en.Wikizine.org

• [Autoblockedtext] - If you block a user you have the option to also block the ip address that this user is using. This appears in the blocklog as a number like "#47980". There is now a special message to be displayed to users who try to edit when the are blocked because of a hidden autoblock. The text of the page [[MediaWiki:Autoblockedtext]] is send to that user. The only way to know what the ip address is that is blocked is if the blocked user can give the block ID. This number is included in the default message so the blocked user needs to include this in his communication. A sysop can then look in the blocklist for that ID and unblock it.
• [image border] - There is a new display instruction for images. The new one is "border". The result is a very small gray border. The idea is that some images because of there colors flow over in the background of a page when used. By putting a small border around it the border between the image and the page is more clear.

• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images -- Example,  see MediaWiki logo
• [Special] -  There is a new special page that gives a list of all articles that have no interwiki links. It is a stored lists that is only updated some times.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Withoutinterwiki
• [404] - The Esperanto Wikipedia, one of the older Wikipedias, has lost, possibly definitive, an old file from there early days. Due to changes of url's and systems for uploading files the path to the file is broken. To prevent this from happening it is best to look on your wiki to links to old files. The are using absolute url's using the wikipedia.com-domain. If the are not inside the current local or commons upload system then save them and re-upload them or put them somewhere safe. At least if you want to keep the early history of your wiki.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/31770
• [Wap] - A special gateway to Wikipedia for mobile devices is created under the Wikipedia-flag, a wap-portal. It exists in a few languages including German, Spanish and English and is fairly buggy. There is a good alternative: wapedia.mobi
• http://de.wap.wikipedia.org
• http://es.wap.wikipedia.org
• http://en.wap.wikipedia.org
• http://wapedia.mobi
  

• [Wikimedia IT] -  Wikimedia Italia is working on an agreement to obtain part of the image archive of Società Geografica Italiana. SGI is one of the most important and respected geographical institutes of the world. Founded in 1867, the Society owns thousands of precious historic volumes, maps and a huge archive of photos related to colonialism and the XX century's explorations. On Friday May 18, some members of it.wiki met Franco Salvatori, president of Società Geografica Italiana. The meeting resulted in an exclusive interview for IT Wikinews.
• http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/La_Societ%C3%A0_della_Geografia
• [Legal] - The German Wikimedia chapter was sued by a powerful German lobby/public relations organisation. This because of a negative comment by an anonymous user on a archived talk page about them that did not amused them. The sued the German WMF chapter because in there opinion Wikimedia DE has control over the German language Wikipedia. The lost and also the appeal.
• http://www.wikimedia.de/2007/05/wikimedia-gegen-insm/
• http://www.golem.de/0705/52486.html
• http://www.onlinepc.ch/index.cfm?page=104029&artikel_id=13889
  

• [RIP] - Norwegian Wikimedian, journalist, and author Tron Øgrim [[w:no:User:Togrim]] passed away last week.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-28/Wikipedian_death
• [Wikisource News]  - Presents the news from Wikisource from January to May 2007.
• http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2007-05-01/Wikisource_report -- (en)
• [Wikiopen] - The Hakka Wikipedia, a spoken variation of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group has been created.
• http://hak.wikipedia.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_language
• [Wikiclose] - The Old English Wikisource has been closed.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource
• http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10059
  

• [IT Wikipedia] -  was granted one of the nine Special Prizes of the Grand Prix di Pubblicità Italia (Advertising Grand Prix of Italy)  for "succeeding in exploiting the Internet potential at its best, directly involving users for a widespread growth of culture". Wikimedia Italia board member Ivan Vighetto attended the gala, and received the prize, a plaque. The event had great resonance on Italian media.
• http://www.pubblicitaitalia.it/news.asp?id_news=41827 -- (it)
  

• [Club of Rome] - Anthere at the Club of Rome
• http://euforic.blogspot.com/2007/05/behind-screens-at-wikipedia.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
• [Audio & video]  - Good audio interview with Jimmy Wales and David Weinberger. And Jimmy also made an appearance as a guest in the American satirical television program "The Colbert Report".  
• http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/wikipedia_is_ju.html  -- Audio interview, 22min
• http://www.newscloud.com/read/Jimmy_Wales_The_Colbert_Report -- video fragment, turn brain off before watching 
• http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/05/29/more-stephen-colbert-wiki-pranks/
  

• [NL.wp & IT.wp] - The Dutch language Wikipedia has passed the 300,000 article mark almost exactly one year after the 200,000 mark.  The NL Wikipedia is the 7th largest Wikipedia. With only 22 million speakers the Dutch language Wikipedia is compared with the larger Wikipedias versus there number of speakers extremely large. Also the Italian language Wikipedia has now 300,000 articles. With 60 to 120 million speakers the are one step higher then the Dutch at the 6th place.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
• [FR.wp] - The French Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles.
• [The Wiki top 50] - An attempt to make a top 50 of the most popular wiki on the the internet according Alexa.com and Google PageRank.  Number one we know but on the second place is a surprize, we have "Adobe labs wiki" as the second most popular wiki.
• http://www.advolcano.com/blog/?p=11
• http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
  

