GCS Step 1

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Wikizine- number: 27

Technical news

Request for help

New project proposals

Foundation

Community

Media


Editor(s): Walter

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Wikizine - number: 26

Technical news

New project proposals

Foundation

  • [Chapters news] Delphine (notafish) is back from Europe where she visitedvarious Wikimedia chapters. Read the interesting report of Delphine aboutWikimedia Polska, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Italia and WikimediaSerbia and Montenegro.
    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/7300
  • [de.wikimedia] Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. has decided to open a office inthe real world. The WMDE is currently searching for office space in theFrankfurt area. The hope that the office will be open from October.Initially there will be one employee for that office, a "Geschäftsführer"(director, chief clerk, manager). There where 65 candidates for thatfunction. Arne Klempert [[w:de:Akl]], member of the board of WMDE, isselected for this function.


Community

Stats


Did you know ...

... there is a Wikipedia-game?

http://common-lisp.net/project/lifp/rouge.htm

IRC quote

[mage] what should I give sister for unzipping?
[Kevyn] Um. Ten bucks?
[mage] no I mean like, WinZip?


[erno] hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, itworks completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.



Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Wikizine - number: 25

Technical news
  • [Bad Image] - there is now the page [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]]. Imageslisted there can not be displayed in that Wiki.Example; If you put on that page [[:Image:George-W-Bush.jpeg]] then theimage will be changed to a link to that pictures description page.Why; some users where vandalizing articles by including to them images.Especially images from a very explicit sexual nature are popular forthis. Even when the only remain on it for a couple of minutes it cangive a very bad impression. Also on the article where the image issupposed to be used the image is not displayed, only a link to thedescription page.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Bad_image_list
  • [Magic word] New magic word __NEWSECTIONLINK__ was introduced, whichallows users to add a "new section" link (shown as a tab in Monobook) topages which aren't talk pages.
  • [New tools] Especially useful is "Commonshelper", which semi-automatesmoving images to Commons with a correct history summary.
    http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commonshelper.php

Request for help

Foundation

  • [Tron] Some time ago there where legal problems for the German Wikipediaabout the article of the deceased hacker Tron. His parents did not likedit that the article contains the real name of Tron, Boris Floricic. Andthe sued Wikimedia about this. The lost but appealed that discussion.Now the have also lost the appeal. Further appeal is not possible. It isallowed to include the full name of Tron in the article.
    http://www.wikimedia.de/2006/05/landgericht-berlin-weist-berufung-in-sachen-tron-zuruck/
  • [New chapter] The Swiss Wikimedia chapter has been officiallyestablished on 14th of May 2006.
    http://www.wikimedia.ch/
  • [pl.wikimedia] Polish Wikimedia Meeting 2006 took place on 29 April-1May in w:en:Wrocław. There was 42 participants including 5 from abroad.10 lectures were delivered and many discussions took place amongparticipants.During the meeting General Member Assembly 2006 I was organized. 17Association's members and several guests accepted Realization of Boardplans for 2006 and Interim Budget. There was discussion aboutWikicontest and several other issues.
  • [Jimbo Time100] Like reported before Jimbo made the Time Magazine top100 of the most influential people of 2006. And there is also a partyfor those 100. Amanda Congdon of rocketboom.com made a video reportabout this.
    http://www.time.com/time/2006/time100/
    http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/archives/2006/05/rb_06_may_09.html -Jimbowatching (and some other people)

Community

  • [*!*Soviet Alert*!*] The licence template PD-Soviet in its current formwill very probably be deprecated on Commons, and replaced by somethingthat is more accurate. The reason, as put forth by[[commons:user:Lupo]], is that images published in the Soviet before1973 are, simply put, not necessarily public domain as the templatecurrently claims.Images with the template will not necessarily be deleted, but manyprobably will. So do not be surprised if some images disappear.
    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:PD-Soviet
  • [$] Money offers for an Admin-account... Maybe a new way to get fundingfor Wikimedia?
    http://tinyurl.com/mlt4e

Awards

Media

Stats

  • [Poll] The Dutch newspaper [[w:en:NRC Handelsblad]] had this poll onthere website for one day;"Websites like wikipedia, where everybody can edit the contents, areunreliable."agree 24.27 %, disagree 46.6 %, neutral 29.13 %; Total votes: 206Remark; all visitors to there website could vote on this poll withoutregistration.
  • [nrm.wikipedia] The Norman Wikipedia has reached 500 articles. Thenumber of speakers is unknown, but it is a very small language so 500 isvery nice.
    http://nrm.wikipedia.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_language

Other news

  • [Sickipedia] Like all things created by men it can be used for good andalso for very questionable purposes. So also for MediaWiki. There is anew (non-wikimedia) project to collect sick jokes. Racism, Paedophile,Old people, Dead babies ... if there is a topic where it is highlyinappropriate to joke about you can find jokes about it there. This is aproject of an author who has made a book full of sick jokes.Editorial remark: very few of those "jokes" are actually funny.
    http://www.sickipedia.org
    http://www.robertmanuel.com/category/sick-joke-book/
  • [Commercial] Being listed in Wikipedia is important for companies. "Howto Place a Company in the Wikipedia?"
    http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003782.html

Did you know ...
... you can use the gmail-spell function without gmail?

