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Year: 2008 Week: 40 Number: 100

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An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community

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=== Technical news ===

[Global blocking] - Stewards are now able to block an IP address or range from editing on all Wikimedia projects (except Meta). This option is intended to be used with restraint and for a short time frame. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking

[Robots.txt] - this is file that exists to control what pages are allowed to be indexed by a search engine. Basically you can use it to keep stuff out of Google. A recent added magic word __NOINDEX__ gives the same result on a specific page. Until now only the developers could edit the robots.txt for all WMF-projects. But now it there a new MediaWiki-page to control that. There is a central part of the Robots.txt that is not in local control. But on the page [[MediaWiki:Robots.txt]] you specify wiki-specific instructions for the spiders of the search engines.

[Global bot] - it is now possible for bots to get a global bot status. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bot_policy#Global_bots

[New tools] - Several users have created external tools for analyzing the history of articles. Statistics, a history search function, page view diagrams. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/09/09/more-story-in-wp-history/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Histlegend -- example of how to include the tools to the history function

[Flood flag] - only at Meta, but it can be requested for other wikis also, is the now the flag "flood". It is actually exactly the same as the "bot flag" only is it named "Flood". The idea is that when a sysop wishes to do many similar, repetitive and non-controversial changes then that user can ask for the "flood"-flag on a bureaucrat. The result is like with a bot that the edits are hidden by default. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Flood_flag

=== Policy ===

[New logo] - Meta, the neutral ground wiki for all Wikimedia Foundation projects and wikis, has a new logo. This was decided after a one week running poll. It used before the WMF-logo and the now changed to a different one but in the same general style. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel/Metawiki_logo_poll

[use of global groups] - the function of global groups is used to give certain groups certain levels of global rights. For example WMF office staff and systems administrators have been given certain global rights. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_global_permissions

[Delete Wikiquote] - a proposal to close the Wikiquote project was closed without consensus. The argument to delete Wikiquote was that some see it as one giant copyright violation and not compatible with WMF goals. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub/On_disbanding_Wikiquote

=== Foundation ===

[Board] - user Frieda of the Italian Wikipedia has resigned from the board of the WMF. The board does not know when she will be replaced for now. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32774

[Wikimedia Nederland] - On November first will Wikimedia NL hold there 4th conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Early registrations are open. http://www.wikimediaconferentie.nl/

=== Community ===

[Books] - It was announced this week that three books were published relating to Wikipedia. Lennart Guldbrandsson from Wikimedia Sverige wrote a book in Swedish titled "Så fungerar Wikipedia", which translates to "How Wikipedia works". Wikimedia Sweden also has its first WikiReader available (about Swedish Birds).

Also, a few English Wikipedians wrote their own book about "How Wikipedia Works" (same title, different book then the Swedish) and they were published around the same time. This book was written by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates. Wikizine is mentioned in it on page 345 in chapter 12. Earlier in 2008 was also published the book the book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual". (ISBN 0596515162) http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/32914 for Swedish books http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/95320 for English book http://nostarch.com/wikipedia.htm -- How Wikipedia Works (free chapter download & order info)

[EO Wikipedia] - the Esperanto Wikipedia is proud of there new main page design. From a text only layout in 2001 has it grown in several steps to the current modern look that was elected out of 7 proposals. http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do/Nova_aspekto

[source:"Wikinews"] - Wikinews is now partially listed on google news (due to flagged revs). The are still working on meeting google's requirement of unique numbers in URLs, so so far only lead articles have been listed. Before this only mirrors of Wikinews where listed. http://tinyurl.com/3prv5u -- view all Wikinews story's in Google News

[RU wiki] - On October 18 and 19 Moscow will play host to the second international Russian-language Wiki-conference related to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as well as other Wikimedia projects. Registrations are open. http://tinyurl.com/4y6ll4

