The English language edition of Wikizine

2008-12-08

Year: 2008 Week: 50 Number: 102

Technical news

[Wiki rename] - the first letters of the url of our projects indicate the language of that project. For some of them those will change to other ones. Effected languages are; Aromanian, Low German, Moldovan and Belarusian. Redirects will be created.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34563

[WikimediaNotifier] - A system has setup to create a message on Meta that then is copied automatically to all the wikis. The purpose is to improve the internal distribution of important news to the community. The messages are posted in namespace of the bot [[user:WikimediaNotifier]] but wikis can request to post them somewhere else like in there village pump if the wish it so.

[MediaWiki extension Testing] - Many of the extensions written for MediaWiki are used outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. Installing is not always easy because they do not come with a guarantee that they will work. ExtentionTesting provides a testing environment where these extensions can be tested against the stable releases of MediaWiki. This way it is easier and more predictable to use extensions with the MediaWiki software.

http://extensiontesting.wikiation.nl/Main_Page

[Interwiki map] - the interwiki map is updated. The means that the many changes done to it are now live. For example you can now link to an OTRS-ticket with the interwiki [[Ticket:]]. The old prefix [[OTRS:]] was broken and no support was found to repair it.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map

[Turnkey MediaWiki] - A Ubuntu-based distro created for one purpose; running MediaWiki. Ideal to try out MediaWiki on your own computer.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/TurnKey_MediaWiki

Request for help

[Web Designer/geek] - Wikizine.org seeks the help of a volunteer who can realize an idea the involves building a website that is intended to besides being useful also create revenue to support Wikizine.org Contact [[user:Walter]]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Walter

Foundation

[Wikimedia Foundation] - The Stanton Foundation donates US$ 890,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation to develop an easier way to write and change articles. The goal is to increase usability so that more people can edit articels, which have less technical knowledge.

http://tinyurl.com/64zmen -- WMF press release
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/StantonGrantQA

[WMF Audited financial statements] - the new ones for the period 2007-2008 are published. If you like the know the official financial numbers then this is what you need to read.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34390

Legal

[Wikimedia Deutschland] - The German chapter Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. are hosting a website (www.wikipedia.de), where the German wikipedia can be searched. A German court enacted a temporary restraining order that this website must not link to the German wikipedia (de.wikipedia.org). The reason is a lawsuit between Wikimedia Deutschland and Lutz Heilmann, a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), about some statements in the article about him. He also sued three Wikipedia users because of their work on this article. The restraining order was abolished after 2.5 days. Because of the news coverage the donations for the Wikimedia Deutschland was increasing signifcant.

[European Copyright] - A working group of the Dutch Wikimedia, German Wikimedia, Hungarian and Italian Wikimedia Chapter has issued a reaction on the EU Green paper Copyright in the Knowledge Economy.

http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek/en
http://tinyurl.com/6djgwy -- The text of the green paper

[WM Netherlands] - a request for an preliminary injunction is issued by Bob Sijthoff against the Dutch Chapter to obtain the identity of particular user and the removal a specific article. The position of WM Netherlands is that the are not legally or technical capable of doing that. Ruling is expected by the 10th of December.

Agenda

[WM Serbia Conference] - The Regional Conference of Wikimedia Serbia will be held at 19th, 20th and 21st December in Belgrade, in the Belgrade Youth Home.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34612
http://tinyurl.com/6hx9vo -- WM Serbia conference

Community

[Commons: Bundesarchiv Project] - The German Federal Archive has about 170.000 digital photos since 2007. Using this photos was not free of charge. After long discussions with the Wikimedia Deutschland almost 100.000 photos are now licenced by the cc-by-sa 3.0 DE. Currently the photos are uploaded to Commons.

[New Wikibooks logo] - The selection process of new logo for the Wikibooks project is coming to a close. Only the colors of the new logo still need to be decided.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/Logo

Media

[Censor] - British internet service providers have been blocking a Wikipedia article and so also causing problems for there users to edit Wikipedia. The blocked article was flagged as child-pornographic in nature. Interestedly also Chinese media are reporting the blocking of Wikipedia in the UK.

http://tinyurl.com/5eo9s7 -- Wikinews article about it
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Censorship_of_WP_in_the_UK_Dec_2008

[Winkler Prins] - in the Dutch language is the Winkler Prins, founded in 1870, the last surviving encyclopedia. Winkler Prins announced that there 10th edition will no longer be published in paper from. Reasons are lack of interest in a encyclopedia on paper and huge work to get the information that can fill 50 book down to 26 books. The 10th edition be published online subscription based.

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/de.redactie/cultuur%2Ben%2Bmedia/1.419229

Stats

[EN wp] - out of frustration of lack of good statistics on the number of active editors on the EN wp [[User:Dragons flight]] has made some.

[NL Wikipedia] - the Dutch language Wikipedia passed the 500,000 article mark
[Fundraiser] - while the funding is coming in some stats are available about the success rate of the different banners.

Other news

[Wikipedia Loves Art] - is a free content photography contest coordinated with the Brooklyn Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and possibly other museums worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009, and the name is a play off of Valentine's Day.

[WikiVoices] - The podcast "Not The Wikipedia Weekly" changes its name to WikiVoices.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiVoices

Quote

"Fair use is not a right. [..] Fair use is only a... ...legal defensible position" ~ A Fair(y) Use Tale!

http://dotsub.com/view/4918f3c8-8f04-4aa1-b300-39048dca6822

Number of subscribers: 725 , Unique Visitors website last week: 110 , Editor(s): Walter, Anonymous , Thanks to: Angela, Ellywa, GerardM , Especially thanks to: Sannse , 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 @ 10:30

Comments:

legal ruling between Wikimedia Nederland and Bob Sijthoff
The judge today ruled that indeed the Dutch chapter has no say about the contents of Wikipedia, so Wikimedia Nederland won this case.

http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nederland_wint_kort_geding_Sijthoff

# posted by