en.Wikizine.org

Year: 2008 Week: 33 Number: 98

2008-08-12T12:56:00.001Z

Technical news

[New and useful] - it is now possible to insert the magic word __NOINDEX__ into a page. The result of this is that when a search engine spider comes by, it gets the instruction not to index that page. This way, it should for example be possible to keep certain pages out of the search results of google. This only works on pages that are not in the content namespace; for example, on Wikipedia it will not work in an article like [[Michael Shmerkin]].
Note that anyone who can edit a page can insert this magic word in a page. There is also a magic word __INDEX__ now. Its use is not clear.

[Double redirect] - a long-standing problem is the creation of double redirects when a page is moved. The user then needs to click on a redirect link to continue. There is now a "double redirect fixer". It works at the MediaWiki level but it behaves like a bot. Sometime after the move is done, the wiki will check if there is a double redirect. If so, it will be fixed automatically. By default, the correction will be done by [[User:Redirect fixer]]. Those edits do not appear in recent changes.
The name of this "user" can be specified by the setting [[MediaWiki:double-redirect-fixer]]. If for some reason you wish the system to not get involved in a double redirect you can insert the magic word __STATICREDIRECT__ .

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-July/038751.html

[Wikisets] - Not so long ago, a new functionality was activated to create "global user groups". These groups can be given certain rights (like "grant and revoke bot flags"); when users are enrolled, they have the rights of that group on all Wikimedia wikis.
The problem is that those rights are valid either everywhere or nowhere, and not all communities agree with external users having special rights on their wiki.
To solve this problem, the "wiki sets" option has been created. This makes it possible to have "global groups" that are not global. Certain wikis can opt out, or a global group can be made opt-in.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Steward_handbook#wikisets

[New mail] - Almost (*) all wikis now offer an user the option to receive an e-mail when their talk page has been changed.
(*) exceptions are enwiki, eswiki, frwiki, plwiki, jawiki, ptwiki, ruwiki, zhwiki, itwiki and dewiki.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15031

[Download wikipedia] - You are free to download the database dump of wikis, but for most users this is not very useful. As an alternative, you can also download a static HTML dump: a huge collection of HTML files that gives you a local copy of the Wikipedia of your choice. This makes it very easy to bring Wikipedia to places where there is no internet or where it is prohibitively expensive.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/03/new-wikipedia-downloads-available

[Ogg support in Firefox] - The fairly popular internet browser Mozilla Firefox now supports the Ogg Vorbis and Theora media formats in its experimental version 3.1. It is considered normal that a webbrower is able to display images by itself; however, for video or audio an external program or a plugin is required. The Wikimedia Foundation projects use Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis for their video and audio recordings. However, besides Wikimedia, these formats are very rarely used by websites for end users.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/31/1752206

Request for help

[Illustration Project] - In November 2007 it was announced (wikizine 84) that a donation was received of US $ 20,000 for creating and improving illustrations. The "Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP)". It has taken some time to organize but now round 1 is open. Requests for illustrations can now be submitted. People who make a good illustration that is requested can get paid for it. US$ 40 or 15 US$ will be paid. Organizer is [[commons:User:Pfctdayelise]]

Proposals

[Flood flag] - A proposal has been made for a new sysop function called the "flood flag", that would allow users to hide batches of repetitive edits from recent changes, like a bot flag does.

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

Foundation

[Job offers] - Wikimedia is offering several technical jobs; at least a few of the new employees are to work in the San Francisco office, but remote development and system administration is also possible.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/39257

[WMF budget] - The financial plan for the next fiscal year of the WMF has been presented. The WMF plans to spend almost 6 million US dollars and have an income of 7,33 million US dollars. This is a big increase compared to the budget of 2007/2008. The hiring of several new staff members, especially for technical functions, has been budgeted. An extensive "FAQ" on the budget is available.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/01/wikimedia-foundation-2008-2009-annual-plan/

Community

[EN Wikinews] - has started to use the flagged revisions system on the wiki. The community is working to integrate this function into the publishing procedures.
[Move Main Page] - Traditionally, the main page of a Wikimedia project is in the content namespace. This is because the main page was the first page created of every wiki. And for most wikis, that was before namespaces existed. Some wikis have moved their main pages to another name space. For example, the German Wikipedia uses the "Wikipedia:" namespace and the Swedish Wikipedia uses the "Portal:" namespace. The English language Wikipedia is now also discussing a move.

