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.org
Year: 2006 Week:5 Number:11
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community.
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=== Technical news ===
[Captcha] For anti-spam reasons you have to enter the code displayed as a
graphic to sign-up for an account on the smaller wikis. There is not yet a
solution for visually limited users.
http://fy.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&type=signup
[Anti-spam] Tim Starling has made spam-removing scripts. I your wiki is infested
with url-spam, Tim can wipe it clean. Ask at #wikimedia-tech.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/21785
[New Dump] of the database of all projects is running.
http://download.wikimedia.org/
=== Request for help ===
[WikiAuthors] - A new project proposal for the disambiguation of authors' names
in MEDLINE, an online database of biomedical literature.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5949http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAuthors
=== Foundation ===
[reform] The board of the Wikimedia Foundation decided to reform their
organisation. The official positions are to be supplemented with a series of
new committees. Like the "Financial committee", "Executive committee" and so
on. All together 8 committees. The actual form how those committees will work
is still under development. Angela welcomes suggestions from people who have
experience with the organisation of non-profit organizations.
This board-meeting was special because of the high number of physical present
key figures of the Wikimedia Foundation. The meeting toeck place in Sint
Petersburg, Florida from January 13th until the 15th. The board members;
Angela, Jimmy (Jimbo), Michael Davis, and Tim Shell where present. And 5 others
involved with the Foundation; Brad Patrick (legal counsel), Delphine
(notafish), Danny Wool, Daniel (mav), and Jean-Baptiste Soufron (Wikimédia
France). Florence (Anthere), Brion VIBBER and Domas Mituzas (Midom,
dev&system-admin) joined by telephone.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/January_14-15%2C_2006 - (does not
yet exist on 2006-01-29)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutionshttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5957http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trusteeshttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5996 - concerns by Erik
Moeller
[Almost] Wikimedia Canada and Wikimedia Netherlands do not yet exist but there
founders are confident it will not take much longer.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Canadahttp://nl.wikimedia.org/http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ledenlijst - list of users interested to become a
member
=== Community ===
[WikiNews] does original reporting. Suggestions are made by the Wikinews
community as to who should be interviewed. And in the best Wikimedia-tradition
there is a vote about it. And then they attempt to make it happen. Recent
interviews were with Ricardo Lobo, Brazilian online journalist, and Danny
O'Brien, Electronic Frontier Foundation's Activism Coodinator.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Interview_with_Brazilian_blogger_Ricardo_Serran…http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Interview:_Danny_O%27Brien_of_the_Electronic_Fr…
- The interview
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Interview_of_the_monthhttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.wikinews/204
=== Media ===
[Print] Directmedia, the company who brought us the German Wikipedia on CD and
DVD, announced that they will publish the German Wikipedia in full print, 100
volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in October 2006, to end
with Z in 2010.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26459http://www.wp10.de/http://www.pcwelt.de/news/unterhaltung/130716/index.html?NLC-Newsletter&id=…
["News"???] A de-sysopping on the dutch language Wikipedia somehow became
international "news". Next week more about this.
[pants down] - Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers from the U.S.
House of Representatives and it becomes big news in the USA general media.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prompt_Wikipedia_in…http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/29/1732238http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/United_Sta…http://news.google.com/news?q=wikipedia+meehan&filter=0
=== Stats ===
[Fund Drive] User:Tobacman has created statistics about the Wikimedia fund
drives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tobacman/Stats/Fundraisinghttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5938
=== Other news ===
[Nature] - All the errors that "Nature" discoverd in the 50 articles the checked
on EN Wikipedia are now corrected. 50 done, only 943881 to go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_peer_review/Nature_December…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/Nature_compares_Wikip…
=== Did you know ... ===
... there is a special FireFox Wikipedia-toolbar?
The toolbar gives a easy way for inserting formatting commands, dialog based
creation of tables, many special characters and more. A very useful function is
the pull-down menu for selecting and inserting templates. Even if you do not
find it extremely useful you can always install it and deactivate the toolbar.
