very good news. Only 5 places to go
and there is not need anymore for this type of "news".
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1049

=== Did you know ... ===

... that there is an easy way to get on IRC from anywhere?

The chat network of Freenode is used by mostly all projects and wikis for
talking and running different tools like for anti-vandalism. To make use of
this system you need an IRC-client. There are many clients available. Two free
clients, from the many that exist, that can be used are Gaim and ChatZilla. 
But you need to install these on your computer. If you can not do that for what
ever reason, your are someone else his computer or your work/school has blocked
IRC-access then the IRC-service of Wikizine can be useful. chat.wikizine.org
provides webbased access to selected Wikimedia related channels. On request
more channels can be added.
http://chat.wikizine.org
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/16/

=== Ferengi Rules of Acquisition ===

"Anything worth doing is worth doing for money." Rule 13
"Faith moves mountains... of inventory." - Rule 104
"Let others keep their reputation. You keep their latinum." - Rule 189

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Editor(s): Walter, Xyrael
Corrector(s): Gary Kirk
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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