http://tinyurl.com/6dvldz

Media

[Hebrew Wikipedia] - an Israeli newspaper published extensively about Wikipedia. Some fragments have been translated in English. It tells the Wikipedia story from the Hebrew Wikipedia point of view.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1005293.html

Stats

[布拉沃] - The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles. Due to the Olympics, the Chinese wikipedia is mostly unblocked in China for now.

http://zh.wikipedia.org

Other news

[Wikimania 2008] - More videos of Wikimania 2008 have become available. An overview can be found on a special Wikizine posting and the Kaltura site. WikipediaWeekly also has some new Wikimania-related postings.

[Wikipedia.org] - The poll discussing which Wikipedias are to be listed on the central space of the portal Wikipedia.org is now closed. The result is a very simple criterion: a ranking by most visitors, without any further specifications or exceptions. These rankings are to be obtained from Alexa.com.
The portal has been updated according the new system. As a result of this the Dutch language Wikipedia has been replaced by the Chinese Wikipedia. According to Alexa, 1% of all traffic to wikipedia.org is to the Chinese Wikipedia.
Alexa gets those statistics by monitoring the internet usage of people who have installed the (English language) Alexa toolbar.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll

Did you know ...

... that the definition of a "community member" can differ strongly between wikis?

... that the Hebrew-language Wikipedia only gives users the right to vote if they have made at least 100 edits in the last 90 days?

... that the idea for using this system is to make it more difficult for users with sock puppets to control votes?

Quote

'It occurred to me that when the dust settled on the Wikipedia versus Britannica question, the likely conclusion would be 'Wikipedia is more up to date; Britannica has better illustrations.' —Philip Greenspun

Number of subscribers: 714 , Unique Visitors website last week: 76 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): Oliphaunt , Thanks to: Yonatan, adambro, pfctdayelise
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

Special post: url's to the Wikimania 2008 streams

2008-07-26T13:38:00.024Z

The video recordings of Wikimania 2008 are online at the Biblotheca Alexandrina webcast section But these do not work if you are not using Windows it looks like.

To make it more esay to watch them Wikizine provides you with the direct links to the files. Try several players if needed. It seems to work mostly with VLC. But for some I needed Mplayer to get it working.

The "Kalura" videos are copys of the Biblotheca Alexandrina webcast streams. So there are not better but the are maybe more easy te view.

Overview of all Kaltura videos can be found at the Kalutra website at the Wikimania2008 section.

Opening Ceremony
Ahmed Darwish, Florence Devouard, Hoda Baraka, Ismail Serageldin
Thursday July 17, 2008

View by streaming

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-3.wmv

Download the video;

http://www.badongo.com/vid/816416 this is wiki-17-3.wmv
note: this video breaks down in the middle of the speech of Florence , sorry, it is the best I can do

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Wikimedia Foundation Board Panel
Domas Mituzas, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Jimmy Wales, Kat Walsh, Michael Snow
Thursday July 17, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-7.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Content creation strategies for emerging countries
Jürgen Galler
Thursday July 17, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-4.wmv

Kultura;

Kaltura

Keeping the Media accountable
Rhonda Shearer
Thursday July 17, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-6.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

New Paradigms For New Tomorrows
Ismail Serageldin
Thursday July 17, 2008

Vieuw by streaming;

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-17-1.wmv

View by downloading;

http://www.badongo.com/vid/817019

Kaltura:

Kaltura

Recent Developments in Search Technology
Usama Fayyad
Friday July 18, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-18-2.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Wikimedia and libraries
Jakob Voss, Phoebe Ayers, Sohair Wastawy, Tim Spalding
Friday July 18, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-18-5.wmv

kaltura;

Kaltura

Free Knowledge & Wikimedia Projects
Oliveir Hugot
Friday July 18, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-18-4.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Open culture and the Internet in the Middle East
Ahmed Tantawy
Friday July 18, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-18-1.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

LibraryThing and Social Cataloging
Tim Spalding
Friday July 18, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-18-3.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Diplopedia: Wiki Culture in the U.S. Department of State
Eric M. Johnson
Saturday July 19, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-19-1.wmv

