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Year: 2006 Week: 35 Number: 40
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[The Return Of The Stats] - On a wikipedia long ago, before MediaWiki and the
WMF, there where webalizer visitor stats. You could see which pages where the
most popular of Wikipedia. Now, many years later, this information can be again
available for your wiki. [[w:de:User:LeonWeber]] has created a tool to count
the requests. See the page on Meta for the information how to get it. But I can
be a good idea to discuss this in your community first to avoid problems.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiChartshttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27848/focu…
[Time] - Tim Starling has written a new parser function for time and date
formatting, called
#time and it is live now on the projects. It gives many options for displaying
the time and date. One of the possibility's is that it can give the current
time +X-hours (or minus) or the same with dates.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/26416…http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions#.23time
[Linksearch]] - There is special page named [[Special:Linksearch]]. By entering
there a domain name or part of a domain name you can see on wish page those
external links are placed. Can be useful to clean up linkspam vandalism.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Linksearch
=== Request for help ===
[Candidates] - There is still for to do in translating that statements of the
candidates for the board.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_translations_2006/En#Candidates
=== Politics ===
[Election] - The registration of candidates for the board election is closed.
There are about 20 candidates now, some have presented thyself near the end,
some have withdrawn thyself. And some will probably be excluded because the
have not confirmed there candidacy like requested. The actual voting is
supposed to start on September first and will close on the 21th September.
Wikizine has done an attempt to present to you the candidates with the extra
editions. Also the Signpost has done a special effort. A sort of written
interviews with the candidates who responded to there questions. If you are
interested in this elections this is a must read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-28/Board_…
=== Foundation ===
[New committee] - The WMF board approved the creation of the "fundraising
committee". The function of this committee is not defined in the resolution.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_fundraising_committee/member…
[CFO resigns] - Daniel Mayer resigns as Chief Financial Officer of the
Wikimedia
Foundation. Daniel Mayer remains involved with the WMF finances as member of the
newly created "fundraising committee". The WMF has hired a professional
experienced bookkeeper who will work to start with on a part-time basis.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9689/focus=9689 - Daniel
resigns as CFO
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9728/focus=9728 - New
bookkeeper hired
[SP-com] - The WMF Special projects committee is holding a public meeting on
IRC. This on September 2 or 3 arround 20u UTC. See the meta-page for more
information.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Special_projects_committee#SPC_Public_M…
=== Community ===
[Beta] - The announced Beta Wikiversity is now live. This wiki is an incubator
for Wikiversities in various new languages. And also a global platform aiming
at coordinating Wikiversity projects in several languages. This coordination
should deal with Wikiversity's mission and general guidelines of the project's
scope. For example, about original research.
http://beta.wikiversity.org/
[Logo] - A new project (Wikiversity) so there is need for a new logo. The start
is given for that process by collecting possible logos for Wikiversity.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/logo
[Verifiability] is a policy on the English Wikipedia. "The threshold for
inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." That means that what is
written must be proven by sources, the fact that it is true is not enough. Not
all Wikipedias have the same policies. Local wikis are looking for policy
inspiration on other projects and sometimes the adopt policies form other
wikis. Currently the Russian Wikipedia is holding a vote regarding the question
to adopt also the policy of verifiability for there wikipedia. Verifiability
has currently on the ru.wp with 53 votes more support then "no" with 32 votes.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википе
…;
[Signpost Radio] - w:en:user:Omaryak provides now audio versions of the English
language Wikipedia Signpost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Audio
[userboxes] - On userpages are sometimes loaded with boxes to inform about the
most unexpeted topics. Those boxes can give controversy about them. One way of
dealing with userboxes that some wikis are using is the "German solution". The
Spanish comunity has decided to implement the German solution for the
userboxes,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:German_userbox_solution
[Swedish Wikipedia] shows everything the are proud of from there community in
the interwiki report of the Signpost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-21/Interw…
=== Media ===
[China] - News about Wikipedia/media in the Chinese press; "Wikipedia chief says
no to censorship"
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=51805
[Africa] - "African Languages Grow as a Wikipedia Presence" article about the
african languages Wikis and the lack of africans working on them. Publised
several newsparers including the NY Times, Herald Tribune and Slashdot.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/BIZ04/608270326/…http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/27/1757237
=== Stats ===
[ku.wp] - The Kurdish Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles. This is the work of
the 15 active users and mostly of only 5 very active users.
http://ku.wikipedia.org
[tg.wp] - The Tajik Wikipedia has reached 500 articles. And that is mostly the
work of only 3 very active users of a total of 9 active users.
http://tg.wikipedia.org
[Wikizine] has now 500 subscribers by email.
Editorial remark: Thank you. Walter
=== Did you know ... ===
... how to enter directly a search query to the wiki?
You enter [alt]+F The result is that the cursor is blinking in the search box.
