en.Wikizine.org

• [MediaWiki Parser] - There will be (another) attempt on rewriting the parser which handles the wikitext. A new mailing list has been created for discussion of what can be done.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitext-l
• [New Preprocessor] - Mediawiki's preprocessor (which expands templates and does parserfunctions) has been rewritten by Tim Starling. The changes include creating a DOM document, caching template expansion and skipping unused cases. The pre-expand include size limit has been changed into a "preprocessor node count". This changes the rules for uncovered
  syntax, so having "<ta" on one template and "ble>" on another will create a table. However, such uses are discouraged. It's not live on wikimedia project yet.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/35451

• [Wikibooks technical] - For a quick grant related to the production of Wikibooks in Agriculture Florence Devouard (Anthere) is asking for input regarding wished for technical improvements for Wikibooks.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2007-November/001163.html
• [Asterisk] - German Wikipedia OTRS helpdesk and press relations group are still looking for someone who can support the development and implementation of an asterisk software solution featuring LRU call management, forced log-off and a web frontend to display status information. Queue size dimensioning would be nice, as well as a web/sms front end for the press people to configure call diversions. Anyone able to help please contact w:de:User:-jha- or, if you can read German, go to
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OTRS/Asterisk-Projekt

• [Logo] - Wikibooks and Wikijunior are considering a new logo.
• http://tinyurl.com/39txry
• http://tinyurl.com/2j7gpw
• [GFDL re-licensing] - On Foundation-l there is a big discussion going on about the GNU Free Documentation License that most projects are using and the possible migration to a new license for those projects. Mike Godwin, the WMF legal counsel, is involved in the discussion.
• http://tinyurl.com/2l9thn

• [ED] - The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed Sue Gardner as Executive Director. She was the Management Consultant of the Wikimedia Foundation.
• [Ombuds(wo)men)] - Anthere announced that a new ombuds(wo)man committee has been appointed. It consists of the enwiki users Mackensen and Rebecca and dewiki user Hei_ber .
• [Fundraiser blog] - A blog has been started by Cary Bass (Bastique) to mobilize potential donators. It is all about answers to the question "Why give to Wikimedia". The posts on the blog are not official Wikimedia Foundation statements. Users are encouraged to add their own reasons, moderators are choosing the best contributions and post them on the blog. This is a test run for now. Should the blog help in increasing donations, it will be started in languages other than English, too.
• http://whygive.wikimedia.org/ -- blog
• http://whygive.wikimedia.org/2007/11/22/why-wikipedia-does-not-run-ads/ -- interesting post
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Why_Give_blog -- give your answer

• [Stewards] - The stewards nominations (elections) have started. There are currently 20 candidates. Users active on all Wikimedia projects can vote.
• http://tinyurl.com/26fror
• [Stewards II] - Also the current stewards are going through confirmation. You can make remarks on their functioning, and afterwards all stewards together will decide which stewards will be confirmed. 27 stewards are up for confirmation.  
• http://tinyurl.com/26b4ew
• [EWW] - December 3 - 8, there will be the first ''Edit Wikipedia Week''. People are extra encouraged to edit Wikipedia in this week.
• http://tinyurl.com/2fejf4

• [Little China] - The Dutch press reports on the Dutch ministry of legal affairs blocking the website Wikipedia.org . Now it is also for judges impossible to watch what's on Wikipedia. In total 30.000 civil servants have been cut off from Wikipedia. The sysops of Dutch language Wikipedia where not contacted about this by ministry of legal affairs.
• http://tinyurl.com/2g3ult
• [Burn Wiki, burn!] - Or at least I would be if Wikipedia was in print. In the USA several schools are uniting in banning wikipedia from the school. Not everybody agrees with that.
• http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004025648_wikipedia21.html
• http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/chalkboard/archives/126657.asp

• [Main stream] - A (English) Wikipedia search tool by default included in the webbrowser FireFox for some time now. Recently several new computer products are launched the give prominent attention for Wikipedia in there default setup.
  
