en.Wikizine.org

• [New "Green" Data Centers] - The Foundation announced a new "in-kind" sponsorship (valued at over €300,000) by "green" (environmentally friendly) Data Center EvoSwitch.  EvoSwitch will be Wikimedia's new Internet HUB for Europe.  Not only does this provide us with a long-term solution for delivering faster and better traffic in Europe and beyond, it also means that Wikimedia servers are taking advantage of cutting edge green power technology provided by Evoswitch.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Selects_EvoSwitch_June_2009
• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/22/evoswitch-helps-us-improve-project-access-in-europe-and-beyond/
• [Public repositories for dumps] - A new public repository has been created to host WikiXRay database dumps, containing info extracted from public Wikipedia dbdumps.  The image is hosted by RedIRIS (in short, the Spanish equivalent of Kennisnet in Netherlands).  These new dumps are aimed to save time and effort to other researchers, since they won't need to parse the complete XML dumps to extract all relevant activity metadata.  As of press time, only some of the biggest Wikipedias are available.  However, in the following days the full set of available languages will be ready for downloading.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2009-June/000825.html -- mailing list post
• http://sunsite.rediris.es/mirror/WKP_research/ -- respository
• [Chinese search improved] - the search function for the Chinese and Japanese wiki's are improved due to to a better support of the language structure.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/chinese-language-search-fixes-for-mediawiki/
  

• [Spread the word!] - We are very happy with your readership, but the subscriber numbers are not really growing anymore.  Wikizine could use some more readers. Maybe are there users on your wiki who do not know about Wikizine? Talk about Wikizine, put a Wikizine banner on your user page or on a community page if approved. Thanks.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/banners
  

• [Wikimania] - last year the were missing but now the are back; the hacking days. Those who love to work on MediaWiki & extensions, bot scripts, toolserver stuff, etc.can amuse themselves at Wikimania.
• http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Days
  

• [Plagiarism?] - There's a report that some parts of Chris Anderson's book "Free" were copied from various Wikipedia articles without attribution.  This news has been picked up by a few gossip blogs, but has not been confirmed as accurate.
• http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2009/06/23/chris-anderson-free/
  

• [SF: Mozilla] - Mozilla Labs is holding their monthly meetup at Mozilla's new HQ in Mountain View Thursday (6/25) night.  The topic should be of interest to local SF Wikimedians (some members from the WMF office are going too).  Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo, will talk about the "Open Social Web" initiative to put users back in control of who they know when using socially-enabled sites by using open data-sharing standards. He will be discussing the social web, the underlying protocols that make it possible, and the potential role for the browser to play in this world.
• https://labs.mozilla.com/2009/06/mozilla-labs-meetup-thursday-625/
• [WMAT] - Wikimedia Österreich (the Austrian chapter of the Foundation) will be holding its second Annual General Assembly on 26 June 2009 at 19:00 at the AKH-Hörsaal Medical Center in Vienna.  If you live in Austria, please attend!
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/vereinat-l/2009-June/000049.html (German)
  

• [Wikimedium #2] - Wikimedia Deutschland released its second "newspaper" aimed at (potential) sponsors, partners, friends and fans of Wikimedia, The new edition includes issues 'around the world' (from other Chapters), information about the recent conferences in Berlin (developers, board, and chapter meets), explanation of the Wikipedia structure, and a lot more.  The next edition is planned for September.  It's definitely worth reading if you know German!
• http://wikimedia.de/fileadmin/wiki/images/Downloads/Wikimedium_2009-02.pdf
• [New DVD (for Linux)] - Wikimedia CH (in collaboration with openZIM) has released a new edition of the German Wikipedia DVD on LinuxTag 2009. The DVD contains more than 900,000 German Wikipedia articles and a full text search index for phrasal search. The openZIM project develops a file format called "ZIM" to store hypertexts like Wikipedia, or other websites, with search indexes and images in the most efficient way. The data is highly compressed; the Wikipedia articles only take up 1.4 GB on the DVD.  A new edition of the Wikipedia DVD, in Spanish, is also planned for the Wikimania conference from August 26th to 28th of 2009 in Buenos Aires.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediach-l/2009-June/001259.html (German)
• http://openzim.org/2009-06-23_Wikipedia_DVD -- press release (multiple languages)
• [Weather bot] - There's a new bot for the Serbian Wikinews that posts and updates weather information for Serbia.  It is planned to increase this to the whole world and all Wikinewses, but help from bot operators is needed.  This has brought up questions on how best to incorporate it into the sites (with OpenStreetMaps? a new weather.wikizine.org?).
• http://tinyurl.com/wn-weather -- example of weather on sr.wikinews
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2009-June/001535.html -- mailing list post
• [PLWP New Main Page] - The Polish Wikipedia is trying to design a new main page ("Strona główna") and is trying to solicit opinions and ideas on what the new one should look like.
• http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GDJ/Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna/Debata (Polish)
• [Vandalism survival] - A new study on Wikipedia attempts to determine the distribution of the length of time that vandalism remains on the English-language Wikipedia. This distribution is also known as the survival function for vandalism. The two primary results from this study are: (a) the median time to correction is down to four minutes, and (b) some subtle forms of vandalism still persist for months and even years.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-06-22/Vandalism -- study was published in the Signpost
  