Type what you look and press enter. But it can even more easy. If you add some
code to you [[Special:Mypage/monobook.js]] then the cursor will always be
waiting by default in the search box for your request.
Include;
// Park the the cursor allways in the search box - by [[w:en:User:Splarka]]
addOnloadHook(function()
{document.getElementById('searchform').elements[0].focus(); return false;;});
=== IRC Quote ===
<Toazt> "Too few women on the internet?
<Toazt> There are lots of women on the internet,
<Toazt> only most of them are naked and in JPG-format."
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 500
Unique Visitors website this week: 962
Editor(s): Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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: 35 Number: 40 Extra
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Board Election 2006 candidates ===
Very soon you will have the opportunity to elect a new board member for the WMF.
To help you to make an informed choice Wikizine presents to you a personal
statement of several candidates. All candidates where invited to send there
statement in. This offer has expired.
This publication is not an endorsement of Wikizine for these candidates.
==== Charles Matthews ====
I'm a candidate with experience and skills useful for the Wikimedia Board. I'm
not a technical person, and have not been active on Wikimedia issues,
preferring to focus on the English Wikipedia. (On en-WP I'm best known for
writing about mathematics and poetry, and as as admin and Arbitrator. See
User:Charles Matthews there for more.)
I come without any specific template for the WMF. For manifesto, I would say
that we still have to match up some things. Implementing the best distance
learning experiences, when we know that factual content is a Long Tail
phenomenon (to speak modishly), means we have to be both collectively smart and
better in the humanities. The aim is to become comprehensive, but also
comprehensible and comprehending on a global scale. These are ambitious
slogans.
Background: I had 10 post-doctoral years in academia (1978-1989), at the
University of Cambridge, with years in France and the USA. After that I have
been a voluntary worker in a number of contexts, including publicity work and
raising sponsorship. I have written two books (one conventional, one with a
Korean friend published online), and many articles. I have travelled, in East
Asia, and recently in Uganda, where in June I gave a well-attended lecture on
Wikipedia. I speak reasonable French, and some Russian. I'm a married parent.
The role of the Board: what other online extended community gets to hire its own
support staff? The Board has stewardship of the most important piece of
hypertext ever. Some intangibles, such as 'wiki culture' and 'motivational
working atmosphere', matter as much as money. The scale of Wikimedia projects
now means that straight management sometimes applies; but the biggest challenge
remains the harnessing of those writing on the wikis to projects in the larger
scheme. This means not losing sight of the old-school way of thinking.
In short, I have outside experience, communication skills, and a traditionalist
wiki approach.
Discuss matters with me at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/WMF_Board_Election_2006.
Another version of this statement is on the formal candidacy page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/Charles_Matthews/En.
== Oscar van Dillen ==
Please read my candidate's statement at;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En#Oscar. from this i
take an excerpt:
"whether we are constructing an ark of noah for human knowledge, or "just"
boldly working at the gradual completion of the tower of babel still remains to
be seen, but i strongly believe that such is in our own hands for a larger part
than could "reasonably be expected". please let it be clear that it is for this
very reason that i most emphatically believe in the importance of the wmf's
mission, and have been devoting most of my free time for 2,5 years now to the
consolidation and further development of its projects and communities. i will
continue to do so, no matter the outcome of these elections."
for any further questions, my meta talk page;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Oscar is available, thank you :-)
--[[User:Oscar]] 12:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
==== The Other Candidates ====
There are also other candidates besides them ones who have presented themselves
here to you with a personal statement. These candidates listed here did not
responded to the offer to publish there statement.
Aaron Swartz
Daniel Arnold (Arnomane)
Carlos Rivera (Cerejota)
Bruce Andersen (Evrik)
Hadraj Said
Pat Gunn (Improv)
Kelly Martin
Alex Schenck (Linuxbeak)
Kathleen (Kat) Walsh (Mindspillage)
Nicholas Turnbull
Juan David Ruiz (Zuirdj)
//////////////////////////////////////////
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//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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: 34 Number: 39 Extra BIS
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Board Election 2006 candidates ===
Very soon you will have the opportunity to elect a new board member for the WMF.
To help you to make an informed choice Wikizine presents to you a personal
statement of several candidates. All candidates where invited to send there
statement in. This offer expires on 2006-08-28, 21:00UTC.
This publication is not an endorsement of Wikizine for these candidates.
==== Arno Lagrange ====
I am running as a candidate for the board of trustees in order to defend
linguistic equal rights. We must try to find a way that any person from any
project, speaking any language, can participate in discussions and decisions.
Unfortunately, important discussions/decisions all happen in American English,
making those who are not good speakers of that language unable to take part.
True multilingualism and perspective, provided by an international neutral
auxillary language (it could be Esperanto) is absolutely necessary.