  Amazon presented there own e-book reader. In there description of there readers Amazon explicitly writes; "Includes free wireless access to the planet's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org." Viewing other websites on the device in not free of charge. Wikipedia is here used as a sales argument because when you get this reader you have free wireless access to Wikipedia  (inside the USA).
  
  A large supermarket in the USA is selling a budget computer. On the taskbar of the desktop there is large  Wikipedia-globe icon to query Wikipedia.
  
  Also a new micro laptop of Asus, the  Eee PC, includes a prominent icon for Wikipedia.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle
• http://www.thinkgos.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC

• [Fundraising totals] - After roughly a month of fundraising, USD 835,334 has been raised by the Wikimedia Foundation on November 24.
• http://tinyurl.com/2c3v4h
• [FR Wiktionary] - On November 26th, the French language Wiktionary reached 593,000 pages and was therefore larger than the English language version (592,000). This is as far as we know the first time that an EN project has been passed by a non-English version in terms of size.
• [HTTP Requests] - Also November 26th the Wikimedia servers for the first time counted a total of 50,000 (fifty thousand!) HTTP requests *per second* on all WMF projects during peak time. This a five times higher peak of page requests per second than in May 2006.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-November/035250.html

• [Free] - There are many definitions of free. Because language is not a perfect tool, people often confuse different meanings of the word. There is a difference between "for free" as in beer and "free" as in Wikipedia and Linux. The latter also means you can re-use the content, change it and spread the improved version even further, even commercially. 
  

• [Not for profit] - That the Wikimedia Foundation is a not for profit organization? And that the WMF is dependent on mainly small donations from individuals like you? This results in a shoestring budget, especially if the targets are not being reached. 

Fundraising quotes

"Harnessing a universe of brainpower to make knowledge accessible" -- Anonymous
"Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax ..." -- William Sherman
"Stone by stone we can build the house, says an arabic proverb. I hope that my humble donation will help to build a free Wikipedia." -- Hicham ben Hassine
"Who would have thought this would work?" -- Anonymous

Number of subscribers: 700 , Unique Visitors website last week: 106 , Editor(s): Effeietsanders, Wikifitz, Londenp, Platonides, Walter
Thanks to: Bastique , 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.  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 @ 09:12 1 comments

• [Wiki moved] - Betawiki, the wiki used to make the default translations of MediaWiki and therefore also for the WMF-projects, has moved to a new domain.
• http://translatewiki.net
• [pyBot] - Plans are currently being made for a major overhaul of the code of the Pywikipediabot framework. The main goals are to start using the MediaWiki API and to unify the coding style. 
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikipedia-l -- place for discussion
• [Anon page creation (not!)] - The announced reactivation of page creation by anonymous users is cancelled.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21655
  

• [$$$] - The fundraiser is going well in the sense that the money is rolling in. At present around 660,000 US$ is donated. The fundraiser is intended to run until the 22nd of December. At the current rate of donations it does not look like the 4.6 million US$, the WMF budget for 2008, will be collected. The counter that shows how many people have donated, has dropped a bit because the deduction of numerous donations of 1$ or less.
• http://donate.wikimedia.org/en/node/22 -- current donations totals 
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21590 -- do we get 4,6 million?
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007#Suspicious_low-value_donations -- strong increase of tiny donations
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84986 -- drop of counter
• [Legal] - French lawsuit against WMF won in court. An article on the FR Wikipedia contained personal information of 3 persons who where no pleased with that. They sued for compensations and the identity of the anonymous editor. The court ruled that Wikimedia is a hosting provider and as such does not need to follow up on what the users are writing. The WMF does need to remove illegal content when they are informed about it. Because the disputed information was removed after proper notification the case was dismissed, including the request for damages and information about the anonymous editor.

• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21407
• [Illustration Project] - The WMF has received a donation of US$ 20,000 to be used for creating and improving illustrations. Around $40 per illustration will be paid. The idea is to get good illustrations for topics there are non-existing or in less suitable versions. Brianna Laugher [[commons:User:Pfctdayelise]] is in charge of this project. Concerns where raised that this project could undermine the defence of the WMF that is is only a hoster and not a publisher. Sue Gardner, the unofficial executive director of the WMF, said that is was not a problem because technically the Wikimedia Foundation is not paying the editors but the donor does. The WMF is "just facilitating a relationship between a donor who wants to see a particular thing happen in the projects, and a trusted volunteer who shares the same goal".
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/3016 -- list announcement of the project
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project -- practical
• http://tinyurl.com/3e4leh -- Philip Greenspun-Wikimedia Foundation illustration project proposal (pdf)
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21457/ -- legal concerns
• [Steward elections] - Elections for new stewards will start on the 26th of November. Stewards are users who can change the user level of any user on a WMF-project wiki. Candidates can nominate themselves now. To be a candidate you need to be at least 18 years old and be willing to provide real identification to the WMF. Also the current stewards are up for confirmation. 
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21683
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2007
• [Chapters] - The chapters committee is looking for new members. The chapcom is responsible for checking the proposed bylaws for a new chapter and advises the board for acceptance of the new chapter.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-November/034705.html
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
  

• [DE wp DVD] - A new edition of German language Wikipedia on DVD is coming out. It will be available either as a basic edition that contains thumbnail images only (10 €) or a premium edition that will include higher quality pictures as well as a bonus disc with 1900s encyclopedia ''Meyers'' (25 €, total 4 DVDs). An image of the DVD will be available for downloading.
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DVD
• [EN wp] - Founder Jimmy Wales has personally de-sysoped a user of the English Wikipedia. This caused very large community responds.
• http://tinyurl.com/2e3dfa
  

• EN Wikinews has a template that can display an image with a random text on it. A sort of ad.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Wikinews_ads
• Wikinews will possibly change the Wikinews site slogan from "Wikinews, the free news source you can write!"" to something else to make the site sound more professional.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:FellowWikiNews/Tagline
• On EN Wikinews is the service of providing spoken news is again restarted. Subscribing by RSS-feed is possible.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Audio_Wikinews
• [Webcomics] - Last time Wikizine reported about the problems with the EN Wikipedia community and the "webcomics" community. The Wikinews article about it received a unusual large amount of comments.
• http://tinyurl.com/36u43b -- comments about the Wikinews report
• http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/31/0328239 - /. about it
  

• [Wikimedia IT] - The Italian edition of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Italia have been awarded the "Premio Aretê 2007 - forum per la Comunicazione Responsabile" (Aretê prize - forum for the responsible communication) for the "internet" section with the following motivation;

"for the commitment in favour of the diffusion of the universal knowledge, in a free, collaborative and constructive way, in the real spirit of the original ideals of the Net."

• [{{copyvio}}] - A book published in 2006 contains a large section of text taken from a Wikipedia-article. And this without and reference to Wikipedia. Ironically the publisher of this book is the same publisher who recently threatened a blogger who had used a diagram, with full attribution, from a publication of them on a blog.
• http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/13/0356203
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ydorb/khobar-copyvio -- what exactly is copied
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84975 -- list discussion
• [Jimmy in Africa] - In South-Africa Jimmy Wales has give a keynote at Wikipedia Academy where workshops where giving about how to edit Wikipedia. The Wikipedias in the many local languages of South-Africa are extremely small, even the largest, Afrikaans has only 8600 articles. Because of the work during the workshops the isiZulu Wikipedia crost the 100 article mark.
• http://tinyurl.com/2cvcze -- What has Jimmy Wales been up to? 
• http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_7436295
• [eat Wikipedia] - Wikinews has the story that in china, where access to Wikipedia is mostly blocked, supermarkets now sell "Wekipedia" bread with a bearded man (= Jimmy?) on the packaging.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikipedia_making_bread_in_China%3F_Not_so%2C_but_close
• http://sexybeijing.tv/new/eblog/default.asp?view=plink&id=127 -- picture of the bread
  