Put this url on your user page; http://orangoo.com/spell/
And when you are working on your wiki when you are not at home you canuse that easy to use spellchecker that is actually using the spellcheckfunction of gmail.

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

"Once you have their money, you never give it back." - Rule 1
"Ask not what your
profits can do for you, but what you can do for yourprofits." - Rule
89"
There's
nothing wrong with charity... as long as it winds up in
yourpocket." - Rule
144


Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter

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

Monday, May 01, 2006

Wikizine - number: 23

=== Technical news ===

[Local botpower] The bureaucrats have now a new responsibility. The will
find in the "Special pages" section the special page
[[Special:Makebot]]. With this page the can give and revoke the bot flag
of a user account. The stewards and the request page on meta is still
the place to be for botrequest for wikis without a bureaucrat.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_bot_status

[Date of Caching] Bug 4327 is resolved. "Add a timestamp to special
pages containing cached data". So now when look up a page like
[[Special:Ancientpages]] you know how ancient that page is. To localize
the message edit [[MediaWiki:Perfcachedts]]

[New Special pages]
- with the page [[Special:Unusedtemplates]] you can find unused
templates. To localize the message on that page edit
[[MediaWiki:Unusedtemplatestext]] and [[MediaWiki:Unusedtemplateswlh]]

- with the page [[Special:Randomredirect]] you get a random redirect.
You can find it by the "special pages". To translate it edit
[[MediaWiki:Randomredirect]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randomredirect

[Small stuff]
- page protection/unprotection is now included in the revision history
- Watchlists now have a namespace selector.
- when a non-sysop attempts to edit a page in the MediaWiki-namespace
the used to get the default "protected page warning". But this is not
correct. That are not protected pages but pages with restricted access.
There is now a special warning for MediaWiki pages. See
[[MediaWiki:Protectedinterface]] to translate the message.
- Bug 93 resolved: Nowiki tags and tilde signatures in templates
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93

=== Request for help ===

[Wikimania] A new page is up for interested Wikimania volunteers.
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteering

[Mirrors and Forks] Maintainers of mirrors and forks lists have been
looking for help.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-compliant_site_coordination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Mirrors_and_forks

=== New project proposals ===

[Proposal] A timeline database with history facts for global history,
people, corporations, products, etc., a global database of timelines
that could be used to show graphic interactive timelines specified by
the user.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTimeLine

=== Community ===

[Wikisource-l] A mailing list for Wikisource created. Like there is
Wikipedia-l for all language Wikipedias this one is for all Wikisource
related matters.
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l

=== Media ===

[The Time 100] The issue of May 8, 2006 of Time Magazine is about "The
People Who Shape Our World", the top 100. And Jimbo is one of them.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187286,00.html

[Jimbo] - on TV - again. But this time on "Geek Entertainment TV". It
does not even has (yet) an article on EN Wikipedia so it must be very geeky.
http://www.geekentertainment.tv/2006/03/24/sxsw2006-jimmy-wales-uber-wikipedian/

[EFF] Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with Pioneer Awards
http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/

[CNN] Campaign manager resigns amid Wikipedia flap
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/26/cox.wikipedia/

=== Stats ===

[en.wikipedia] The English Wikipedia reaches 1.1 million articles on the
27th of April, adding an extra 100,000 articles only two months after
reaching the one million milestone. This is only a twelfth of the time
taken to create Wikipedia's first 100,000 articles.

=== Editorial ===

Did you noticed there was no Wikizine last week? Until now there was
every week a new edition of Wikizine. The concept of Wikzine is to bring
you every week to most important news about the Wikimedia projects. Last
week there was in my opinion nothing to report that qualified enough for
real news to make an edition. So there was none. Can happen again.
Filling a Wikizine with only Alexa and other stats, some Jimbo
appearances on CNN and "Did you know" and a Quote is easy but no news.

Something else;

Wikizine describes itself as "An independent internal news bulletin for
the members of the Wikimedia community". I need to give some
clarification about the "independent" part of it. Like many other people
working in our community I have a lot of different functions on several
layers of the Wikimedia community. Some of them are difficult to combine
with my function as editor-in-chief of Wikizine. As a member of the WMF
Communications committee I have access to confidential information that
is not (yet) for publication. So as committee member it can be that I
censor Wikizine by not reporting or not including all the information I
know. That is more the exception. By being on the committee I have
better access to people and information to inform you.

So, is Wikizine independent? Probably not really. But I find it is still
independent enough to call it independent. This is not a Wikimedia
Foundation publication. Texts are not approved by the board or so. I can
live with it.

Greetings,
Walter Vermeir

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

... that Wikipedia, now at the 17th place of the top 500 of Alexa, is
the only dot org?


All the other websites getting more visitors than Wikipedia are commercial.

=== User Quote ===

"Like most decisions on Wikipedia which actually get things done, I
suspect large quantities of alcohol were drunk by someone who already
had extraordinarily large testicles and who had just finished reading
[[Wikipedia:Be bold]]." Rob Church 23:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)



Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter