Michael Snow a écrit:

Pete/Pcb21 wrote:

...

When we passed 100,000 , 200,000 , 300,000 etc articles there was a fair bit of fanfare.

I think it is only right therefore to announce that en passed the 100,000,000 word mark earlier this month.

This is about the same size as Columbia, Encarta Deluxe and EB put together, and if printed would weigh about the same as George Bush.

Across all languages we reached this milestone back in January, and are now up to 220,000,000 words.

Qualitätsoffensive, anyone?

Pete/Pcb21

Speaking of milestones, aren't we getting pretty close to one million articles covering all languages? A nice handy round number probably worthy of some fanfare. Are we planning a press release or other special efforts to publicize it, either externally or internally? Sometime in September looks like the target date, given our statistical direction.

--Michael Sno w

Well, I started mentionning it late july, but alas with no reaction :-( Mav also mentionned it on another mailing list during this week and made a call for a coordinator. I second this wish he has for someone coordinating the press release.

Mav also suggested that we used the last one, update it accordingly and use this one for the third press release.

Though that would definitly be easier on us all, I am not sure I entirely support this.

After I sent to many many many places the first two press releases, and french press releases as well, and this without being in the press business at all (so I may be totally wrong here), I will however mention a point : I think the second press release was perhaps too long. People do not have time to read a lot. Either they want to just put 5 lines, and such a page will discourage them, or they want something even more fleshy.

The root of the current press releases : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_release

In french, I started a page to gather most facts in short and clear paragraphes. Most informations already existed, but was dispersed in dozen of articles. It still needs to be improved. I would like very much that such a page exist in several languages, and be used as a reference for any interested journalist.

While there is such a page, the press release really do not need to be very long and detailed. We should focus on basics (free, many languages, easy to edit etc...), shortly remind evolution (with a graph and some figures), mentions mediawiki and that is it AND link to a more fleshy wiki page, highly structured so that the journalist quickly goes to his question.

Examples of short (2 propositions - perhaps too short) for the 50000 french. : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ACommuniqu%C3%A9_de_presse_5000...

Press information : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ADossier_de_presse

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It was suggested at some point that the third press release focuses on Slashdot and software/hardware issues. This is clearly outdated after the Jimbo's interview on Slashdot 3 weeks ago. Besides, there seems to be a consensus that focusing on technical issues is not a good idea as it would not "talk" to most readers. Finally, Slashdot is a site in english and this press release should be for all of us. It is especially an important moment for small wikipedias which can potentially make advertisement in big sites, relying on the whole project size.

However, I do think it might be good to mention mediawiki in a paragraph and remind that the software is free to be used by other projects as well. On a purely technical note, a graph showing the evolution of hits (or similar numbers) and figures on the evolution of the number of servers we need now may be a good sign of our progress.

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Michael, would you like to coordinate the 3rd ?

ant