en.Wikizine.org

• [Suggestions] - A function has been enabled on the projects that gives a drop-down menu with search suggestions.
  • http://leuksman.com/log/2008/04/21/suggestion-search-drop-down/
• [New search tests] - Testing is underway of a new search system to replace the current wiki-search function. The new system is supposed to give a more "google-like" search experience.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37611
  • http://ls2.wikimedia.org/ - location of experimental search system
• [Global blocking?] - A MediaWiki extension has been created that makes global blocking of IP addresses on all WMF wikis possible. Discussion is opened about whether this is a good idea, how it can be used, and by whom.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37704
  • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking
• [Global login] - Users who already have a global account for the projects still need to login to every wiki independently. There is a global login but no global session. The developers are working on this. Brion explains a possible way for doing this and the security risks.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37661
  • http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_session_threat_assessment
• [OpenID] - Regarding the possible implementation of OpenID on the WMF-projects, Brion says: "We may [implement this] at some point, but it's a much lower priority atm, and requires more review to make sure we're happy with how it'll look and behave."
  • http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37671
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID

• [Board Treasurer] - A non-elected seat on the Board of Trustees has been filled by Stuart West, who is the new Treasurer of the Board.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28722 -- announcement on Foundation-l
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28753 -- "Hello" from Stuart West
  • http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board#Stuart_West
• [New jobs] - the Wikimedia Foundation has job openings for 3 functions related to the organisation of future fundraising drives.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28517
• [Wikimania 2008] - Requests for scholarships (financial support) to go to Wikimania in Egypt were opened but are now closed again. Sorry. The timeframe was to short to make it in time for Wikizine.
  • http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
• [Large donation] - the WMF has received a new large donation. It is US$500,000 from Vinod and Neeru Khosla.
  • http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_Releases/Khosla_Gift
• [WMF blog] - a Foundation blog has been started. WMF staff will post news and information about the work they're engaged in that is not large enough to need a press release, but is still noteworthy.  Also, guest contributors, board members and so on can post... but anyone can comment!  
  • http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/11/welcome/

• [Wikiportret] - the Dutch Wikimedia chapter presents a service to make it more easy for famous people or there managers to submit pictures for use on the projects.
  The front-end is a basic website with clear and easy instructions to submit a picture. After this an email is sent to the OTRS team (who need to verify the submission) and if is is accepted they put in on Commons.
  Currently there is only a Dutch language version of this service in use, but support for more languages is possible and intended.  (However, for many languages this already exists by use of a page on the wiki Contact form.)
  To support this project templates are placed on (Dutch) articles of people who have not yet a picture to point to the special website. Also an advertisement is created that can be used for publication by people who wish to support this project.
  • http://www.wikiportret.nl
  • http://www.wikiportrait.org -- multi-language version (only Dutch works)
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission -- English Wikipedia (and four other language versions linked from the sidebar)
• [EN Wikinews] -  a bot active on the English Wikipedia is helping to bring the news articles of the sister project Wikinews to the attention of the Wikipedia readers. This bot will update pages on Wikipedia with relevant Wikinews articles, including the addition of Television portal links to recent Wikinews articles that are about television related topics.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikinews_Importer_Bot
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Television

• [Documentary] - On the Dutch (Netherlands) public television, a 50-minute documentary about Wikipedia has been broadcast at prime time, and uninterrupted by commercials. An English-language version is available on YouTube.
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0
  • http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/39405191/

• [By page view] - Overview of how much traffic the different Wikipedias receive. English gets 50%, German 10% and Japanese 9.5%.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27602
• [2000th featured article] - the English language Wikipedia now has 2000 featured articles. The latest Signpost features an interview about it.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/2000th_FA
• [Wiktionary] - the Japanese has 30,000 definitions, the French has 800,000 definitions and the English also has almost 800,000.
  • http://ja.wiktionary.org
  • http://fr.wiktionary.org