Kaltura

Kaltura

Communication issues : Musings of a Dinosaur

Florence Devouard
Saturday July 19, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-19-2.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Closing Ceremony
Florence Devouard, Ismail Serageldin, Jimmy Wales, Michael Snow, Noha Adly, Sue Gardner
Saturday July 19, 2008

mms://webcast.bibalex.org/WebCast/wiki-19-3.wmv

Kaltura;

Kaltura

Year: 2008 Week: 30 Number: 97

2008-07-24T21:59:00.001Z

Notice from the editor: this edition does not includes all relevant news for the time frame between the previous Wikizine and this one. I decided that getting something out is more important then more delays. Walter

Foundation

[New board chair] - The board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has a new chair. All board members where in favour to appoint Michael Snow for the job. Michael, who is a board member since February 2008, is best known as the founder of the Wikipedia Signpost. The former chair, Anthere (Florence Devouard), was Chair since October 2006 and board member since 2004. She is now not longer a WMF board member. Anthere has joined the WMF Advisory board.

[Board election] - [[meta:user:Wing]] (Ting Chen) is elected as a community board member to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. His term will expire in July 2009. 3019 valid votes where registered.

[New hires] - The WMF has hired 5 new staff members; Erik Zachte (Tech stats guy), Sara Crouse (Head of Partnerships and Foundation Relations), Rebecca Handler (Major Gifts Officer), Rand Montoya (Head of Community Giving), and Frank Schulenburg (public outreach coordinator). Erik Zachte starts in September as a part-time contractor. Erik is a Wikipedian from the Dutch language Wikipedia but is mostly know for his volunteer work in creating detailed statistics for the Wikimedia projects. As a contractor for the WMF Erik will also work on this.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31508 -- Erik Zachte
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31661 -- Sara Crouse
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31367 -- Rebecca Handler / Rand Montoya
http://stats.wikimedia.org/ -- the stats of the WMF by Erik Zachte
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff -- overview staff

Technical news

[SUL] - Bureaucrats can now rename a user to a name that is already migrated to the Single User Login. This at least when if the global account and the local account have the same email address or password.
[Video on wiki] - Kaltura, Inc is sponsoring Michael Dale, lead developer of the MetaVid project, to work in the Wikimedia Foundation offices in San Francisco beginning in August. Michael will work on adding support for video editing operations and other video-related functionality to MediaWiki.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31756

[ERATA] - the item "Restrict upload", section "Proposals", in Wikizine 96 was not correct. Restricting uploads to auto confirmed users only is not a proposal but is live on all wikis ... except those wikis who have requested to disable this function explicitly.

Request for help

[Wikizine] - assistance would be useful (understatement)

http://report.wikizine.org

Proposals

[Front door] - Just like most people have a very hard time to understand that a domain of a website can end with something else then .com have visitors the urge to put "www" before everything. The means the url "www.wikipedia.org" is an important page and the front door for many visitors of Wikipedia. 10 Wikipedias have currently the honour to be listed very prominently around the wikipedia-globe, the Wikipedias who have the most articles. When a Wikipedia breaks the 100,000 articles milestone the also like to move up and get a spot around the globe. But space is limited. This a long standing source of discussion.

A poll is currently opened to find a solution. Users can indicate there support for different ways to present the Wikipedia-options to the visitors. The poll is open until July 31, 2008 at 23:59 UTC.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll

Community

[Wikimania 2008] - For this year is it over. WikipediaWeekly provides audio reporting about Wikimania.The 2009 Wikimania conference will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

http://wikipediaweekly.org/ -- podcasts 52 / 57
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2008_Alexandria -- some
http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gallery pictures from Wikimania 2008
http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Wikimania_Sessions -- If you are very lucky you can find some video recordings there
http://tinyurl.com/6l4gwr -- Bibliotheca Alexandrina Webcast
http://linuxawy.org/node/28 -- how to get those streams working
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2008/07/wikimania-alexandria.html -- Impression by GerardM, who was there
http://tinyurl.com/6fu5hy -- and also one from User:Pfctdayelise

[Most read] - The English Wikinews has a new page that displays the top 20 of the most read articles of the last hour. This is not done by MediaWiki but by means of the Domas's wikistats.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Popular_articles

[The Other Side] - Once was it a mystery and cause to speculation how the dark side of the Moon would look like. Now the question is raised; how does the other side of the Wikipedia globe looks like?

