The Official Wikizine Archive: 2006/12

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Wikizine - number: 55

Technical news

[Auto patrol] - If a user has the "autopatrol" right, then their edits are auto-marked as patrolled. If a user does not have this right, then they can not mark their own edits as patrolled in the normal fashion.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5411

[Check user] - the interface for check user has been changed. There is now a field to provide a reason for the check. The log where you can see that can only been seen by checkusers.

Foundation

[Stewards] - The Wikimedia Foundation appointed 12 new stewards; M7, Redux, Effeietsanders, Dbl2010, Shanel, Pathoschild, Guillom, Bastique, Drini, Darkoneko ,Cspurrier, MaxSem

Community

[User:†††††] - When SUL is implemented all users have one user account for all wikis. But also one user name. And because the many languages use different writing systems it means that user names also are written in very different characters. When used on Wikis not using that system writing system it can be that it is impossible to read those user names. This because of unknown writing system for the normal users there or because the are displayed as ††††† because of lack of font support on the computers used by most of the users of that wiki. On some wikis it happens that people with "foreign" user names are blocked because of that. An extensive discussion is ongoing on the mailing list about that and also some possible technical solutions.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12576/focus=12576

[DE Wikipedia DVD] - the German language Wikipedia has made a new version of there DVD. It has the look and feel of the real Wikipedia

Media

[Something Search] - This weeks buzz is the news of a new project of Wikia for a search engine site. The idea is to make a "wiki-inspired search engine". As usually several media mixed up Wikia and Wikipedia. Also a screenshot form the unrelated Wikia project "Wikisearch" that currently is in beta and not open is to the public caused confusion.

http://tinyurl.com/w6gyd - EN Wikinews
http://tinyurl.com/y3rm5a - Wikipedia: A free search engine?
http://search.wikia.com - the wiki about the new project
http://tinyurl.com/ykz9pr - techcrunch.com and there "exclusive screenshot", 120 comments

Stats

[vls.wikipedia] - The West Flemish Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles. This Wikipedia has only started in April 2006. The idea of Wikipedia in this dialect was not taken serious by many when founded and regarded as a "joke-wikipedia". Now this Wikipedia has jumped over many other older Wikipedias and is now a viable Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Flemish

http://vls.wikipedia.org

[nl.wikipedia] - And the have now passed the 250,000 mark with an article about Pierre Soulages, a French painter, engraver and sculptor.

http://nl.wikipedia.org

Other news

[Google Earth] - Google has added Wikipedia to the default setup of Google Earth. Google Earth is software the gives a virtual version of the planet Earth. (win/mac/Linux) If you have Google Earth go to; layers -> Primary database -> geographic web -> wikipedia. The result is that you will see the Wikipedia globe appear on certain places. When you click on them you get information about the location in a pop-up. The information for placing a globe icon comes from the templates on certain articles that contain the geographical co-ordinates of the topic of the article. It is nice but the implementation can be improved. There is also Wikipedia community layer that contains a lot more links.

Did you know ...

... what a Wikipedia Christmas-vote is?

A Christmas vote is an around the 24the of December on Wikipedia organized advisory poll. The objective is to — on completely informal basis — figure out of Wikipedia is or not an appropriate place for wishing your fellow man pleasant Christmas days.

Quote

Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for.
-- Unknown source

Number of subscribers: 570 , Unique Visitors website last week: 297, Editor(s): Walter

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Wikizine - number: 54

Technical news

[(+338)] - New anti-vandalism function is included to the recent changes. When an edit is made it now shows up in the RC how many characters are removed or added. This function is also added to the IRC-stream of the recent changes. To use is conect to irc.wikimedia.org with a IRC-client and go to #xx.wikiproject = so FR Wikibooks is #fr.wikibooks

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1085

[Site notice] - registered users have now the option to hide the site notice messages. It works with a cookie. The cookie expires after one month. To view the the site notice again or delete the cookie "dismissSiteNotice" or a sysop must give the site notice a new ID-number. This can be set in MediaWiki:Sitenotice_id a number other then the current ID-number. Ad one digit or use a random number. Translate MediaWiki:Sitenotice_close for the "close" link.

Reminder; if the site notice shown to the anonymous users must be the same as for the registered users then you can keep MediaWiki:Anonnotice empty. Then MediaWiki:Sitenotice will also be used for anonymous visitors.