(right click on the toolbar) and use it when you need it. It works for all
MediaWiki-wikis, so its name should actually rather be "MediaWiki-toolbar".
http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/screenshots.html
=== The last Q4 fund drive quotes ===
"Information wants to be free; and I'm willing to pay for its freedom." by Mike
Sollanych
"Stuart Brand said "information wants to be free." We have to pay its bail." by
Bob McCoy
"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin"
by Jonathan Rosen
"Sterling stuff. If it wasn't for Wikipedia I'd have learned next to nothing
this week about norse gods, diamond mining, Rubik's cubes and Braille" by Chris
Rae
"The price I would pay monthly to Britannica I'd rather donate to Wikipedia." by
Piotr Przemyslaw Karwasz
"This project has been helpful in my graduate studies." by William Myatt
"I want to thank you (and your daughter) for this site - I owe my 'A' grades
this fall to Wikipedia and I thought you should know. As a student, this is all
I can afford! For now, anyway..." by anonymous
"I am a physics graduate student from China. I enjoy using Wikipedia!" by Meng
Lu
=== Privacy and Wikizine ===
The subscribers list of Wikizine was only available to the readers of Wikizine.
For a real discussion list that is not unreasonable because by posting you
expose also your identity and email address. But Wikizine is a read-only list
and that is not the same. The list settings are now changed to hide the
subscribers' addresses.
///////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers:277
Editor(s): Walter, Oscar
E-mail: ihavenews(a)wikizine.org
///////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]
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.org
Year: 2006 Week:3 Number:9
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An internal news bulletin for the
members of the Wikimedia community.
///////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[+] plus signs are now allowed in titles.
example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C++
[Test] test wiki runs from the current NFS copy of MediaWiki. Changes to
the code will generally appear here a few minutes before they appear on
the rest of the Wikimedia wikis.
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
=== Foundation ===
[Steward] the board approved 9 new stewards.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5874http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards
[post-Q4 fund drive] Officially the fund drive is over. But there is
still the "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's personal appeal for
donations" on most wikis. And that seems to work. There are still very
nice amounts of donations coming in. Donations of 100 dollar/euro are
not uncommon. And even very large donations; $15000,00 from Jeff Minor.
=== Community ===
[Frau] The Germans have found the most NPOV-woman. Still looking for a man.
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Kurier&oldid=12574170http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frau
=== Media ===
[The power of Google] Google celebrating the birthday of Louis Braille
generated nearly 600 edits to that article on the English Wikipedia in
24 hours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-01-09/Louis_…
[Sex offender] arrested partly because of information found on en.Wikipedia
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LegalCenter/story?id=1501916http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Gardner
=== Did you know ... ===
... that if you give a user/ipadress a block and if that user is all
ready blocked it is the shortest block that counts?
Example;
sysop John gives user betty1995 a block of 1 hour.
sysop Marjet gives also user betty1995 a block but of 2 weeks.
Betty1995 will be blocked for one hour. The block of 2 weeks is canceled
together with the end of the block of 1 hour.
=== Q4 fund drive Quotes ===
"I do hope knowledge will spread and defeat violence which is caused by
ignorance" by francesco pirotti
"I feel truly privileged to be living in a time when I can participate
in something as world-changing as Wikipedia etc. – keep it up!" by anonymous
"Truly I cannot put a price on how much Wikipedia has helped in my
studies, my work and in my general interests. More than that it has
expanded my horizons and given inspiration. Thank you." by anonymous
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when
there is nothing more to take away." by Richard Hough
"Can you believe they let someone like me write about thermodynamics?"
by anonymous
"Stop wasting time reading comments and write an article!" by Eric Towers
///////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers:246
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter
E-mail: ihavenews(a)wikizine.org
///////////////////////////////////////
Disclaimer: this message is not an
official publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine makes no guarantee of validity.
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.org
Year: 2006 Week:2 Number:8
***************************************
An internal news bulletin for the
members of the Wikimedia community.
///////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[[Special:Disambiguations]] works again on all Florida-cluster wikis.
You just have to make sure that the template being used to flag
disambiguation pages is correctly set in: [[MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage]]
It must be part of the template:namespace ( aka template:<something> ).
Example:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage
[[Special:Unwatchedpages]], the page where you can see the pages that
are not on someone's watchlist. If you are sysop you can find it in the
"Restricted special pages"-section. It lists just the first 1000 pages
(not 5000) and is only periodically updated.
