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Year: 2007 Week: 05 Number: 59

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Contact form] - Thanks to JeLuf there is now a contact form. This form makes it easier for visitors of the various projects to send a message to the email team of the Wikimedia Projects. Currently there is a live form for the Dutch and English language email team. Other teams can also get the form for their language. Contact JeLuF for that at #wikimedia-tech http://ticket.wikimedia.org/otrs/webform.pl?Language=en -- yes it works, grow up and do not test it

=== Request for help ===

[Open question] - What would the ideal wiki software be like? Discuss at [[meta:MediaWiki Ideal]]. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Ideal

=== Foundation ===

[Advisory Board] - Announced in june 2006, the Wikimedia Advisory Board has finally been created. Anthere presented the members of the new board. It consists of 18 people for now. The members were asked to join. See the list on [[wikimedia:Advisory Board]]. The all have an impressive and relevant curriculum vitae. Picking out a few for this article would not be fair. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14066 http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board

[New hire] - The Wikimedia Foundation has hired a new full-time employee, Carolyn Doran, to work as Chief Operations Officer (COO). Carolyn was already working for the WMF but only part-time via an interim agency. The Chief Operations Officer (COO) is responsible for the overall administration and business operations of the Wikimedia Project. Areas of responsibility include administration, personnel and fiscal management. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14063 -- Announcement by Anthere, Chair WMF http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14064 -- (must read!) long clarification about the difference between the COO, CEO and board

[Other] - The board appointed Jan-Bart de Vreede, WMF board member, as Vice-Chair of the WMF-board. Anthere is and remains the Chair. The board also approved a gift policy. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Gift_Policies

=== Community ===

[Pic of the Year] - Commons is holding a "Best picture of the year 2006" election. Every day the Wikimedia Commons showcases a "Picture of the Day" on their main page, the best from over one million files. In round one users can choose from all the pictures of the day over the last year. And in round two the community will vote for the best of them all. If you would like to vote but you are not active on commons you can use your seniority on your home-wiki as well. And if you do not vote, bookmark that page and view the photos later. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006

=== Awards ===

[Honour] - The "Forum of Young Global Leaders" has published there yearly lists of people up to 40 years old whom they describe as "the top 250 young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, their commitment to society and their potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world." - The conection with Wikimedia is that Jimmy Wales is one of these 250. http://www.younggloballeaders.org/What_s_new/World_Economic_Forum_Announces_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_of_Young_Global_Leaders

=== Media ===

[Podshow] - Jimmy Wales on the rusiriusradio.com podcast. Long interview with Jimmy starts at index 07:45 http://www.rusiriusradio.com/2007/01/22/show-92-wikipedia-man-jimmy-wales/

[WikiLaw] - In the USA, there are Wikipedia entries that are frequently being used by judges in their legal rulings. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html

=== Stats ===

[hu.wikibooks] - The Hungarian Wikibooks has reached over 2000 book modules. http://hu.wikibooks.org

[Lurkers] - Wikia has done some research on their wikis concerning what % of the traffic is coming from logged in users and people who were not logged in. For the Wikia wikis, 90% of all visitors are people who visit the wiki but rarely participate... (in other words, people who are lurking). For Wikia, there are great differences between the wikis. Some have almost no logged in users active, on others almost all users are logged in. Read Angela's post about it and discover some of very special wikis the have at Wikia. http://wikiangela.com/blog/participation-inequality/

[Influential] - Brandchannel published its annual list of the most influential brands. Of the global top 5, Wikipedia takes 4th place in the category, "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?" This is according the 3,625 people that answered that question. And while Wikipedia may be 4th place globally, it is only in the USA and Canada that Wikipedia seems to rank high. Everywhere else Wikipedia ranks below the 10th place. YouTube, Wikipedia storm into 2006 brand ranking http://news.com.com/2100-1047_3-6153686.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandchannel

=== Other news ===

[Help for Wikimania] - Wikia, Inc is donating 50% of the work time of Wikia staff member KJ for the next six months to work on Wikimania 2007. She will be one of the main organizers and will focus heavily on sponsorship for Wikimania. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14051 http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:KaurJmeb - Kj's userpage

=== Did you know ... ===

... that what you see is not always what the visitor sees?

When you are working on the wikis, you are most likely doing that as a registered user. And there is a good chance you have selected the option in you preferences "Disable page caching". But when a normal visitor views a wiki, they normally see a cached version of that page. A cache is a copy of the page, and this is done because it is much less stressful for the servers then creating a new page from the wiki-text every single time. The result is that it is quite likely when viewing a recently updated page that an anonymous visitor will not see the updated version of that page immediately. By default, cached versions of a page expire after one week.

When a topic is popular in the media and you are working on that article's topic, what often happens is that visitors will not be able to see your changes. This is a shame.

Another problem involves the number of articles tally. Due to page caching, this number is also often out of date. So for example, news of a Wiki's 10,000th post may be going around and people may be celebrating and visiting that Wiki, but the number of posts they see will be less than the actual number, making it appear to be below the mark that they're celebrating.

To fix this you can manually flush the cache. To do this, click on "edit". This url should end with "action=edit". Change that to "action=purge" and reload. This will clear the cache and the new version will be shown to visitors.

=== Fund drive quotes ===

"I don't know anything anymore, but that's all right. Wikipedia knows and remembers everything for me!" -- David Stattler "As a university student, wikipedia has been an invaluable tool in furthering my education. I can't tell you how many times I used wiki for help or clarification with difficult concepts. Thank you Wiki" -- Anonymous "College life is a bitch, Wikipedia makes it a bitch worth putting up with" -- Dyne Li "I am a Google Employee, and on behalf of everyone here we are all proud of what the Internet has become, and needless to say Wikipedia has played a very large role. Long live Wikipedia, and its users!" -- Anonymous "I have no comment at this time." -- Anonymous "I've probably learned more from Wikipedia that from Columbia University (Which I attend)" -- Haralampos Psaradellis "In a world of increasingly sealed off knowledge, Wikipedia provides charitable enlightenment." -- Anonymous "Eine der besten Ideen in der Geschichte der Menschheit!" -- Stephan Lindner "This is for my girls who play on Wikipedia alllll day at work!" -- Elizabeth McClellan

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