It might seem trivial that in my statement I treat only the language question
and none other. But as long as this important problem is not solved correctly,
it seems impossible for me to look further into any other subject. How does
someone enter a debate on some important subject if, because of a language
barrier, I, like a great many users, cannot understand well what it is about?
There is certainly an effort to develop some amount of multilingualism on meta
(such as, for example, this election) but obviously the majority of the debates
on the pages of meta, by IRC or mailing lists (e.g. Foundation-l) proceed only
in English.
I tried to become interested in certain questions but I am constantly
overwhelmed by long English messages; they lack conciseness, a summary and even
a summary in other languages. One can note that those used to the English
language (whether native speakers or non-native English-speakers accustomed to
using English every day) are totally unaware that they leave behind all those
who do not use the language as well as themselves. They do not make any effort
of conciseness, stuff important messages with unimportant chatter, slang or
jargon, abbreviations (which one finds neither in the dictionary nor
elsewhere). Consequently even with a pretty good level of English it is
impossible to enter the debates when you do not have unlimited time.
Read more;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/ArnoLagrange/statem…
==== Ross Hedvicek ====
I'm a candidate for the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. My platform is
not to change anything drastically, but to improve the current situation. For
example - I am aware of cases of blatant abuse of power on several language
branches of Wikipedia in eastern Europe. I made the board aware of these cases.
However, no action was taken by the board. This was not because they weren't
aware of the problems but because of the language barrier preventing them from
making reasonable decisions and possibly due to lack of familiarity with the
history, realities and facts of life in that part of the world. I am more than
qualified to rectify this situation.
My election slogan is: The crap has to stop - vote for me - it is your chance
for change. I have a reputation to uphold!
[[User:Ross.Hedvicek|Ross.Hedvicek]] 18:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
==== Steve Dunlop (UninvitedCompany) =====
I'm a candidate for the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors. I believe that
the board of directors should set up a decisionmaking structure rather than
make individual decisions itself, and to that end I've advocated creating
additional volunteer and paid positions within the Foundation with specific
responsibilities.
I think that would be one means to allow interested people to become active in
their particular areas of interest at the Foundation level. Another of my
proposals is the designation of two Foundation contacts for each project.
Especially for smaller projects, that would be a means to be sure that each
project both has a voice and remains accountable to the overall goals of
openness and NPOV.
I also support long-term independence for various languages as they become large
enough to be self-sustaining. I've been involved at ENWP since March 2003,
where I am a former member of the arbitration committee. I've participated at
meta since before the inception of the Foundation, and am presently involved in
the [[meta:OTRS]] mail handling system.
For more information about my candidacy, you can view my candidate statement
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En#UninvitedCompany
or the discussion page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UninvitedCompany
where I have been replying to questions about my candidacy.
[[User:UninvitedCompany]] 17:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
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Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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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Year: 2006 Week: 34 Number: 39 Extra
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Board Election 2006 candidates ===
==== Erik Möller ====
The Wikimedia Foundation must meet many critical challenges in the coming years,
including, but not limited to:
- getting as many people as possible involved in important organizational tasks
and making the Foundation transparent, open and accountable
- accelerating technological innovation to make projects such as Wikibooks,
Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, Wikinews, and Wiktionary succeed in
the same way Wikipedia has
- finding new ways to systematically improve and label the quality of Wikipedia
content, without destroying the principles that have enabled our fantastic
growth and that make Wikipedia fun
- developing a large network of partnerships with organizations and individuals
who can help us in our ambitious goals, particularly with regard to building
sustainable free knowledge communities in developing nations
- responsibly and thoughtfully dealing with legal risks and conceiving a sound
legal strategy that covers all projects, all chapters, and all languages.
After 5 years of contributions to Wikimedia on almost all levels, I believe I am
ready to help to guide the organization to meet these challenges. I would like
to gain your trust and your support in this coming election.
Please review my candidate presentation at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/Platform_2006
and tell me what you think on the associated discussion page.
Sincerely,
Erik Möller
==== Cimon Avaro ====
Hi. I have been editing wikipedia and the related projects for three years now.
My focus has been always finding where I can do most good, even if it has meant
sacrificing my own ego in the process. Attempting to find solutions in a
forward thinking way; such as conceiving the cleanup process out of thin air,
and making an honest go of steering the nascent mediation committee away from a
bureaucratic model. (Cleanup turned out to be a phenomenal success, although it
quickly surpassed all my planning through the miracle that is collaborative
wikiway, the mediation committee less so, but that is how it goes).
My last real life job was about "herding cats" in a heavily geek-oriented
environment (16-19 age group), as a librarian at a Sciences oriented "magnet"
high-school. My modus operandi there was to meet the students at their own
level, as far to being one of them as possible. Having established early on
that I could not be provoked into over-reacting to their lively antics, I only
had to raise my voice once (when a student juggled a switchblade in a dangerous
fashion) and it was immediately effective, largely in part to not establishing
myself as an authority figure to start with. Over here in Finland this model is
called leading from the midst of the troops, rather than from the front, or the
rear.
