[Foundation-l] EN Wikizine - Year: 2009 Week: 27 Number: 110

[EN Wikizine]

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                                     .org

Year: 2009  Week: 27  Number: 110

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Michael Jackson Kills WP] - Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop", died  
this week and nearly took Wikipedia down with him (as well as many  
other websites).  Wikimedia sites were unresponsive for a whole due to  
the large number of page hits.  The Michael Jackson article got nearly  
6 *million* hits on June 26, more than the Main Page.
In the evening of the 2th July (UTC) Wikipedia&Co was virtually down  
because of power outage of the European servers. The remaining servers  
choked on the additional traffic routed to them.
http://stats.grok.se/en/200906/Michael_Jackson -- page hit statistics
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/current-events/ -- techblog  
explanation of issues
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/News_of_Michael_Jackson's_death_overloads_Internet_sites_and_sparks_hoaxes -- wikinews  
article
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/power-outage-in-wikimedias-european-servers/ -- wiki  
down

[Usability] - the Usability team has released its first set of  
usability improvement (the "acai" release) for testing.  As of press  
time, the new "vector" skin has been made available on all wikis for  
users who select it from their preferences, please help test the new  
features!
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/first-usability-release-is-coming-up-soon/ -- blog  
post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases#Acai -- "acai" release  
description

[Usability BIS] - one aspect is already live by default; the new  
design of the search results. Just use the internal search and see.
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Designs#Search_Results

=== Request for help ===

[Fundraising 2009] - the Wikimedia Foundation is preparing for its  
next fundraiser and would like feedback from the community on some of  
the pages it has developed so far.  In addition to the creation of a  
new survey that they would like comments on, the Foundation is also  
trying to enhance the visibility of the donate button. The new buttons  
will be placed on the skin and will be viewable on every page. There  
are also several design proposals that need community input!
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/25/would-you-press-this-button/ --  
blog post about it
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade --  
buttons
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Survey -- survey

=== Foundation ===

[Licensing] - The "licensing update" changes have now been rolled out  
to all languages and projects, with the new license being featured in  
the footer and new interface items to translate for your wiki.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/30/licensing-update-rolled-out-in-all-wikimedia-wikis/ -- blog  
post
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-June/000959.html --  
translation steps
http://tinyurl.com/LU-interface-trans -- betawiki trans interface

[Board election] - Once again an election for the board of trustees of  
the Wikimedia Foundation is coming up. It is for 3 seats this time.  
But before there can be elections there must be someone to vote for.  
Submissions of candidacy are open between 6th and 20th July.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009

[New grant: Commons] - the Wikimedia Foundation was just awarded a  
US$300,000 grant that will research problems with and design new  
tools/fix current tools for uploading files to the global Wikimedia  
image repository, the Wikimedia Commons.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/02/ford-foundation-awards-300k-grant-for-wikimedia-commons/ -- blog  
post
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Ford_Foundation_Grant_July_2009 -- press  
release
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_Ford_Multimedia_Participation_Project.pdf -- full grant  
proposal

[Job: "Bookshelf"] - as a further development from the "Scribus  
operator" volunteer position noted in Wikizine a few months ago, a new  
job opening has been posted for project manager of the "Bookshelf"  
project.  The "Bookshelf" project strives to develop a slate of basic  
educational materials (print, online and video) to attract new authors  
and editors to Wikipedia.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Project_Manager_Bookshelf --  
job opening
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_outreach/Get_involved --  
volunteer position, scribus operator

=== Community ===

[David Rohde] - it turns out that Wikipedia, along with tons of other  
media outlets, kept the kidnapping of journalist David Rohde out of  
its article on him.  This has caused a few Wikipedians and Wikipedia  
critics to note this and either scream censorship or just point out  
the fact that it was unsourced information that could help save  
someone's life by erring on the side of caution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html?ref=media --  
nytimes article
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/06/29/was-wikipedia-correct-to-censor-news-of-david-rohdes-capture/ -- blog post about  
censorship
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/29/2120257/Wikipedia-Censored-To-Protect-Captive-Reporter -- slashdot  
discussion

[A reliable article?] - A new tool tries to help make scholars feel  
better about using Wikipedia by telling how reliable an article seems  
to be by using "wikibu-points".  These points are based on statistical  
criteria and represent only possibilities, the creators hope that  
warnings will help people think to look at the discussion pages or  
article history.  Wikibu is only available on the German Wikipedia at  
this time.
http://www.wikibu.ch/ -- site/tool
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2009-July/000833.html --  
mailing list post

[EN Wikibooks] - is now using Meta's unified "user language" template.  
It will enable greater collaboration on the textbooks that teach  
foreign languages.

[enwp AFD] - An interesting AFD (deletion discussion) on the English  
Wikipedia was recently closed -- it resulted in the deletion of 4077  
articles, probably the most ever from a single AFD on enwp!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anybot's_algae_articles -- deletion  
discussion

=== Media ===

[No tourists] - an article by a New Zealand newspaper tells that  
"references to gang violence and crime on Palmerston North's Wikipedia  
page have seen overseas investors and professionals shy away from the  
city"!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/2516472/Wikipedia-entries-slag-off-Palmerston-North

=== Stats ===

[bn.wp] - The Bengali Wikipedia (bn) has reached 20,000 articles.
http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/???????????_???????_?_?????????_?????_???????_???  
-- 20,000th article

=== Other news ===

[Who owns transit schedules?] - Only marginally related but  
interesting nevertheless, the subject of a recent battle has been  
pretty simple: who owns the copyright to bus arrival times?  Public  
transportation agencies are trying to assert that they own the times  
and stop people from making iPhone apps (and similar items) off of the  
content, so that they can do it themselves and charge people.  Not  
very FOSS of them!
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090628/1419595382.shtml

[Wikizine at Foundation-l] - Wikizine will now be featured on  
foundation-l too!  Thanks to Milos for proposing it and the list  
members for agreeing.
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation

[Firefox 3.5] - ... is finally out. This main stream browser supports  
natively Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis, the media file formats our  
projects are using.
http://www.mozilla.com/

=== Quote ===

"Programming languages are like cats. It is easier to get a new cat  
than to get an old cat fixed." -- Douglas Crockford

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Editor(s): Casey, Walter
Corrector(s): Alex
Thanks to: Rand, Steve Bennett, Brion, Domas, Nando, Erik, Belayet,  
Naoko, Chad, Kul, Jay, Signpost, Adrignola, rainman-sr
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
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