• [Erratum] - Commons has now 1000 featured pictures, not 10,000 as was reported in Wikizine 83.
• http://tinyurl.com/2e4xab -- the 1000th featured picture
  

• [£ BBC] - The website of the British public broadcaster, who is funded by taxes, has started to display a limited number of advertisements to users who visited there website from outside the United Kingdom. Concerns where raised about impartiality of the BBC when carrying advertisement. The BBC explicitly stated that the advertisement will be clearly separated from editorial content. The BBC hopes to raise around 100 million euro yearly with the advertisements.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7050625.stm
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/faq/
• [Comic] - "...articles on Wikipedia are written [..] by one extremely dedicated squirrel."
• http://tinyurl.com/2l5gfu
• [Bye-bye Wiki-Wiki] - A classic part of any interview with the press is to explain that the name "wiki" comes from a bus service in Hawaii. The WikiWiki bus system in Hawaii, after which the software concept Wiki is named, will be soon no more. It will replaced by a "air-conditioned walkway", a sort of bridge.
• http://www.kpua.net/news.php?id=13096
• [Wikizine: less short] - A core idea of Wikizine was to keep the items very short so you can read it very quickly. For more information there are the external links where you can read the whole story. The problem is that when you translate Wikizine into non-English editions, those short items alone contain sometimes too little information to be really informative. Most external links are in English. For non-English readers it is then difficult to get the story. Because of this it will be attempted to include more information in the Wikizine items. Being brief maybe good but if you end up by (almost) saying nothing, we are not achieving our goals.
  

•  donation 0,01 AUD - 0,01 AUD paypal fee = 0 AUD for WMF
•  donation 0,25 USD - 0,25 USD Paypal fee = 0 USD for WMF
•  donation 1,20 CAD - 0,59 CAD PayPal fee = 0,61 CAD for WMF (50% fee!)
•  donation 1 EUR - 0,38 EUR PayPal fee = 0,62 EUR for WMF (38% fee)
  
• donation 5 USD - 0,41 USD PayPal fee = 4,59 USD for WMF (8,2% fee)
•  donation 25 USD - 0,85 USD PayPal fee = 24,15 USD for WMF (3,4% fee)
•  donation 100 USD - 2,50 USD PayPal fee = 97,50 USD for the WMF (2,5% fee)
  

"Hail Wikipedia" -- Anonymous
"Wikipedia, OpenOffice.org , Ubuntu - three things that makes me feel good." -- Gergely Máté
"to get wikipedia is like to have the Alexandria's library at home! thanks to the Wikipedia Team." -- eric malbos (editorial note: next Wikimania will be at the library of Alexandria)
"Wikipedia, une cathédralle informatique" -- roland moreno
"Please do not go commercial." -- Anonymous
"Danke!" -- Anonym

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 19:29 0 comments

• [Upload limit] - The upload limit is 20 MB. Now that the recent changes have resulted in good support for video, it was suggested to increase this limit. There are concerns for a dramatic growth in bandwidth and storage need.

• [Fundraising translations] - Most translations for the 2007 fundraising have been done, but some still remian. Cary Bass, volunteer coordinator, requests your help.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007

• [Chain of reasons] - This proposed new project aims to be a reference for people who simply want to learn about the reasoning behind particular beliefs -- moral, political, scientific, religious, or whatever.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chains_of_Reason
  

• [Page creation on EN Wikipedia] - Page creation for anonymous users has been disabled for the English Wikipedia since December 2005. There will probably soon be a trial of one week during which page creation is enabled again.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84133
• http://tinyurl.com/yw6gvj -- discussion at the village pump

• [Priorities] - Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees, has stated priorities for her next term as a chair. She also summarizes the major developments of last year.
• http://tinyurl.com/325sjo
• [Fundraising] - The 2007 fall fund raising has started on October 22 and will run until December 22. People are encouraged to place web buttons on their private websites. At present around US$130,000 has been donated. The live stream of donations from Paypal can be seen in the IRC channel #wikimedia-donations on freenode.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons
  