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31763

Other news

[Knol] - Google has gone live with their project to create user written information articles. It is not like Wikipedia in the sense that an article is owned by an author, at least as default. When you start a new "knol" you can also allow everyone to edit if logged in. That author can write about what he wishes to write, even when there is already an article about that topic. Other people can give a rating (stars) and give comments. Authors received a part of the earnings of the advertisements displayed on there articles if the switch the advertisements on. The default license is "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0". It is currently not clear of the GFDL-licence that Wikipedia is using is compatible. But you can also pick a licence that does not allow commercial use or you can disallow all use elsewhere. So knol be very open or very restrictive depending on what you chose as author of a knol.

http://knol.google.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYO-fN_VgU -- Jimmy Wales gives his idea about Knol & Wikipedia

[China] - The Chinese language Wikipedia is now, months after the unblocking of the other languages editions, also unblocked. At least in some parts of China. It is expected the will be blocked again as soon as the Olympic fire is extinguished.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia_unblocked_by_government

Quote

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mozilla

Number of subscribers: 710 , Editor(s): Walter , Thanks to: Platonides, bawolff , 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

Notification of delay of EN Wikizine

2008-07-15T14:47:00.001Z

Dear reader of Wikizine in English,

The next edition of Wikizine is delayed. At this time it is still the
intention to provide you with this edition.

If you would like to help out with the creation of EN Wikizine please
contact me at <walter@wikizine.org>

Greetings,

Walter
--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community

Year: 2008 Week: 25 Number: 96

2008-06-16T23:36:00.001Z

Technical news

[Upload] - When you upload an image that is already online with another name you get a warning about it. It works by calculating the hash of the file and compares it with the already online files.
[Move] - sysops have now the option to rename all sub-pages in one move when moving the parent page.
[Global user groups] - a WMF-global user group can now be created that has a much or as little user rights as desired. Users can then be added to that group. Global user members then have the user rights assigned to that group on all wikis. Currently this function is only used to give stewards administrative rights on all wikis.

Proposals

[Global sysops] - there is a proposal and a poll about the possibility of creating a "Global sysops user group". That is creating users who are sysop on all wikis. The idea is to make it more easy to maintain the many small wikis. Users who would be "global sysop" would be only allowed to use there rights on small wiki where there is no local community or one that not yet take care of there own wiki. The opposition against this idea does not like that "Global sysops" would also have the technical sysops rights on large wikis, like the English Wikipedia, despite it would not be allowed to use it.

[Restrict upload] - there is a proposal to restrict upload rights of new users on all wikis except commons to autoconfirmed users. That are users who have an account that it at least 5 days old. The idea is that this will prevent the upload of a lot of problems.

http://tinyurl.com/56z4fs

[Interwiki] - a proposal to introduce the Interlanguage Extension on Wikimedia projects to change the system of the language interwiki links.

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

Policy

[Draft] - Mike Godwin has drafted a new version of the privacy policy. Feedback and input is requested.

Foundation

[Board elections] - the election for one position on the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation is open. There are 15 candidates. You can vote until 23:59 21 June 2008 (UTC). Note that the voting system has changed. Read the manual. The result are expected to be announced on or around 26 June 2008.

[Enquête] - In July 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with UNU-Merit, plans to launch the first general survey of Wikimedia readers and contributors. Attempts are made to make it available in as many languages as possible. Translation assistance is requested.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/06/06/help-translate-our-first-survey-of-readers-and-contributors/

[Lawsuit Germany] - a German publishing company sued Wikimedia Deutschland over their article in the German Wikipedia. This because there was critical information in the article. The court ruled that it was legal to include to critical information and rejected the claim that Wikimedia Deutschland was legally responsible for the article in question. The publishing company intents to appeal the decision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-05-26/News_and_notes

Media

[Live; dead on wiki] - Wikipedia vs Associated Press.

http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2008/06/wikipedia_vs_ap.html

Stats

[Voters stats] - parcial statistics of the voter turnout indicate that few actually vote. The Hebrew Wikipedia has most users who use the voting right. Most in numbers is the English language Wikipedia.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/30693

[Bla-bla] - Wikipedia NL has more spoken articles (735) then EN Wikipedia (728).

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_en_Ernie -- example (press play button)

Other news

[Britannica] - a new website run by the Encyclopaedia Britannica will be a bit like wikipedia. EN hopes to created a community of people who work on their encyclopedia under thiee real name and revise articles and write articles. The EB Staff keeps editorial control. Submissions will need to be approved to be included in the article.

