Year: 2007 Week: 18 Number: 69

Technical news

• [Login] - Passwords that are the same as the user name can no longer be used. Affected accounts can reset their password by e-mail to something more secure. If you do not have an email address provided in your account you have no access any more. The only hope to keep your account is to go to #wikimedia-tech and convince a developer that you are who you say you are. In general providing an email address for your account, and the same for all accounts, is a good idea.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/29945
• http://www.spammotel.com -- if you do not trust Wikimedia with your email address
• http://www.spamgourmet.com 
• [Special] - New special page [[Special:Fewestrevisions]] . It lists .... yes ....pages that have very few revisions, other versions. Because it also includes redirects its usefulness is limited. The results are cached.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Fewestrevisions

Request for help

• [Wikimania2007] - Call for Participation deadline extended until May 15.
• http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation
• [ENDS] - WMF Chair Anthere is asking for comments about a draft governance model for Wikimedia Foundation Board Policy.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16587
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_governance_manual

Policy

• [Who Are You?] - The WMF approved a resolution making it required that people who have access to confidential information identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation. This seems only to apply to access toinformation that falls under the Wikimedia Privacy policy. This does notseem to include the private mailing lists and wikis.

People who do need to identify themselves and prove that they are at least 18 years old (or older if the legal age is higher in your country) are:

1. All stewards
2. All holders of the "checkuser" and "oversight" rights
3. All OTRS volunteers
4. And all developers with access to any electronic records which contains non-public information
   

Sysop and bureaucrats are excluded from this. All users who fall under this category need to comply with this resolution or their user rightscan be revoked. In the resolution 60 days are given to comply but it is not clear from what date you need to count.
Board member Kat Walsh writes in a posting to Foundation-l:

"Those affected by this resolution should contact Cary Bass, WMF volunteer coordinator, at <cbass AT wikimedia DOT org>.  We will also attempt to contact everyone individually who will need to do this; however, please spread this message to those in your communities."

• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Access_to_nonpublic_data
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16598 
• [Closed] - A proposal has been made for a procedure to close wikis. This is for wikis who are de facto dead.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closure_of_WMF_projects
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/30011

Foundation

• [Mission] - The WMF approved a new "Mission and Vision statement". The Vision statement is "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." The mission statement is a bit too long to include it. See on Meta and Wiktionary to translate it.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Mission_and_Vision_statement
• http://en.wiktionary.org/
• [Scholarship] - To come to Wikimania 2007 are still available for people coming from Africa and the Commonwealth of Independent States (parts of the ex-USSR)
• http://wm07schols.wikimedia.org/apply.php
• [Sponsor] - The WMF is looking for sponsors for Wikimania 2007. This is for large sponsors who can donate tens of thousands of dollars.
• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/0/0b/Wikimania_sponsorship.pdf
• [wiki] - The WMF advisory board has now its own wiki. It is a public wiki. 
• http://advisory.wikimedia.org  -- nothing to see there
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board
  

Community

• [Wild Sysop] - On EN Wikipedia an sysop has deleted several pages including the Main Page and blocked some users and unblocked himself after being blocked because of local policy violations. After being de-sysopped the user was blocked again.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-04-23/Robdurbar
  

Media

• [Virginia Tech] - The article of the EN Wikipedia about the shooting at the university in Virginia, USA was for a few days the most popular page of the EN Wikipedia and is praised by traditional media as a very good source for information about this event.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-04-23/Virginia_Tech
• http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/23/america/wiki.php -- The Latest on Virginia Tech, From Wikipedia
• [Citizendium] -  One Month Later
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/citizendium_one.php
  

Stats

• [fur.wp] - Friulian Wikipedia reaches 2000 articles with [[w:fur:Laurenzi]] (the chimical element). Friulian is a language spoken mainly in northern Italy.
• http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurenzi
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friulian_language
• [SuperStats] - Dynamic and recent statistics of all Wikipedias. A must see for stats lovers.
• http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php
• [Study] - More than a third of American adult internet users (36%) consult Wikipedia, according to a new nationwide survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And on a typical day in the winter of 2007, 8% of online Americans consulted Wikipedia.
• http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Wikipedia07.pdf --  Sorry about the pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-04-30/Statistical_profiles
  

Other news

• [Correction] -  In Wikizine 67 it was reported that 0.5 CD of the English-language Wikipedia is produced by the Wikimedia Foundation and LinterWeb. This is not correct. The CD was not produced by the Wikimedia Foundation, it has been produced by Linterweb.
• http://www.wikipediaondvd.com/
  

Weird shit

According to various observers there are many parallels between communist ideology and practices, and the economic and political system in The Smurfs ....

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs_and_communism

Quote

"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." -- Unknown attribution

Editorial

In Wikizine 68, the English and German edition and in a posting to Foundation-l I have asked for assistance with Wikizine. The response was less than pathetic. It was non existent.

So it looks like I will remain the only one working on Wikizine. I have decided to give Wikimedia related things and Wikizine in particular a lower priority in my life. Wikizine will continue but in a even more erratic publication frequently then now. Also you can expect reduced editions who are more basic between normal editions. This depending of I feel like giving priority in going to the park or so or sitting in front of the computer.

Walter Vermeir, the editor

Number of subscribers: 648 , Unique Visitors website last week: 346 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): Gary Kirk , Thanks to: Klenje, Schiste  ,  Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org ,  Website: http://en.wikizine.org ,  Wikizine Auf Deutsch: http://de.wikizine.org ,
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and especially but not limited to,  correct grammar and spelling.  Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time) Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html