[Wikitravel] The interwiki-links to Wikitravel are now functional to
more than only the English language Wikitravel. You can now link the
normal way to Wikitravel pages for all languages. [[wikitravel:xx:Name
of the page]] Wikitravel exist in EN, FR, RO, DE, SV, JA, NL.
To be clear about this; Wikitravel is not a wikimedia project. You can
use interwiki-links to many wikis outside the Wikimedia family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Walter/tmp&oldid=34402022http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4479http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map
=== Technical non-news ===
[Old search database] the database used for the search function is still
not updated. Articles created from at least December first 2004 can not
be found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Billy+Reed&fulltext=Sear…
=== Request for help ===
[Wikipedia Day] Sunday the 15th will once again be Wikipedia Day. 5
years of Wikipedia! If people are interested to do something to
celebrate this, it is now high time to prepare.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26214http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Day
=== Policy ===
[Wikimedia (TM)] The Wikimedia Foundation publicized "visual identity
guidelines". You may not copy them out of the Foundation website but
only provide a link to the page.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_visual_identity_guidelineshttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5832
=== Politics ===
[Stewards elections 2006] The election ends 10th of January 2006. If you
have voted already: some late new candidates have arrived who may
deserve your attention...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006
=== Foundation ===
[Q4] the fund drive is now officially closed. The goal to raise at least
US$500,000 was not attained. The grand total at the end of the fund
drive day is $349.184,42 or 288.964,26 EUR.
A bit more is to be expected however, since some donations have not yet
been received, and also because since the start of the fund drive, the
donations on the Belgian Dexia bank account have not been counted,
because the balance is unknown. For reasons beyond comprehension the
Wikimedia Foundation has been unable to have online access to that account.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4/Day_21http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Daniel_Mayer&old…
=== Community ===
[WikiStandards] A new project proposal by GerardM, the Ultimate
Wiktionary evangelist, deserves looking into.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5835http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikistandards
=== Media ===
[Not on CNN for once] between December 24th and January 1st, the Italian
Wikipedia and Wikipedia in
general appeared three times on Italian TV: a 15-minutes special with
interviews during the news on RAI3 (public national network), an
interview with Frieda in "Futura City", a program on RAI2 (public
national network) and another interview with Frieda in "NetCafé", a
program on TeleLombardia (a regional TV station in Milan area).
http://www.tg3.rai.it/SITOTG/TG3_pagina_es/0,9480,3567-id_rubrica-A,00.htmlhttp://www.futuracity.rai.it/FY3_puntata/0,11065,244-7332,00.html
[JOHO] Why the media can't get Wikipedia right: Stuck in its old model,
the media get the story backwards.
http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-dec29-05.html#wikipedia
=== Stats ===
[Milestones] The English Wikipedia reaches 900,000 articles, at 20:43, 4
January 2006 (UTC). The German Wikipedia comes on the second place whit
338,000 articles.
=== Did you know ... ===
... that you do not need to use the web-based upload form of your wiki
to upload files?
There are several solutions for bulk upload. The Commonist is an easy to
use application that works for all OS so long you have java-support for
your OS. So it works for Win/Mac/Linux.
http://djini.de/software/commonist/http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Commonist_screenshot.png - on
Linux the Gui does not look so nice :(
You can easy upload many files to commons or the other wikis. You can
define default upload information or specific for every file. It creates
automatically a gallery of the uploaded files in
[[user:MyUsername/gallery]].
You can add more license templates (example);
edit
script/commonist.bsh
and add
"{{self2|GFDL|cc-by-sa-2.0-be}}",
to the LICENSES array.
Other options are;
A upload bot, written in Perl. For the command line lovers. Unix,
Unix-like, Linux or Mac OS X.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:File_upload_service/Script
Wikimedia Commonplace - Windows only; you need Microsoft .NET Framework
- possibly does not work (yet)
http://tiredbrain.com/wikimedia/commonplace/
=== Q4 fund drive Quote ===
"Wikipedia has the potential for being an extraordinary resource, akin
to the Encyclopedia Galactica. But just as 'eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty', we all need to get personally involved!" by anonymous
"Thank you for showing us that the Internet isn't all about banner ads
or how many pages a search engine can index, but about presenting
accessible and relevant information in the languages that we speak." by
anonymous
"Wikipedia is the most important development to human knowledge and
understanding since the printing press. Thank you to everyone that
contributes and improves it." by Charlie Wiederhold
"May the force be with Wikimedia. Greetings from India." by Chandan Haldar
"My own finances aren't too good at the moment, but Wikipedia is one of
the things that make life worth living." by anonymous
"Wikipedia got me through school!" by anonymous
///////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers:240
Non-digest:205
Digest:35
Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao, Oscar
Special thanks: w:it:Utente:Frieda
E-mail: ihavenews(a)wikizine.org
///////////////////////////////////////
Disclaimer: this message is not an
official publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine makes no guarantee of validity.
