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From: EN Wikizine <info-en(a)wikizine.org>
Date: Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:49 PM
Subject: EN Wikizine - Year: 2009 Week: 23 Number: 107
To: announce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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.org
Year: 2009 Week: 23 Number: 107
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Chrome Support for Ogg] - Google's Chrome browser is going to support
Theora video (the type of audio files that Wikimedia uses) natively
with the HTML5 video tag. Earlier announced Mozilla also this support
in there upcoming version Firefox 3.5
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/052123.htmlhttp://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/05/google-chrome-3-adds-html5.html
[Usability] - The Usability Team has been working on a number of new
projects that hope to make editing easier. Among others, there is a
new skin (vector) and an action-grouped toolbar. The toolbar which
hides the overwhelming number of tool icons which are not being used
by novice users and the new skin has a streamlined tab layout. Lots of
clutters will be removed from the interface.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/02/ -- blog post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Designs -- design descriptions on
usability wiki
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vectorskin.png -- image of skin
[New search] - After some initial hardware issues, the new search
backend/servers has been enabled on all wikis. This new feature has
many cool parts, including "did you mean", wild cards, prefix, etc.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/040022.html --
full feature list
[Google Wave] - Google has recently announced a new communication and
collaboration tool called Google Wave. There was a long thread on
foundation-l about how this "wiki-like" tool could fit in with
Wikimedia projects.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/052135.html
-- mailing list thread
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave -- Wikipedia article
=== Request for help ===
[Licensing update] - GFDL wikis must migrate their licenses by August
1 to remain compatible with Wikimedia projects. Help is needed to
identify and contact the wikis affected.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Outreach
[Signpost] - The Wikipedia Signpost is looking for writers. A few
have signed up so far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-18/From_t…
=== Proposals ===
[Social bookmarking] - EN Wikinews has voted in favor of the
introduction of links to add articles to social bookmarking sites such
as Facebook and Delicious. On news stories, there is now a template
available to share it.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2009-May/001512.html
-- mailing list proposal
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#Social_bookmark…
onwiki
discussion
=== Foundation ===
[Trustee elections] - Three community representatives will be elected
to the Wikimedia Foundation board this summer. The election is
scheduled to run from July 28-August 10, the vote time was extended to
two weeks after input from the community.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/enhttp://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/052070.html
=== Community ===
[TS: New servers] - The Toolserver received a new shipment of servers
that will be used as a new place for user home directories, a
replacement for zedler (s2 database), a second login server, and an
extra toolserver for OpenStreetMap stuff. All the new servers should
be up and running before the next maintenance period, July 6.
[POTY 2008] - The Third Annual Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year
Competition has concluded and the results are now available. The
winner was "Horses on Bianditz mountain" by Mikel Ortega.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biandintz_eta_zaldiak_-_modified2.jpg
-- Winning image
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2008/Results--
Results
[First logo creator] - The creator of Wikipedia's first logo has
finally realized that we used his logo when he googled himself! ;-)
Bjørn Smestad, had submitted his idea to a Nupedia logo competition
and, while it didn't win that competition, it became the official
Wikipedia logo for around 8 months (and served as a basis for the
current logo).
http://bjornsmestad.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-wikipedia-logo.html --
creator's blog post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_logos -- Wikipedia
logos through the years
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2009/05/28/another-reason-not-to-copyright-…
blog post by sj on the
subject
[SF+MakerFaire] - The San Francisco Wikimedians and the Wikimedia
Foundation office made an appearance at the San Mateo MakerFaire. The
event went very well and was mostly community run. Visitors to the
booth found Wikimedia trading cards and a guess the language game!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_Faire -- Wikipedia article
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_Trading_Card_…
trading
cards
http://austinhair.org/guess/ -- guess the Wikipedia language
=== Media ===
[ArbCom + Scientology] - The English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
(final level of dispute resolution) closed a 6-month long case
involving the Church of Scientology articles. This news was quickly
picked up by the tech press and is making its way through the
mainstream papers, with articles in many languages (including English,
German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Danish).
http://tinyurl.com/ScientologyWiki -- Google News results
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology…
arbitration case
[nowiki comparison] - A Norwegian newspaper (VG, Verdens Gang)
compared Wikipedia in Norsk (Bokmål) and Store Norske Leksikon. The
latter encyclopedia is a large traditional paper lexicon transferred
to a web portal, together with to other lexicons; one medical and
health lexicon
and one biographical lexicon. The roundup focused on five different
areas; history, culture, entertainment, society and politics, and
sport. Wikipedia either won or tied in all categories.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-June/052282.html --
mailing list post description
http://bayimg.com/image/laannaacf.jpg -- scan of the article
[WMUK denied charity] - Wikimedia UK, the British chapter of the
Wikimedia Foundation, was recently denied charity status by HMRC (the
organization that controls charity status in the UK). The HMRC
stating that production of an encyclopaedia is not a charitable
purpose; the story was listed on the front page of Charity Finance, a
charity-related news site.
http://www.charityfinance.co.uk/home/content.php?id=2876&pg=15&cat=30 --
story
http://uk.wikimedia.org -- Wikimedia UK
=== Stats ===
[wp] - The Ukrainian Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles, the
Arabic Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles, and the Malayalam
Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
http://tinyurl.com/ukwp150k -- 150,000th article (uk.wp)
http://tinyurl.com/arwp100x -- 100,000th article (ar.wp)
http://tinyurl.com/mlwp10k -- 10,000th article (ml.wp)
[wikt] - The Italian Wiktionary has reached 100,000 entries and the
Ukrainian Wiktionary has reached 20,000 entries.
http://tinyurl.com/ukwikt20k -- 20,000th entry (uk.wikt)
[more] - More stats: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News
=== Other news ===
[Open Source City] - The Vancouver (in British Columbia, Canada) city
council has stated it will try to make its data open and accessible to
everyone (when possible), opting for open standards and considering
open source software when replacing existing applications.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/22/tech-vancouver-open-source-st…
[OSM Italy] - The first conference of the Italian Open Street Map
(OSM) will be held in Trento, Italy between June 5 and 6. The OSM
software will be integrated into Wikimedia sites and Wikimedia Italia
is also sponsoring this conference.
http://osmit.fbk.eu -- conference website
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OSM -- Meta page on the integration
[WMDE: Job] - Wikimedia Deutschland, the German chapter of the
Wikimedia Foundation, is currently hiring a new Executive
Director/Geschäftsführer. Applications are being accepted until June
13.
http://neu.wikimedia.de/index.php?id=95 -- more information (German)
=== Quote ===
"I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would
not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights.
This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock
that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."
-- Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, speech to the Aero Club
of France, 1908
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