Announce-l May 2006

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[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 27
by Wikizine 31 May '06

31 May '06

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[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 26
by Wikizine 23 May '06

23 May '06

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[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 25
by Wikizine 15 May '06

15 May '06

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2006 Week: 20 Number: 25 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Bad Image] - there is now the page [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]]. Images listed there can not be displayed in that Wiki. Example; If you put on that page [[:Image:George-W-Bush.jpeg]] then the image will be changed to a link to that pictures description page. Why; some users where vandalizing articles by including to them images. Especially images from a very explicit sexual nature are popular for this. Even when the only remain on it for a couple of minutes it can give a very bad impression. Also on the article where the image is supposed to be used the image is not displayed, only a link to the description page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Bad_image_list [Magic word] New magic word __NEWSECTIONLINK__ was introduced, which allows users to add a "new section" link (shown as a tab in Monobook) to pages which aren't talk pages. [New tools] Especially useful is "Commonshelper", which semi-automates moving images to Commons with a correct history summary. http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commonshelper.php === Request for help === [Web design] Wikimania is looking for a web designer. http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteering === Foundation === [Tron] Some time ago there where legal problems for the German Wikipedia about the article of the deceased hacker Tron. His parents did not liked it that the article contains the real name of Tron, Boris Floricic. And the sued Wikimedia about this. The lost but appealed that discussion. Now the have also lost the appeal. Further appeal is not possible. It is allowed to include the full name of Tron in the article. http://www.wikimedia.de/2006/05/landgericht-berlin-weist-berufung-in-sachen… [New chapter] The Swiss Wikimedia chapter has been officially established on 14th of May 2006. http://www.wikimedia.ch/ [pl.wikimedia] Polish Wikimedia Meeting 2006 took place on 29 April-1 May in w:en:Wrocław. There was 42 participants including 5 from abroad. 10 lectures were delivered and many discussions took place among participants. During the meeting General Member Assembly 2006 I was organized. 17 Association's members and several guests accepted Realization of Board plans for 2006 and Interim Budget. There was discussion about Wikicontest and several other issues. [Jimbo Time100] Like reported before Jimbo made the Time Magazine top 100 of the most influential people of 2006. And there is also a party for those 100. Amanda Congdon of rocketboom.com made a video report about this. http://www.time.com/time/2006/time100/ http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/archives/2006/05/rb_06_may_09.html -Jimbo watching (and some other people) === Community === [*!*Soviet Alert*!*] The licence template PD-Soviet in its current form will very probably be deprecated on Commons, and replaced by something that is more accurate. The reason, as put forth by [[commons:user:Lupo]], is that images published in the Soviet before 1973 are, simply put, not necessarily public domain as the template currently claims. Images with the template will not necessarily be deleted, but many probably will. So do not be surprised if some images disappear. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:PD-Soviet [$] Money offers for an Admin-account... Maybe a new way to get funding for Wikimedia? http://tinyurl.com/mlt4e === Awards === [Ja.wikipedia] Japanese Wikipedia won `AllAboutスーパーおすすめサイト大賞ビジネス・キャリアチャネル賞'. Some sort of Award. No more information is available. http://allabout.co.jp/super/2006/page_win_career.htm === Media === [Baidu Baike], the "free" encyclopedia, Chinese style. The Chinese search website Baidu launched an encyclopedia inspired by Wikipedia. You need to register, all edits must be approved by anonymous back-office editors, state censorship is applied, searching for inappropriate subjects like "democracy" get you blocked. Also the seem to violate the CC and GFDL licence besides the human rights. http://jonathan.rawle.org/2006/04/26/chinese-censorship-in-action/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_mainland_China === Stats === [Poll] The Dutch newspaper [[w:en:NRC Handelsblad]] had this poll on there website for one day; "Websites like wikipedia, where everybody can edit the contents, are unreliable." agree 24.27 %, disagree 46.6 %, neutral 29.13 %; Total votes: 206 Remark; all visitors to there website could vote on this poll without registration. [nrm.wikipedia] The Norman Wikipedia has reached 500 articles. The number of speakers is unknown, but it is a very small language so 500 is very nice. http://nrm.wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_language === Other news === [Sickipedia] Like all things created by men it can be used for good and also for very questionable purposes. So also for MediaWiki. There is a new (non-wikimedia) project to collect sick jokes. Racism, Paedophile, Old people, Dead babies ... if there is a topic where it is highly inappropriate to joke about you can find jokes about it there. This is a project of an author who has made a book full of sick jokes. Editorial remark: very few of those "jokes" are actually funny. http://www.sickipedia.org http://www.robertmanuel.com/category/sick-joke-book/ [Commercial] Being listed in Wikipedia is important for companies. "How to Place a Company in the Wikipedia?" http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003782.html === Did you know ... === ... you can use the gmail-spell function without gmail? Put this url on your user page; http://orangoo.com/spell/ And when you are working on your wiki when you are not at home you can use that easy to use spellchecker that is actually using the spellcheck function of gmail. === Ferengi Rules of Acquisition === "Once you have their money, you never give it back." - Rule 1 "Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits." - Rule 89 "There's nothing wrong with charity... as long as it winds up in your pocket." - Rule 144 ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 396 Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter 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]]

