en.Wikizine.org

• [Foundation Licensing] - The WMF approved a licensing policy for its projects. The policy has an impact on all projects about how they are allowed to use media (like photos, logos). The policy heavily restricts the use of media under a "Fair use" or similar status and allows it only under very specific circumstance if no other possibility exists. All new files uploaded from March 23, 2007 must comply with the new policy or be deleted. Please read the policy. Reading this text is no substitute.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15318
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_policy_FAQ_draft -- *!*draft*!*
  

• [NL.wikibooks] - The Wikibooks NL community has decided to change the default license of textbooks for the future. That will mean that from a certainpoint in the near future all new submitted changes and new texts will be default double licenced under GNU FDL *and* CC-BY-SA-2.5 or later.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15213
• http://nl.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Dubbellicentie
  

• [Upgrade] - A large hardware purchase for $280,000 is approved. This will include 36 Apache servers and 20 Squids. After this upgrade the server park will be able to handle the traffic until it doubles from the current one.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Hardware_purchase_March_2007
• [Quiz]  - On Wikiversity (that is a WMF project) is the MediaWiki quiz extension enabled. With this extension you can make wiki-based quizzes.
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Quiz
  

• [EN Wikinews] - There is interest by some users of EN Wikinews to try to make a video news bulletin. The problem is that there is need for people who know how to do that. People who are interested to help can say so in the "Water cooler".
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#wikinews_Video  -- Like to help?
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Broadcast -- early attempts
• [Wikimentary]  - In Wikizine 64 there was an item about a project to make a documentary about Wikipedia. But there is also another unrelated project for making a documentary. This is a project of Rory O'Connor, a documentary maker and journalist. This documentary is supposed to be focused on wiki technology including Wikipedia. Video recordings have been made at the previous Wikimanias.  This project is now seeking financial support to complete a film. To contact the people working on this; <roc AT globalvision DOT org>
• http://www.archive.org/details/WIKIMANIA-ROUGH_CUT.mov -- A possible segment of the documentary

• [Resignation] - Brad Patrick, General Counsel (lawyer) and ex-interim Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, has announced that he will leave the WMF on March 31, 2007. Brad was hired by the WMF in June 2006. In his statement Brad makes clear that he announced his decision to leave Wikimedia weeks ago and is totally unrelated with the resignation of Danny.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15210  -- statement by Brad about this resignation
• [Danny] - Danny also has posted a statement about his resignation. He writes that he will run for the board of WMF in next election.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15204
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-03-26/Departures -- Danny&Brad
• [Job] - The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a legal coordinator to handle the day-to-day legal needs of the Foundation and to coordinate outside help.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15307
• [Hire upgrade] - Anthere announced that Rob Halsell who has been working part-time as data center technician since December is hired full-time now to work for the WMF. Rob will work as IT'er in the Tampa data center of and as office IT technician in the Wikimedia Foundation world headquarters in Saint Petersburg.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15253
• [Advisory Board] - Two new members are added to the WMF Advisory Board: Teemu Leinonen and Debbie Garside. This brings the board up to 20 members.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15291

• [Wikimeet Serbia] - Everyone who has time and means is welcome to come to Belgrade, Serbia during the weekend of April 21 and 22 for a Wikimeet.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dungodung -- contact person for this
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15300
• [Wikimania 2007] - New Team Bulletin, edition March 25, 2007 
• http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_Bulletin/20070325  
• [JA Wiki] - Japanese Wikipedians have held a public interview with Jimbo Wales who is staying in Japan for a month until 2th April. Twenty questions to ask to Jimbo were written by the Japanese Wikipedia community.  The questions where send to Jimbo in advance and Jimbo answered questions at the event. There were about 60 people attending. Jimbo also answered non-prepared questions from the audience.
• [Wikiquote-l] - There was not yet a general mailing list for the Wikiquote project. Now there is one; Wikiquote-l
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiquote-l

• [EO.wp]  - The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles with Biblioteko de Aleksandrio (Library of Alexandra). The Esperanto Wikipedia is one of the older Wikipedia's and now the 11th largest Wikipedia out of +/- 240.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_Wikipedia
• [Wikibooks] - The Russian Wikibooks and the Chinese Wikibooks has reached 500 book modules.
  

