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.org
Year: 2008 Week: 25 Number: 96
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Upload] - When you upload an image that is already online with
another name you get a warning about it. It works by calculating the
hash of the file and compares it with the already online files.
[Move] - sysops have now the option to rename all sub-pages in one
move when moving the parent page.
[Global user groups] - a WMF-global user group can now be created that
has a much or as little user rights as desired. Users can then be
added to that group. Global user members then have the user rights
assigned to that group on all wikis. Currently this function is only
used to give stewards administrative rights on all wikis.
=== Proposals ===
[Global sysops] - there is a proposal and a poll about the possibility
of creating a "Global sysops user group". That is creating users who
are sysop on all wikis. The idea is to make it more easy to maintain
the many small wikis. Users who would be "global sysop" would be only
allowed to use there rights on small wiki where there is no local
community or one that not yet take care of there own wiki. The
opposition against this idea does not like that "Global sysops" would
also have the technical sysops rights on large wikis, like the English
Wikipedia, despite it would not be allowed to use it.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysopshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub#Global_sysops_.28poll.29
[Restrict upload] - there is a proposal to restrict upload rights of
new users on all wikis except commons to autoconfirmed users. That are
users who have an account that it at least 5 days old. The idea is
that this will prevent the upload of a lot of problems.
http://tinyurl.com/56z4fs
[Interwiki] - a proposal to introduce the Interlanguage Extension on
Wikimedia projects to change the system of the language interwiki links.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_newer_look_at_the_interwiki_link
=== Policy ===
[Draft] - Mike Godwin has drafted a new version of the privacy policy.
Feedback and input is requested.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31075http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_Privacy_Policy_June_2008
=== Foundation ===
[Board elections] - the election for one position on the board of
trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation is open. There are 15 candidates.
You can vote until 23:59 21 June 2008 (UTC). Note that the voting
system has changed. Read the manual. The result are expected to be
announced on or around 26 June 2008.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Candidates/en
[Enquête] - In July 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration
with UNU-Merit, plans to launch the first general survey of Wikimedia
readers and contributors. Attempts are made to make it available in as
many languages as possible. Translation assistance is requested.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/06/06/help-translate-our-first-survey-of-rea…
[Lawsuit Germany] - a German publishing company sued Wikimedia
Deutschland over their article in the German Wikipedia. This because
there was critical information in the article. The court ruled that it
was legal to include to critical information and rejected the claim
that Wikimedia Deutschland was legally responsible for the article in
question. The publishing company intents to appeal the decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-05-26/News_a…
=== Media ===
[Live; dead on wiki] - Wikipedia vs Associated Press.
http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2008/06/wikipedia_vs_ap.html
=== Stats ===
[Voters stats] - parcial statistics of the voter turnout indicate that
few actually vote. The Hebrew Wikipedia has most users who use the
voting right. Most in numbers is the English language Wikipedia.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/30693
[Bla-bla] - Wikipedia NL has more spoken articles (735) then EN
Wikipedia (728).
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_en_Ernie -- example (press play button)
=== Other news ===
[Britannica] - a new website run by the Encyclopaedia Britannica will
be a bit like wikipedia. EN hopes to created a community of people who
work on their encyclopedia under thiee real name and revise articles
and write articles. The EB Staff keeps editorial control. Submissions
will need to be approved to be included in the article.
http://tinyurl.com/5upqb3 - Britannica blog
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/06/ency.htmlhttp://www.mercurynews.com/alamedacounty/ci_9599914
=== Offtopic request for help ===
[Vote for Oscar!] - this is an experiment. This to see what, if any,
the responds is. You are requested to vote for Oscar, a Belgian cat
(you can see that because of the beer bottle) in a competition of
Whiskas.
1) go to the vote page (link below)
2) enter your name ("Voornaam" and "Naam") and email.
3) ignore the check box (check if you like to get Dutch catfood
emails) and the lower input options
4) click on the purple "Breng je stem uit" button.
5) You get an email from "makeyourcatastar(a)whiskas.be" - click on the
purple button "Ik bevestig mijn stem!" to confirm your vote
6) done
Oscar says; "burp" (= thank you)
http://tinyurl.com/6eubno
=== Quote ===
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will
piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham
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Number of subscribers: 710
Unique Visitors website last week: 154
Number of votes for Oscar: 21
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Spacebirdy, Nathan
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
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