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Year: 2006 Week: 16 Number: 22
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[ParserFunctions] The extension for mathematical expressions and conditional constructs has been enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctionshttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27087/
[Single Login] is coming. The previous time frame for it was "end of February, early march". The current time frame is "It'll be done when it's done. - Brion". Make sure that you use for all your accounts the same email address so the can be merged when it is time.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/23027…
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania] There are two weeks left to submit presentation ideas for Wikimania. The design of the conference site is being discussed.
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_participationhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Sandbox
=== Policy ===
[Privacy policy] suggestion of a revised version of the policy
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6833/focus=6833
=== Community ===
[Answers.com] End of 2005 the Foundation announced a partnership with Answers.com The agreement included that Answers.com would provide a search tool where some of the revenue of the use of this tool would go to the Wikimedia Foundation. The tool is now available. There is controversy about this partnership. Anwsers.com is accused to be a company using dishonorable ways of doing business.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/4627/http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/44025/http://wikipedia.answers.com/
=== Media ===
[Content review] BBC Focus magazine had experts compare three entries in Wikipedia, Britannica, Encarta and Infoplease in a quick study. Wikipedia was ranked http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/44112/
[Fake Bio] of "war hero" caught the attention of the media.
http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/307381.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mcilwraith
=== Stats ===
[pdc.wp] The Pennsylvania German Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
http://pdc.wikipedia.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch
[Alexa] rankings on a by-country basis
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awareness_statistics#Alexa_country_r…
=== Did you know ... ===
... that it is not so difficult to chat to many users of different instant messaging systems?
It can be very useful that you can contact your fellow Wikimedians in real time, to chat with them. But of course instant messaging is not like e-mail, a universal system that works. There are many incompatible systems for instant messaging. But you can use one program for that. There are several solutions. A good solution is Gaim.
Works with Windows, BSD and Linux. MacOS X can but not easy. Better use http://adiumx.com/
You chat with users of almost any system with one client. You can also access IRC and use it to join the Wikimedia IRC-channels. Very useful is that you can add IRC-users to you watch list just like with users of MSN, AIM and so. This way you can IRC easy for direct person to person contacts without the need to ask for authorisation or to know there exact user name because you find them in the chat rooms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaimhttp://gaim.sourceforge.net/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels
=== Microsoft bashing Quotes ===
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners. - Ernst Jan Plugge
"The box said, Win95 or better required... so I used a Mac !" — Tim Scoff.
When you say: "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say: "Hey, I got those with the system -- for free." (Linus Torvalds)
*Welcome to Hell. Here's your copy of Windows.
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Number of subscribers: 375
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter, Sj
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]
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.org
Year: 2006 Week: 15 Number: 21
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Outage] Wikimedia was down from 19:19 UTC on 9th April to around 01:30
UTC on 10th April. The explanation we have at this time is that one of the
800A circuit breakers between the generators/UPS and our servers failed at
our Florida co-location facilities causing obvious problems. Staff at the
datacenter struggled to resume service as soon as possible, and are now
investigating the reason said breaker failed.
Wikimedia sites were unavailable for just over six hours.
Several servers came up with bad clocks. Brion has corrected the times in
the 'revision' database entries for the entries edited from these servers
so 'history' and 'contribs' will be correct, but you might see some edits
listed in your watchlist etc 8 hours earlier than their actual times.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22810/http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22827/
[Parser functions] Tim Starling created a MediaWiki extension supporting
parser functions, along with four new functions: if, ifeq, expr, and rand.
These can replace inefficient templates such as {{{qif}}} and
{{{switch}}} from the English Wikipedia. Parser functions such as
LOCALURL have existed for a while; but including them in an extension has
only been possible since MediaWiki 1.6, released last week.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ed_Poor/subtract&action=edit
-- example of inefficient template
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/tags/REL1_6_1/phase3/RELEASE-NOTES
-- MediaWiki 1.6
[Move to Commons] Magnus Manske has made a online tool to make it more
easy to mo move files from a local wiki to commons
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27061/http://magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/commonshelper.php
[SpamWar-IV] The coming of the Redirects - new way of link spamming
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/22799
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania] Needs volunteers and translators. Spanish, French, and
Chinese translators are especially welcome.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimaniahttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Meetings#General_volunteer_me…http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6795/
[en.wikinews] Needs more people to help out with the daily audio recording
of the news. If you'd like to help contact User:Mrmiscellanious
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Mrmiscellanioushttp://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews
=== New project proposals ===
[List of proposals] User:Robert_Harrison is working on a new version of
the new project proposals page on Meta
http://tinyurl.com/z5ek3
=== Foundation ===
[PR] Schwartz Communications, a public relations firm, provides on a
voluntary basis there services to the Wikimedia organization. The are from
now on included to the Communications committee as advisors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartz_Communicationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee
=== Community ===
[EN.wikinews] is now offering a podcast of their daily news briefs on a
daily basis and actively promoting it.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinewshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/AudioWikinewsNewsBriefs
[EN.wp CD] User:BozMo produces a CD with 2006 articles and 8500 images for
use in UK schools to benefit the group 'SOS Children' from the English
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BozMo/2006_Wikipedia_CD_Selectionhttp://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/education-cd.htm
=== Media ===
[no print] the print edition of German Wikipedia is postponed due to lack
of support from the community.
http://tinyurl.com/lhpmn - google translation
[AlistApart.com] Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters - about
registered and anonymous users and Wikipedia
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters
=== Stats ===
[The TOP] The classic traffic ranking is from Alexa where Wikipedia has
the 18the place of all websites of the internet. But there are also
others. According to "Hitwise" Wikipedia is on the 38th place, just after
CNN.com That seems impressive but that is still only 0,17 % market share.
When limited to "Education websites" Wikipedia is the clearly the number
one. Also according Hitwise the visitors of Wikipedia are 47,2 female and
52,8 male and users of all ages are using Wikipedia.
According to the statistics of "comScore" Wikipedia is on the 28th place
and rising. All those reports are nice to know but it is important to
realize that the give an strong English / American POV of the use of the
internet.
http://tinyurl.com/g6uog -- Hitwise data and demographics (USA) for
Wikipedia, March 2006 (doc file)
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?id=783 -- February 2006 'top 50'
list (WP: #28)
[KW.wp] The Cornish Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles. According to EN
Wikipedia there are around 3500 speakers of this language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_languagehttp://kw.wikipedia.org
[jp.wp] The Japanese Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
http://jp.wikipedia.org
=== Did you know ... ===
... that you *can* switch of your computer, go outside in the real world,
leave your phone, iPod and PDA at home, go to a forest of a park and watch
to the movement of the leaves in the wind and the breaking of the sunlight
in those leaves and enjoy its fantastic resolution?
=== MediaZilla-IRC Quotes ===
"And so, we don't need a business model, we're just doing it." [Jimmy
Wales, early 21st century]
Sweater: optional piece of clothing applied to child when its mother feels
cold.
"The life is too short, and Wikipedia too slow ..." - Anon
"George Bush is a good president. No really. Please stop laughing."
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 362
Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao, Sj
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]