• [Open] - Citizendium, then encyclopedia project of Larry Sanger, co-founder of wikipedia depending on who you ask, has opened his Wiki to the general public for reading. Applying for an account is also possible but it will take more effort then on our projects.
• http://en.citizendium.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizendium
• [WikiSym] -  International Symposium on Wikis; Call  for submitting of a paper, panel, workshop, etc
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/30941
• http://www.wikisym.org/
  

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." (1991)
"If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do." (1996)
"Talk is cheap. Show me the code." (2000)
"They are smoking crack." (2003) Source: eWeek interview. Notes: said about SCO
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." (2003)

"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's _my_ choice, dammit." (October 26, 2004)  rms = Richard Stallman

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 22:11 0 comments

• [Hope] - "Stable versions", a function in the wiki so that the readers can see some form of approved version of an article, that was announced to go live very soon almost a year ago, is not forgotten. A developer is hired to work on that function.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/30700
• Notice: people who read the Wikipedia Signpost and Wikizine will notice that the Signpost reports much more technical news in their B.R.I.O.N section than Wikizine, and mostly also a lot earlier than Wikizine.  There are two reasons for this. Some changes are considered too trivial or technically obscure so that it is not likely that there is a benefit in informing the target audience of Wikizine about it. Also many of the changes listed in the Signpost are not (yet) live on the Wikimedia websites but only present in the code. In general Wikizine chooses to report only technical changes when they are live on the projects. Major technical changes that are known in advance will be reported before they are live. But those are rare and even more almost never known in advance enough to report it.
  

• [New hire] - The Wikimedia Foundation has hired [[ meta:User:Bastique]]  for the position of " Volunteer Coordinator".
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/15190
• [Exit] - Danny Wool, Grants Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation in the Florida office, from September 2005 has left Wikimedia. Danny has also resigned from all his functions on EN Wikipedia, Meta and as steward.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Former_staff
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Danny
  

• [South Asia] - Interview with two users about the Bengali and Indonesian Wikipedia's
• http://wikipediaweekly.com/2007/03/14/wikipedia-weekly-15/
• [Abuse] - On the Dutch language Wikipedia it was noticed that a user had placed a link "Donate to Wikipedia" inside an article pointing to a PayPal donation form to donate to a stranger. The page [[Special:Linksearch]] can be of use to find this type of fraud. Also because some companies give money to people who bring to them new customers some users try to add to some links a referrer - a special code so that they can gain profit from the traffic that comes from Wikipedia. 
• [Sinbad] - Vandalism on the article [[w:en:Sinbad (actor)]]  declaring this person deceased has been used to start a hoax sent by email linking to that article, even making it to the mainstream media. The problem is that when the link used to point to the article is a permalink, a link pointing to a specific revision, people only see the old version and may not be aware that the most current version is different form version the are reading. The specific revision can be deleted by a sysop by deleting the article and restoring it selectively. Or by a user with oversight rights. What also can help is to make it more clear to the reader that the page the are seeing is an old version. Edit your local page [[MediaWiki:Revision-info]] to modify the text displayed on the top of an old revision. 
• http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10520/1103/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Revision-info -- discussion on EN about how the notice must look like
  

• [Andrew Lih] - Pod/Vod-cast interview with Andrew Lih, maybe more know to some as Fuzheado.  Andrew Lih is a writing a book about Wikipedia, has blog about Wikipedia and is a core member of the WikipediaWeekly podcast.
• http://www.calacanis.com/2007/03/20/calacaniscast-18-beta/
• http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/
• [.gov] - The Wikipedia Factor in U.S. Intelligence; Wikipedia used in U.S. Government intelligence reports.
• http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2007/03/the_wikipedia_factor_in_us_int.html
  

• [cy.wp] - The Welsh Wikipedia has reached 8,000 articles with the article [[w:cy:Livorno]]
• http://cy.wikipedia.org
• [el.wp] - The Greek Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.  
• http://el.wikipedia.org
• [tr.wikt] - The Turkish Wiktionary has reached 120,000 entries. 
• http://tr.wiktionary.org
  

• [Wiki] - It is now offical. "Wiki" is a word - it must be so because it is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
• http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2362781.ece
  

"A woman wearing clothes is like a man in the kitchen." Rule 4
"Females and finances don't mix." - Rule 94
"Wives serve, brothers inherit." - Rule 139
"A wife is a luxury... a smart accountant a necessity." - Rule 255

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 23:25 2 comments

• [Planet Wikimedia] - A website has been created to collect Wikimedia related blog entries in one place. English blogs about Wikimedia can request their feed be added on Meta (see links). Non-English blogs can can request a similar system for that language. In addition to the Wikimedia version of this service, [[ w:en:user:Nickj]] has created his own version at open.wikiblogplanet.com . This version has a "Edit this planet" link which allows you to your own blog.
• http://planet.wikimedia.org
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planet_Wikimedia
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Planet_Wikimedia  -- Change of the url?
• http://open.wikiblogplanet.com/ 