Offtopic request for help

[Vote for Oscar!] - this is an experiment. This to see what, if any, the responds is. You are requested to vote for Oscar, a Belgian cat (you can see that because of the beer bottle) in a competition of Whiskas.

go to the vote page (link below)
enter your name ("Voornaam" and "Naam") and email.
ignore the check box (check if you like to get Dutch catfood emails) and the lower input options
click on the purple "Breng je stem uit" button.
You get an email from "makeyourcatastar@whiskas.be" - click on the purple button "Ik bevestig mijn stem!" to confirm your vote
done

Oscar says; "burp" (= thank you)

http://tinyurl.com/6eubno

Quote

"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham

Number of subscribers: 710 Unique Visitors website last week: 154 Number of votes for Oscar: 21 Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Spacebirdy, Nathan 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

Year: 2008 Week: 22 Tech flash

2008-05-27T22:01:00.001Z

Single User Login (SUL), the system that you have one user account for all Wikimedia Foundation wikis is now live for all users. Until now it was only for sysops.

Please read first the documentation before about it before using it. Stewards can undo the merge of an account be try to avoid the need for it. If you wish to unsurp an account on some wiki do that before you merge your account.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount
#wikimedia-tech
#wikimedia-stewards

http://chat.wikizine.org

Editor(s): Walter 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

Year: 2008 Week: 21 Number: 95

2008-05-21T22:35:00.001Z

Technical news

[Sighted revisions] - a system to hide edits made by certain groups of users from visitors as long as the edit is not approved by a user who has the user rights to approve the edit - This is now active on the German language Wikipedia. "Surveyor" is the title of a user who has approval rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-05-12/Sighted_revisions

[Special:GlobalUsers] - on this special page you can see who has a global account. Works on all wikis, not only Meta.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsers

Request for discussion

[Wikibooks logo] - For the last 2 years Wikibooks is in the process of selecting a new logo for Wikibooks and Wikijunior. Community involvement and feedback, discussion is requested to move things forward.

Foundation

[Board election] - one seat on the Board of Trustees is open for election. Candidates can submit their candidacy until 22 May.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008

[Board restructuring] - the WMF board of trustees will increase from the current 8 to 10. The board will be comprised of: 3 elected community members, 2 members selected by the chapters, 1 board-appointed 'community founder' seat and 4 "specific expertise" seats (also Board-appointed).

[Exit Anthere] - Florence Devouard, Chair of the WMF board of trustees, will not seek reelection for a seed in the board. As a result after the conclusion of the current board election Anthere will not longer be a member of the board and chair of the board. Anthere is a board member since June 2004.
[WMF bylaws] - the WMF passed a resolution to update the bylaws.

http://tinyurl.com/66krxt

[Wikimania 2008] - registration is open. The price is $45 until 30th of May. After that it is $60.

http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration

[MS MediaPlayer needed] - Based on the current information users who wish to view parts of Wikimania 2008 online will need to get access to a Windows system with MS MediaPlayer to be able to view the video content.

http://webcast.bibalex.org/home/home.aspx

[Wikimania security] - a FAQ is posted regarding security concerns regarding Wikimania. Also an "Egypt Country Profile prepared by Clayton Associates" that can be useful reading for all who go to Wikimania is online

Media

[Good reading] - Article about Wikipedia and Britannica

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080516/0916211136.shtml

[OMG! WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDEREN??!!] - Some people are concerned about pictures of (parts of) people without clothes that can be found in Wikipedia.

Stats

[MediaWiki stats] - some stats of several wikis, also non WMF wikis, who use MediaWiki.

http://s23.org/wikistats/

Other news

[Google Translate] - the translation function of Google is expanded with many new languages (and even identifies the language for you!). This can be useful to solve the babel problem when you try to communicate on a projects whose language you do not know.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-translate-becomes-best-online.html

[Wikibook2pdf] - online tool to create a pdf-book of a wikibook book.

http://blogpaper.com/mediawiki2pdf

Did you know ...

... that a pencil sharpener 'is a device for sharpening a pencil's point by shaving the end of the pencil'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil_sharpener

This was the first "Did you know" of the English language Wikipedia, posted on February 22, 2004.