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[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 24
by Wikizine 09 May '06

09 May '06

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2006 Week: 19 Number: 24 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Update Renameuser] The contributions limit for [[Special:Renameuser]] is increased to 200,000. This means a bureacrat now can rename an user account for so far the have not done more then 200,000 edits. According to the available information the bot [[w:en:User:Rambot]] has made the most edits of all users on the English Wikipedia with 131,511 edits so it is not likely users will have limit problems. [Bug 5284] Resolved: [[Special:Mypage]], and [[Special:Mytalk]] can now take arguments in their URLs http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5284 [Bug 3309] Resolved: When undeleting a page a reason can now be given. Including a reason is not obligatory === Request for help === [Mediawiki-i18n] A new mailing list dedicated to centralising discussion regarding MediaWiki internationalisation. Maintainers for each language for helping to keep their specific language up to date is requested. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/23486 === Foundation === [Wikimania] Registration for attendance and housing opens for Wikimania 2006. Community members are encouraged to register early while housing is available. http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/ [InstantCommons] The WMF special projects committee recommends the implementation of the InstantCommons project. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/InstantCommons === Community === [No reference] The English Wikisource decides to exclude all reference material. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2006-05-02/Recent_vote_ends_e… Example of information that is not welcome anymore http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hello_world http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mercury [Polish Wikimeet] A meeting of Wikimedia Poland was held in Wroclaw April 29 - May 1 http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Polish_Wikimedia_Meeting_2006 http://zlot.wikimedia.pl/ === Awards === [Planetizen] The [[w:en:Portal:Architecture]] and [[w:en:Category:Urban studies and planning]] of the English language Wikipedia have jointly won an award, being rated one of the top ten best planning, design, and development websites. Now, this isn't an award which can be won annually; it is only given to new or dramatically improved web sites. One thing to notice is this is a trade magazine. That is, the people who are reading this magazine are professional designers, particularly community engineers and architectural designers. This indicates Wikipedia is being used professionally by the people who work in this field. http://www.planetizen.com/websites/2006#10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Architecture === Stats === [4 million] Wikipedia reached 4 million articles in its various languages on Sunday. Of the 4 million articles, over 25% (~1.1 million) were in English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-05-01/News_a… [131 million] comScore World Metrix, a new global internet tracking system has placed what it calls "Wikipedia Sites" seventh on its list of "Online Properties Worldwide", with an estimated 131 million unique visitors aged 15+ in March 2006, or 19% of all internet users aged 15+, based on comscores estimate that there were 694 million of them that month. (see also the "quote" section) http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20060504/CGTH06704052006-1.h… === Other news === [CFP 2006] Three Wikipedians presented Wikipedia at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Washington, DC. Author Vernor Vinge gave the conference's closing address, discussing Wikipedia as an example of a fantasy 'that might have been proposed at CFP 5 or 10 years ago' as a result of giving everyone networked computers. http://www.cfp.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge === Did you know ... === ... that you can falsify the history of an article? At least if you are a sysop. First delete the article, then go to the restore page of that article. There you see history of the page. Every edit has a tick box. Select all of them. (select the first box and the last one while pressing <shift>) Now you can de-deselect edits which you want to disappear, and restore the page. === Quote === "While the 'big three' properties remain consistent among worldwide and U.S. audiences, Wikipedia has emerged as a site that continues to increase in popularity, both globally and in the U.S. Wikipedia's popularity demonstrates the global power of the Web to unite and provide information across countries and languages, but the full extent of its global appeal is only measurable through this new worldwide measurement," -- Mr. Daboll, comScore Networks ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 391 Editor(s): Walter, Amgine 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]]

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[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 23
by Wikizine 02 May '06