• [Wikimania 2007] - Registration is open for Wikimania 2007, which will be held from 3-5 August in Taipei, Taiwan. A 3-day ticket costs 40$US. You can also register for the Hacking Days and "Citizen Journalism Unconference". Registration for sleeping arrangements are also open; the fee is 20$US if you register now, and the number of beds is limited. The Wikimedia Foundation is also offering some scholarships for Wikimania.
• http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration
• http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarship 

• [Usurpation] - 'Usurpation' is a new Wikipedia jargon term whose real meaning is to seize something by force. It is used on the English Wikipedia to refer to the process of changing the username of an inactive user so that the username becomes available for registration or can be assigned to another user. This is not a new function; it has existed for as long as renaming users was possible. However, it may not have been very well known until now.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHU/U
• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/usurpation
• [Torrent] - The "Picture of the Year 2006 archive" containing the best photographs that Wikimedia Commons has to offer from the year 2006 are now available as a torrent download (321 pictures, 526MB).
• http://tools.wikimedia.de/~bryan/poty2006.torrent
• [Bias] - A company active in selling worthless college degrees was not happy about the article about their business. They have published a job offer for a watchdog to follow the article and remove negative content about them. Although it is not uncommon for a company to edit their own article in this way, offering a paid job as a professional bias-pusher is new.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-03-12/Paid_editing  

• [According to Wikipedia] - The English language Wikipedia article about the US town "Sioux Falls" is printed in a local publication of that town. This is what Wikipedia is all about, giving people information they can use freely. However, people of Sioux Falls where not charmed with the article's description of their town as a "dirty little town" and "full of drunks".
• http://tinyurl.com/2xmda9
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux_Falls
• [Jimmy] - A short written question-and-answer session with Jimmy Wales.
• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1755098.cms
• [Audio] - BBC has broadcast a radio interview about Wikipedia versus Conservapedia, a new wiki intended to provide information from a Conservative point of view.
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today4_wikipedia_20070307.ram -- RealAudio 5:34min 

• [RU.wp] - The Russian Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles just one week after they reached 140,000 articles.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Wikipedia
• [EL.wikt] - The Greek Wiktionary has reached 75,000 entries.
• http://el.wiktionary.org/ 

• [MediaWiki book] - A new book by Mizanur Rahman about MediaWiki will soon be released. It is a technical book for MediaWiki administrators. If you pre-order, you get a discount and free shipping (for some reason, it is cheaper when you use US dollars as currency).
• http://www.packtpub.com/book/Mediawiki -- "MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide"
• [Doc] - A real documentary about Wikipedia is in production. The people involved have already made a documentary about craigslist.org, a popular website in the United States, and a movie about graffiti in San Francisco. The producers are accepting donations to pay for the production. Donors of at least $50 are included in the credits in the movie on DVD when it is ready. The documentary is scheduled to be released in 2008. Their website contains preview video clips.
• http://www.wikidocumentary.org
• [Stella Artois] - An advertisement bureau working for InBev, the world's largest brewery company, has used Wikipedia in their online campaign for their beer brand "Stella Artois" for the Belgian market. They replaced the text of the article about "Stella Artois" in the French- and Dutch-language Wikipedia with their own fictional history of the beer. Their version is permalinked on the official website of Stella Artois as "proof" for the fictional history used in a publicity campaign.
• http://www.stella-artois.be/hacking/NL/ 

... that it is possible for non-sysop to semi-protect a page?

This method is based on last week's "did you know" about protecting unborn articles (see link below). If you "transclude" pages you would like to protect (including them as templates) on a page that is semi-protected with the 'cascading protection' option enabled, they will be automatically protected from edits by non-sysops.

Because the semi-protected page can be edited by almost all users, most editors can protected pages.

For example, make a page like [[Wikipedia:Non-sysop protected pages]], with semi-protection and cascading protection. An editor adds the "Foobar" article with '{{:Foobar}}'. The article [[Foobar]] is now fully protected (not only semi-protected, as would be expected).

When this system is used, the semi-protected page (in the example, [[Wikipedia:Non-sysop protected pages]]) will become very large if many pages are included in it.

