GCS Step 1

Monday, May 08, 2006

Wikizine - number: 24

=== Technical news ===

[Update Renameuser] The contributions limit for [[Special:Renameuser]]
is increased to 200,000. This means a bureacrat now can rename an user
account for so far the have not done more then 200,000 edits. According
to the available information the bot [[w:en:User:Rambot]] has made the
most edits of all users on the English Wikipedia with 131,511 edits so
it is not likely users will have limit problems.

[Bug 5284] Resolved: [[Special:Mypage]], and [[Special:Mytalk]] can now
take arguments in their URLs
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5284

[Bug 3309] Resolved: When undeleting a page a reason can now be given.
Including a reason is not obligatory

=== Request for help ===

[Mediawiki-i18n] A new mailing list dedicated to centralising discussion
regarding MediaWiki internationalisation. Maintainers for each language
for helping to keep their specific language up to date is requested.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/23486

=== Foundation ===

[Wikimania] Registration for attendance and housing opens for Wikimania
2006. Community members are encouraged to register early while housing
is available.
http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/

[InstantCommons] The WMF special projects committee recommends the
implementation of the InstantCommons project.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/InstantCommons

=== Community ===

[No reference] The English Wikisource decides to exclude all reference
material.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2006-05-02/Recent_vote_ends_excluding_reference_material
Example of information that is not welcome anymore
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hello_world
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mercury


[Polish Wikimeet] A meeting of Wikimedia Poland was held in Wroclaw
April 29 - May 1
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Polish_Wikimedia_Meeting_2006
http://zlot.wikimedia.pl/

=== Awards ===

[Planetizen] The [[w:en:Portal:Architecture]] and [[w:en:Category:Urban
studies and planning]] of the English language Wikipedia have jointly
won an award, being rated one of the top ten best planning, design, and
development websites. Now, this isn't an award which can be won
annually; it is only given to new or dramatically improved web sites.
One thing to notice is this is a trade magazine. That is, the people who
are reading this magazine are professional designers, particularly
community engineers and architectural designers. This indicates
Wikipedia is being used professionally by the people who work in this field.
http://www.planetizen.com/websites/2006#10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Architecture

=== Stats ===

[4 million] Wikipedia reached 4 million articles in its various
languages on Sunday. Of the 4 million articles, over 25% (~1.1 million)
were in English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-05-01/News_and_notes

[131 million] comScore World Metrix, a new global internet tracking
system has placed what it calls "Wikipedia Sites" seventh on its list of
"Online Properties Worldwide", with an estimated 131 million unique
visitors aged 15+ in March 2006, or 19% of all internet users aged 15+,
based on comscores estimate that there were 694 million of them that
month. (see also the "quote" section)
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20060504/CGTH06704052006-1.html

=== Other news ===

[CFP 2006] Three Wikipedians presented Wikipedia at the Computers,
Freedom, and Privacy conference in Washington, DC. Author Vernor Vinge
gave the conference's closing address, discussing Wikipedia as an
example of a fantasy 'that might have been proposed at CFP 5 or 10 years
ago' as a result of giving everyone networked computers.
http://www.cfp.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

=== Did you know ... ===

... that you can falsify the history of an article?

At least if you are a sysop. First delete the article, then go to the
restore page of that article. There you see history of the page. Every
edit has a tick box. Select all of them. (select the first box and the
last one while pressing ) Now you can de-deselect edits which you
want to disappear, and restore the page.

=== Quote ===

"While the 'big three' properties remain consistent among worldwide and
U.S. audiences, Wikipedia has emerged as a site that continues to
increase in popularity, both globally and in the U.S. Wikipedia's
popularity demonstrates the global power of the Web to unite and provide
information across countries and languages, but the full extent of its
global appeal is only measurable through this new worldwide
measurement," -- Mr. Daboll, comScore Networks



Editor(s): Walter, Amgine