[Oversight] - this is an technical function that can be used to censor the history of an article. The difference with a normal dentition is that there is no undo like for the deletion function. When used, it is also no longer visible for sysops.. It is actually a function to hide things that also the sysops are not supposed to see anymore. Using this function to hide an edit is more user friendly if you are a sysop; you can hide a specific version without deleting and restoring the article like you must do as an sysop to hide a version. It is in use on the English Wikipedia. It is now technically possible for a steward to grant "oversight" status to any user on any WMF-project. Discussion is now in process about who can be trusted with this function.

Foundation

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Wikizine - number: 53 Tech flash

Technical news

The fund raiser is now live! The fund raiser banner must be or must come on the top of all WMF websites. The banner will only appear automatically if [[MediaWiki:Anonnotice]] and/or [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] are never been updated before.

So this means for most wikis the banner needs to be manually activated.

To have a successful fund raiser the banner must be on the projects wikis. The instructions for how to get the banner working on your home wiki can you find on this page;

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_sitenotice_2006_Q4

Notice the new option "close" for registered user. This can hide the banner.

Please only translate the text, nothing else. Please help with this, this is paying the bill. When you get the banners working for your home-wiki do not forget the other projects in you language. Check them and updated them there to, if you do not have sysop rights there ask it to local admin, put a notice in there local village pump.

Request for help

For the fund raiser some documents and pages still need translation.

Please go to;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests#Current_requests

and see how you can help with translating. Meta is also a wiki, so you can do it.

There is also a new type of donation page. It is already created for a fair amount of languages but many still have the old one.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:DavidStrauss/Fundraising_Translations

Please first verify that the content of the current donation page in your language is not plain wrong. And then try to make also a one in the new style.

If you need help with one of the places to look for it are the IRC channels. You can use the IRC-service of Wikizine;
http://chat.wikizine.org

And try #wikimedia-tech , #wikimedia or #wikimedia-stewards

If you can use your own IRC-client, the one of wikizine is sometimes blocked in certain channels.

Editor(s): Walter

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Wikizine - number: 53 Extra edition

Request for help

Anthere, Chair of the WMF, has send the following request to Foundation-l;

Hello

As roughly announced last week, the fundraiser will start *tomorrow*.
A bunch of things still need to be fixed, and in particular, WE NEED
HELP to translate the fundraising page.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:DavidStrauss/Fundraising

We need it at minimum for tomorrow in english, german, french, spanish,
swedish, japanese, italian, dutch...

Please help us with the translation.

The page in on Foundation because it requires html (will not work on
meta) and is using rather complex templates. If you need help and more
generally, please contact Danny (dwool ATTTT wikimedia.org).

These are the most urgent languages, others are welcome as well of
course. Please coordinate either with Danny or with Aphaia and transcom.

Thank you for your help

Anthere

Editor(s): Walter

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Wikizine - number: 53

Technical new

[Redirect] - It is now possible to redirect to a specific section of the target page. The syntax is; #REDIRECT[[Target page#Traget section]] This only works when JavaScript is enabled; otherwise, the redirect will lead to top of the target page.
- http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218
[OS swap] - The developers seem to be changing the operating systems used on the servers from Fedora to Ubuntu. Both are Linux distributions.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28Linux_distribution%29
[Python Wikipediabot] - The Python Wikipediabot framework has been updated.
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/28863
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pywikipedia
[tEmplate] - On most projects, the first letter of an article title starts with a capital letter, but some subjects are correctly spelled with a starting lowercase letter. There is a way around this by using a special template that changes the appearance of the title with JavaScript.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Lowercase - the template
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/iPod - the template in action

Request for help

[License Wikizine] - Wikizine is currently using the GNU Free Documentation License. A request has been made to change that; reader feedback would be useful.
- http://tinyurl.com/yyvmp8

