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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 33 Number: 79
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Single User Login] - also known as SUL - is again a step closer to
implementation. For the newer readers; Single User Login is exactly
what it sounds like; one login for all WMF wikis. Because many users
have accounts on many wikis, at not always with the same username,
making a system to support one login and not breaking to existing
accounts is complex. This is in the works for several years now. The
merge function is now live on the test-wiki in demonstration modus for
testing. (demonstration -> testing = does not really work yet). Brion
says that beta-testing could start in a couple of weeks.
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical
[pywikipediabot] - The "pywikipediabot" framework, which has been
hosted at sourceforge for the last almost 4 years, has recently been
moved to wikimedia servers. This means that robot users will need to
go to a different server to update their version of the robot software.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikipedia-l -- New mailing list
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/98876 -- A message
announcing the move
[Redirects] - The now work with URL-encoded page titles (like
"#REDIRECT [[foo%20bar]]").
[WP offline] - Building a (fast) Wikipedia offline reader; a user who
wanted to have Wikipedia on his hard disk to take along explains how
he done it.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/13/1939231http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/buildWikipediaOffline.html
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania 2008] - Suggestions are requested for locations where to
organize the next Wikimania in 2008.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
=== Policy ===
[CC 3.0 licence] - Wikimedia commons, our media files project, has
accepted the 3.0 Creative Commons licence after long discussion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-13/CC_3.0
=== Foundation ===
[Wikimania 2007] - In Taipei Wikimania has accrued like planed. It is
considered to be successful. At this time only very limited video
recordings of the events are available. Photographs are present on
commons and Flickr. The best way of getting the feeling of being there
are the audio reports of the "Wikipedia Weekly World Service" about
Wikimania.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.wikimania/309 --
Refection Wikimania by Ant
http://wikimania.tw/streaming/ -- the available video
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2007 -- images
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/wikimania2007/ -- and some more pictures
http://www.wikipediaweekly.org/ --- start with "Wikimania Day 1:
Morning Update"
[Wikimedia USA?] - Options are explored about creating chapters inside
the USA. Until now chapters are created on the national lever of a
country. For chapters inside the USA the situation is different. There
is no need for an organization for tax reasons because Wikimedia
Sint-Petersburg covers that already. It is considered to organize the
USA chapters by city and not by state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/US_cha…
=== Community ===
[EN Wikinews] - A wikinews reporter was able to get an exclusive
interview with Tony Benn on U.K. politics.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews:_Tony_Benn_on_U.K._politics
[PL wiki on DVD] - In April was announced in Wikizine 68 that very
soon a DVD of the Polish language Wikipedia would be on sale in shops
in Poland. That "soon" is now. It is available for purchase in shops
in Poland as well as online. The release contains 239 000 articles, 59
000 images and the dedicated Java software WikiMiner. The DVD costs 39
PLN (~ 10 EUR, $14). Soon the 8 GB image of the DVD will be available
for download as well.
http://tinyurl.com/33c8xs
=== Awards ===
[Wikimania Awards 2007] - The Wikimania Awards where awarded. There
where 7 categories in where people could nominate pictures. On the
presentation of the winners only winners for 4 categories where
announced. Jury member [[User:Cspurrier]] explained that the reason
was that the intended prices for the winners for the other categories
did not seemed to exist. And because of that there where no winners
for the other categories.
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Awards --- And the
winners are ...
=== Media ===
[Wikimania] - Whats Next After Wikimania 2007?
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/08/11/taiwan-whats-next-after-wikima…
[Wikitracker] - See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a
Campaign. About the results that you get from "Wikiscanner", a
(public) database of edits done by anonymous users. And how company's
and organisations edit there own articles.
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_trackerhttp://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/vote-on-the-top.htmlhttp://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/
=== Stats ===
[All wp] - All Wikipedias together have reached 8 million articles.
[ja wp] - The Japanese Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles.