Quote

"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet airplane. His son will ride a camel." -- Saudi Arabian saying

Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): Philippe, Cbrown , Thanks to: mutante, Mike_lifeguard , 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

Year: 2008 Week: 17 Number: 94

2008-04-24T09:07:00.001Z

Technical news

[Suggestions] - A function has been enabled on the projects that gives a drop-down menu with search suggestions.
- http://leuksman.com/log/2008/04/21/suggestion-search-drop-down/
[New search tests] - Testing is underway of a new search system to replace the current wiki-search function. The new system is supposed to give a more "google-like" search experience.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37611
- http://ls2.wikimedia.org/ - location of experimental search system
[Global blocking?] - A MediaWiki extension has been created that makes global blocking of IP addresses on all WMF wikis possible. Discussion is opened about whether this is a good idea, how it can be used, and by whom.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37704
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking
[Global login] - Users who already have a global account for the projects still need to login to every wiki independently. There is a global login but no global session. The developers are working on this. Brion explains a possible way for doing this and the security risks.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37661
- http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_session_threat_assessment
[OpenID] - Regarding the possible implementation of OpenID on the WMF-projects, Brion says: "We may [implement this] at some point, but it's a much lower priority atm, and requires more review to make sure we're happy with how it'll look and behave."
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37671
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID

Foundation

[Board Treasurer] - A non-elected seat on the Board of Trustees has been filled by Stuart West, who is the new Treasurer of the Board.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28722 -- announcement on Foundation-l
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28753 -- "Hello" from Stuart West
- http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board#Stuart_West
[New jobs] - the Wikimedia Foundation has job openings for 3 functions related to the organisation of future fundraising drives.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28517
[Wikimania 2008] - Requests for scholarships (financial support) to go to Wikimania in Egypt were opened but are now closed again. Sorry. The timeframe was to short to make it in time for Wikizine.
- http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
[Large donation] - the WMF has received a new large donation. It is US$500,000 from Vinod and Neeru Khosla.
- http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_Releases/Khosla_Gift
[WMF blog] - a Foundation blog has been started. WMF staff will post news and information about the work they're engaged in that is not large enough to need a press release, but is still noteworthy. Also, guest contributors, board members and so on can post... but anyone can comment!
- http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/11/welcome/

Community

[Wikiportret] - the Dutch Wikimedia chapter presents a service to make it more easy for famous people or there managers to submit pictures for use on the projects.
The front-end is a basic website with clear and easy instructions to submit a picture. After this an email is sent to the OTRS team (who need to verify the submission) and if is is accepted they put in on Commons.
Currently there is only a Dutch language version of this service in use, but support for more languages is possible and intended. (However, for many languages this already exists by use of a page on the wiki Contact form.)
To support this project templates are placed on (Dutch) articles of people who have not yet a picture to point to the special website. Also an advertisement is created that can be used for publication by people who wish to support this project.
- http://www.wikiportret.nl
- http://www.wikiportrait.org -- multi-language version (only Dutch works)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission -- English Wikipedia (and four other language versions linked from the sidebar)
[EN Wikinews] - a bot active on the English Wikipedia is helping to bring the news articles of the sister project Wikinews to the attention of the Wikipedia readers. This bot will update pages on Wikipedia with relevant Wikinews articles, including the addition of Television portal links to recent Wikinews articles that are about television related topics.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikinews_Importer_Bot
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Television

Media

[Documentary] - On the Dutch (Netherlands) public television, a 50-minute documentary about Wikipedia has been broadcast at prime time, and uninterrupted by commercials. An English-language version is available on YouTube.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0
- http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/39405191/

Stats

[By page view] - Overview of how much traffic the different Wikipedias receive. English gets 50%, German 10% and Japanese 9.5%.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27602
[2000th featured article] - the English language Wikipedia now has 2000 featured articles. The latest Signpost features an interview about it.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/2000th_FA
[Wiktionary] - the Japanese has 30,000 definitions, the French has 800,000 definitions and the English also has almost 800,000.
- http://ja.wiktionary.org
- http://fr.wiktionary.org