As you can read from my [[w:en:User:Cimon Avaro]] userpage, I have had a decades
long interest in encyclopaedias and systematizing the worlds knowledge in
general, and have witnessed the whole history of The Net, far from being a pure
spectator; for instance participating in the founding of the first commercial
ISP in Finland.
Although you can read much more about me on my candidacy page, I would like to
end this short introduction by recapping what you will get, if you vote me in
as trustee of the board of the WMF:
* Someone who listens before he talks, talks before he acts and thinks before he
either talks or acts.
* Someone not beholden to authority, or intimidated by it, but realizing that
the potential of collaboration can acheive developments that individual
planning might not ever be able to conceive.
* Someone who firmly believes that people will do what people will do, and the
role of people in positions of responsibility in an organization such as ours
is to apply the "art of the possible" rather than impose superficially ideal
seeming constructs. Evolution, not "intelligent design" for WMF. Our part as
trustees should be to fend off harm, not believe we can deliver some great
boon. The great and wonderful things we acheive are in large part due to
communities brewing "stone soup", each bringing to the pot what they can, and
spicing up the broth.
Thank you. -- User:Cimon Avaro 02:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Vote for who you like, but do vote. Read
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/En
and make your own mind up.
//////////////////////////////////////////
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//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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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Year: 2006 Week: 34 Number: 39
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[ExpandTemplates] - There is a new special page called "ExpandTemplates". With
this you are able to copy a page from a Wiki without having to copy all the
templates. In the first field you define the page you took the input from. So
if you took it from the page named "Sesame Street" you fill that in and without
{{}} arround it.
You can put the input of a template, or of a series of templates, or even the
whole page, in the second field. If you wish to enter a whole page you can
paste the source text or do it like this; {{:Sesame Street}}
The Special:ExpandTemplates will write the result you get in ordinary Wikitext
as it looked like on that specific page, and you will be able to copy and paste
that to whatever wiki you want. The only thing you have to do now, is uploading
the images. If you move a page this way you loose off course the benefit of the
templates that by changing the template you change all the pages where the
template is used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates
[Operations report] - Overview about what the status is of hardware and
software
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/26122…
[Wiki down] - It has been a wile since the last total system down. And this time
the servers where running perfectly. But there ip-addresses where temporary
invalid due to external reasons. The wikis where down for less then three
hours. See the article of EN Wikinews for more information.
Remark: when the WMF-systems are down the Wikizine.org website and email is
still functional. Feel free to submit news about the situation or see of
Wikizine has news about it. Due to the limited core staff of Wikizine this
service can not be guaranteed.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers_unreachable_for_3_hours_due_t…
=== Community ===
[ES.wikipedia] has decided in two polls to disallow the upload of files to the
Spanish wiki and to do it exclusively in Commons.
[ES.wp BIS] - The fifth Wikiconcurso (Wikicontest) has just finished. This
edition was about translating featured articles from en.wiki, de.wiki, fr.wiki,
it.wiki, pt.wiki, pl.wiki, nl.wiki, sv.wiki and ja.wiki. The Spanish language
Wikipedia translated about 88 articles. 17 of those will be proposed as
"Articulo destacado" (outstanding articles) on the Spanish Wikipedia.
[ZH.wp news] The Signpost brings a report about how the the Chinese language
Wikipedia is doing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-14/Interw…
=== Agenda ===
[Italia] - On September 2nd, Italian Wikipedians are going to meet in Valentano,
near Viterbo, and in the afternoon they will attend to the second Annual
Meeting for Wikimedia Italia, the Italian Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The assembly is going to elect a new Board and the meeting is going also to
approve the budgets and to to describe the strategies for achieving a better
promotion to Wikimedia Projects in Italy.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Raduni/Viterbo_2006http://www.wikimedia.it/
[Netherlands] - Also on September 2nd, there will be a local one day Wikimedia
conference in Utrecht.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_Netherlands
=== Media ===
[it.wikipedia] -On Monday, August 14th, at 7:34 local time in the morning, one
Wikipedian found himself on air on RAI1, the national TV station of Italy. The
producers had also invited for the interview Enrico Cogno, a professor at the
University of Perugia, and Federica Lanzellotto, a student from Rome. The
subject of the interview was "Wikipedia: il sapere per tutti", with the aim of
understanding how Wikipedia is getting more and more present in every day's
life. It was only for 9 minutes and extremely early in the morning. But
nevertheless it was National television and the Italian Community is very happy
with it. The links to the video can you find on the page linked below.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Intervista_ad_Unomat…
[Anthere's Blog] A mission: providing free knowledge. Free as in ?
http://blog.anthere.org/index.php/2006/08/19/73
[Wikizine] made its first appearance in an news article (and made the visitor
stats explode)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/77032
=== Stats ===
[fr.wikt] - The French language Wiktionary has now already 200,000 definitions
in its database.
http://fr.wiktionary.org
=== Other news ===
[ERRATUM] - The webhoster and sponser of Wikizine is Memebot.com and not
"memobot.com"
[WikiBritanica] - The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica is now online in a
wiki-form. Because the conversions form print to digital text is done by
computer mistakes are made. On that wiki you can fix them. And also include
some more recent information on a separate page. This is not a WMF-project.