• [Britannica free!] - ... at least for bloggers. The Encyclopædia Britannica is now giving away free accounts for their encyclopedia to "web publishers". Also articles of EB are now free for all to read, if you go to the article by means of an hyperlink posted online. You can only read that one specific article, if you jump to any other article the text is shielded by a subscribe option.... at least if you have javascript enabled. If you disable javascript in your browser, everyone (without the need to login) can read all articles of Britannica.
  • http://britannicanet.com/?page_id=15
  • http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/
  • http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192818/Wikipedia  -- The "Wikipedia" article on EB (if this doesn't work use the online link on en.wikizine.org)
  • http://www.britannica.com/bps/home -- MainPage (disable javascript)
• [Wikipedia book] - come autumn 2008, the publisher Bertelsmann will publish a German-language printed edition of Wikipedia that contains information on about 50,000 topics on 1000 pages. The price will be EUR 19.95 (US$32). The Wikimedia Foundation will receive EUR 1 for every copy.
  • http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/22/wikipedia-in-german-book-form/
  • http://tinyurl.com/4fx4n2   Slashdot news item
• [Wikipedia Chemistry] - Yet another book: KnowledgePublications is publishing an English language book about hydrogen (H). It contains large parts of the chemistry related articles of EN wp.  The book is titled, "The Chemical Educator: for The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen". The published says it is one of the best books ever written on the manufacture of hydrogen.  
  • http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-04-0416-003.shtml
  • http://tinyurl.com/65c49c -- view of the book
• [ID Wikizine] - the Indonesian language edition of Wikizine has been closed due to lack of interest and assistance.

... that even changes that were active during a very brief amount of time can pop up for a long time afterwards as the version a visitor will see?

On the first of April was the tag-line changed several times. That is the string of text that normally says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Seven days later, when requesting an article as a visitor, the version of the article displayed contained the version of the tagline that was active for only one minute on the first of April.

The reason is that for the servers to be able to take care of the very large volume of traffic the sites get, pages are cached. Anonymous users get a previously saved version to see. The cache of a page expires after 31 days.

Moral of the story: even a "joke edit" that is only live for a minute or so can show up to visitors up to a month later.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37598
 

"Spanking or hitting a skunk is not recommended"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/WikiWorld

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 09:07 0 comments

• [Wikimania 2009] - on March 28, after a long wait since February 28, the jury that would determine the location of Wikimania 2009 chose Buenos Aires, Argentina.  This is the first time that a Spanish-speaking country will harbor the largest gathering of Wikimedians.  Other bids for Wikimania 2009 were from the cities of Toronto (Canada), Brisbane (Australia), and Karlsruhe (Germany).

• [Interview] - In a brief interview, Patrician Lorente (President of Wikimedia Argentina) responded to questions about Buenos Aires as headquarters of Wikimania 2009.

<babelfish translation>

Wikizine: How arose the restlessness from Wikimania in Wikimedia Argentina?

Patricio: It even arose before organizing to us like Wikimedia Argentina formally. Our sensation is as much the Spanish-speaking world as the South hemisphere has, by different reasons, a marginal participation in the global community of Wikimedia, that does not correspond with the real participation in the projects. Even let us remember that the Wikipedia in Spanish second more is visited and than the Spanish-speaking community, with its overwhelming heterogeneity and complexity is growing and it is being organized of admirable way.

W: Which were the main problems that were in the organization?

P: We have not had serious problems still, but the hard work just begins. Until now we have had to work in the development of a project, from the resolution of the jury of Wikimanía 2009 we will have to take that project to the practice.

W: What is the hope of this event?
P: We hope to turn to the Spanish-speaking community and the South hemisphere assets protagonists of the global dynamics of the Wikimedia projects. We want to show our European and North American friends whom an anxious community exists here and worker who is perhaps sometimes invisible for many. Perhaps that the ideal of the free knowledge has a more meant and particular importance in these places of the world in which the difficulties to the access to the education and the knowledge are multiplied for vast social sectors.

W: A message for the readers of Wikizine.
P: That we waited for them in Buenos Aires! The projects brothers of the Wikipedia already take own flight and is necessary to show them the community.