[commons] - The Wikimedia Commons has reached 1,750,000 files
[ps wp] - The Pashto Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles.
=== Other news ===
[Wikipedia on stage] - In New York City a small theatre company has
preformed a play with the name "The Wikipedia Plays" inspired more or
less on certain articles. The play was made up of 17 very small plays.
The Signpost has written detailed reporting about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipe…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipe…
[Wikizine about underweare??] - When Wikizine was started there was so
far as could be found nobody else using or had been using the name
"Wikizine" for an online activity. But that has changed. There is now
a website the provides a sort of blogs that anyone can edit and those
blogs are called "Wikizines". The can be about anything.
http://www.zimbio.com/http://www.zimbio.com/Men's+Underwear+Wikizine+by+UndiesDrawer
[Similpedia] - This is not again yet an other wiki-project. Similpedia
is a website the finds articles inside the English language Wikipedia
that are related to the url or text you past inside the search box of
Similpedia.
http://similpedia.org/
=== Editorial ===
The community of Wikimedia exists on the internet. But sometimes there
are large gatherings of Wikimedians in the real world; Wikimania. Even
when Wikimania is a great success with a high numbers of visitors
there remains a group of very interested Wikimedians who want to
follow the events but are not physical present. In these modern times
of one global digital village that can not be a problem. Especially
for an online technological community as Wikimedia.
The first Wikimania, in 2005 (Frankfurt), there was no live-streaming
nor archives. But that was very first Wikimania, time to learn and
grow is necessary, so that is understandable.
For the second Wikimania in Boston, in 2006, there was live-streaming.
Yes, it was a RealMedia stream but it worked and also for all
operating systems. The archives of the recordings where a problem.
During that Wikimania and at several times after it was announced that
the video archives would come available soon. The never did came
available.
Now for this Wikimania in 2007 I expected that the online experience
would be better then in 2006. It was not. It was even significant
worse. The live-streaming was provided by a sponsor. So far no
problem. But to see the live-stream you needed to go a website that
contains advertisement. There you could see the stream on a web-based
player that starts with a commercial.
For any other organisation or community that would be totally normal.
But when you consider that the Wikimedia community, with the English
language Wikipedia on the first row, is fundamentalistic against even
the smallest form of advertisement or suggesting of commercial
activity, then it is very weird that the official live-stream of
Wikimania is so clearly commercial.
Even worse; the live-stream solution provided was Windows-only! By day
2 I had installed Windows XP in an emulator. The stream was not very
stable, frequent buffer under-runs and this together with no working
function to get a full screen video made the user experience not very
good to say the least.
Video archives where announced to be available be the end the day. One
week after the end of Wikimania; are not yet available.
Wikimania 2007 was a success, but the online experience was not. Will
next year be better? Maybe the people who where providing the on the
spot put together Ogg Theora streams could do that. Considering that
it was an ad hoc solution the did a great job.
Walter, Editor of Wikizine
=== Did you know ... ===
... that you can buy a listing in Wikipedia on eBay?
Ebay user diremine, who has a 99,9% positive feedback, provides the
service of getting an article about you business inside Wikipedia, 10
interwiki links to your article and 2 external links to your website.
The comments in his feedback indicate that has sold successful several
of these packages and the his customers are satisfied. This suggests
that there are spy's and traitors on Wikipedia who assist with this.
http://tinyurl.com/yqyr78 -- article on sale for only US $99.99
http://myworld.ebay.com/diremine
=== Donation Quotes ===
"gott sei dank fur Wikipedia -- Anonym
"Knowledge is Fun" -- Eugene Demeter
"I don't google as I used to, it has thankfully been replaced by
Wikipedia" -- Anonymous
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 675
Unique Visitors website last week: 342
Editor(s): Walter, me and myself
Thanks to: Pathoschild, Rob Hooft
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
New: Wikizine Auf Deutsch and en Español
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy news
(and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
During Wikimania, what is now going on, you can find on the EN
Wikizine website very frequently updated information about Wikimania.