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/
=== Editoral ===
A murderer of a 10 year old murder is arrested. A minister-president says
something in a interview about a very sensitive local topic. An ethnic group of
people continuous to be exterminated while the world does not care.
What is considered important depends highly about your personal point of view
shaped by who and where you are. In the virtual city of Wikimedia the
important topic is the board election. Why is it important? It is only for one
place on the board. And because of this is only to replace Angela's spot, it is
only for the remaining term of Angela's original term of 2 years. And that
means it will not even be for one year.
This election is important because the board is not so big. One voice can make a
difference. And it is likely that this new board will have to make decisions
about significant reforms of the organisation of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Now the candidates present there candidacy to the community. This election is
not like a real election where you only can choice between "a giant douche and
a turd sandwich", like expressed so colorful in South Park. This are all
people from our community. There are very good people between them who I know
personally and are deeply committed to do good for the projects. You can not
know everybody. Consider also the ones you do not know. This is not a "vote for
your friends" contest and also not "vote for the candidate form you local
wiki". Raise above that. Read there statements. Check there behavior in the
history. Ask them questions. Know for who you are voting. This is not a sysop
election.
I have send an offer to all candidates to write a few words to present
themselves to the readers of Wikizine. This to lower the step for the
candidates to reach the community. The first two candidates will say there
piece in an extra Wikizine send out soon after this one. Readers of the website
will find it below this edition. Depending on the number of candidates who
requested inclusion in Wikizine a second extra edition can be send out this
week.
Thanks for reading this,
Greetings,
Walter Vermeir
=== Did you know ... ===
... how to verify of a user who is contacting you off-wiki is really the user he
claims to be?
You write (email, Jabber, IRC, etc.) or say (Skype, etc) to the user to write a
specific phrase on the wiki like on his talk page.
You can also contact him or ask that user to send you an email by means of the
"E-mail this user" function of the wiki. Look at the headers, the source of the
message. It must contain "X-Mailer: MediaWiki mailer" and the name in the
"From:" field is the username of that user on that wiki. This way can be
falsified. Asking to edit is the most secure way.
=== IRC Quote ===
<frank> can you help me install GTA3?
<knightmare> first, shut down all programs you aren't using
frank has quit IRC. (Quit)
<knightmare> ...
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 487
Unique Visitors website this week: 1907
Editor(s): Walter, Effeietsanders
Special thanks to: M7, Peter B.,Ecelan
Thanks for promoting Wikizine to the;
Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Italian Wikipedia
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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: 33 Number: 38
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Acknowledgement ===
Memobot.com, a small webhoster, supports Wikizine by granting a free account
upgrade to match it bandwidth needs. The WMF provides Wikizine with a free
mailing list.
Thank You.
=== Technical news ===
[CORRECTION] - in the previous edition of Wikizine about the single-user login
it was reported that the email address needed to be confirmed. This is not
correct. The fact of an email address is confirmed or not will make no
difference regarding the migration to the single-user login. If you have
different passwords for the same username on different wikis makes also no
difference. If you have a different password and also a different email address
you will need to login to confirm ownership.
[White list] - Our Wikis can be abused with spam-hyperlinks. One way of
preventing the insertion of spam-hyperlinks is the [[meta:Spam blacklist]]. On
that list are all the domains who have been used in spam-attacks or are not
welcome for some reason on the projects listed. You can not save the page on
the projects if one of these domains listed on that on that page are present.
Now there is a local override for this global spam blacklist. You can find it
on [[Mediawiki:Spam-whitelist]] on your local wiki. See how it is done on the
English language Wikipedia for the correct formatting;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist
[Special:Imagelist] has changed. You see now more information and it is shown in
a table.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Imagelist
[Meta] - the wiki that is supposed to be the neutral public wiki for all
projects and languages has now email notification on. This means that you can
specify in your account preferences to receive an email when you talk page or a
page on you watchlist is changed.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences
[Userbox] - some useful new userboxes on Meta; to indicate that you can
translate from language X to language Y. If you put this on your userpage on
Meta and something needs to be translated you can be found if needed.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translator_in_the_following_language_combina…
[djvu] - Support for rendering inline thumbnail JPEGs from DjVu images is
added.