This type of protection is not listed in the block logs, and this behaviour may change in the future. Although it is probably not a good idea to use this system, at least now you know that it is possible.

http://en.wikizine.org/2007/03/year-2007-week-10-number-63.html -- last week's "did you know"

Some people put a lot of work into their lawn, as if a patch of green grass was the most important thing in the world. As if they thought that as long as the lawn out front was green and mowed and beautiful, it wouldn't matter at all what was going on inside of the house. -- Character Allie Keys / science fiction miniserie "Taken"

Number of subscribers: 626 , Visitors website last week: 318, editors: Walter, Gary Kirk
Corrector: Pathoschild Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org , Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling. Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a weekly 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 @ 08:00 2 comments

• [IRC bots] - All operators of Wikimedia IRC bots are requested by IRC group contact and freenode staff member m:User:Xyrael to read this posting, and respond to him via e-mail. The post was submitted to multiple lists and it is requested that it be distributed to all IRC bot operators.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/30428
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Group_Contacts
  

• [Wikimania] - There is an open call for submissions for the the Wikimedia event of the year, Wikimania 2007, which will be held in Taipei, Taiwan on 3-5 August. The following are requested: presentations (10–30 minute talks), workshops (30–120 minute sessions with more involvement of the audience), Birds-of-a-Feather (45-60 minutes of informal group discussion on a particular topic), panels (groups of 2-5 speakers to discuss a specific subject), posters (printed presentations or visual displays that can stand on their own), and artistic artifacts (plays, competitions, comedy, visualizations, or other representations of some aspect of the projects).
• http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Particpation
  

• [WMF update] - Board member Anthere has posted an unofficial announcement about how the Wikipedia Foundation is doing. The Foundation is looking for people with certain qualifications: a professional fundraising person, a professional in international employment, and a brand strategist.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14960
• [Draft] - Board member Erik Moeller requests comments on a draft licensing policy resolution, intended to guide projects on copyright issues.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14730
• [Job offer] - The WMF has a (paid) job offer as Volunteer Coordinator.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/14870
  

• [  :-(  ]  -  w:en:User:Essjay , a (now former) heavily involved and high ranking Wikimedia member, has become the center of media attention and internal discussion. Extensive reports what is going own can be found by the hyperlinks below. The essence of the case is; User Essjay has presented himself on Wikipedia as a professor of theology. And now it has come out that this is not true. Essjay has resigned form all his functions and has left the project. The story is reported in the general mass media, including television. Also the non-English media is reporting about it.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-03-05/Essjay
• http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/03/05/essjay-departure-questions-remain-for-the-new-yorker/
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales_asks_Wikipedian_to_resign_%22his_positions_of_trust%22_over_nonexistent_degrees
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Ex-Wikipedian_accuses_Pulitzer_winner_of_bad_journalistic_practices
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_scandal
• http://wikipediaweekly.com/podpress_trac/web/27/0/WW12-32kbps.mp3  -- Audio; WikipediaWeekly 12 
• http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/03/01/wikipedia-firmly-supports-your-right-to-identity-fraud/
• http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/01/1313251
• http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/03/233224
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/06/wwiki106.xml 
• Related posts on WikiEN-l;
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/64370
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/64486
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/64548
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/64725
• [The Babylonian] - The translation subcommittee has published its second newsletter with news about translations-related news and requests for help.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/Trans/Newsletter/2007-03
• [NL Arbcom] - The Dutch language Wikipedia has elected its own Arbitration Committee. For the 7 positions are 7 users elected in a close call because only 7 members has enough votes to be considered. The normal term will be one year but because this was the first election now 4 members are elected for one year and 3 for six months.
  

• [Picture of the Year] - The Wikimedia Commons has chosen the 2006 picture of the year: a photograph of the [[w:en:Aurora Borealis]] taken by Senior Airman Joshua Strang of the United States Air Force.
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2006
  

• [Law] - In Belgium has a court made some interesting rulings. A editor of a story on the Belgium edition of Indymedia was sued by the company that was written about for libel. The court ruled that a private person writing for a community news site must be treated the same way as a professional journalist. In this case this mean that case must come for a jury.               In a other case, also in Belgium, a court destroyed part a law about the protection of sources used by journalists. The judges ruled that it is illegal to make a difference between professional journalists and bloggers by giving only professional journalists protection of source. "Protection of sources is an essential part of the freedom of speech and of the freedom of the press."
• http://zdnet.be/news.cfm?id=65592
  
• http://lvb.net/item/2909
• [A new pedia] - A new wiki-based encyclopedia project is started; Conservapedia. It is a encyclopedia project written from a fundamentalistic Christian American point of view. It is intended as a serious project. Probably this project will be more competition for uncyclopedia then Wikipedia.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservapedia
• http://www.conservapedia.com
  

"Uveigil as lok at mennet, homennet thorpar ey wat marta ok etin."
"How clear a river may be, upstream always will something disgusting float in your direction." -- Marbak proverb

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 23:28 0 comments