Foundation

[New boardmembers] - The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed 3 new board members. These are w:en:user:Mindspillage (Kat Walsh), w:nl:Gebruiker:Oscar (Oscar van Dillen) and Jan-Bart van Kennisnet (Jan-Bart de Vreede). Kate and Oscar were candidates in the last board election that appointed Eloquence (Erik Möller). For personal descriptions, see their board election candidacy statements linked below. Jan-Bart was an unexpected appointment; he was not a candidate for the board elections, but was appointed directly by the board. Jan-Bart has significantly supported Wikimedia projects by means of the Kennisnet organization and the Dutch ICT organization for the schools. Kennisnet is providing hosting facilities in Amsterdam for the Wikimedia Foundation. It is also thanks to the support of Kennisnet that the WikitionaryZ project was able to start. Jan-Bart was also present at Wikimania2006 with a presentation titled "The Use of Wikis and Wikipedia in Dutch Education" (no recording/transcript available).
[Financial audit] - Brad Patrick announced the public release of audited financial statements for the Wikimedia Foundation for the fiscal years 2004, 2005 and 2006 inclusively. The results of the audit were positive for the Foundation, and help to establish it as a reputable charitable organization. This will improve chances of getting external support for our projects.
- http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12330/focus=12330
[Bylaws] - A new version of the Wikimedia Foundation's bylaws have been posted. These are the rules governing the internal management of the Foundation.
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12352
[WMF/Chapters] - The Wikimedia Foundation approved a default agreement between itself and its chapters. The agreement describes the Foundation's relationship with the chapters.
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12351
- http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Agreement_between_chapters_and_Wikimedia_Foundation
[Fund raising] - The start of the fundraising drive has been delayed, but it is still expected to start (very) soon.
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/12315

Community

[Interwiki] - A report in the Wikipedia Signpost talks about the Japanese Wikipedia's growth.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-10-30/Interwiki_report
[ne.wikipedia] - The Nepali Wikipedia has become the second Wikipedia to enable a JavaScript-based input editor that allows the user to type directly in Devanāgarī. The script, designed by Tatari, addresses text-entry problems faced by languages that do not use a Latin-based alphabet.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devan%C4%81gar%C4%AB
- http://ne.wikipedia.org/

Awards

[ja.wikipedia] - The Japanese language Wikipedia has won the Yahoo "Web of the Year 2006" award and one in the "Information Resource on the Web" category. These awards are awarded specifically for websites written in Japanese. The Wikimedia Foundation was represented at the ceremony by Imaizumi Makoto (known as Suisui on Wikipedia), who commented that "besides hardware, Wikipedia is supported by Japanese volunteers. We are happy to see such a website awarded." A video of the award ceremony is available.

Media

[On CBS] - CBS, one of the largest television and radio networks in the United States, has made a broadcast about Wikipedia. It was nothing spectacular, just a basic story on Wikipedia for any people that are unaware of it. The news report is 7 minutes 36 seconds in length, and was broadcast on a Sunday morning. The video is available online.
- http://tinyurl.com/skqb3 - direct link to RealMedia video stream
- http://preview.tinyurl.com/skqb3 - try this if the first does not work
- http://tinyurl.com/wbtgx - written article of the item

Stats

[Interwiki-stats] - Andre Engels has made a new list of articles with the most interwiki links on Wikipedia projects that gives some interesting results. The article with the most interwiki links is w:en:India with 233 language links; next is w:en:True Jesus Church with 161. Fourth place is w:en:Wikipedia with 142 links.
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Common_Interwiki_links
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/28829
[Netherlands] - The Dutch edition of Wikipedia experienced significant growth in 2006. This is reflected in its website rankings, where it went from the 45th most popular Dutch-language website at the beginning of 2006 to the 10th most popular website in the Netherlands.
- http://www.multiscope.nl/organisatie/nieuws/berichten/top-20-sites-van-2006.html
[qu.wp] - The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles. It is the first Native American language wiki with some many articles.
- http://qu.wikipedia.org/
[tk.wp] - The Turkmen Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- http://tk.wikipedia.org/

Was ist das?

Matching donations: a form of sponsorship. For every unit a person or organization sells, the sponsor will double it. This can be in the form of money, goods or services. This is often used by schools or youth organizations. For example, cakes can be sold, and for every cake sold the sponsor will donate the value of one extra cake. In return, the name of the sponsor is often included in marketing materials as a form of recognition for their donation.

LOL: Laughing Out Loud. Used in written form for expression of emotion. Used in email, chat and similar forms of informal written communication

OT: Off-Topic. When something is not appropriate for the location where it is used. Usually used for situations regarding chat rooms, mailing lists or news groups

Quote

We're all standing on the edge of a cliff, all the time, every day, a cliff we're all going over. Our choice isn't about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall." -- Character Allie Keys / science fiction miniseries "Taken"

Number of subscribers: 573 , Unique Visitors website this week: 357 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): Pathoschild, Lantoka , Thanks to: Andre Engels , Used sources: Wikimedia Foundation website

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

EN Wikizine - number: 52

Technical news

[Login] - The universal login, that you have one username & password for *all* wikis, is again a step closer to reality. Brion is testing the migration.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2006-11-30/Unified_login_in_test_phase

[Sort-function] - it is now possible for tables to have the option to be sorted by date, alphabetical order or numerical order. However, it is not possible to sort numbers with a dot or comma in them. Javascript must be on to make it work. Use "class="prettytable sortable" for the table.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/Example#52 - Example

[Undo] - when viewing the diffs of page you have edited on, also as an anonymous user, there is now an extra button "undo". It is not like the rollback function, it only goes to an edit screen where you can modify that revision. The localize; MediaWiki:Editundo

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/28195/focus=28195

[New HTML-dump] - New static HTML dumps of Wikipedia have been made, except the English Wikipedia (due to technical problems). If it can be fixt the English one will also come online soon.