• [Clean School WP] - This week a website went live with a "2007 Wikipedia selection for schools". Created by SOS Children, a charity focust on orphan and abandoned children,  is aimed at British school children following the National Curriculum, and consists of all of the English Wikipedia's Good and Featured Articles, excluding content SOS Children deemed 'adult'. The site uses the Wikipedia logo, with permission. The content of there website is also available as a CD-rom or DVD that can be downloaded for free from there website.
• http://schools-wikipedia.org/
• [The perfect logo] - The Wikipedia logo appears to be very "Wikipedia" in the meaning that there are mistakes on it. Some of the characters on the globe are reported to be incorrect. Editing the logo seems to be from a technical and possibly also from a legal (trademark) POV difficult.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ambuj.Saxena/Wikipedia-logo
• [Wikizine] - The last weeks the domain wikizine.org  has been down several times for longer periodes of time. This is a direct result of the hoster of Wikizine.org being down. When this is noticed the DNS-settings of the domain is changed to a back-up  hoster to be able to provide minimal service. Because of possible slow updating of DNS-servers it can take a long time before Wikizine resolves at your location. 

Encyclopedias are now suffering obsolescence (*), evolving from traditional publishing to a new form - I don't know what this form is [...] but we sure have a new horizon in front of us, related to the very bases of encyclopedicism, and '''you are the reality that matters now from this point of view'''. [...] Encyclopedia is not dead: its spirit is not dead, the Enlightenment spirit is not dead. -- F. Salvatori, SGI (La Società della Geografia)

Labels: audio interview jimbo, award, DVD, SOS Children, video interview jimbo, wap, wikiclose, Wikimedia IT, wikiopen

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 22:58 0 comments

• [SyntaxHighlight] - This is a function that is now live on all wikis. Its function is to display text, more programming code, in colors like it is custom for editors used by programmers to make the code more readable.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/31108
• http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi  -- See here how it works
• [Wikiclosed] - The Kanuri Wikipedia, language spoken mostly in Northern Nigeria, has been closed. The Low Saxon Wikiquote has also been closed.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Kanuri_Wikipedia
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Low_Saxon_Wikiquote
• [Wikiopen] - An Italian Wikiversity has been created.
• http://it.wikiversity.org/

• [Brand survey] -  Erik Moeller (board) drafted a survey on Wikimedia's brands: their perception, use,
  protection, and various potential reorganization options.  Edits/feedback on the current survey questions are welcome.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/17159
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_brand_survey

• [New Hire] - The WMF has hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer for the WMF. Mr. Pattel was already working as an intern for the WMF. To see what he will be doing and all the comments about it visit
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/17174  -- Announcement by Anthere (Chair WMF) - there are more postings then in this thread because it was broken several times.

• [Czech Wikipedia] - The Czech edition of Wikipedia has won the "Czech Open Source 2007" award in the reader's vote in the category "Project" and it has also been declared the overall winner of the contest as the subject with the biggest total number of reader's votes without regard for category.
  The award has been organized by Root.cz, a popular Czech news server oriented on Linux and free software in general.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/30117
• [Intelligent Award]  - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikia, Inc. founder and Angela Beesley were named as the 2007 Intelligent Community Visionaries of the Year by the Intelligent Community Forum.
• http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/associations/5315/files/2007_VisionaryAward_4-23-07.pdf
• http://tinyurl.com/28rfcs

• [en.wikinews] – Original reporting with prominent New Zealand blogger, David Farrar, opens doors for an exclusive interview with the Leader of the New Zealand Opposition, John Key.
• http://gpollard.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/another-exclusive-interview-for-wikinews/  

• [Jimmy] - Good quality video recording of a presentation done by Jimmy Wales about Wikipedia and Wikia in Bayreuth, Germany.  If you like to know what Jimmy is doing while travelling around the world, this is good video to see. It is also informative about Wikia. This is a long video.(01:17, 943mb, fast download). If you have no time, download it now and view it later. It is not a waste of time.
• http://cms-sprachlabor.split.uni-bamberg.de/av/2007/dgpuk/Wales.avi
• ["Left Wikipedia"] - Wikipedia is 'politically slanted' by the left, who are 'in control'.
• http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/5/13/212015.shtml?s=lh

