GCS Step 1

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Wikizine - number: 49

Technical news
  • [New block option] - sysops have now a third tickbox when blocking a user. The box is labelled "Automatically block IP addresses used by this user" and is selected by default. Previously blocking a registered user meant edits done with that account were removed. And every time that user was trying to edit a page after the block was given the IP address of the blocked user was "auto-blocked". Those blocks appear in the log like "#15429" so you cannot see the real IP address. In some situations it can be that you only wish to block a specific user account and not the IP address used by that user. Like for example when a bot needs to blocked because it is doing something wrong. Or when blocking an unsuitable username.
When the option "Automatically block IP addresses used by this user" is not selected it shows up in the log as "autoblock disabled".
To localize translate; [[MediaWiki:Noautoblockblock]] and [[MediaWiki:Ipbenableautoblock]]

Be aware that when an ip address is blocked automatically because of it is used by a blocked user that this hidden ip address (like #15429) can not be used by any other user. The option "Block anonymous users only" has no effect on them. So this way important ipadresses, like form a ISP proxy, can be blocked for all users, also registered ones. And can will not even know it because you can not see the ip address. The good thing is that this type of automatic block is only for 24 hours.

New project proposals
Foundation
Community
Awards
Media
  • [Publicité] - a website or publication reporting about the existence of Wikipedia is no news since many years. But this one is. In France there is a website " Service-public.fr". It is a state website that "aims to give citizens access to all administrative information on-line. Its objective is above all practical: to answer questions posed by citizens to make their contact with the civil service more user-friendly." says their website. And they have presented Wikipedia to their nearly two million monthly visitors and 200,000 readers of their email newsletter. As a state e-government website this can bring FR Wikipedia in spotlight to many less advanced internet-users.
  • [Intellipedia] - the US intelligence services have created a internal MediaWiki encyclopedia to collect and share information between the different agencies.
  • [Virus Alert!] - a typical subject for spam. A more original was "warning from Wikipedia"; an attempt by using the name and logo of Wikipedia to get people to download a file that is suspected to be a virus. They also used a link to a history page of an article to make it look more real. It was on the DE wikipedia, and like you can except from DE.wp there admins are very gründlich so the link was gone in a few minutes. It did has give many media inspiration to write something negative about wikipedia. Example; the mostly read newspaper in Belgium had on Monday a article, just above the one where the where saying that Novell had invented Linux, that Wikipedia was hacked.
  • [Not funny] - a student who posted a threat to do something violent in a school has discovered that editing "anonymous" is a relative term when there is an incentive to find out who it was.
Stats
  • [81%] - According to a study you have an 81% change that when you look for something in google a Wikipedia result will show up in the first 10 results. When you look with Yahoo it is 77%. And if you look by means of MSN it drops to 38%. You would think; that is logical, Microsoft has his own encyclopedia, Encarta. But strangely enough MSN links to Encrata in 0% of the first 10 results. This is of course a summary of a summary. See the blog post, the full report and appendix for the real information.
  • [Wow!] - According to Netcraft; in August 1995 there where 18,957 hosts, April 1997 (1 million sites), February 2000 (10 million), July 2001 (30 million), March 2005 (60 million), November 2006 ; +100 million websites. To compare; the stats place Wikipedia between the 15th and 6th most popular site of all those million of websites. Of you can believe that is something else. According to Alexa is the website where this ezine is also on posted, Wikizine.org, in the top 1 million of those 100 million and that with around 1400 unique visitors a month.
Other news
  • [An other one] - In Wikizine 47 you were presented with a very extended nice presentation about Wikipedia & Co made by a librarian. Here is another one, this one made by our own w:en:User:Tawker
Was ist das?
Jimbo: Jimmy Wales. Founder of Wikipedia, Chairman Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation. President of Wikia, Inc.
Wikia: company founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. It is hosting wikis and works on the developing of MediaWiki, the software the projects are using.
Bomis: an internet company founded Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell. Bomis provided hosting and staff to Wikipedia in the very beginning of the project.

A bit of wisdom from South Park

Peta-member:
"But why on earth would you not want to vote?"
Stan Marsh: "I think voting is great but I just did not care this time because it was between a giant douche and a turd sandwich."
Peta-member: "But Stan, do you do not know it is always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and so turd. The are the only people who suck up enough to make it that far in politics."


Note: "douche" means in American something else than in the rest of the world. You can look it up in Wikipedia...

Editor(s): Gary Kirk, Walter - Corrector(s): Gary Kirk - Thanks to: Renaud, Pathoschild, 555

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