Politics

[Censure?] - Wikipedia, and other websites, are reported to be blocked in Iran. But then later they were also reported to be again unblocked. Also, there where recently reports of a block of Wikipedia in Tunisia but a little later the block was lifted.

Foundation

[Fundraiser] - The Wikimedia Foundation will start a new fundraiser campain this Friday (2006-12-08), but it is possible it might be delayed for a few days. If there is translation work needing to be done then you can find it on meta:Translation requests
[Board] - Anthere provided feedback about a board meeting at end of November. Please read Anthere's post. Some highlights;

- the board will be expanded to probably 11 members by July 2008
- 3 board members will be added by appointment before the end of the year on the board, until next elections in July 2007. (includes replacement for Tim Shell)
- every year there will be board elections for the board
- an audit of the WMF has been done. The result was positive and will be published soon.
- the idea of an advisory board for the WMF is being implemented. Candidates are being contacted.
- the board informally approved new bylaws for the WMF.

[fr.wikiquote] - end of March 2006 the French language Wikiquote was deleted and closed and by the WMF because of copyright problems. Now a new and empty wiki is again online.

Awards

[ru.wikipedia] - The Russian Wikipedia has won the Russian national internet award in the "Science and education" category. There is no money involved in this award but they do get a very nice trophy and publicity. The award ceremony will be broadcast on the television so this can give more visibility to the Russian Wikipedia in Russia.

http://tinyurl.com/yb7m5a - Machine translation
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Premia_Runeta_2006
http://www.premiaruneta.ru/

Media

[censor/bias] - the Hearld Tribune and the New York Times publicized an article about self censorship of the sensitive articles on the Chinese Wikipedia. Feedback for the Chinese Wikipedia suggests that the article is misleading.

[Non-Notable] - the Washington Post noticed that if your are non-notable then your article gets deleted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/02/AR2006120201111.html

Stats

[1000000] - Commons has breached the 1 million mark of files on the 30th of November. Commons was launched on September 7, 2004. A mosaic is made for this occasion containing 1200 images forming the Wikimedia logo.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/1M
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_logo_mosaic - Wikimedia logo made of 1200 tiny pictures

Other news

[Compare] - It happens frequently that people who are not well informed, like journalists, think that every website where you can edit the pages is "a Wikipedia". The software Wikipedia uses is, of course, MediaWiki. MediaWiki is "a wiki" but there are many others. Wikimatrix.org attempts to present all those different wikis there out there and to make it possible to compare them easily.

http://www.wikimatrix.org/

[Wikia, Inc.] - has taken over Armchairgm.com for $2 US million in cash and Wikia stock. Armchairgm writes that they are "a fan-based sports community built on a customized MediaWiki (Wikipedia) engine that combines blogs, news, and voting, with the power of a sports-wiki."

http://armchairgm.com/ - only works if you enable javascript

[Parody] - A not to bad parody of Wikipedia templates

http://www.cracked.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1293

Did you know ...

... there is an interesting program for MacOSX to navigate Wikipedia?

It displays a graphical "network" representation of your visited article pages. A node represents an article, and a connection between two nodes means that you have gone from the first article to the second one. You can save the network you've created to disk and recover it. This way, you are able to keep track of everything: what you've looked at, how you get there, and just how it all fits together.

http://pathway.screenager.be/2006/11/25/pathway-06/

Quote

"My first sight of the office was an open door with a big (Wikipedia)
poster on it. All other offices in that building have closed doors.
After one walks past the poster, one gets in a corridor with the signed
Wikimania banner. And it is open...
Who else than us could have office doors open this way ?" -- Anthere about the WMF-office

Number of subscribers: 565, Unique Visitors website this week: 323, Editor(s): Walter, Corrector(s): Zhaladshar, Thanks to: JePe, Angela

GCS Step 1

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Tuesday, December 05, 2006