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Year: 2006 Week: 52 Number: 55
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An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Auto patrol] - If a user has the "autopatrol" right, then their edits are auto-marked as patrolled. If a user does not have this right, then they can not mark their own edits as patrolled in the normal fashion. http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5411
[Check user] - the interface for check user has been changed. There is now a field to provide a reason for the check. The log where you can see that can only been seen by checkusers.
=== Foundation ===
[Stewards] - The Wikimedia Foundation appointed 12 new stewards; M7, Redux, Effeietsanders, Dbl2010, Shanel, Pathoschild, Guillom, Bastique, Drini, Darkoneko ,Cspurrier, MaxSem http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006-2 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards
=== Community ===
[User:†††††] - When SUL is implemented all users have one user account for all wikis. But also one user name. And because the many languages use different writing systems it means that user names also are written in very different characters. When used on Wikis not using that system writing system it can be that it is impossible to read those user names. This because of unknown writing system for the normal users there or because the are displayed as ††††† because of lack of font support on the computers used by most of the users of that wiki. On some wikis it happens that people with "foreign" user names are blocked because of that. An extensive discussion is ongoing on the mailing list about that and also some possible technical solutions. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12576/focus=12576 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12666/focus=12666 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12909/focus=12909
[DE Wikipedia DVD] - the German language Wikipedia has made a new version of there DVD. It has the look and feel of the real Wikipedia http://wikipedistik.de/2006/12/06/wikipedia-dvd-20062007/ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DVD#Screenshots
=== Media ===
[Something Search] - This weeks buzz is the news of a new project of Wikia for a search engine site. The idea is to make a "wiki-inspired search engine". As usually several media mixed up Wikia and Wikipedia. Also a screenshot form the unrelated Wikia project "Wikisearch" that currently is in beta and not open is to the public caused confusion. http://tinyurl.com/w6gyd - EN Wikinews http://tinyurl.com/y3rm5a - Wikipedia: A free search engine? http://search.wikia.com - the wiki about the new project http://tinyurl.com/ykz9pr - techcrunch.com and there "exclusive screenshot", 120 comments
=== Stats ===
[vls.wikipedia] - The West Flemish Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles. This Wikipedia has only started in April 2006. The idea of Wikipedia in this dialect was not taken serious by many when founded and regarded as a "joke-wikipedia". Now this Wikipedia has jumped over many other older Wikipedias and is now a viable Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Flemish http://vls.wikipedia.org
[nl.wikipedia] - And the have now passed the 250,000 mark with an article about Pierre Soulages, a French painter, engraver and sculptor. http://nl.wikipedia.org
=== Other news ===
[Google Earth] - Google has added Wikipedia to the default setup of Google Earth. Google Earth is software the gives a virtual version of the planet Earth. (win/mac/Linux) If you have Google Earth go to; layers -> Primary database -> geographic web -> wikipedia. The result is that you will see the Wikipedia globe appear on certain places. When you click on them you get information about the location in a pop-up. The information for placing a globe icon comes from the templates on certain articles that contain the geographical co-ordinates of the topic of the article. It is nice but the implementation can be improved. There is also Wikipedia community layer that contains a lot more links. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/opening-my-eyes-to-whole-new-world.ht... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#Wikipedia_and_Panoramio_mashup http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Georeferenzierung/Wikiped...
=== Did you know ... ===
... what a Wikipedia Christmas-vote is?
A Christmas vote is an around the 24the of December on Wikipedia organized advisory poll. The objective is to on completely informal basis figure out of Wikipedia is or not an appropriate place for wishing your fellow man pleasant Christmas days.
=== Quote ===
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. -- Unknown source
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