[Announce-l] Wikizine - number: 33
Wikizine
info at wikizine.org
Mon Jul 10 22:23:59 UTC 2006
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.org
Year: 2006 Week: 28 Number: 33
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[<poem>] On the Wikisource project a new tag is now live especially for poems.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/24563/focus=24563
[Bug550] will be fixed soon, block options will change
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27667/focus=27667
[localization] - BetaWiki is a project to centralize the translations and
updates for the MediaWiki system messages. This way all MediaWiki installations
can have a recent and nearly complete translation. When implementing the new
translation care must be taken not to insult projects that are using their own
translation version by overwriting those with the new version without
consulting them first about it. Like was done on the Dutch language Wikipedia.
http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Etusivu - BetaWiki
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27664 -
explanation by GerardM about BetaWiki
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27644/focus=27644
- Protest
[PLURAL] there is a magic word "plural" that can be used to change the spelling
of the user interface depending of the number of items involved. For some
languages there are multiple conjugations depending on the number, PLURAL
allows for that
One example of the syntax for English is:
{{PLURAL:$1|one article|are $1 articles}}
This can be used on MediaWiki-pages the contain text used on dynamic changing
pages.
Example:
[[MediaWiki:Categoryarticlecount]] contains the text used on category-pages to
say how many items there are in that category. But a category can contain one
item and then the correct description would be that there is "one article". If
there are more then the phrase should use "articles", the plural form.
You can see this in practice on the Afrikaanse Wikipedia;
There you see how the magic word it used;
http://af.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Categoryarticlecount&action=edit
And the results on a category with only one item reads "een artikel", what is
the singular form.
http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Amerika
Here you see a category with more than one article and it reads "artikelen", the
plural form.
http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Kaapstad
This construction can be used on those MediaWiki messages where the software is
aware of the potential of a plural form; the English message should have the
PLURAL construct as well.
More about this at;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words#Project-dependent_word_conversions
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5805
=== Foundation ===
[Wikibooks] project is 3 years old now on the 10th of July 2006.
Congratulations! This page gives an overview of the "State of the Project";
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:State_of_the_Project/2006
[Staff] The Wikimedia Foundation has hired a new full-time staff member. She
will be working in the function of administrative assistant in the Florida
office. This person will be answering the phones for the WMF office and emails
send to Wikimedia and the English language Wikipedia queue. The WMF has now 5
people in service and 1 contractor.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff
[Angela] posted an explanation about her resignation from the Board. The Board
accepts her resignation and confirms that there will be a election for a new
Board member starting on 1 September 2006. Until that time Angela stays on the
Board.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/8337/focus=8337
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Board_election
=== Community ===
[Incubator] A vote is proceeding about a logo for the "incubator". This is a
wiki where new projects can start and maybe move later to their own wiki if
they succeed. There is now a vote about a logo for this wiki and about maybe a
new name for it.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Incubator/logo#Voting
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Incubator/name
=== Media ===
[interview] with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko about "How and
Why Wikipedia Works"
http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/10/0353220
[No News] - When someone dies it is always a rush to change their article as
fast as possible on Wikipedia. So also with the article about [[w:en:Kenneth
Lay]]. Reuters has published an article about the short time from when the
article was changed from alive to dead, and about the initial confusion about
the cause of death in some versions in the first hour after the announcement of
the death of Kenneth Lay. Funny is that Reuters has slightly changed their own
article about the Wikipedia article because that had made a mistake. Because it
came from Reuters many others have covered it like CNN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komkommertijd
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2006/07/05/wikipedias-ken-lay-problem/
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-07-06T031803Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-258341-2.xml
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/07/05/lay.wikipedia.reut/index.html
=== Stats ===
[Wiktionary], the dictionary project of the WMF has reached the 1,000,000
definitions milestone. Wiktionary, started on 12 December 2002, is the oldest
WMF project after Wikipedia. The number of people actively working on the
Wiktionaries is, compared with Wikipedia, very few. This means that one person
can make a difference - a big difference. [[User:GerardM]] has managed to make
an astonishing 13,000 pronunciation audio recordings for Wiktionary, with his
bot 200,000 edits on the English Wiktionary and 600,000 on all Wiktionaries.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/Wiktionary_reaches_milestone_1%2C000%2C000_words/en
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2006/07/dubious-record.html
[Edits] - the total number of edits in all Wikimedia projects surpassed 150
million.
[ko.wiki] The Korean Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
http://ko.wikipedia.org
=== Other news ===
[Campaigns] - On Wikia a new Wiki is created: "Campaigns". It launched on the
American Independence Day the 4th of July. It is a new non-Wikimedia project
strongly supported by Jimbo. It is a project about increasing the intelligence
of politics in the USA. This new project has received a lot of attention by the
media.
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Mission_Statement - Open letter by Jimbo about
this project
http://wikiangela.com/blog/wanted-structure-and-ideas-for-the-campaigns-wikia/
http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6091839.html
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6091151.html
=== Did you know ... ===
... that Skype can be useful for your Wikimedia-work?
On our projects many people work together. And there are many ways of
communication to makes the work. But talking to someone can makes things a lot
easier in some situations. You can use Skype for this. It is free to use
between PC to PC. It exists for Windows. And also for Mac OS X and Linux. Those
are crappy versions compared to the Windows versions but the work good enough
to be useful.
You can also talk with up to 5 people in a conference call. And if like to host
a virtual Wikimeet or a open meeting for you chapter maybe the
Skypecast-function can be useful. With you can talk to up to 100 people.
http://www.skype.com/
http://skypecasts.skype.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Instant_Messaging_Wikipedians
Remark; this was not an ad. Wikizine does not get paid for this. Wikizine does
get paid for the Firefox and Picasa button on http://www.wikizine.org if the
software is installed on a windows pc and for the fist time. Total benefits
currently $0,0. The theoretical benefits will be used for expenses related to
Wikizine. If ads where to be included in Wikizine it will be clearly labeled as
such. There are no plans to include ads in Wikzine.
=== Quote ===
"People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see
things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is
kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending that the day won't ever
come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there
is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we
wouldn't keep going at all."
-- Character Allie Keys / science fiction miniserie "Taken"
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Number of subscribers: 451
Editor(s): Walter
Corrector(s): Gary Kirk, Oscar
Special thanks to: Alias
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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