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6420
=== Request for help ===
[Bylaws] - Anthere has asked community attention for and feedback about a draft
version of new bylaws for the WMF. This a very serious thing. Speak now or
remain silent later.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9199/focus=9199
[The Wikistudy] project on EN Wikibooks is looking for college students who have
completed Advanced Placement courses and exams to help out in writing textbooks
that are directed towards specific AP syllabi and academic exams.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikistudy#Wikistudy_II
[Wikizine] is looking for typical wikimedia slang, abbreviations, special words
and so for a new section to explain these words.
=== Policy ===
[Wikiversity] - more information about Wikiversity is announced;
* Wikiversity is now an offical WMF-project with "Beta-status"
* On the website "beta.wikiversity" people can start working on the translations
of the guidelines and look for support the start a Wikiversity in a specific
language. After 6 months there will be a review of this new project. A German
and English language version already exist.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9238/focus=9238http://beta.wikiversity.org/ - not yet online
http://de.wikiversity.org/http://en.wikiversity.org/
=== Politics ===
[Foundation-l] A posting of Anthere about the current candidates for the board
and an appeal to the community for serious people from the non-English language
projects to stand as candidate has evolved into discussions about, besides the
board candidates, reimbursement of childcare expenses, payment in general for
expenses, holding speeches for the wikimedia foundation and who must arrange
this and so more is that discussion keeps growing to a very long length more or
less like this sentence actually.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9073/focus=9073http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9143/focus=9143http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9157/focus=9157http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-August/thread.html
=== Foundation ===
[Board Election] - A clarification is posted by the Election Officers regarding
the numbers of seats vacant to the board in the current election. This election
is only to replace Angela. One spot is free. Further expansion of the board is
a possibility. But if and how the will be appointed is not yet know. That can
be by a new second election of by direct appointment.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9231/focus=9231
[Wikimania 2007] - First round for the selection of the host city is open!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007
[Board] - Tim Shell, WMF board member, will step down from the board by the end
of the year. So as is announced on Wikimania. The current election has no
relation with this.
[Staff] - The very recently hired person to help in the WMF office has quit. She
will now be the very first ex-WMF employee. A person to replace here is already
found and active.
=== Community ===
[FR.wp news] The Signpost brings a report about how the the Frensh language
Wikipedia is doing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-07/Interw…
[Again a Wikimania report] - This time from Elain for the Kurier of the DE.wp.
http://tinyurl.com/re8yh - machine translation
http://tinyurl.com/kxsul - original version
=== Awards ===
[Time] magazine announced its list of the "50 Coolest Websites 2006" and
Wikipedia is on it. From those 50 another list was made named "25 Sites We
Can't Live Without" which also includes Wikipedia.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222769,00.html
=== Media ===
[Wikimania press] - I you like to read about Wikimedia/Wikimania then check out
the page with links to all the press coverage of Wikimania. On Wikimania it
self there where about 50 journalist present. About 78 unique news articles
where created, about 1500 news sources ran articles about Wikimania. And there
where short spots on 5 TV stations, including 2 on FOX news which is a very
important TV-station in the USA.
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Press_coverage
[Fashion&Style] - when articles are been written about people about nothing
besides some trivial facts about that person and not about what the person
actually is doing then the have Rich a new level of famous hood. It seems that
Jimbo has g received this dubious honer now. Or was the author only looking for
an excuse to praise a specific type of flashlight?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/fashion/13poss.html
=== Stats ===
[Alexa] - since the early days of Wikipedia there was interest of how popular
Wikipedia was. Early August 2003 Daniel Mayer created the page "Wikipedia.org
is more popular than...". And writes "We are also neck and neck with sex.com!
Soon Wikipedia will be more popular than sex!". Now, 3 years later Wikipedia is
not only more popular than sex, but more popular than almost everything.
Almost. Wikipedia has raised through the rankings month after month, year after
year, going higher and higher. Now Wikipedia is (according to Alexa) the 17th
most popular website of the internet. But the steep climb has stopped.
Wikipedia now stays stable on its spot in the rankings. Possibly, even
probably, shall Wikipedia raise some more. But the flight is over. We are the
top. And at the top you can not go higher anymore.
http://tinyurl.com/o542x
[yi.wp] - The Yiddish Wikipedia is proud to announce that they hit the 2000
articles mark.
http://yi.wikipedia.org
[nl.wikibooks] - The Dutch Wikibooks has reached 1,000 Wikibook modules. The
Dutch Wikibooks recently won the Wikimania Award for best wikibook with their
manual for MediaWiki
http://nl.wikibooks.org/wiki/Handboek_MediaWiki
[Wikizine.org], the website, exists now for some weeks. From the end of June
until now there where 1286 unique visitors. The total weekly average is 322
visitors. Most visitors come from the Italian Wikipedia, followed by the
English and Dutch Wikipedia. 49% of the visitors is using Firefox and 17%
Linux, 4% MacOS, 73% some version of MS Windows.
