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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 39 Number: 81
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[WebPlayer] - There is now a real web based player for the audio and video
content on the WMF wikis. This was already possible with a player on the
separate toolserver, but it is now displayed on the wiki itself. This
functionality is created by Tim Starling. Because of the use of the not very
popular Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora file formats for audio and video it was for
the end user not always easy to use the content. Now with this web based player
function the source file format is not longer relevant for the end user. It
just works like on YouTube. The use of this function is very simple. Basically
it is [[image:foobar.ogg]] to include a file in a page. To play you click on a
'play' symbol under the thumbnail. See link for more information.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OggHandlerhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:A11v_1094228.ogg -- A classic fragment
[Overwrite] - Overwriting existing files are now distinguished in the logs from
uploading new files with [[MediaWiki:Overwroteimage]]
=== Request for help ===
[Wikilove] - Pictures of Wikimedians expressing there love for the projects are
requested. The will be used in the upcoming fund drive to provide a more
personal impression to the potential donors. See post of Sabine Cretella for
more information or contact here if you have questions.
http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2007/09/wikimedian-of-hour.htmlhttp://pms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figura:GM_Wikilove.jpg -- example
[Quality project] - One of goals of our projects is not only to create free
information but also accurate information. Currently there is room for
improvement regarding the quality. A new quality project is launched. A special
wiki is created and a mailing list to discus the possibilities for improving
the overall quality of our content. Main focus is a software change to support
article/edit verification by trusted users. Also is considered a system that
uses colors to show the level of trust of the user that has done the edit.
Community feedback and cooperation is requested.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19980http://quality.wikimedia.org/http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiquality-lhttp://enwiki-trust.cse.ucsc.edu/index.php/CPL
[Wikizine] - Your help is urgently requested with Wikizine, which may affects
its chances of continuing. If you are interested, contact the editor-in-chief
using the link below.
http://report.wikizine.org
[Buttons] - and also banners are requested to be used for the upcoming fund
drive. So that websites who like to support the Wikimedia projects can use them
to advertise for it.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons
[Pop-up] - There has been received several reports from readers of EN Wikipedia
that the get a pop-up that says the need to "donate to Wikipedia" to use
Wikipedia. This is naturally not so. It can be that those users are confused
but also that there some sort of spy-ware or virus behind this. If you see this
or know someone who complains about this let them make a screenshot and send it
in to info-en AT wikimedia DOT org or Wikizine.
=== Policy ===
[Draf: Software Policy] - A proposal for a WMF "Principles Regarding Software
Use" has been drafted by WMF board member Erik Möller. Feedback is welcome.
The result could become a WMF resolution proposal.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Software_Policy_Drafthttp://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19547
=== Foundation ===
[Moving headquarters] - The Wikimedia Foundation is moving its offices from St.
Petersburg in Florida to San Francisco in California, both in the United
States, this winter. That is timezone UTC-8/UTC-7 Summer time. The servers are
in Tampa, Florida, and will not be moved. The announcement says the original
location was chosen in 2003 because the founder Jimbo lived there when he
started the foundation, and that being in a larger city brings the Foundation
closer to potential staff, partners, services, and media. Probably this means
that most of the current office staff will not able to move with the office and
new people will need to be hired. The board will enjoy its last board meeting
in sunny and warm Florida at the office in Saint-Petersburg on the 6th and 7th
October.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/20090 -- announcement by
Sue Gardner + discussion
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/20218 -- more discussion
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2007-10-01#Foundation_to_move…
[New hire] - The WMF office staff expands with the arrival of Ingrid as
executive assistant. She will work at office for time it is still in
Saint-Petersburg.
[World WMF meeting] - Like last year there will be meeting of board of the
Wikimedia Foundation and representatives of all the Wikimedia chapters. To
purpose of the meeting is to clarify the relationships between chapters and
Foundation. At present it looks like the meeting will be in Frankfurt, Germany
on December 7, 8 and 9.
[Fund raiser] - The Wikimedia foundation has started to plan its 2007 fund
raiser. The last one ended Currently it looks like the fund raiser will start
on October 22 and go until December 22. Help is needed in the following ways:
to collect compelling human stories that show why the projects matter,
translation help, lots of help designing and implementing the message, and to
help plan and carry out plans as they are being developed.