02 May '06

****************************************** __ __ _ _ _ _ / / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___ \ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/ \/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___| .org Year: 2006 Week: 18 Number: 23 ****************************************** An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community ////////////////////////////////////////// === Technical news === [Local botpower] The bureaucrats have now a new responsibility. The will find in the "Special pages" section the special page [[Special:Makebot]]. With this page the can give and revoke the bot flag of a user account. The stewards and the request page on meta is still the place to be for botrequest for wikis without a bureaucrat. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_bot_status [Date of Caching] Bug 4327 is resolved. "Add a timestamp to special pages containing cached data". So now when look up a page like [[Special:Ancientpages]] you know how ancient that page is. To localize the message edit [[MediaWiki:Perfcachedts]] [New Special pages] - with the page [[Special:Unusedtemplates]] you can find unused templates. To localize the message on that page edit [[MediaWiki:Unusedtemplatestext]] and [[MediaWiki:Unusedtemplateswlh]] - with the page [[Special:Randomredirect]] you get a random redirect. You can find it by the "special pages". To translate it edit [[MediaWiki:Randomredirect]] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randomredirect [Small stuff] - page protection/unprotection is now included in the revision history - Watchlists now have a namespace selector. - when a non-sysop attempts to edit a page in the MediaWiki-namespace the used to get the default "protected page warning". But this is not correct. That are not protected pages but pages with restricted access. There is now a special warning for MediaWiki pages. See [[MediaWiki:Protectedinterface]] to translate the message. - Bug 93 resolved: Nowiki tags and tilde signatures in templates http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93 === Request for help === [Wikimania] A new page is up for interested Wikimania volunteers. http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteering [Mirrors and Forks] Maintainers of mirrors and forks lists have been looking for help. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-compliant_site_coordination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Mirrors_and_forks === New project proposals === [Proposal] A timeline database with history facts for global history, people, corporations, products, etc., a global database of timelines that could be used to show graphic interactive timelines specified by the user. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTimeLine === Community === [Wikisource-l] A mailing list for Wikisource created. Like there is Wikipedia-l for all language Wikipedias this one is for all Wikisource related matters. http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l === Media === [The Time 100] The issue of May 8, 2006 of Time Magazine is about "The People Who Shape Our World", the top 100. And Jimbo is one of them. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187286,00.html [Jimbo] - on TV - again. But this time on "Geek Entertainment TV". It does not even has (yet) an article on EN Wikipedia so it must be very geeky. http://www.geekentertainment.tv/2006/03/24/sxsw2006-jimmy-wales-uber-wikipe… [EFF] Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with Pioneer Awards http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/ [CNN] Campaign manager resigns amid Wikipedia flap http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/26/cox.wikipedia/ === Stats === [en.wikipedia] The English Wikipedia reaches 1.1 million articles on the 27th of April, adding an extra 100,000 articles only two months after reaching the one million milestone. This is only a twelfth of the time taken to create Wikipedia's first 100,000 articles. === Editorial === Did you noticed there was no Wikizine last week? Until now there was every week a new edition of Wikizine. The concept of Wikzine is to bring you every week to most important news about the Wikimedia projects. Last week there was in my opinion nothing to report that qualified enough for real news to make an edition. So there was none. Can happen again. Filling a Wikizine with only Alexa and other stats, some Jimbo appearances on CNN and "Did you know" and a Quote is easy but no news. Something else; Wikizine describes itself as "An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community". I need to give some clarification about the "independent" part of it. Like many other people working in our community I have a lot of different functions on several layers of the Wikimedia community. Some of them are difficult to combine with my function as editor-in-chief of Wikizine. As a member of the WMF Communications committee I have access to confidential information that is not (yet) for publication. So as committee member it can be that I censor Wikizine by not reporting or not including all the information I know. That is more the exception. By being on the committee I have better access to people and information to inform you. So, is Wikizine independent? Probably not really. But I find it is still independent enough to call it independent. This is not a Wikimedia Foundation publication. Texts are not approved by the board or so. I can live with it. Greetings, Walter Vermeir === Did you know ... === ... that Wikipedia, now at the 17th place of the top 500 of Alexa, is the only dot org? All the other websites getting more visitors than Wikipedia are commercial. === User Quote === "Like most decisions on Wikipedia which actually get things done, I suspect large quantities of alcohol were drunk by someone who already had extraordinarily large testicles and who had just finished reading [[Wikipedia:Be bold]]." Rob Church 23:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC) ////////////////////////////////////////// Number of subscribers: 385 Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter 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]]

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Announce-l May 2006