Other news

[Britannica free!] - ... at least for bloggers. The Encyclopædia Britannica is now giving away free accounts for their encyclopedia to "web publishers". Also articles of EB are now free for all to read, if you go to the article by means of an hyperlink posted online. You can only read that one specific article, if you jump to any other article the text is shielded by a subscribe option.... at least if you have javascript enabled. If you disable javascript in your browser, everyone (without the need to login) can read all articles of Britannica.
- http://britannicanet.com/?page_id=15
- http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/
- http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192818/Wikipedia -- The "Wikipedia" article on EB (if this doesn't work use the online link on en.wikizine.org)
- http://www.britannica.com/bps/home -- MainPage (disable javascript)
[Wikipedia book] - come autumn 2008, the publisher Bertelsmann will publish a German-language printed edition of Wikipedia that contains information on about 50,000 topics on 1000 pages. The price will be EUR 19.95 (US$32). The Wikimedia Foundation will receive EUR 1 for every copy.
- http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/22/wikipedia-in-german-book-form/
- http://tinyurl.com/4fx4n2 Slashdot news item
[Wikipedia Chemistry] - Yet another book: KnowledgePublications is publishing an English language book about hydrogen (H). It contains large parts of the chemistry related articles of EN wp. The book is titled, "The Chemical Educator: for The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen". The published says it is one of the best books ever written on the manufacture of hydrogen.
- http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-04-0416-003.shtml
- http://tinyurl.com/65c49c -- view of the book
[ID Wikizine] - the Indonesian language edition of Wikizine has been closed due to lack of interest and assistance.

Did you know ...

... that even changes that were active during a very brief amount of time can pop up for a long time afterwards as the version a visitor will see?

On the first of April was the tag-line changed several times. That is the string of text that normally says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Seven days later, when requesting an article as a visitor, the version of the article displayed contained the version of the tagline that was active for only one minute on the first of April.

The reason is that for the servers to be able to take care of the very large volume of traffic the sites get, pages are cached. Anonymous users get a previously saved version to see. The cache of a page expires after 31 days.

Moral of the story: even a "joke edit" that is only live for a minute or so can show up to visitors up to a month later.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37598

Quote

"Spanking or hitting a skunk is not recommended"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/WikiWorld

Number of subscribers: 710 , Unique Visitors website last week: 86 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): Philippe, Oliphaunt, Cbrown1023 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

Year: 2008 Week: 14 Number: 93 Extra

2008-04-03T20:41:00.001Z

Foundation

[Wikimania 2009] - on March 28, after a long wait since February 28, the jury that would determine the location of Wikimania 2009 chose Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is the first time that a Spanish-speaking country will harbor the largest gathering of Wikimedians. Other bids for Wikimania 2009 were from the cities of Toronto (Canada), Brisbane (Australia), and Karlsruhe (Germany).

This is the first occasion that the convention will be done in two languages (English and Spanish) and will be carried out in the southern hemisphere of the planet, on August 28-30, 2009, according to information presented by the local organization.

Backing this bid was Wikimedia Argentina (presided by Patrician Lorente), which did everything to present to the capital of Argentina as a place for Wikimedians to come and visit.

The jury picked the Latin American city due to the large Spanish-language projects of the Foundation (wikipedia, wikinoticias, wikilibros, etc.) and the cultural significance of the city. The jury also emphasized the great commitment of the organization and the activity that has developed Wikimedia Argentina from December 2007.

[Interview] - In a brief interview, Patrician Lorente (President of Wikimedia Argentina) responded to questions about Buenos Aires as headquarters of Wikimania 2009.

This interview was arranged and published in the Spanish language edition of Wikizine ( ES2008-93 extra). A machine translation of it is in included below.

<babelfish translation>

Wikizine: How arose the restlessness from Wikimania in Wikimedia Argentina?

Patricio: It even arose before organizing to us like Wikimedia Argentina formally. Our sensation is as much the Spanish-speaking world as the South hemisphere has, by different reasons, a marginal participation in the global community of Wikimedia, that does not correspond with the real participation in the projects. Even let us remember that the Wikipedia in Spanish second more is visited and than the Spanish-speaking community, with its overwhelming heterogeneity and complexity is growing and it is being organized of admirable way.

W: Which were the main problems that were in the organization?

P: We have not had serious problems still, but the hard work just begins. Until now we have had to work in the development of a project, from the resolution of the jury of Wikimanía 2009 we will have to take that project to the practice.

W: What is the hope of this event?
P: We hope to turn to the Spanish-speaking community and the South hemisphere assets protagonists of the global dynamics of the Wikimedia projects. We want to show our European and North American friends whom an anxious community exists here and worker who is perhaps sometimes invisible for many. Perhaps that the ideal of the free knowledge has a more meant and particular importance in these places of the world in which the difficulties to the access to the education and the knowledge are multiplied for vast social sectors.