[New chapter] - A new Wikimedia chapter, Wikimedia Hong Kong, is now
officially registered in Hong Kong.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19996http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hong_Kong
[Wikimania 2008] - To procedure for choosing the location for next Wikimania is
in its final stage. Currently are in the running 4 cities; Africa with
Alexandria and Cape Town and North America with Atlanta and Toronto. The winner
will be known by 6th of October.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
[IT Wikimedia] - On 1st and 2the September IT Wikimedia had its annual Italian
chapter meeting and wikimeet in Rome, featuring a wide presence of wikimedians
and journalists from press and TV. The news published by all of the main
national newspapers. During the meeting some new board members where elected,
others confirmed. Frieda Brioschi, former president of IT Wikimedia and now WMF
USA board member has been given honorary board membership of IT Wikimedia and
is appointed Wikimedia evangelist (PR person).
[FR Wikimedia] - is organizing its first conference. It will be in Paris on
October 19 and 20, organized by the French WMF chapter. Subscriptions are open.
http://colloque.wikimedia.fr/2007/
[NL Wikimedia] - In the Netherlands there will be on the 27th October in
Amsterdam a local Wikimedia conference organized by the dutch chapter. The
topic of this years conference is "wikis and education". Most presentations
will be in Dutch, some in English. Registration is open.
http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/english/
=== Community ===
[EN Wikiquote] - The English language Wikiquote is trying out a new policy for
page deletion. It is a simplified deletion process invented on the English
Wikipedia, which allows users to place a template on a page and it will be
deleted after seven days if nobody removes it. After 3 months the community
will decide if the policy will be implemented longer.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:PROD
[EN Wikipedia] - is the flagship of all WMF projects. So making a good first
impression with the layout is important. The EN Wikipedia, like other wikis,
has a huge collection of templates. Some page have many templates that gives a
global very ugly impression. On the EN Wikipedia those templates have been
redesigned to be less ugly and make a significant difference in the ugliness of
that articles where the are used on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-09-17/News_a…
=== Media ===
[Wikipedia 2.0] - "Now with added trust". Article about plans of Wikipedia to
improve the quality of the articles. Important it to realize that the plans
that are described in this article as of the will be implemented very soon are
in reality only ideas. The implementation of a automatic rating of "trust" of
edits by users is nothing else then a possibility, a concept.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19526226.200-wikipedia-20-%C3%…http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/1340207
=== Stats ===
[When new stats?] - Since many years there are very nice statistics of the
projects created by Erik Zachte. Those statistics are not updated since long
for some projects and because people keep asking why Erik explains it in a
posting to Foundation-l. The core problem is that database dumps the the WMF
must provide to be able to making the statistics are failing very frequently,
especially for the larger projects. When there is no recent database dump then
no statistics can be made from them. Also it becomes more and more difficult to
process the data because of the huge amount of data of such a database dump of
a large wiki like the English language Wikipedia.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19880/focus=19937http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm
[Alexa] - Wikipedia.org has reached a rank of 9 on alexa.com, which means
Alexa's statistics show it as the 9th most visited web site on the Internet.
The 10th and 11th positions are Facebook (a social networking site) and Baidu
(a Chinese search engine).
[Articles and edits] - The Swedish Wikipedia has reached 250 thousand articles.
The Indonesian Wikipedia has made 1 million edits. The Vietnamese Wiktionary
has reached 1 thousand users.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_News&oldid=679817
[EN Wikipedia] - The English Wikipedia has passed 2 million articles with "El
Hormiguero", an article about a Spanish television program. The English project
is by far the largest Wikipedia, with the second-largest project being the
Deutsch Wikipedia with about 600 000 articles. However, the tech site zdnet.be
reports that the English Wikipedia is missing articles about many topics about
non-English languages and cultures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Hormiguero
=== Other news ===
[Must read] - Rethinking fund raising (1): SWOT & more. Post by Erik Möller
about fund raising
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19842
[Wiki closed] - The Siberian Wikipedia is closed after nearly one year of
procedure. Currently the wiki is still online but the database is locked.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SIBhttp://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/
[New wikis] - A Wikisource in the Bengali language and a Wiktionary in Upper
Sorbianis is approved and created.
http://bn.wikisource.org/http://hsb.wiktionary.org/http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/
=== Did you know ... ===
... the internet is for porn?
Porn is a huge part of the Internet, and that interest is also reflected in the
use of Wikipedia. For as long as we have kept statistics, articles about sex
and sexuality were among the most popular.