</babelfish translation>

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 20:41 0 comments

• SUL. Single User Login. Bug 57. Unified login. One login for all wikis. The mythical uberlogin has migrated to The Real World.
  
  The migration function is enabled currently for sysops only. The options to migrate can be found on the first page of the account preferences page on the projects were you're a sysop. From there you can follow the instructions to claim all you accounts on all wikis that have the same username. After the migration you can log on all these wikis with the same password.
  
  For the migration to work you need to have the same email address or password on all your user accounts. You can claim the rest of the accounts with your name by providing their password.
  
  The current sysop-only migration is to collect information for the general user migration later. Sysops who have problems are strongly encouraged to report them so that they can be fixed before SUL is rolled out generally.
  
  By migrating now (if you can) you have the advantage that you can use that username to log in to all WMF wikis as long as there is not a local user account with your name that is not yours.
  
  Please note that not everhings works yet when you migrate. For example renaming an account can not be done (for now at least). Inform you before you do it.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37290
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37434
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
• [Upload auto-confirmed] - upload of files on all Wikimedia sites except Commons is now restricted to auto-confirmed users. That are user accounts older then 4 days.
• http://tinyurl.com/2vuz8m
• [Search changed] - the technical side of the search function of the wikis has changed. As a result some wikis who have used javascript to include external search engines may experience glitches requiring an update of the local code.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37379
• http://leuksman.com/log/2008/03/21/lucenesearch-is-dead-long-live-mwsearch/

• [Stable Versions] - testwikis are setup for tests of the stable versions function. This function makes it possible to rate the quality of an article. Feedback is requested from users who volunteer to test the function.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37372
• [Scholarship] - translations are requested of the Wikimania 2008 scholarships information page.
• http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation/Scholarships

• [+ $3,000,000]  - The board of the "Alfred P. Sloan Foundation" has granted the Wikimedia Foundation 1 million dollars (US) per year for the next three years. This is the largest donation made to the Foundation in its history. Note: 1 million USD = 642302 EUR / 501669 GBP
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27379
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan_Foundation
• http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17324/53/
• [New hire] - the WMF has hired a new accountant, Mary Lou Secoquian, who will work in San Francisco.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27279

• [NotTheWikipediaWeekly] - On the English language Wikipedia a new audio podcast project about Wikipedia has started. They announce a time to meet in a skypecast, talk about Wikipedia topics and publish the recordings.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly

• [IT Wikipedia] - The Italian Wikipedia has won the a category award of "PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore" a competition organized by the most important business newspaper in Italy (Il Sole 24 ore). The winners were selected by jury from the shortlist composed by the 5 sites that obtained the highest score through a popular vote.  This is the second time that it.wiki wins "PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore". Last time was two years ago.
• http://premiowww.ilsole24ore.com/vincitori.php

• [Animated stats] - Our grandmaster of statistics Erik Zachte has made a new form of Wikipedia-stats. Animated statistics; bubbles representing the projects floating true time and number of articles. It is available in an interactive format that works currently with FireFox 3.0 release candidate. A flash version that works with any browser (8MB) is also available.
• http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Wikistats/
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27393

• [Schoolbook] - A publisher of schoolbooks in Japan is using a Wikipedia map as illustration. It is the world map of death penalty sentences.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27395
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Death_Penalty_World_Map.png

... Microsoft also uses MediaWiki ?

Microsoft researcher Steve Ickman said while Microsoft SharePoint is great, MediaWiki has valuable features not found  in SharePoint - particularly the ability to archive.

• http://tinyurl.com/ysbz6n
• http://tinyurl.com/2ar5jo

"Do not leave your children unattended. All unattended children will be eaten." -- Friendly advice from vulture in movie "Ice age 2"

Number of subscribers: 712 , Unique Visitors website last week: 132 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): 2 who do not wish to take credit for it , Thanks to: Nick , Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org , Website: http://www.wikizine.org , Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,  validity and especially but not limited to,  correct grammar and spelling. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html  

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 16:09 0 comments