=== Media ===

[Sweden] - Recently the former national telephone company of Sweden (and still the biggest telephone company in Sweden) ran a commercial for their mobile internet. The commercial ran like this: three men sit in a outside oak hot tub. One of them tell the others about how a former king planted oaks in Sweden. The others say: "Well, you know a lot." Another goes out of the water, is gone for a few moments, comes back and gives a comprehensive description of oaks, including their Latin name, while the others are more and more impressed. Then we cut to a sign that says: "Wikipedia in your mobile phone." http://media.resume.se/resPlayer.aspx?type=1&id=1250

[Report about wp &win prize] - Wired.com won a $10,000 award for their reporting about Wikipedia and the Wikipedia-scanner http://www.journalism.co.uk/14/articles/532334.php

[Jimmy] - A classic item once more; interview of Jimmy Wales on TV, Canadian this time. http://tinyurl.com/3h8ppr

=== Stats ===

[No interest?] - after the unblocking of the Chinese language Wikipedia in China the statistics do not indicate a special increase of traffic. http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/09/pretty-much-none-whatsoever/

[ES Wikipedia] - reached 400.000 articles on Saturday, September 22. The Spanish language Wikipedia is the 9th of 256 largest Wikipedias. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

[Special:Statistics] - the statistics page of the wikis now also lists the number of active users of last 30 days. What a lot more meaningful is then the number of user accounts created. For EN Wikipedia is it 153,000 active users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

[If the editors where paid ...] - how much would it have cost? A lot. http://infodisiac.com/blog/2008/10/quantifying-volunteer-contribution/

[Bangla Wikisource] - has reached 1,000 pages milestone on 25th September, 2008. http://bn.wikisource.org/

[EN wikinews] - The English language Wikinews has recieved its 700 000th edit. First edit was Tim uploading the draft version of our logo. The 700,000th edit was by 207.108.15.1 commenting about how connecting strongly religious people with "extremists" (aka the type who blow things up is a bad thing) http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WN:WC#700.2C000_edits http://tinyurl.com/5yf4n9 -- this is how a 700,000th edit looks like

=== Other news ===

[Delitionpedia] - Where do articles go to when the get deleted?" - The go to Deletionpedia. http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/09/21/2342226.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionpedia http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/

[Wikizine] - the good news; Wikizine ID - the Indonesian language version of Wikizine is back after its formal closure in April 2008. This thanks to the effort of [[meta:user:Rex]]. The bad news; DE Wikizine - the German language version of Wikizine is now formally closed because of lack of support. http://id.wikizine.org -- reborn http://de.wikizine.org -- closed

[Wikisage] - Wikisage, a "second generation wiki encyclopedia", is founded by Guido den Broeder. The active users have most a Dutch language Wikipedia background. The difference is that users can also write essays, so a personal POV. And some users can become labeled as an "expert" and be in charge of certain articles. Basically the expert voice gets more important than on Wikipedia. The project exists in Dutch and English but the Dutch version is stronger on this moment. http://www.wikisage.org/

[Interwiki sync] - A page on Meta is created to discus interwiki synchronization problems. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_synchronization

[681 hits for wikipedia] - to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Google the have put online a dump of google from January 2001. Wikipedia was founded on January 15, 2001. In this google there are 681 hits for "wikipedia", now it is 251 million. http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=wikipedia http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/ -- one of least know WMF-sites ; EN Wikipedia edition December 2001

=== Was ist das? ===

Well, if you not know it you look it up .. and there is a very handy FF extension to do so in Wiktionary.

Users of FireFox can install the WikiLook exstension. When installed you just press shift and point to a word in a text. And you get in a small overlay screen the dictionary description of it and a link to look it up in Wikipedia. English language editions only. But due the multi-language nature of Wiktionary the extension remains useful also for non-English language users. http://wikilook.mozdev.org/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7675

=== Quote ===

"If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/If_a_man_speaks_in_a_forest_and_there_is_no_woman_...

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