According the data from the video-player hosted on the toolserver, that now is
replaced by the wiki-player, the correctly labeled video file "Ejaculation
Educational Demonstration.OGG" was the most poplar video. The file on the
second place was only requested almost the half of the first one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sNGgo-soSc
=== Quote ===
The "Web 2.0 model"
1. Make a cool site
2. Slap up some ads to look like you have a business plan
3. Sell out to Google,Y!, or Microsoft
cha-ching!
The "Wikipedia model"
1. Make a cool site
2. Incorporate as a not-for-profit, keep the site non-commercial and ad-free
3. Beg for money
Hey, at least we’re honest about it!
-- from presentation by Brion Vibber
http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/09/13/news/sfcc/wikipedia.txthttp://leuksman.com/images/e/e1/gatorjug-2007-09-12.pdf
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 698
Unique Visitors website last week: 229
Editors: Walter, Jacroe, Pathoschild
Corrector(s): Pathoschild
Thanks to: Jollyroger, gattonero, dracotheimpaler, Aphaia, Pathoschild
Special thanks to: WikipediaWeekly.org, Gray B., ++Lar
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
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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 38 Special edition
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Request for help ===
Dear readers,
Almost two years ago I started with Wikizine. The very first message
send out about it was also a "special edition". That was to present
Wikizine, what it was all about.
http://en.wikizine.org/2005/10/year-2005-week41-special-edition.html
This one now is not to explain what Wikizine is.
Wikizine is not totally unsuccessful. The number of readers has only
go up since its existence, slowly yes, but up nevertheless. The rare
feedback has been positive.
It was my intention to create a platform with Wikizine to bring
together the most relevant information, news, from all Wikimedia
projects and languages. I felt, and still do, that there is a need for
that.
I hoped that after some time a network of reporters of the various
wikis, languages, projects, would form who could bring there news to
the larger community by means of Wikizine. And also that the would
people step up to join me in creating Wikizine.
This largely did not happened. In the last two years some people have
volunteered and helped with making Wikizine. But that where far to
few, who did not a lot and only for a to short time to have any real
impact.
Wikizine was and is still a one man show. I have made all editions
until now of Wikizine. I can not continue like this. It has become
more difficult with every edition for me to bring myself to get the
next one ready. The time it was fun is long gone. The frequency of the
editions has become more and more erratic. And the quality is falling.
I need people who are willing to work substantially on Wikizine. And
not only today but on the long term. Finding news, writing it in the
draft; constructing Wikizine. If you like to help please contact me;
walter AT wikizine.org
Request for help for Wikizine has been send out before, only not so
explicit like now. This is also the first time I send it to
non-Wikizine channels.
The responds the previous times was always nearly zero. I do not
expect anything else this time. Surprise me.
Greetings,
Walter Vermeir
The editor-founder of Wikizine
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter
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
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\ \/ \/ / | |/ / |_ / | '_ \ / _ \
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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 36 Number: 80
******************************************
An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
//////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Map function] - A javascript plugin is created that can provide an interactive
map to an article and jump to other articles. This system is already in use on
several Wikipedias.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiMiniAtlashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument
=== Foundation ===
[Fundraiser] - A new fundraiser is coming. Like it looks now it will be from
September 23 to
November 22.
[Wikinews Foundation?] - A proposal has been raised on Foundation-l to found a
Wikinews foundation for the Wikinews project. This mostly to be able to provide
accreditation for wikinews reporters.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/19300
[Wikimania 2008] - Bidding for the location of next Wikimania opens formally ...
and is already closed by now.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids
=== Community ===
[Support Wikipedia] - A few Wikipedias show since long a small note to anonymous
users to suggest a donation to the WMF. One of those is the English language
Wikipedia. That notice has now grown a fair deal larger on that wiki. Also a
second, small, anon notice is included to draw attention of the visitors about
the way wikipedia differs from other websites and how one should use wikipedia.
Currently that is "Researching with Wikipedia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia
=== Media ===
[Wikiscanner] - has turned out as perfect topic for many newspapers around the
world to fill there paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-09-03/WikiSc…
[WikipediaWeekly] - A new edition reflecting about the last Wikimania and next
Wikimania
http://wikipediaweekly.org/2007/09/04/wikipedia-weekly-28/
=== Stats ===
[EN Wikinews] has written 10,000 news articles since its creation.
http://en.wikinews.org
//////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Stevenfruitsmaak
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