• [Interview] - Lichtenstein's "Vaterland" did an interview with German Wikipedia user "Dodo von de Bergen" where "dvdb" talked about his activities within Wikipedia.
• http://www.vaterland.li/page/epaper/pdf_download.cfm?seite=09_mapc_01_2009-06-05 -- article (German)
• [Video Upgrade] - Technology Review (a publication by MIT) gave an update about some future changes to how Wikipedia will handle searching, editing, and embedding video clips (and other media).  This article combined a large number of "mini-updates" that Michael Dale has been giving the community about his work on MediaWiki's video handling (per a grant with Kaltura).
• http://beta.technologyreview.com/web/22900/page1/ -- article
• http://tinyurl.com/kaltura-pr -- press release
• http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/06/dotsub.html -- multi language subtitles for video
• [Wikisource] - An info/law blog published an interesting post about using Wikisource as an alternative open access repository for legal studies.  It turns out the author is actually an admin on Wikisource who works on expanding the texts too!
• http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/
  

• [Wikt OC] - The Occitan Wiktionary has reached 10,000 entries.
• http://oc.wiktionary.org
• [WP Ru] - The Russian Wikipedia has reached 400,000 articles
• http://ru.wikipedia.org
• [Wp an] - The Aragonese Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles
• http://an.wikipedia.org/wiki/
• [Wp csb] - The Kashubian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles
• http://csb.wikipedia.org/
  

• [Give us your passwords] - Not exactly related to Wikimedia projects, but a US city tried to request that government job applicants turn over their user names and passwords to Internet social networking and Web groups.  A flood of criticism has prompted a Montana city to drop this request, but it still started an interesting (albeit offtopic!) discussion on the Wikimedia mailing lists.
• http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/19/us/AP-US-Internet-Background-Checks.html
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-June/101262.html
• [Berkman files now in Ogg] - The Berkman Center for Internet & Society (a research center at Harvard University) has released its audio and video files in Ogg (and licensed under CC-BY).
• http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5444
  

There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
--- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, almost all versions

# posted by Walter @ 21:43 0 comments links to this post

• [Chrome Support for Ogg] - Google's Chrome browser is going to support Theora video (the type of audio files that Wikimedia uses) natively with the HTML5 video tag. Earlier announced Mozilla also this support in there upcoming version Firefox 3.5
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/052123.html
• http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/05/google-chrome-3-adds-html5.html
• [Usability] - The Usability Team has been working on a number of new projects that hope to make editing easier.  Among others, there is a new skin (vector) and an action-grouped toolbar.  The toolbar which hides the overwhelming number of tool icons which are not being used by novice users and the new skin has a streamlined tab layout. Lots of clutters will be removed from the interface.
• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/02/ -- blog post
• http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Designs -- design descriptions on usability wiki
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vectorskin.png -- image of skin
• [New search] - After some initial hardware issues, the new search backend/servers has been enabled on all wikis.  This new feature has many cool parts, including "did you mean", wild cards, prefix, etc.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/040022.html -- full feature list
• [Google Wave] - Google has recently announced a new communication and collaboration tool called Google Wave.  There was a long thread on foundation-l about how this "wiki-like" tool could fit in with Wikimedia projects.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/052135.html -- mailing list thread
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave -- Wikipedia article
  

• [Licensing update] - GFDL wikis must migrate their licenses by August 1 to remain compatible with Wikimedia projects.  Help is needed to identify and contact the wikis affected.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Outreach
• [Signpost] - The Wikipedia Signpost is looking for writers.  A few have signed up so far.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-18/From_the_editor
  

• [Social bookmarking] - EN Wikinews has voted in favor of the introduction of links to add articles to social bookmarking sites such as Facebook and Delicious. On news stories, there is now a template available to share it.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2009-May/001512.html -- mailing list proposal
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler/proposals#Social_bookmarking_of_Wikinews_articles -- onwiki discussion
  

