[Wikipedia-l] press release, anticipation

[Daniel Mayer]

Anthere wrote:
>I am very excited by the first press release for
>wikimedia. Incidently, I thank the one who 
>suggested a multilingual release (I think it is 
>Mav, but messages get a lost among 95 digests
>...well..). 

Yep - it was me. You are welcome! 

>Whether the english wikipedia has a 
>release for 200000 is good and should be done, 
>but a common release for the fundation is ... the 
>good way imho.

Unless a bot is set loose, en.wiki will not hit 200,000 articles until at 
least December. 150,000 is not a really important milestone for a separate 
press release, IMO, especially since the project as a whole will reach 
300,000 at about the same time as en.wiki hits 150,000. 

>Anticipating : 
>1) It may have been said somewhere, but when 
>can we roughly said to have reach 300 000 
>together ? It does not need to be very precise 
>since no journalists will be able to check numbers 
>really :-) 

I'm thinking the end of the month or early next month. But, IMO, we can 
distribute the press release anytime while we are in the 300,000 to 310,000 
range. That should give us a little bit more time if we need it. 

>2) When is decided that the time is the good 
>one for the press release, could we organise 
>a sort of schedule ? Each time the english wiki 
>has a press release, everything is slowed down, 
>last time the german release also had a clear 
>impact on availability. 

I dunno - there really aren't any slow times anymore. Before the press release 
is released one of the developers should disable all non-vital slow features 
from the largest 7 wikis. 

>Should not we a bit try to schedule an
>order among wikis, or some rough dates, 
>so we can smooth the peak ?

It might make sense to hold-off on the English release for a few days while 
the other language press releases are distributed. There is a very good 
chance that the release of the English version will make the website very, 
very slow (en.wiki may have to be in read-only mode for a while once that 
happens). 

>3) the links at the bottom of the message are 
>all english wikipedia oriented ? I saw Youssef 
>translation kept the english links. Have other wikis 
>did the same or should not we when possible have 
>each wiki links (for best prose; wikipedia description...)

Please change those links to point to any corresponding pages in French. You 
can also translate the most important parts of the English pages into French 
and then link to those new pages. This translating work doesn't have to wait 
for the press release on meta to be finished. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)