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Year: 2008 Week: 13 Number: 93
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Wikizine ... not yet dead
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=== Technical news ===
=== Single User Login ===
SUL. Single User Login. Bug 57. Unified login. One login for all wikis. The
mythical uberlogin has migrated to The Real World.
The migration function is enabled currently for sysops only. The options to
migrate can be found on the first page of the account preferences page on the
projects were you're a sysop. From there you can follow the instructions to
claim all you accounts on all wikis that have the same username. After the
migration you can log on all these wikis with the same password.
For the migration to work you need to have the same email address or password on
all your user accounts. You can claim the rest of the accounts with your name
by providing their password.
The current sysop-only migration is to collect information for the general user
migration later. Sysops who have problems are strongly encouraged to report
them so that they can be fixed before SUL is rolled out generally.
By migrating now (if you can) you have the advantage that you can use that
username to log in to all WMF wikis as long as there is not a local user
account with your name that is not yours.
Please note that not everhings works yet when you migrate. For example renaming
an account can not be done (for now at least). Inform you before you do it.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37290http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37434http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
[Upload auto-confirmed] - upload of files on all Wikimedia sites except Commons
is now restricted to auto-confirmed users. That are user accounts older then 4
days.
http://tinyurl.com/2vuz8m
[Search changed] - the technical side of the search function of the wikis has
changed. As a result some wikis who have used javascript to include external
search engines may experience glitches requiring an update of the local code.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37379http://leuksman.com/log/2008/03/21/lucenesearch-is-dead-long-live-mwsearch/
=== Request for help ===
[Stable Versions] - testwikis are setup for tests of the stable versions
function. This function makes it possible to rate the quality of an article.
Feedback is requested from users who volunteer to test the function.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37372
[Scholarship] - translations are requested of the Wikimania 2008 scholarships
information page.
http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation/Scholarships
=== Foundation ===
[+ $3,000,000] - The board of the "Alfred P. Sloan Foundation" has granted the
Wikimedia Foundation 1 million dollars (US) per year for the next three years.
This is the largest donation made to the Foundation in its history. Note: 1
million USD = 642302 EUR / 501669 GBP
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27379http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan_Foundationhttp://www.itwire.com/content/view/17324/53/
[New hire] - the WMF has hired a new accountant, Mary Lou Secoquian, who will
work in San Francisco.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27279
=== Community ===
[NotTheWikipediaWeekly] - On the English language Wikipedia a new audio podcast
project about Wikipedia has started. They announce a time to meet in a
skypecast, talk about Wikipedia topics and publish the recordings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly
=== Awards ===
[IT Wikipedia] - The Italian Wikipedia has won the a category award of
"PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore" a competition organized by the most important
business newspaper in Italy (Il Sole 24 ore). The winners were selected by jury
from the shortlist composed by the 5 sites that obtained the highest score
through a popular vote. This is the second time that it.wiki wins
"PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore". Last time was two years ago.
http://premiowww.ilsole24ore.com/vincitori.php
=== Stats ===
[Animated stats] - Our grandmaster of statistics Erik Zachte has made a new form
of Wikipedia-stats. Animated statistics; bubbles representing the projects
floating true time and number of articles. It is available in an interactive
format that works currently with FireFox 3.0 release candidate. A flash version
that works with any browser (8MB) is also available.
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Wikistats/http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27393
=== Other news ===
[Schoolbook] - A publisher of schoolbooks in Japan is using a Wikipedia map as
illustration. It is the world map of death penalty sentences.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27395http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Death_Penalty_World_Map.png
=== Did you know ... ===
... Microsoft also uses MediaWiki ?
Microsoft researcher Steve Ickman said while Microsoft SharePoint is great,
MediaWiki has valuable features not found in SharePoint - particularly the
ability to archive.
http://tinyurl.com/ysbz6nhttp://tinyurl.com/2ar5jo
=== Quote ===
"Do not leave your children unattended. All unattended children will be eaten."
-- Friendly advice from vulture in movie "Ice age 2"
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 712
Unique Visitors website last week: 132
Editor(s): Walter
Corrector(s): 2 who do not wish to take credit for it
Thanks to: Nick
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. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular 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: 2008 Week: 10 Number: 92
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[__HIDDENCAT__] - there is a new magic word __HIDDENCAT__ When used on a
"Category:Foobar"-page it is not listed among the other categories at the
bottom of an article in the category.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/36831
[New dump!] - There is a new database dump of the English language Wikipedia.
The full dump of EN Wikipedia, all articles, full history is 130gb
(compressed).
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20080103/ -- EN Wikipedia dump
http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html -- other wikis dump
[New Skin] - When you go to your "preferences" you have the option "skin" where
you can select what the interface will look like. The default skin is Monobook.
There are several others to choice from but besides "classic" they are not very
usable. But now is there a new good looking and usable skin: "Modern". Check it
out.
http://tinyurl.com/22gsy6 -- Wikipedia style "Modern"
[RC on IRC] - Recent changes of the projects are posted on IRC by means of a
Wikimedia IRC-server. By request access to this service has been added to the
Wikizine IRC gateway for a selection of projects.
http://chat.wikizine.org
=== Request for help ===
[Wikimania 2008] - Call for Participation; Submissions are open until 16 March.