• [Paper] - Two studies about EN Wikipedia; "Visualizing the Overlap between the 100 Most Visited Pages on Wikipedia" and "What is Popular on Wikipedia and Why?"
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-14/Academic_journal_coverage
• http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_4/spoerri/index.html
• http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_4/wilkinson/index.html
• [en.wikibooks] - The English Wikibooks has exceeded 75,000 total pages and 25,000 non-stub book modules.
• http://en.wikibooks.org/
• [ca.wp] - The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
• http://ca.wikipedia.org
• [ci.wp] - The Vietnamese Wikipedia is edited for the 600,000th time as Trungda makes changes to the article on "Mạc Ngọc Liễn", a figure from the Mạc Dynasty of northern Vietnam.
• http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BA%A1c_Ng%E1%BB%8Dc_Li%E1%BB%85n
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BA%A1c_Dynasty

• {{spoiler}} Jesus dies … False ending! He comes back! {{endspoiler}}
• http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/05/17/snape-kills-dumbledore/  -- A blog posing about the template culture in Wikipedia, worthy to read.

... we have a project in our family called "Wikispecies"?

Wikispecies is a Wikimedia project intended to be a directory of species. There are currently about a dozen active editors and over 60,000 listings. It is similar to Commons in that it is multilingual. They are working on the fine line between being a framework of species with links to information in all of the various Wikipedias, and containing that information there. Searching is always challenging when working in multiple languages. Wikispecies hopes to utilize wikidata when it becomes available to serve up the data. Check it out at http://species.wikimedia.org/ .
 

Labels: award, new hire, Survey, video interview jimbo, wikiclose, wikiopen

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 09:16 0 comments

• [Password security]  - After several user accounts on EN Wikipedia where cracked password security has been increased. From now on if an incorrect password is entered you will need to pass a captcha test when trying again. The passwords of the sysops on EN Wikipedia and Commons has been checked against very weak passwords and some are locked. Those users can login again by requesting a new password, at least if the provided a valid email address in there preferences. The check could be expanded to other wikis also and it is possible that additional security measures will be taken. It is highly recommended to make sure you have good password and a valid email address for your account.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/71181
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Admins_desysopped
  

• [Board election] - WMF board member Jan-Bart de Vreede is looking for candidates for the "Election Committee" that will at least prepare and possibly also manage the upcoming board elections. Election committee members can not run as candidates for the board and are not allowed to vote. Applications can be send in until 13th of May. See lists posting for more information.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16727
  

• [New chapter] - A new Wikimedia chapter is founded; Wikimedia Israel.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Israel
  

• [Re-branding] - WMF boardmember Erik Moeller has posted a proposal to change the names of the Wikimedia projects to a name starting with "Wikipedia" because that is the strongest brand. So for example Wikiquote would become "Wikipedia Quotes". This proposal is a personal idea of Erik and is not a board idea. This idea does not seem to get  a lot of support.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16813  -- Main thread
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16945
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16931
• [Sponsor] - A Norwegian Wikipedian is awarded a scholarship for working on the Nynorsk Wikipedia by an organization aiming to promote the use of Nynorsk as a written language .
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Wikipedian_scholarship
• [EN Wikinews] - Get original reporting by asking someone else to do it.
• http://wikinewsreports.blogspot.com/2007/04/wikinews-sends-reporter-to-province_30.html
  

• [DE Wikimedia] -  Wikimedia Deutschland, the german local WMF chapter, awards a price, the Zedler-Medaille, for an article (or the significant improvement of an article) in the german Wikipedia. The article must be in the area of humanities. The award is endowed with 3000 Euro and is funded by the German magazine "Gehirn und Geist" ["Brain and Mind"] and allocated in co-operation with the Academy of Science and Literature in Mainz as part of the german "Year of Humanities".
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Zedler-Medaille
• http://www.wikimedia.de/zedler-medaille
• http://www.abc-der-menschheit.de/coremedia/generator/wj/de/__Downloads/Pressemitteilungen__Partner/Zedler-Medaille.pdf
  

• [en.wikiquote] - The English Wikiquote has reached 10,000 articles. The milestone is Langdon Smith posted by Kalki.
• http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Langdon_Smith
• [ar.wp] - The Arabic Wikipedia announces that the are almost at 30,000 articles. The are now 35th largest Wikipedia. The have made a celebration logo for the event.
• http://ar.wikipedia.org
• [ga.wp] - The Irish Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• http://ga.wikipedia.org
  

• [Encyclopedia of Life] - Yet again a new encyclopedia project. But this one has very, very serious funding so most likely this one will not fail or at least not in the short run. There mission is ambitious; "Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth available everywhere by single access on command." And is exactly what the are planing to do. The content will primary be imported from several existing sources, authenticated by scientists and used in the encyclopedia. The first pages are expected to be live by mid 2008. The hope to get the work done for creating articles about every organism in 10 years.  The also plan to have the encyclopedia available in several languages. The licence the will use is not yet known. If the can make true what the announce the Encyclopedia Of Life will be a very strong competition for Wikipedia and Wikispecies for fauna and flora.  The Wikimedia Foundation is a partner of "Encyclopedia Of Life".
• http://www.eol.org/home.html -- See the video and notice the interface
• http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/08/226230
• http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/05/09/encyclopedia-of-life/
• http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/05/08/a-new-encyclopedia-of-life-announced/ -- Larry Sanger about EOL
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16907
• [kab.wp] - A new Wikipedia is born; number 251. This one is on Kabyle language, a language the can use an encyclopedia. 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabyle_language
• http://kab.wikipedia.org
  

