2007-01-23
Year: 2007 Week: 04 Number: 58
Technical news
- [Auto unproteced] - When protecting a page, it is now possible to specify an expiration date for the protection. So for example, with the new feature, you can semi-protect a page for 5 days, and after those 5 days the protection will be automatically lifted. The box to fill in the expiring time is a simple text box, so you can use the same notations that are used when blocking a user. For example, all of the following should work fine: 10 min, 10 hours, 10 days, or a specific date and or time like 2007-01-25 22:45. For the last option, you may need to convert your local time to the local Wiki's time. To localize: MediaWiki:Protectexpiry.
- [protect all] - Sysops can now select the option "Cascading protection" when protecting a page. The result is that everything on that page is protected, including templates, templates used inside those templates, and images. The only thing that is not protected are images not hosted locally, but on the Wikimedia Commons.
To localize: MediaWiki:Protect-cascade, MediaWiki:Protect-cascadeon, MediaWiki:Cascadeprotected, MediaWiki:Cascadeprotectedwarning - [Special:Protectedpages] - There is a new special page, "Special:Protectedpages". This page, which is only periodically updated, shows all protected pages on your wiki. This page also indicates if the page is fullly protected or semi-protected. You can find it in the normal list of special pages. At the time of this writing, those lists are still empty.
- [rel="nofollow"] - At Jimbo Wales' directive, all external links in the main (article) namespace of the English language Wikipedia are now coded "nofollow". This should help cut spamming of EN Wikipedia. External links on this wiki will no longer help to boost the Google PageRank or perceived importance of those sites in other search engines.
- http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/061137.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_in_blogs#rel.3D.22nofollow.22
- http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/22/1840214
- [perma link?] - Due to changes to the mailing list system and the archive, it is possible that a link to a specific posting in a list archive may be pointing to a different posting. So just like a page on the wiki, a link to a mailing list archive can change. This change does not effect the archive of gmane.org. If you wish to refer to a specific posting you should also include the Message-ID of the post. You can find that in the headers of every email and give a unique reference tag for that message.
- [Wikidown] - Most non-English wikis recently went down for two and a half hours due to a full hard drive on the master database server. A few edits were lost, but the problem appears to be fixed now.
Request for help
- [Sitenotice update] - Request from Erik Möller to all wikis: "the "Thank you" notice can be removed now from
all wikis. Where any donation messages have been in place before the fundraiser, they should be restored." To do this, update the following: MediaWiki:Sitenotice (registered users and anonymous if "anonnotice" is empty) MediaWiki:Anonnotice (anonymous users)
Some wikis are using the anonnotice to run a permanent discreet notice for anonymous users, like EN Wikipedia.
Foundation
- [New hire] - Anthere announced the addition of Sandra Ordonez as Communications Manager to the Wikimedia Foundation office staff. Her role will include press relations, written and oral communications, and various other assignments.
- [Fundraiser] - The Fundraiser officially ended, with an announcement by WMF chair Anthere marking this. On Wikipedia day, 15th January--the project's sixth birthday--the total money raised reached over $1 million USD.
Community
- [Year in review] - The Signpost has written a review about 2006 from the (EN) Wikipedia POV.
Awards
- [Bravo TR.wp] - The Turkish Wikipedia won the Golden Spider - 2006 Best Content Prize. The Golden Spider award is a nationwide, famous and reputable web award organization in Turkey.
Media
- [Wikiasari] - Recently Wikia's new search website project appeared in the news. CNET has a video interview item about it starring Jimmy Wales and, according to CNET, Gil Penchina in the role of CEO of Wikimedia. In real life Gil Penchina is CEO of Wikia, Inc.
- [mainstream] - Wikipedia becomes more and more mainstream. Wikipedia has been used in an commercial advertisement, a popular video clip (White & Nerdy, Weird Al), an American comedy series (30 Rock), and the popular thriller series "Prison Break".
Other news
- [EO stamps] - Israel has issued a postage stamp commemorating Esperanto for 120 years, using text from the Esperanto language Wikipedia.
Corrections Wikizine 57
- [Fundraising] - Corporations matching donations is only over for the current fundraiser, not for this year.
- [Romanian Wikipedia] - They reached 50,000 on the 5th of January 2007. The number of articles did not fall back below the 50,000 articles after that date. Because of a cache problem it appeared to be a lower number of articles.
Did you know ...
... that it is not always easy for others to understand your name on Wiki?
Most if not all human cultures use identifiers to distinguish the different members of their community. The most common identifier is the name of the person. There exists many incompatible naming systems. This can result in errors and miscommunication when converting foreign names names to your own naming system. It is important to be aware of the existence of those differences.
The most basic setup is the first name. Most people have also a family name. People can also have more than one "first name"; middle names. Also the family name can consist of several parts. How these are all used is what can be confusing.
Because it can be "first-name family-name" or "family-name first-name" it can be difficult to tell which is the first name and which is the family name. The best way to make this clear is write the family name in capital letters to indicate the difference.
Because names can appear strange for you, or unisexsual or it in some cultures it is custom to write only the first letter of your first name(s), so you can have a name like "J.H.Janssens", it can be that it is not clear what your sex is based on your name. To solve this problem, it is best to include a clue as to your sex in your username, or on your user page, so that people know how to address you.
Fund drive quotes
"Danke Wikipedia, hast mir schon viel geholfen." -- Gunther Hebein
"Vielen Dank für all eure Projekte." -- Alexander Forst-Rakoczy
"Danke für den Fisch :)" -- Anonym
"I wish you all good luck. You are the future" -- Shams Khassenov
"Thank you all for all your hard work, it's very much appreciated!" -- Patrik Adolfsson
"Wikimedia projects are true examples of Humanity and Civilization at its best. May it continue to change lives as it has changed mine." -- Claudio Martins
"Open access to knowledge is a fundamental human right." -- Kyoko Oka
"Um mundo feito por todos para todos - Paz, amor e liberdade" -- Mauro Costa Couceiro
Number of subscribers: 580, Unique Visitors website last week: 344, Editor(s): Walter, Gary Kirk, Corrector(s): Gary Kirk, Lantoka, Thanks to: Anthere