• [Trustee elections] - Three community representatives will be elected to the Wikimedia Foundation board this summer. The election is scheduled to run from July 28-August 10, the vote time was extended to two weeks after input from the community.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/en
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/052070.html
  

• [TS: New servers] - The Toolserver received a new shipment of servers that will be used as a new place for user home directories, a replacement for zedler (s2 database), a second login server, and an extra toolserver for OpenStreetMap stuff.  All the new servers should be up and running before the next maintenance period, July 6.
• [POTY 2008] - The Third Annual Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year Competition has concluded and the results are now available.  The winner was "Horses on Bianditz mountain" by Mikel Ortega.
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Biandintz_eta_zaldiak_-_modified2.jpg -- Winning image
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2008/Results -- Results
• [First logo creator] - The creator of Wikipedia's first logo has finally realized that we used his logo when he googled himself! ;-) Bjørn Smestad, had submitted his idea to a Nupedia logo competition and, while it didn't win that competition, it became the official Wikipedia logo for around 8 months (and served as a basis for the current logo).
• http://bjornsmestad.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-wikipedia-logo.html -- creator's blog post
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_logos -- Wikipedia logos through the years
• http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2009/05/28/another-reason-not-to-copyright-logos/ -- blog post by sj on the subject
• [SF+MakerFaire] - The San Francisco Wikimedians and the Wikimedia Foundation office made an appearance at the San Mateo MakerFaire.  The event went very well and was mostly community run.  Visitors to the booth found Wikimedia trading cards and a guess the language game!
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_Faire -- Wikipedia article
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_Trading_Card_Game.pdf -- trading cards
• http://austinhair.org/guess/ -- guess the Wikipedia language
  

• [ArbCom + Scientology] - The English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (final level of dispute resolution) closed a 6-month long case involving the Church of Scientology articles.  This news was quickly picked up by the tech press and is making its way through the mainstream papers, with articles in many languages (including English, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Danish).
• http://tinyurl.com/ScientologyWiki -- Google News results
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology -- arbitration case
• [nowiki comparison] - A Norwegian newspaper (VG, Verdens Gang) compared Wikipedia in Norsk (Bokmål) and Store Norske Leksikon. The latter encyclopedia is a large traditional paper lexicon transferred to a web portal, together with to other lexicons; one medical and health lexiconand one biographical lexicon.  The roundup focused on five different areas; history, culture, entertainment, society and politics, and sport. Wikipedia either won or tied in all categories.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-June/052282.html -- mailing list post description
• http://bayimg.com/image/laannaacf.jpg -- scan of the article
• [WMUK denied charity] - Wikimedia UK, the British chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, was recently denied charity status by HMRC (the organization that controls charity status in the UK).  The HMRC stating that production of an encyclopaedia is not a charitable purpose; the story was listed on the front page of Charity Finance, a charity-related news site.
• http://www.charityfinance.co.uk/home/content.php?id=2876&pg=15&cat=30 -- story
• http://uk.wikimedia.org -- Wikimedia UK
  

• [wp] - The Ukrainian Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles, the Arabic Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles, and the Malayalam Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
• http://tinyurl.com/ukwp150k -- 150,000th article (uk.wp)
• http://tinyurl.com/arwp100x -- 100,000th article (ar.wp)
• http://tinyurl.com/mlwp10k -- 10,000th article (ml.wp)
• [wikt] - The Italian Wiktionary has reached 100,000 entries and the Ukrainian Wiktionary has reached 20,000 entries.
• http://tinyurl.com/ukwikt20k -- 20,000th entry (uk.wikt)
• [more] - More stats: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News
  

• [Open Source City] - The Vancouver (in British Columbia, Canada) city council has stated it will try to make its data open and accessible to everyone (when possible), opting for open standards and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.
• http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/22/tech-vancouver-open-source-standards-software-city.html
• [OSM Italy] - The first conference of the Italian Open Street Map (OSM) will be held in Trento, Italy between June 5 and 6.  The OSM software will be integrated into Wikimedia sites and Wikimedia Italia is also sponsoring this conference.
• http://osmit.fbk.eu -- conference website
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OSM -- Meta page on the integration
• [WMDE: Job] - Wikimedia Deutschland, the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, is currently hiring a new Executive Director/Geschäftsführer.  Applications are being accepted until June 13.
• http://neu.wikimedia.de/index.php?id=95 -- more information (German)
  

"I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."

-- Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer, speech to the Aero Club of France, 1908

# posted by Walter @ 17:02 0 comments links to this post