=== Other news ===
[Apple] has now also has found the wiki-way. In there new MacOS Leopard Server
software. With a WYSIWYG way of editing the pages. Like is expected to come to
MediaWiki also relative soon.
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html
[Mywikibiz.com] - Part 2: This is a company that is selling the service to write
an article for other company's and get those in the English language Wikipedia.
Jimbo has blocked access to en.wp for mywikibiz. New articles for there
clients will be written on the website of mywikibiz under GNU/FDL-licence. From
there can people if the wish that copy them to Wikipedia.
http://www.mywikibiz.com/
=== Tales from Wikimania ===
[Must hear] - many people have given their very best to make Wikimania a
success. There where many interesting presentations. Go to the archive page,
download them and listen to them on you mp3/Ogg-player. If you do not know
where to start, start with these tree;
http://www.wikizine.org/2006/08/wikimania-2006-online.html
=== Quotes from Wikimania ===
Andre Engels: "I think the reactions [to the Nature study] are interesting -
Britannica takes three months to criticize you, and Wikipedia takes one week to
fix all the errors"
Paul Kobasa: (One librarian describing Wikipedia to another librarian) "... And
he had a wonderful phrase to describe people like him and me - he said we're
like the scriptorium monks who are meeting [Johann] Gutenberg for the first
time"
Paul Kobasa: "Someone asked me why, as an employee of Worldbook, I was going to
Wikimania. And I said that we were jealous of all the press that Encyclopedia
Britannica is getting"
A random radio journalist: "So this is like woodstock?"
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 475
Unique Visitors website this week: 326
Editor(s): Walter
Corrector(s): NielsF
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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: 32 Number: 37
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Stable version] - the German language Wikipedia will soon (how soon is not
known yet) enable a new function on there wiki to support "stable versions" as
an experiment. This should increase the quality of the articles. And also make
the wiki more open to edit because the visitor will see the version with the
stable-status. So vandalism on the unstable version will not be a problem from
the point of view of the visitor.
[MediaWiki] will also be developed by full-time employees of the private
organizations Wikia.com (the company of Jimbo) and Socialtext.com. This should
increase strongly the development of MediaWiki. A new component to MediaWiki is
expected to make "wysiwyg"-editing possible. This means that you will have an
editbox that looks like the compose window of Hotmail or Gmail with options the
edit a page without to see all the sourcetext with all the code. There is hope
that this will lower the barrier for new people to work on the projects.
http://wikiwyg.net/ - with a picture how it will (possibly) look like
http://www.socialtext.com/node/90http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/wysiwyg_and_wik.html
[Update] about single-user login. The one login for all projects is coming soon.
But will probably be delayed until after the board election. When there are
several users with the the same username on different wikis the user with the
most edits will keep his username, the others will need to pick a new one. To
identify witch accounts belong to the same user there well looked of the have
same *confirmed* email address. Read the excellent Signpost article for more
information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-07/Wikima…
=== Request for help ===
[The Signpost] is bringing to its readers a weekly report about a Wikipedia in a
"foreign language" written by users from that wiki. Wikizine includes those
reports also one week later. The Signpost is looking for users from several
wikipedias to present there project to the English Wikipedia audience. This is
a great opportunity to show a large part of the Wikipedia-world, EN Wikipedia,
how great to non-English versions also are. Contact users Kpjas or Carmelapple
for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Treebark/Table
=== Foundation ===
[done] - Wikimania 2006 is over. Over 400 attendees on each day where
registered. No incidents are reported. This Wikimania is considered to be a
success.
Recordings of some of the presentations are available. Mostly audio. Expansion
of the available media soon, especially video, is expected.
The overview of the recordings;
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archiveshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/wikimania2006/ - picture collection of
Wikimania visitors
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blog - Wikimania blog
[Wikiversity] - Jimbo announced on Wikimania the start of a new Wikimedia
project; Wikiversity. A center for the creation and use of free learning
materials and activities. It will create and host a range of free content
materials, multilingual materials, for all ages in all languages. It'll host
scholarly projects and communities to support these materials, and foster
research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other wikimedia
projects. It will launch in three languages, in a six-month beta, within a
month.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
[Board election] - Candidates for the open board seat can present themselves
until the end of August. The voting will start on September 1st, 2006. On
Wikimania the function of the board and the election was also discussed. A
compilation of those discussions are available to listen to. Interesting for
board candidates or possible candidates.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_W…http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_candidates_2006/Enhttp://tinyurl.com/rdnxu - Ogg Vorbis 11,9Mb 32min
http://tinyurl.com/s2j66 - Webbased Player playing the same file
[New board] - The WMF will create an advisory board by the end of the year.