"Peace is good for business" - Rule 35
"More is good. All is better." - Rule 242
"After you've exploited someone, it never hurts to thank them. That way, it's easier to exploit them next time." - Rule 299 (Unofficial Rule)

Labels: award, board election 2007, Encyclopedia of Life, wiki security, Wikimedia IL

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 20:28 0 comments

• [Cracked sysop accounts] - At least on the English language Wikipedia several user accounts of sysops have been hijacked and abused. This seems to be done by guessing the (weak) passwords of those accounts.

Labels: wiki security

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 12:33 0 comments

• [Login] - Passwords that are the same as the user name can no longer be used. Affected accounts can reset their password by e-mail to something more secure. If you do not have an email address provided in your account you have no access any more. The only hope to keep your account is to go to #wikimedia-tech and convince a developer that you are who you say you are. In general providing an email address for your account, and the same for all accounts, is a good idea.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/29945
• http://www.spammotel.com -- if you do not trust Wikimedia with your email address
• http://www.spamgourmet.com 
• [Special] - New special page [[Special:Fewestrevisions]] . It lists .... yes ....pages that have very few revisions, other versions. Because it also includes redirects its usefulness is limited. The results are cached.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Fewestrevisions

• [Wikimania2007] - Call for Participation deadline extended until May 15.
• http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation
• [ENDS] - WMF Chair Anthere is asking for comments about a draft governance model for Wikimedia Foundation Board Policy.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16587
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_governance_manual

• [Who Are You?] - The WMF approved a resolution making it required that people who have access to confidential information identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation. This seems only to apply to access toinformation that falls under the Wikimedia Privacy policy. This does notseem to include the private mailing lists and wikis.

• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Access_to_nonpublic_data
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16598 
• [Closed] - A proposal has been made for a procedure to close wikis. This is for wikis who are de facto dead.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closure_of_WMF_projects
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/30011

• [Mission] - The WMF approved a new "Mission and Vision statement". The Vision statement is "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." The mission statement is a bit too long to include it. See on Meta and Wiktionary to translate it.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Mission_and_Vision_statement
• http://en.wiktionary.org/
• [Scholarship] - To come to Wikimania 2007 are still available for people coming from Africa and the Commonwealth of Independent States (parts of the ex-USSR)
• http://wm07schols.wikimedia.org/apply.php
• [Sponsor] - The WMF is looking for sponsors for Wikimania 2007. This is for large sponsors who can donate tens of thousands of dollars.
• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/0/0b/Wikimania_sponsorship.pdf
• [wiki] - The WMF advisory board has now its own wiki. It is a public wiki. 
• http://advisory.wikimedia.org  -- nothing to see there
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board
  

• [Wild Sysop] - On EN Wikipedia an sysop has deleted several pages including the Main Page and blocked some users and unblocked himself after being blocked because of local policy violations. After being de-sysopped the user was blocked again.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-04-23/Robdurbar
  

• [Virginia Tech] - The article of the EN Wikipedia about the shooting at the university in Virginia, USA was for a few days the most popular page of the EN Wikipedia and is praised by traditional media as a very good source for information about this event.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-04-23/Virginia_Tech
• http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/23/america/wiki.php -- The Latest on Virginia Tech, From Wikipedia
• [Citizendium] -  One Month Later
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/citizendium_one.php
  

• [fur.wp] - Friulian Wikipedia reaches 2000 articles with [[w:fur:Laurenzi]] (the chimical element). Friulian is a language spoken mainly in northern Italy.
• http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurenzi
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friulian_language
• [SuperStats] - Dynamic and recent statistics of all Wikipedias. A must see for stats lovers.
• http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php
• [Study] - More than a third of American adult internet users (36%) consult Wikipedia, according to a new nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And on a typical day in the winter of 2007, 8% of online Americans consulted Wikipedia.
• http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Wikipedia07.pdf --  Sorry about the pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-04-30/Statistical_profiles
  

• [Correction] -  In Wikizine 67 it was reported that 0.5 CD of the English-language Wikipedia is produced by the Wikimedia Foundation and LinterWeb. This is not correct. The CD was not produced by the Wikimedia Foundation, it has been produced by Linterweb.
• http://www.wikipediaondvd.com/
  

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs_and_communism

"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." -- Unknown attribution

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 22:59 0 comments