GCS Step 1

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Year: 2007 Week: 39 Number: 81

Technical news
  • [WebPlayer] - There is now a real web based player for the audio and video content on the WMF wikis. This was already possible with a player on the separate toolserver, but it is now displayed on the wiki itself. This functionality is created by Tim Starling. Because of the use of the not very popular Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora file formats for audio and video it was for the end user not always easy to use the content. Now with this web based player function the source file format is not longer relevant for the end user. It just works like on YouTube. The use of this function is very simple. Basically it is [[image: foobar.ogg]] to include a file in a page. To play you click on a 'play' symbol under the thumbnail. See link for more information.
  • [Overwrite] - Overwriting existing files are now distinguished in the logs from uploading new files with [[MediaWiki:Overwroteimage]]
Request for help
  • [Wikilove] - Pictures of Wikimedians expressing there love for the projects are requested. The will be used in the upcoming fund drive to provide a more personal impression to the potential donors. See post of Sabine Cretella for more information or contact here if you have questions.
  • [Quality project] - One of goals of our projects is not only to create free information but also accurate information. Currently there is room for improvement regarding the quality. A new quality project is launched. A special wiki is created and a mailing list to discus the possibilities for improving the overall quality of our content. Main focus is a software change to support article/edit verification by trusted users. Also is considered a system that uses colors to show the level of trust of the user that has done the edit. Community feedback and cooperation is requested.
  • [Wikizine] - Your help is urgently requested with Wikizine, which may affects its chances of continuing. If you are interested, contact the editor-in-chief using the link below. 
  • [Buttons] - and also banners are requested to be used for the upcoming fund drive. So that websites who like to support the Wikimedia projects can use them to advertise for it. 
  • [Pop-up] - There has been received several reports from readers of EN Wikipedia that the get a pop-up that says the need to "donate to Wikipedia" to use Wikipedia. This is naturally not so. It can be that those users are confused but also that there some sort of spy-ware or virus behind this. If you see this or know someone who complains about this let them make a screenshot and send it in to info-en AT wikimedia DOT org or Wikizine.
Policy
Foundation
  • [Moving headquarters] - The Wikimedia Foundation is moving its offices from St. Petersburg in Florida to San Francisco in California, both in the United States, this winter. That is timezone UTC-8/UTC-7 Summer time. The servers are in Tampa, Florida, and will not be moved. The announcement says the original location was chosen in 2003 because the founder Jimbo lived there when he started the foundation, and that being in a larger city brings the Foundation closer to potential staff, partners, services, and media. Probably this means that most of the current office staff will not able to move with the office and new people will need to be hired. The board will enjoy its last board meeting in sunny and warm Florida at the office in Saint-Petersburg on the 6th and 7th October.
  • [New hire] - The WMF office staff expands with the arrival of Ingrid as executive assistant. She will work at office for time it is still in Saint-Petersburg.
  • [World WMF meeting] - Like last year there will be meeting of board of the Wikimedia Foundation and representatives of all the Wikimedia chapters. To purpose of the meeting is to clarify the relationships between chapters and Foundation. At present it looks like the meeting will be in Frankfurt, Germany on December 7, 8 and 9.
  • [Fund raiser] - The Wikimedia foundation has started to plan its 2007 fund raiser. Currently it looks like the fund raiser will start on October 22 and go until December 22. Help is needed in the following ways: to collect compelling human stories that show why the projects matter, translation help, lots of help designing and implementing the message, and to help plan and carry out plans as they are being developed.
  • [New chapter]  - A new Wikimedia chapter, Wikimedia Hong Kong,  is now officially registered in Hong Kong.
  • [Wikimania 2008] - To procedure for choosing the location for next Wikimania is in its final stage. Currently are in the running 4 cities; Africa with Alexandria and Cape Town and North America with Atlanta and Toronto. The winner will be known by 6th of October.
  • [IT Wikimedia] - On 1st and 2the September IT Wikimedia had its annual Italian chapter meeting and wikimeet in Rome, featuring a wide presence of wikimedians and journalists from press and TV. The news published by all of the main national newspapers. During the meeting some new board members where elected, others confirmed. Frieda Brioschi, former president of IT Wikimedia and now WMF USA board member has been given honorary board membership of IT Wikimedia and is appointed Wikimedia evangelist (PR person).
  • [FR Wikimedia] - is organizing its first conference. It will be in Paris on October 19 and 20, organized by the French WMF chapter. Subscriptions are open.
  • [NL Wikimedia] - In the Netherlands there will be on the 27th October in Amsterdam a local Wikimedia conference organized by the dutch chapter. The topic of this years conference is "wikis and education". Most presentations will be in Dutch, some in English. Registration is open.
Community
  • [EN Wikiquote] - The English language Wikiquote is trying out a new policy for page deletion. It is a simplified deletion process invented on the English Wikipedia, which allows users to place a template on a page and it will be deleted after seven days if nobody removes it. After 3 months the community will decide if the policy will be implemented longer.
  • [EN Wikipedia] - is the flagship of all WMF projects. So making a good first impression with the layout is important. The EN Wikipedia, like other wikis, has a huge collection of templates. Some page have many templates that gives a global very ugly impression. On the EN Wikipedia those templates have been redesigned to be less ugly and make a significant difference in the ugliness of that articles where the are used on.
Media
Stats
  • [When new stats?] - Since many years there are very nice statistics of the projects created by Erik Zachte. Those statistics are not updated since long for some projects and because people keep asking why Erik explains it in a posting to Foundation-l. The core problem is that database dumps the the WMF must provide to be able to making the statistics are failing very frequently, especially for the larger projects. When there is no recent database dump then no statistics can be made from them. Also it becomes more and more difficult to process the data because of the huge amount of data of such a database dump of a large wiki like the English language Wikipedia.
  • [Alexa] - Wikipedia.org has reached a rank of 9 on alexa.com , which means Alexa's statistics show it as the 9th most visited web site on the Internet. The 10th and 11th positions are Facebook (a social networking site) and Baidu (a Chinese search engine).
  • [Articles and edits] - The Swedish Wikipedia has reached 250 thousand articles. The Indonesian Wikipedia has made 1 million edits. The Vietnamese Wiktionary has reached 1 thousand users.
  • [EN Wikipedia] - The English Wikipedia has passed 2 million articles with "El Hormiguero", an article about a Spanish television program. The English project is by far the largest Wikipedia, with the second-largest project being the Deutsch Wikipedia with about 600 000 articles. However, the tech site zdnet.be reports that the English Wikipedia is missing articles about many topics about non-English languages and cultures.
Other news
Did you know ...

