Wikizine - number: 33

Technical news

• [<poem>] On the Wikisource project a new tag is now live especially for poems
• Wikitech-l

• [Bug550] will be fixed soon, block options will change
• Wikipedia-l

• [localization] - BetaWiki is a project to centralize the translations and updates for the MediaWiki system messages. This way all MediaWiki installations can have a recent and nearly complete translation. When implementing the new translation care must be taken not to insult projects that are using their own translation version by overwriting those with the new version without consulting them first about it. Like was done on the Dutch language Wikipedia.
• http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Etusivu - BetaWiki
• http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27664- explanation by GerardM about BetaWiki
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27644/focus=27644 - Protest
  

• [PLURAL] there is a magic word "plural" that can be used to change the spelling of the user interface depending of the number of items involved. For some languages there are multiple conjugations depending on the number, PLURAL allows for that

One example of the syntax for English is:
{{PLURAL:$1one articleare $1 articles}}

This can be used on MediaWiki-pages the contain text used on dynamic changing pages.

Example:
[[MediaWiki:Categoryarticlecount]] contains the text used on category-pages to say how many items there are in that category. But a category can contain one item and then the correct description would be that there is "one article". If there are more then the phrase should use "articles", the plural form.

You can see this in practice on the Afrikaanse Wikipedia;

There you see how the magic word it used;

• http://af.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Categoryarticlecount&action=edit

And the results on a category with only one item reads "een artikel", what is the singular form.

• http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Amerika

Here you see a category with more than one article and it reads "artikelen", the plural form.

• http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Kaapstad

This construction can be used on those MediaWiki messages where the software is aware of the potential of a plural form; the English message should have the PLURAL construct as well.

More about this at;

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words#Project-dependent_word_conversions
• http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5805
  

Foundation

• [Wikibooks] project is 3 years old now on the 10th of July 2006. Congratulations! This page gives an overview of the "State of the Project";
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:State_of_the_Project/2006
  

• [Staff] The Wikimedia Foundation has hired a new full-time staff member. She will be working in the function of administrative assistant in the Florida office. This person will be answering the phones for the WMF office and emails send to Wikimedia and the English language Wikipedia queue. The WMF has now 5 people in service and 1 contractor.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff
  

• [Angela] posted an explanation about her resignation from the Board. The Board accepts her resignation and confirms that there will be a election for a new Board member starting on 1 September 2006. Until that time Angela stays on the Board.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/8337/focus=8337
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Board_election
  

Community

• [Incubator] A vote is proceeding about a logo for the "incubator". This is a wiki where new projects can start and maybe move later to their own wiki if they succeed. There is now a vote about a logo for this wiki and about maybe a new name for it.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Incubator/logo#Voting
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Incubator/name
  

Media

• [interview] with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko about "How and Why Wikipedia Works"
• http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview.html
• http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/10/0353220
  

• [No News] - When someone dies it is always a rush to change their article as fast as possible on Wikipedia. So also with the article about[[w:en:Kenneth Lay]]. Reuters has published an article about the short time from when the article was changed from alive to dead, and about the initial confusion about the cause of death in some versions in the first hour after the announcement of the death of Kenneth Lay. Funny is that Reuters has slightly changed their own article about the Wikipedia article because that had made a mistake. Because it came from Reuters many others have covered it like CNN.
• http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2006/07/05/wikipedias-ken-lay-problem/
• Reuters: Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia
• http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/07/05/lay.wikipedia.reut/index.html
  

Stats

• [Wiktionary], the dictionary project of the WMF has reached the 1,000,000 definitions milestone. Wiktionary, started on 12 December 2002, is the oldest WMF project after Wikipedia. The number of people actively working on the Wiktionaries is, compared with Wikipedia, very few. This means that one person can make a difference - a big difference. [[User:GerardM]] has managed to make an astonishing 13,000 pronunciation audio recordings for Wiktionary, with his bot 200,000 edits on the English Wiktionary and 600,000 on all Wiktionaries.
• meta:Wikimedia_press_releases/Wiktionary_reaches_milestone
• http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2006/07/dubious-record.html
  

• [Edits] - the total number of edits in all Wikimedia projects surpassed 150 million.

• [ko.wiki] The Korean Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
• http://ko.wikipedia.org
  

Other news

• [Campaigns] - On Wikia a new Wiki is created: "Campaigns". It launched on the American Independence Day the 4th of July. It is a new non-Wikimedia project strongly supported by Jimbo. It is a project about increasing the intelligence of politics in the USA. This new project has received a lot of attention by the media.
• http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Mission_Statement - Open letter by Jimbo about this project
• http://wikiangela.com/blog/wanted-structure-and-ideas-for-the-campaigns-wikia/
• http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6091839.html
• http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6091151.html
  

Did you know ...

... that Skype can be useful for your Wikimedia-work?

On our projects many people work together. And there are many ways of communication to makes the work. But talking to someone can makes things a lot easier in some situations. You can use Skype for this. It is free to use between PC to PC. It exists for Windows. And also for Mac OS X and Linux. Those are crappy versions compared to the Windows versions but the work good enough to be useful.

You can also talk with up to 5 people in a conference call. And if like to host a virtual Wikimeet or a open meeting for you chapter maybe the Skypecast-function can be useful. With you can talk to up to 100 people.

• http://www.skype.com/
• http://skypecasts.skype.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Instant_Messaging_Wikipedians
  

Remark; this was not an ad. Wikizine does not get paid for this. Wikizine does get paid for the Firefox and Picasa button on http://www.wikizine.org if the software is installed on a windows pc and for the fist time. Total benefits currently $0,0. The theoretical benefits will be used for expenses related to Wikizine. If ads where to be included in Wikizine it will be clearly labeled as such. There are no plans to include ads in Wikzine.

Quote

"People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending that the day won't ever come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all." -- Character Allie Keys / science fiction miniserie "Taken"

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Editor(s): Walter - Corrector(s): Gary Kirk, Oscar - Special thanks to: Alias, Ruben Slock

Update: 2006-07-12 09:00 utc - fixt broken links