[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 72

Wed May 30 22:42:16 UTC 2007

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                                    .org

Year: 2007  Week: 22  Number: 72

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Autoblockedtext] - If you block a user you have the option to also block the ip
address that this user is using. This appears in the blocklog as a number like
"#47980". There is now a special message to be displayed to users who try to
edit when the are blocked because of a hidden autoblock. The text of the page
[[MediaWiki:Autoblockedtext]] is send to that user. The only way to know what
the ip address is that is blocked is if the blocked user can give the block ID.
This number is included in the default message so the blocked user needs to
include this in his communication. A sysop can then look in the blocklist for
that ID and unblock it.

[image border] - There is a new display instruction for images. The new one is
"border". The result is a very small gray border. The idea is that some images
because of there colors flow over in the background of a page when used. By
putting a small border around it the border between the image and the page is
more clear.
Usage: [[Image:Filename|border|100px|right]]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images -- Example,  see MediaWiki logo

[Special] -  There is a new special page that gives a list of all articles that
have no interwiki links. It is a stored lists that is only updated some times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Withoutinterwiki

[404] - The Esperanto Wikipedia, one of the older Wikipedias, has lost, possibly
definitive, an old file from there early days. Due to changes of url's and
systems for uploading files the path to the file is broken. To prevent this
from happening it is best to look on your wiki to links to old files. The are
using absolute url's using the wikipedia.com-domain. If the are not inside the
current local or commons upload system then save them and re-upload them or put
them somewhere safe. At least if you want to keep the early history of your
wiki.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/31770

[Wap] - A special gateway to Wikipedia for mobile devices is created under the
Wikipedia-flag, a wap-portal. It exists in a few languages including German,
Spanish and English and is fairly buggy. There is a good alternative:
wapedia.mobi
http://de.wap.wikipedia.org
http://es.wap.wikipedia.org
http://en.wap.wikipedia.org
http://wapedia.mobi

=== Foundation ===

[Wikimedia IT] -  Wikimedia Italia is working on an agreement to obtain part of
the image archive of Società Geografica Italiana. SGI is one of the most
important and respected geographical institutes of the world. Founded in 1867,
the Society owns thousands of precious historic volumes, maps and a huge
archive of photos related to colonialism and the XX century's explorations. On
Friday May 18, some members of it.wiki met Franco Salvatori, president of
Società Geografica Italiana. The meeting resulted in an exclusive interview
for IT Wikinews.
http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/La_Societ%C3%A0_della_Geografia

[Legal] - The German Wikimedia chapter was sued by a powerful German
lobby/public relations organisation. This because of a negative comment by an
anonymous user on a archived talk page about them that did not amused them. The
sued the German WMF chapter because in there opinion Wikimedia DE has control
over the German language Wikipedia. The lost and also the appeal.
http://www.wikimedia.de/2007/05/wikimedia-gegen-insm/
http://www.golem.de/0705/52486.html
http://www.onlinepc.ch/index.cfm?page=104029&artikel_id=13889

=== Community ===

[RIP] - Norwegian Wikimedian, journalist, and author Tron Øgrim
[[w:no:User:Togrim]] passed away last week.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-28/Wikipedian_death

[Wikisource News]  - Presents the news from Wikisource from January to May 2007.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2007-05-01/Wikisource_report --
(en)

[Wikiopen] The Hakka Wikipedia, a spoken variation of the Chinese language
spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group has been
created.
http://hak.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_language

[Wikiclose] The Old English Wikisource has been closed.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10059

=== Awards ===

[IT Wikipedia] -  was granted one of the nine Special Prizes of the Grand Prix
di Pubblicità Italia (Advertising Grand Prix of Italy)  for "succeeding in
exploiting the Internet potential at its best, directly involving users for a
widespread growth of culture". Wikimedia Italia board member Ivan Vighetto
attended the gala, and received the prize, a plaque. The event had great
resonance on Italian media.
http://www.pubblicitaitalia.it/news.asp?id_news=41827 -- (it)