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007 -- feedback from the visitors of the projects on the fund raiser
• http://chat.wikizine.org -- provides access to #wikimedia-donations
• [Budget] - Together with its fundraising, the Wikimedia Foundation has also published its budget for 2007-2008. The Foundation plans to spend US$4.6M in total, of which 57% is reserved for technical services. The rest is going to overhead, staff and other activities such as Wikimania. 
• http://tinyurl.com/3bxpwa
• [New chapter] - Wikimedia Sweden was founded in Stockholm, Sweden. Lennart Guldbrandsson was elected Chair. For the board several members of community were elected as well as persons from the free knowledge movement of Sweden. One of them is Lars Aronsson, founder of susning.nu, which was the second largest wiki in the world before it was closed.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige
• [Treasurer] - The foundation is looking for a treasurer who will succeed Miles Davis on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
• http://tinyurl.com/2y9ryy
• [Job openings] - As a result of the relocation of the Wikimedia Foundation's headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Francisco, several positions are to be filled.
• http://tinyurl.com/24ow5e
  

• [Dutch Conference] - On October 27, Wikimedia Nederland held a conference in Amsterdam about Wikimedia, Wikis and Education. Most of the program was in Dutch; however, a few presentations were in English. Florence Devouard was one of the keynote speakers.
• http://tinyurl.com/2r9e4p -- conference website
• http://tinyurl.com/2r2na9 -- Wikinews report on the conference
• [Russian Conference] - The Wiki-Conference 2007 was held on October 27 and 28 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• http://tinyurl.com/35axup
• [Wikijunior] - It is proposed that stable versions of the Wikijunior books hosted on the English Wikibooks will be published on www.wikijunior.org. Also there are discussions on a new logo.
• http://tinyurl.com/32vh9b 
• http://tinyurl.com/3afhp3
  

• [Wikicomics] - "Wikimedia fundraiser highlights webcomic community's frustration with Wikipedia guidelines" reports Wikinews
• http://tinyurl.com/2z8mda
• [Edit for grades] - Some schools may ban Wikipedia, but the story about a teacher of the University of Washington-Bothell who makes her students write Wikipedia articles for grades was in the news this week.
• http://tinyurl.com/2hjnmm
• [Anons best?] - "Anonymous Wikipedia entries the most accurate" writes Brockpress.com.
• http://tinyurl.com/3c4895
  

• [Commons] - Three years have passed since Commons started selecting their best pictures; now, the 10,000th featured picture has been selected.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21385
• http://tinyurl.com/2e4xab -- the 10,000th featured picture
• [hu.wp ] - The Hungarian Wikipedia just reached 75.000 articles.
• http://hu.wikipedia.org
• [haw.wp] - The Hawaiian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• http://haw.wikipedia.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language
• [simple wp] - The Simple English Wikipedia has reached its 20,000th article with "Mandurah railway line, Perth". Simple is looking for editors to write even more articles.
• http://simple.wikipedia.org
• [Erratum] - Wikizine 82 reported that the Vietnamese Wikipedia had reached 100,000 articles. This is not correct. The count was 100,000 pages in total, not just articles. The Vietnamese Wikipedia has over 25,000 articles.
  

"For tripling the number of Elephants in Africa!" US$500 --Anonymous.
"Instead of a banner asking for donations, why don't you just have a banner with an ad, and skip the middle step." --Anonymous.
"Wikipédia est d'une utilité publique colossale." -- Lionel Bolnet
"Who's that guy? The guy on the banner looks like Osama bin Laden." --Anonymous
"Your efforts to educate the world are highly admirable. Keep up the good work." -- Alison Dwyer
"Symbolisch bedrag en mijn hartelijke dank voor jullie geweldige site." -- Tejo Hoekman

# posted by Walter Vermeir @ 23:15 2 comments