GCS Step 1

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Wikizine - number: 38

Acknowledgement

Memebot.com, a small webhoster, supports Wikizine by granting a free account upgrade to match it bandwidth needs. The WMF provides Wikizine with a free mailing list.

Thank You.

Technical news
  • [CORRECTION] - in the previous edition of Wikizine about the single-user login it was reported that the email address needed to be confirmed. This is not correct. The fact of an email address is confirmed or not will make no difference regarding the migration to the single-user login. If you have different passwords for the same username on different wikis makes also no difference. If you have a different password and also a different email address you will need to login to confirm ownership.
  • [White list] - Our Wikis can be abused with spam-hyperlinks. One way of preventing the insertion of spam-hyperlinks is the meta:Spam blacklist. On that list are all the domains who have been used in spam-attacks or are not welcome for some reason on the projects listed. You can not save the page on the projects if one of these domains listed on that on that page are present. Now there is a local override for this global spam blacklist. You can find it on [[Mediawiki:Spam-whitelist]] on your local wiki. See how it is done on the English language Wikipedia for the correct formatting;
  • [Meta] - the wiki that is supposed to be the neutral public wiki for all projects and languages has now email notification on. This means that you can specify in your account preferences to receive an email when you talk page or a page on you watchlist is changed.
  • [Userbox] - some useful new userboxes on Meta; to indicate that you can translate from language X to language Y. If you put this on your userpage on Meta and something needs to be translated you can be found if needed.
  • [djvu] - Support for rendering inline thumbnail JPEGs from DjVu images is added.
Request for help
  • [Bylaws] - Anthere has asked community attention for and feedback about a draft version of new bylaws for the WMF. This a very serious thing. Speak now or remain silent later.
  • [The Wikistudy] project on EN Wikibooks is looking for college students who have completed Advanced Placement courses and exams to help out in writing textbooks that are directed towards specific AP syllabi and academic exams.
  • [Wikizine] is looking for typical wikimedia slang, abbreviations, special words and so for a new section to explain these words. ( report to Wikizine)
Policy
  • [Wikiversity] - more information about Wikiversity is announced;
Politics
Foundation
  • [Board Election] - A clarification is posted by the Election Officers regarding the numbers of seats vacant to the board in the current election. This election is only to replace Angela. One spot is free. Further expansion of the board is a possibility. But if and how the will be appointed is not yet know. That can be by a new second election of by direct appointment.
  • [Wikimania 2007] - First round for the selection of the host city is open!
  • [Board] - Tim Shell, WMF board member, will step down from the board by the end of the year. So as is announced on Wikimania. The current election has no relation with this.
  • [Staff] - The very recently hired person to help in the WMF office has quit. She will now be the very first ex-WMF employee. A person to replace here is already found and active.
Community
Awards
Media
  • [Wikimania press] - I you like to read about Wikimedia/Wikimania then check out the page with links to all the press coverage of Wikimania. On Wikimania it self there where about 50 journalist present. About 78 unique news articles where created, about 1500 news sources ran articles about Wikimania. And there where short spots on 5 TV stations, including 2 on FOX news which is a very important TV-station in the USA.
  • [Fashion&Style] - when articles are been written about people about nothing besides some trivial facts about that person and not about what the person actually is doing then the have reached a new level of famous hood. It seems that Jimbo has received this dubious honer now. Or was the author only looking for an excuse to praise a specific type of flashlight?
Stats
  • [Alexa] - since the early days of Wikipedia there was interest of how popular Wikipedia was. Early August 2003 Daniel Mayer created the page "Wikipedia.org is more popular than...". And writes "We are also neck and neck with sex.com! Soon Wikipedia will be more popular than sex!". Now, 3 years later Wikipedia is not only more popular than sex, but more popular than almost everything. Almost. Wikipedia has raised through the rankings month after month, year after year, going higher and higher. Now Wikipedia is (according to Alexa) the 17th most popular website of the internet. But the steep climb has stopped. Wikipedia now stays stable on its spot in the rankings. Possibly, even probably, shall Wikipedia raise some more. But the flight is over. We are the top. And at the top you can not go higher anymore.
  • [yi.wp] - The Yiddish Wikipedia is proud to announce that they hit the 2000 articles mark.
  • [nl.wikibooks] - The Dutch Wikibooks has reached 1,000 Wikibook modules. The Dutch Wikibooks recently won the Wikimania Award for best wikibook with their manual for MediaWiki
  • [Wikizine.org], the website, exists now for some weeks. From the end of June until now there where 1286 unique visitors. The total weekly average is 322 visitors. Most visitors come from the Italian Wikipedia, followed by the English and Dutch Wikipedia. 49% of the visitors is using Firefox and 17% Linux, 4% MacOS, 73% some version of MS Windows.
Other news
  • [Mywikibiz.com] - Part 2: This is a company that is selling the service to write an article for other company's and get those in the English language Wikipedia. Jimbo has blocked access to en.wp for mywikibiz. New articles for there clients will be written on the website of mywikibiz under GNU/FDL-licence. From there can people if the wish that copy them to Wikipedia.
Tales from Wikimania
  • [Must hear] - many people have given their very best to make Wikimania a success. There where many interesting presentations. Go to the archive page, download them and listen to them on you mp3/Ogg-player. If you do not know where to start, start with these tree;
Quotes from Wikimania

Andre Engels: "I think the reactions [to the Nature study] are interesting - Britannica takes three months to criticize you, and Wikipedia takes one week to fix all the errors"

Paul Kobasa: (One librarian describing Wikipedia to another librarian) "... And he had a wonderful phrase to describe people like him and me - he said we're like the scriptorium monks who are meeting [Johann] Gutenberg for the first time"

Paul Kobasa: "Someone asked me why, as an employee of Worldbook, I was going to Wikimania. And I said that we were jealous of all the press that Encyclopedia Britannica is getting"

A random radio journalist: "So this is like woodstock?"

Editor(s): Walter   - Corrector(s): NielsF

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