=== Media ===

[Club of Rome] - Anthere at the Club of Rome
http://euforic.blogspot.com/2007/05/behind-screens-at-wikipedia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

[Audio & video]  - Good audio interview with Jimmy Wales and David Weinberger.
And Jimmy also made an appearance as a guest in the American satirical
television program "The Colbert Report".
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/wikipedia_is_ju.html  -- Audio interview,
22min
http://www.newscloud.com/read/Jimmy_Wales_The_Colbert_Report -- video fragment,
turn brain off before watching
http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/05/29/more-stephen-colbert-wiki-pranks/

=== Stats ===

[NL.wp & IT.wp] - The Dutch language Wikipedia has passed the 300,000 article
mark almost exactly one year after the 200,000 mark.  The NL Wikipedia is the
7th largest Wikipedia. With only 22 million speakers the Dutch language
Wikipedia is compared with the larger Wikipedias versus there number of
speakers extremely large. Also the Italian language Wikipedia has now 300,000
articles. With 60 to 120 million speakers the are one step higher then the
Dutch at the 6th place.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

[FR.wp] - The French Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles.

[The Wiki top 50] - An attempt to make a top 50 of the most popular wiki on the
the internet according Alexa.com and Google PageRank.  Number one we know but
on the second place is a surprize, we have "Adobe labs wiki" as the second most
popular wiki.
http://www.advolcano.com/blog/?p=11
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

=== Other news ===

[Clean School WP] - This week a website went live with a "2007 Wikipedia
selection for schools". Created by SOS Children, a charity focust on orphan and
abandoned children,  is aimed at British school children following the National
Curriculum, and consists of all of the English Wikipedia's Good and Featured
Articles, excluding content SOS Children deemed 'adult'. The site uses the
Wikipedia logo, with permission. The content of there website is also available
as a CD-rom or DVD that can be downloaded for free from there website.
http://schools-wikipedia.org/

[The perfect logo] - The Wikipedia logo appears to be very "Wikipedia" in the
meaning that there are mistakes on it. Some of the characters on the globe are
reported to be incorrect. Editing the logo seems to be from a technical and
possibly also from a legal (trademark) POV difficult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ambuj.Saxena/Wikipedia-logo

[Wikizine] - The last weeks the domain wikizine.org  has been down several times
for longer periodes of time. This is a direct result of the hoster of
Wikizine.org being down. When this is noticed the DNS-settings of the domain is
changed to a back-up  hoster to be able to provide minimal service. Because of
possible slow updating of DNS-servers it can take a long time before Wikizine
resolves at your location.

Users of the public DNS service of opendns.com will be one of the first to
resolve Wikizine if it is online. The hoster reported to have find the source
of the problems. Hopefully Wikizine will stay online now.

In the last weeks users of several communities have contacted Wikizine to setup
a translated edition of Wikizine. Wikizine does now also exist in German,
Spanish and Indonesian. And for the readers who read this as a translation,
there is also an English version :-)

For now and in principle the translations will contain exactly the same content
as EN Wikizine. Possibly and hopefully these editions will become eventually
more then only a translation but also include there own original content
directed directly to there local language community. The homepage at
wikizine.org provides easy access to the different editions and subscription
possibility.

As always the assistance of the readers for all levels and all languages
versions of Wikizine to Wikizine is very welcome.

http://www.opendns.com
http://www.wikizine.org

=== Weird ... ===

And now music ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Song/The_RfA_Candidate%27s_Song
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/Candidate%27s_song_take_2.ogg

=== Quote ===

Encyclopedias are now suffering obsolescence (*), evolving from traditional
publishing to a new form - I don't know what this form is [...] but we sure
have a new horizon in front of us, related to the very bases of
encyclopedicism, and '''you are the reality that matters now from this point of
view'''. [...] Encyclopedia is not dead: its spirit is not dead, the
Enlightenment spirit is not dead. -- F. Salvatori, SGI (La Società della
Geografia)

(*) the state, process, or condition of being or becoming obsolete

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