W: A message for the readers of Wikizine.
P: That we waited for them in Buenos Aires! The projects brothers of the Wikipedia already take own flight and is necessary to show them the community.

</babelfish translation>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos Aires
http://wikitravel.org/en/Buenos_Aires
http://www.wikimedia.org.ar - Wikimedia Argentina
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Buenos_Aires - Candidatura de Buenos Aires para Wikimania 2009

Editor(s): Dennis Tobar ([[meta:User:Superzerocool]]) Translator: Casey Brown Thanks to: Patricio Lorente Construction: Walter
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

Year: 2008 Week: 13 Number: 93

2008-03-26T16:09:00.001Z

Technical news
Single User Login

SUL. Single User Login. Bug 57. Unified login. One login for all wikis. The mythical uberlogin has migrated to The Real World.

The migration function is enabled currently for sysops only. The options to migrate can be found on the first page of the account preferences page on the projects were you're a sysop. From there you can follow the instructions to claim all you accounts on all wikis that have the same username. After the migration you can log on all these wikis with the same password.

For the migration to work you need to have the same email address or password on all your user accounts. You can claim the rest of the accounts with your name by providing their password.

The current sysop-only migration is to collect information for the general user migration later. Sysops who have problems are strongly encouraged to report them so that they can be fixed before SUL is rolled out generally.

By migrating now (if you can) you have the advantage that you can use that username to log in to all WMF wikis as long as there is not a local user account with your name that is not yours.

Please note that not everhings works yet when you migrate. For example renaming an account can not be done (for now at least). Inform you before you do it.

[Upload auto-confirmed] - upload of files on all Wikimedia sites except Commons is now restricted to auto-confirmed users. That are user accounts older then 4 days.

http://tinyurl.com/2vuz8m

[Search changed] - the technical side of the search function of the wikis has changed. As a result some wikis who have used javascript to include external search engines may experience glitches requiring an update of the local code.

Request for help

[Stable Versions] - testwikis are setup for tests of the stable versions function. This function makes it possible to rate the quality of an article. Feedback is requested from users who volunteer to test the function.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37372

[Scholarship] - translations are requested of the Wikimania 2008 scholarships information page.

http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation/Scholarships

Foundation

[+ $3,000,000] - The board of the "Alfred P. Sloan Foundation" has granted the Wikimedia Foundation 1 million dollars (US) per year for the next three years. This is the largest donation made to the Foundation in its history. Note: 1 million USD = 642302 EUR / 501669 GBP

[New hire] - the WMF has hired a new accountant, Mary Lou Secoquian, who will work in San Francisco.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27279

Community

[NotTheWikipediaWeekly] - On the English language Wikipedia a new audio podcast project about Wikipedia has started. They announce a time to meet in a skypecast, talk about Wikipedia topics and publish the recordings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly

Awards

[IT Wikipedia] - The Italian Wikipedia has won the a category award of "PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore" a competition organized by the most important business newspaper in Italy (Il Sole 24 ore). The winners were selected by jury from the shortlist composed by the 5 sites that obtained the highest score through a popular vote. This is the second time that it.wiki wins "PremioWWW-Il sole 24 ore". Last time was two years ago.

http://premiowww.ilsole24ore.com/vincitori.php

Stats

[Animated stats] - Our grandmaster of statistics Erik Zachte has made a new form of Wikipedia-stats. Animated statistics; bubbles representing the projects floating true time and number of articles. It is available in an interactive format that works currently with FireFox 3.0 release candidate. A flash version that works with any browser (8MB) is also available.

Other news

[Schoolbook] - A publisher of schoolbooks in Japan is using a Wikipedia map as illustration. It is the world map of death penalty sentences.

Did you know ...

... Microsoft also uses MediaWiki ?

Microsoft researcher Steve Ickman said while Microsoft SharePoint is great, MediaWiki has valuable features not found in SharePoint - particularly the ability to archive.

http://tinyurl.com/ysbz6n

http://tinyurl.com/2ar5jo

Quote

"Do not leave your children unattended. All unattended children will be eaten." -- Friendly advice from vulture in movie "Ice age 2"

Number of subscribers: 712 , Unique Visitors website last week: 132 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): 2 who do not wish to take credit for it , Thanks to: Nick , 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