This information consist of links to live-stream solutions when
available during the different sessions. Links to video and/or audio
recordings of past presentation when the exist, links to photographs.
Podcasts about Wikimania.
Basically an overview of everything there is to be found about
Wikimania that helps to provide the best possible online experience
for everybody who is not at Wikimania.
Visited Wikizine frequently to get the latest information about
Wikimania content.
http://en.wikizine.org
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/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __ ___
\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
\ /\ /| | <| |/ /| | | | | __/
\/ \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
.org
Year: 2007 Week: 31 Number: 78 Extra
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Wikimania 2007 ===
[Start] - Wikimania will start now very soon. The opening ceremony
with a welcome speech by Anthere and Jimbo is at 01:00 UTC upcoming
(2007-08-03)
[Wikimania online] - At present there is no information available
about live streaming of the Wikimania events on the Wikimania-wiki.
There are indications that there is the intend to provide some sort of
online access to Wikimania by the Wikimania organization.
Best hope to find out about it if it will exist is the Wikimania IRC
channel #wikimania and the "Schedule"-page on the Wikimania-wiki.
http://chat.wikizine.org -- webbased IRC access
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule
WikipediaWeekly has already some audio reports from Wikimania.
http://wikipediaweekly.com/2007/08/01/wikipedia-weekly-21/http://wikipediaweekly.com/2007/08/02/wikipedia-weekly-22-wikimania-07-intr…
[Wikimania Awards] - submissions are open for the Wikimaina Award.
Pictures, and only pictures, are welcome. There are 7 awards for 7
categories. The awards are sponsored. For example; there is the "EPSON
History Award" for the best picture about "history". The other topics
are; share, mother nature, news, people, society, Wikimania activities.
The 7 winners wil get an award cup and a USB stick that includes a
Wikipedia local database and a search software.
The winners will be announced during the closing ceremony on the 5th
of August.
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Awards
=== Stats ===
[FY Wikipedia] - Fryske wikipedy no oer de 5.000 siden. (The Frisian
wikipedia has reached 5.000 articles)
http://fy.wikipedia.org
[LT Wikipedia] - The Lithuanian Wikipedia reached a big milestone -
50,000 articles. The 50000th article was XXXV Europos krepšinio
čempionatas - an article about upcomming basketball tournament
EuroBasket 2007.
http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXXV_Europos_krep%C5%A1inio_%C4%8Dempionatas
=== Other news ===
[WikiSearch] - Wikia,inc has announced by means of Jimbo last year
that Wikia would start with a community based search engine. Now has
Wikia announced that the have bought the web crawler Grub. A web
crawler is software the spiders the internet and maps all websites.
The websites that are discovered by a web crawler can be included in
an index to create a search engine. Wikia has released Grub now as an
open source project.
Grub is an p2p program (like bittorent) that users need to install on
there personal computer. When the client computer has nothing better
to do it starts exploring the internet trying to find new websites
where no webcrawel has gone before. The results will be send back to
SearchWikia where volunteers will proces them and put them in the
search engine index. That is at least the idea.
When the new system will be online is not known yet.
http://tinyurl.com/w6gyd -- Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to start
wiki-based search engine (2006)
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia_OSCONhttp://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/08/open-or-closed-.html --
Video of Jimmy Wales announcing it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grub_%28search_engine%29http://tinyurl.com/2npls3 -- Critical blogposting about it
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/30/1632251 -- /.
http://tinyurl.com/25wtv3 -- Wikia details plans for search rival to Google
=== Quote ===
"Hopefully we will have the first stab of something that sucks up by
the end of the year," he said. "And then we will start to revise,
reconsider, rethink, delete, add, edit, change, until we start making
something better and better over time. Will it take 2 years? 5 years?
I dunno. It will take however long it takes. But it will be fun." --
Jimmy Wales about Search Wikia
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Knutux, Theun
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
correct grammar and spelling.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy news
(and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html