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Year: 2009 Week: 33 Number: 115

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Tech Update] - the sysadmins posted a tech update of what happened last week and what will be coming up this week and beyond. http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/weekly-wiki-tech-update/ -- techblog post

[clone $brion;] - Brion Vibber, the current Foundation CTO, announced that they want to split his position into two. There will be a new Chief Technical Officer and Brion will become the "Senior Software Architect"; more information about the responsibilities of each can be found on the blog post. http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/cto-position-split/ -- techblog post

["Try Beta"] - Have you noticed the new ?Try Beta? link at the top of Wikimedia project sites? The usability team is proud to introduce the new skin, Vector, and the newly enhanced edit toolbar. Check it out and give them your feedback! http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/try-the-usability-beta/ -- techblog post

[pl.wp: Report a Problem] - The Polish Wikipedia has put together a neat little pop-up tool for reporting errors in articles. (The "Zg?o? b??d" link in the sidebar.) http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-August/102708.html -- post on wikien-l

[MW.org: FlaggedRevs] - MediaWiki.org is currently testing out Flagged Revisions in their Manual and Help namespaces. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/043806.html -- reason for FlaggedRevs http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-August/044582.html -- brion telling about it being enabled

[Image Annotations] - a hack for Wikimedia Commons allows for image annotations, just like Flickr has them, be sure to check it out! http://ur1.ca/8tik -- example image http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator -- help page

[MediaWiki Wave] - a new project, "MediaWiki Wave", has been launched. It attempts to find a way for Google Wave, a communication and collaboration tool in development, to work with and make the best of MediaWiki. http://mediawikiwave.blogspot.com/ -- blog http://code.google.com/p/mediawikiwave/ -- project code

=== Request for help ===

[BBC & Wikimania] - this is a weird request for help, because it doesn't come from the community. The BBC's "Digital Revolution", an open and collaborative documentary on the way the web is changing our lives, wants to come to Wikimania 2009 but can't make it! They're looking for people to film some content for them, are you going to Wikimania and interested? Visit the blog post for more information and contact them ASAP. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/08/wikimania-2009-are-you-...

=== Proposals ===

[Global sysop opt-out] - a new proposal about global sysops has been created and feedback is requested! http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops/opt-out_proposal

=== Foundation ===

[Report to the Board] - Sue Gardner, the Executive Director, has published her report to the Board of Trustees for April 2009. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-August/053920.html

[Board Election Results] - the results of the Board of Trustees elections have been released; the three winners are: Ting Chen (Wing), Kat Walsh (Mindspillage), and Samuel Klein (Sj). The Election Committee started a "post-mortem" section to collect commentary for future elections. Your comments on what went wrong and what went right will be highly appreciated. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Results/en -- results http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2009#Post_mortem -- post mortem

=== Agenda ===

[IN: WP Takes Chennai] - Are you in India? Love Wikipedia? Got a camera? Then participate in 'Wikipedia Takes Chennai' this Sunday (August 16). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Chennai

=== Community ===

[WMFR: Multimedia Usability] - Wikimédia France has announced a new Multimedia Usability Project. It is intended to support and compliment the Wikimedia Foundation's project funded by the Foundation. http://blog.wikimedia.fr/lancement-du-multimedia-usability-project-822 http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/02/ford-foundation-awards-300k-grant-for-w... -- WMF project

[MW Translation Rally] - Translatewiki.net, the site that coordinates translations of the MediaWiki software, is running a translation rally. Contribute 500 MediaWiki translations and share in 1,000 Euro! http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Project:Rally-2009-08 http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/08/rally-is-hit.html

[WikiExpedition] - the Polish community has had its first annual WikiExpedition. The ten-day journey to the Polish region of Podlasie (northeastern part), focusing on collecting material that would be used to enrich Wikimedia project content with photographs, has brought gigabytes of photos and tons of material. http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiekspedycja (pl) http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiekspedycja#Wikiekspedycja_w_mediach -- media coverage (pl) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikiekspedycja_2009 -- images

[New wikis] - a large number of new projects were created this week: 5 content projects and 2 chapter wikis. The 5 content projects were Sorani Wikipedia (ckb), Western Panjabi Wikipedia (pnb), Mirandese Wikipedia (mwl), Acehnese Wikipedia (ace), Turkish Wikinews (tr) and the 2 chapter wikis, Wikmedia Ukraine (ua) and Wikimedia Colombia (co; in planning). https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20181 -- bug: content projects https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19533 -- bug: ua.wikimedia.org https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19609 -- bug: co.wikimedia.org

=== Media ===

[Usability Feedback] - Mashable, "the social media guide" has posted an article covering Wikipedia's recent usability release. http://mashable.com/2009/08/07/wikipedia-redesign/

[Wikipedia's on the wane] - the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian both ran an article about a new California study related to Wikipedia. The study found the number of new articles added a month was on a steep decline and new contributors were being pushed out by the rusted-on Wikipedia elite. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikipedias-on-the-wane-stud... http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/wikipedia-deletionist-inclu...

[Wikimanía] - a Spanish technology site reports on Wikimania and Richard Stallman's keynote ("the Father of the Free Software Movement") http://www.infobaeprofesional.com/notas/85723-El-padre-del-software-libre-da... (es)

[GLAM-WIKI coverage] - the GLAM-Wiki conference in Australia has gotten a lot of media coverage, and the organizers are keeping a list on their site. One of the articles has an interesting analogy from Liam Wyatt, "People who like sausages or obeying the law shouldn't see either being made, and the same goes for encyclopedias - it's a messy process but the outcome is good." Tim Starling has also posted a report on what he saw while he attended. http://glam.wikimedia.org.au/ -- glam coverage listed http://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/5/52/GLAM-WIKI_twitter_hashtag_transcript.p... -- 59 page pdf with all the #glam-wiki tweets http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-August/053946.html -- Tim's report

[Wikiversity] - Wikiversity was mentioned in a news article! The Colombia news site, Unviersia, ran an article entitled: "Web 2.0 to share and build collective knowledge" and used Wikiversity as one of its examples. http://www.universia.net.co/noticias/mas-noticias/web-2.0-para-compartir-y-c... (es)

=== Stats ===

[sr.wn 10k] - the Serbian Wikinews has reached 10,000 articles and is now the second largest Wikinews. http://tinyurl.com/srwn10k -- ten thousandth article

[pt.wp 500k] - following closely behind the Spanish Wikipedia (es), the Portuguese Wikipedia has also reached 500,000 articles!

=== Quote ===

"Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were." - Cherie Carter-Scott

////////////////////////////////////////// Editor(s): Alex, Casey Corrector(s): Ryan, MarkW Thanks to: Techman224, Wpedzich, Naoko, Erik, Brion, Milos, Pharos, @wikipedian, private musings, Sage, Siebrand, Julien, NuclearWarfare, Liam, Lijealso, Gerard Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org Website: http://www.wikizine.org //////////////////////////////////////////

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