Submissions are warmly welcomed
http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation
=== Foundation ===
[4 new Wikimedia Chapters] - The board of the Wikimedia Foundation approved 4
new chapters. The new chapters are: Wikimedia Česká republika, Wikimedia
Österreich, Wikimedia Australia Incorporated, Wikimedia Hong Kong Limited
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters
[Wikimanina 2008] - A site risk assessment will be ordered for Wikimania 2008 in
Alexandria, Egypt announced Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue
Gardner. Concern for the safety of Wikimanians in Alexandria has been a topic
on Foundation-l and the assessment will look at various threats.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/26221
[Board elections 2008] - there is a call for election officials
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/25911http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Committee/en
=== Media ===
[Sue on CNET] - Video intervieuw of Sue Gardner (executive director of the WMF)
about the Jimmy Wales buzz and Wikipedia.
http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-32449.html
[Wikipedia in Africa] - story about Wikipedia on DVD in Africa.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23906
[1984] - Japan is considering legislation to "govern top news Web sites"
http://tinyurl.com/2dt26j
[The Economist] - inclusionists versus deletionists
http://tinyurl.com/23agss
=== Stats ===
[WikiWoordenboek] - the Dutch language Wiktionary passed the 30,000 page
milestone.
http://www.wikiwoordenboek.org
[Counts] - The Wikimedia Commons has reached 2,500,000 media files.
[Again new stats] - A site that is using the squid logs to generate Wikipedia
article traffic statistics. You can get the stats for a specific article or get
a list of the most popular pages. There can you learn that for some reason
"Canine reproduction" is very popular.
http://stats.grok.se
[Wikipedia is 2nd in the world!] - at least in the "2008 Web Globalization
Report Card". The number of languages supported is a big factor in this
ranking.
http://bytelevel.com/news/reportcard2008.html
=== Other news ===
[Dirty dishes] - Bad week for Jimmy Wales. His personal life is getting media
coverage. It is reported that Jimmy had a brief relationship with Rachel
Marsden, a conservative blogger who works in the media industry. The
relationship broke off and Rachel Marsden provided private communications
between herself and Jimmy to a gossip site, which published them. Jimmy
published a statement about it on his blog.
And at the same time Danny Wool, ex WMF staff member, published a blog posting
where he writes about his time at the Wikimedia Foundation and requests for
reimbursement of expenses by Jimmy, among other things.
http://blog.jimmywales.com/index.php/statement/http://tinyurl.com/22t42g -- Wikinews article
http://allswool.blogspot.com/2008/03/money-for-nothing-chicks-for-free.htmlhttp://tinyurl.com/23f3am -- Signpost article about it
[Encyclopedia of Life] - the EOL has gone live with more than one million
species pages that are mostly minimal articles. Only 25 articles are like the
EOL wishes the articles to be, articles containing rich media with extensive
information.
http://www.eol.org/
[About Wikipedia] - author John Broughton wrote the book "Wikipedia: The Missing
Manual" . A guide to editing Wikipedia. ISBN 0596515162
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-03-03/Book_r…
[CNN goes (a bit) Wikinews] - CNN, an American news network, has started a
website where everyone can submit news and pictures. As it looks now every
article has only one author and people can post comments about it. So it is
more a blog than a wiki.
http://beta.ireport.com/
[Wikileaks] - An attempt to bring down Wikileaks has failed. There was a
DOS-attack, a fire at their web hosting facility and the release of lawyers who
obtained a court order to remove the domain "wikileaks.org" from DNS. Wikileaks
did remain online by means of other domains and by entering the ip-address. The
court order was later revoked. Wikileaks.org is again online.
http://tinyurl.com/2pbk3q
[Wikirace] - Wikirace.org is game where you compete with other people to try get
from one "start-article" to try to reach the "end-article" in as few steps as
possible.
http://wikirace.org
=== Message to the readers ====
Wikizine is there to inform you, readers, about the news related to the
Wikimedia projects or what seem relevant to inform you about.
It has been increasingly more difficult to get a new edition ready for
distribution the last half year. At present the publication rate is below the
necessary frequency necessary to inform our readers in a timely manner about
the relevant news.
Because of this I recommend, as editor, that the readers of Wikizine read the
Wikipedia Signpost as their primary internal news source to keep informed. --
[[meta:user:Walter]] , Editor of Wikizine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
=== Did you know ... ===
... there is dedicated program to browse Wikipedia visually?
The program is called indywiki. (And no, it has nothing to do with Indymedia.)
Basically it is a GUI that displays Wikipedia content in a different way then
your browser. Focus is on the visual aspect. You search for a entry, you get a
selection of pictures related to that article. By clicking on an image you can
browse Wikipedia. Also is there a text box that displays text sections of the
article, a list of sections of the article and a list of external links. The
software runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.
Indywiki is young software and the main developer is looking for assistance with
this project. The developer is looking for a python developer to work on
features and people who can work on the GUI to make it better looking.
http://indywiki.sourceforge.net/ -- website
http://indywiki.sourceforge.net/indywiki_fosdem.pdf -- presentation of Indywiki
Contact indywiki: <mgogoulos AT gmail DOT com>
=== Quote ===
"[..] And for the encyclopedia, it turned out
that a volunteer model was able to do quite a reasonable job." -- Bill Gates
reffering to Wikipedia
http://tinyurl.com/32kpw9
//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 714
Unique Visitors website last week: 170
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Annabel, Effeietsanders
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. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a irregular 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