There function will be to help with partnerships, public relations, financing,
technology, administration, international affairs, ... The people who will be
on the advisory board, if the can be found, will be more academic people who
are also like the wiki-style and the open contend movement.
[$100 laptop] - Jimbo announced on Wikimania that the "One Laptop per Child"
(OLPC) association has chosen to load a snapshot of select Wikipedia articles
onto the laptops it is developing. The idea is to make relative cheap laptop
computers for schoolchildren for countrys where there are few computers
available for children. These laptops are not yet in production. Use of
Wikipedia in this way is a perfect fit whit the goal of the WMF to give every
single person free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Because these
laptops well able to connect to a network Jimbo hopes that by spreading those
computers projects in new languages will be started or live will come in near
dead wiki's.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/One_Laptop_Per_Child_Inc…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
[$] - Brad Patrick stated the there is no need for a fund drive soon. The
Wikimedia Foundation has a financial reserve of about $500,000. There is a
stable income of donations of about $30,000 every month. The WMF will make a
special effort to attract money from grants.
=== Community ===
[PL.wp news] The Signpost brings a report about how the the Polish language
Wikipedia is doing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-31/Interw…
=== Media ===
[Censor] - A Chinese project similar to Wikipedia has shutdown after pressure of
the Chinese censor.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18487
[MyWikiBiz.com] is a small company who has found a way to make a living of
writing articles on Wikipedia.
http://www.sbwire.com/news/view.php?sid=7452
[The Hive] - "How an attempt to build an online encyclopedia touched off
historys biggest experiment in collaborative knowledge" by Marshall Poe
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Poe
[Good News] - According to US television the number of elephants in Africa has
tripled in the past 10 years.
http://www.powerpage.org/archives/2006/08/stephen_colbert_v_wikipedia.htmlhttp://tawker.com/2006/08/01/i-blocked-stephen-colbert-on-wikipedia/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-07/Wikial…
=== Other news ===
[GFW] - The Great firewall of China has upgraded its block level for Wikipedia.
The upgrade was noticed and reported as early as August 7, 2006 9:30 UTC. It
seems that official Wikimedia proxies are blocked and that zh.wikipedia.org"
has become a URL-level keyword for the great firewall of China. This upgrade
coincided with a Beijing News (新京報) report on Wikipedia.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27800/focu…
=== Stats ===
The English Wikipedia has reached 1,300,000 articles.
The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
http://mr.wikipedia.org/
The Min Nan Wiktionary has reached 2,000 articles.
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/
The Sundanese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
http://su.wikipedia.org/
The Lombard Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
http://lmo.wikipedia.org/
=== Quote from Hacking Day ===
Ward Cunningham: "The Wiki[pedia] community has grown Wiki[pedia] and has done
everything almost perfectly"
Ivan Krstic: "I want a Brion Vibber action figure - when you squeeze it, it says
'it's totally broken'"
Brion Vibber: (Extolling the virtues of downtime) "If you are up all the time,
then you forget simple things like how to reboot the servers"
Brion Vibber: "And we have a lot of testers on Wikipedia, so [Mediawiki] bugs
get identified pretty quick"
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 468
Editor(s): Walter Shizhao
Special thanks to: User dg on #cgiirc
Thanks for promoting Wikizine to the wikis;
HU,RO and KO wikiquote,EN wikibooks
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
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: 31 Number: 36 Extra
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Wikimania 2006 Online ===
It is now almost so far. The main Wikimedia event of the year; Wikimania 2006.
(View countdown until Wikimania; http://tinyurl.com/gn6o8 )
>From this Friday until Sunday in Cambrige, Massachusetts, USA Wikimedians from
all around the world will meet. And listen and give speeches or visit
workshops.
Many Wikimadians will be there. But for all the the other people who are not
there but interested in what is going on extended online information will be
available.
The main presentations will be broadcast online by audio and/or video
live-streams, live transcriptions of the talks and even live translations for
some languages.
Every presentation has its own page on the Wikimania-wiki with information about
it and links to all media when available. (pfd's, silde shows, audio/video,
transcripts)
These pages can you find on the general schedule page;
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule
There will also an item especially for the online participants;
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_online
You can still enter nominations for the Wikimania Awards
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Awards
=== Wikizine special ===
Wikizine will attempt to provide its own overview of Wikimania on the website
with the post;
http://www.wikizine.org/2006/08/wikimania-2006-online.html
This post will be frequently updated and expanded.
The idea is to provide on one page easy access to the audio, video and other
media that are needed for attending Wikimania online. And tools for making it
more easy to use like a clock with UTC/Wikimania local time, webbased Ogg
Vorbis-player, javachat ... So that you have everything you need to follow
Wikimania online with only one page to watch.
Volunteers for assisting Wikizine with the updating of this post "Wikimania 2006
Online" are highly welcome. To give you access you will need or get a blogger
account. Contact Wikizine if interested.
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]