... the internet is for porn?

Porn is a huge part of the Internet, and that interest is also reflected in the use of Wikipedia. For as long as we have kept statistics, articles about sex and sexuality were among the most popular.

According the data from the video-player hosted on the toolserver, that now is replaced by the wiki-player, the correctly labeled video file "Ejaculation Educational Demonstration.OGG "  was the most poplar video. The file on the second place was only requested almost the half of the first one.


Quote

The "Web 2.0 model"
1. Make a cool site
2. Slap up some ads to look like you have a business plan
3. Sell out to Google,Y!, or Microsoft
cha-ching!

The "Wikipedia model"
1. Make a cool site
2. Incorporate as a not-for-profit, keep the site non-commercial and ad-free
3. Beg for money
Hey, at least we're honest about it!

-- from a presentation by Brion Vibber

http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/09/13/news/sfcc/wikipedia.txt
http://leuksman.com/images/e/e1/gatorjug-2007-09-12.pdf

Number of subscribers: 698 , Unique Visitors website last week: 229 , Editors: Walter, Jacroe, Pathoschild , Corrector(s): Pathoschild , Thanks to: Jollyroger, gattonero, dracotheimpaler, Aphaia, Pathoschild , Special thanks to: WikipediaWeekly.org, Gray B., ++Lar  , Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org , Website: http://www.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  

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome to Wikizine. Comments may be moderated.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)