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.org
Anno Domini MMVI Week I Number VII
***************************************
An internal news bulletin for the
members of the Wikimedia community.
///////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Berlin roundup] Brion has gone to Berlin for a conference and to meet
some people like Magnus and JeLuf and posted a report about that on
Meta. Very interesting. Like that it seems that the mythical Universal
Login will become reality soon.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Berlin_roundup
[New Specialpage] Filepath that allows user agents to get the full path
of a file from its name. Active on all wikis, for all users
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filepath
[Cite] Cite.php is a Cite extension that adds two parser hooks to
MediaWiki, <ref> and <references>, these operate together to add
citations to pages.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php
[SSL] Brion is experimenting with a HTTPS interface to the wikis. This
service is *not* ready for the general public or even real use. Do not
send your visitors to those url's. It is also buggy for some wikis. For
example on the dutch Wikipedia you get the message that the database is
locked when you try to edit. And when you block a user it appears
successful but it is not.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/21277
Example;
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ English Wikipedia
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiquote/fr/wiki/ Frensh Wikiquote
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikinews/de/wiki/ German Wikines
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/ Meta
=== Request for help ===
[Q4] A Personal Appeal from Jimbo for donations. Please help translate
the personal appeal from Jimbo Wales. EN, IT and PT version are now online.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Personal_Appealhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4_planning/Translations#Pe…
=== Community ===
[Book/DVD] A 139 page book in German explaining Wikipedia, its history
and policies was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles
and 100,000 images from the German language Wikipedia. The book with DVD
is sold for 9.90 Euro; both are also available for free download.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/German_DVD/Book_release_-_december_2005
=== Media ===
[W$k$p€d$a] with ads? "Wikipedia chief considers taking ads" reports
Times Online.
Responds of Jimbo about this;
"Somehow a statement from me "I continue to oppose having advertising on
Wikipedia" is transformed into a headline "Wikipedia chief considers
taking ads"
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html
=== Stats ===
The year 2005, and the month of December, were both record-breaking for
Wikipedia.
The English Wikipedia more than doubled its body of articles in 2005, to
almost 900,000; just over 50,000 of these were added in December alone -
the first time we've grown by 50,000 articles in a single month. The
Wikipedia project as a whole added almost 1.8 million new articles in
201 languages, 200,000 of them in December. With the exception of
September, when the Italians and Poles went on a bot-rampage, December
was the first time that the project gained 200,000 new articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Announcements
=== Did you know... ===
... that the only difference between non-digest and digest delivery of
Wikizine is that digest readers have to wait between 12 and 24 hours
longer before the receive the copy?
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-l
=== Q4 fund drive Quotes ===
*"Wissen ist Macht. Und die Macht sollte beim Volk liegen und nicht bei
Verwertungsgesellschaften." by anonymous
(Knowledge is power. And the power should lie with the people and not
with copyright collecting agencies.)
*"Knowledge will never be burnt again" by anonymous
*"How could I not donate to the Encyclopedia Galactica (well, in a
hundred years or so... give it
time)?" by Craig Hirsch
*"Wikipedia is better than corn chips, and I really like corn chips." by
Chris Kilgour
*"Wikipedia is to the 21st Century what the library of Alexandria was to
antiquity" by anonymous
*"With the stones of the past we build our future, and knowledge is how
to use those stones." by
Daniel Scallon
///////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers:225
Non-digest:193
Digest:32
Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao
E-mail: ihavenews(a)wikizine.org
///////////////////////////////////////
Disclaimer: this message is not an
official publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine makes no guarantee of validity.
