Year: 2007 Week: 44 Number: 83

Technical news

• [Upload limit] - The upload limit is 20 MB. Now that the recent changes have resulted in good support for video, it was suggested to increase this limit. There are concerns for a dramatic growth in bandwidth and storage need.

Request for help

• [Fundraising translations] - Most translations for the 2007 fundraising have been done, but some still remian. Cary Bass, volunteer coordinator, requests your help.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007

New project proposals

• [Chain of reasons] - This proposed new project aims to be a reference for people who simply want to learn about the reasoning behind particular beliefs -- moral, political, scientific, religious, or whatever.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chains_of_Reason
  

Policy

• [Page creation on EN Wikipedia] - Page creation for anonymous users has been disabled for the English Wikipedia since December 2005. There will probably soon be a trial of one week during which page creation is enabled again.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84133
• http://tinyurl.com/yw6gvj -- discussion at the village pump

Foundation

• [Priorities] - Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees, has stated priorities for her next term as a chair. She also summarizes the major developments of last year.
• http://tinyurl.com/325sjo
• [Fundraising] - The 2007 fall fund raising has started on October 22 and will run until December 22. People are encouraged to place web buttons on their private websites. At present around US$130,000 has been donated. The live stream of donations from Paypal can be seen in the IRC channel #wikimedia-donations on freenode.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons
  
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007 -- feedback from the visitors of the projects on the fund raiser
• http://chat.wikizine.org -- provides access to #wikimedia-donations
• [Budget] - Together with its fundraising, the Wikimedia Foundation has also published its budget for 2007-2008. The Foundation plans to spend US$4.6M in total, of which 57% is reserved for technical services. The rest is going to overhead, staff and other activities such as Wikimania. 
• http://tinyurl.com/3bxpwa
• [New chapter] - Wikimedia Sweden was founded in Stockholm, Sweden. Lennart Guldbrandsson was elected Chair. For the board several members of community were elected as well as persons from the free knowledge movement of Sweden. One of them is Lars Aronsson, founder of susning.nu, which was the second largest wiki in the world before it was closed.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige
• [Treasurer] - The foundation is looking for a treasurer who will succeed Miles Davis on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
• http://tinyurl.com/2y9ryy
• [Job openings] - As a result of the relocation of the Wikimedia Foundation's headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Francisco, several positions are to be filled.
• http://tinyurl.com/24ow5e
  

Community

• [Dutch Conference] - On October 27, Wikimedia Nederland held a conference in Amsterdam about Wikimedia, Wikis and Education. Most of the program was in Dutch; however, a few presentations were in English. Florence Devouard was one of the keynote speakers.
• http://tinyurl.com/2r9e4p -- conference website
• http://tinyurl.com/2r2na9 -- Wikinews report on the conference
• [Russian Conference] - The Wiki-Conference 2007 was held on October 27 and 28 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• http://tinyurl.com/35axup
• [Wikijunior] - It is proposed that stable versions of the Wikijunior books hosted on the English Wikibooks will be published on www.wikijunior.org. Also there are discussions on a new logo.
• http://tinyurl.com/32vh9b 
• http://tinyurl.com/3afhp3
  

Media

• [Wikicomics] - "Wikimedia fundraiser highlights webcomic community's frustration with Wikipedia guidelines" reports Wikinews
• http://tinyurl.com/2z8mda
• [Edit for grades] - Some schools may ban Wikipedia, but the story about a teacher of the University of Washington-Bothell who makes her students write Wikipedia articles for grades was in the news this week.
• http://tinyurl.com/2hjnmm
• [Anons best?] - "Anonymous Wikipedia entries the most accurate" writes Brockpress.com.
• http://tinyurl.com/3c4895
  

Stats

• [Commons] - Three years have passed since Commons started selecting their best pictures; now, the 10,000th featured picture has been selected.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21385
• http://tinyurl.com/2e4xab -- the 10,000th featured picture
• [hu.wp ] - The Hungarian Wikipedia just reached 75.000 articles.
• http://hu.wikipedia.org
• [haw.wp] - The Hawaiian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• http://haw.wikipedia.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language
• [simple wp] - The Simple English Wikipedia has reached its 20,000th article with "Mandurah railway line, Perth". Simple is looking for editors to write even more articles.
• http://simple.wikipedia.org
• [Erratum] - Wikizine 82 reported that the Vietnamese Wikipedia had reached 100,000 articles. This is not correct. The count was 100,000 pages in total, not just articles. The Vietnamese Wikipedia has over 25,000 articles.
  

Editorial

Dear readers,

Today, Wikizine has existed for three years.  A couple of weeks ago, I was seriously considering to stop contributing to Wikizine. My reason was that it became too difficult to continue creating weekly a new and good edition of Wikizine virtually alone.

At this time, the start of the third year of Wikizine, I want to inform you, my readers, that Wikizine will continue. This is possible because of the recent assistance in creating Wikizine that has been provided to me by users londenp and effeietsanders and a slightly less pessimistic state of mind.

It will not longer be a goal of Wikizine to have a weekly issue. The new publication frequency will be "You will get a new Wikizine whenever one is ready".

The Spanish and Indonesian language edition of Wikizine will mostly be terminated soon because of lack of activity of the people who started them. For the German edition there is just a new volunteer so there is hope that this one can stay.

Thanks for reading Wikizine. That is the reason for existence of a newsletter. This newsletter is "for the members of the Wikimedia community". The main purpose of Wikizine is to inform you, the Wikimedia community, what is going on in the community. That is across all projects and languages.

Only what is known by the (small) staff of Wikizine can be reported. Currently Wikizine fails in reporting what is going on in the global community due to lack of information.  Please take a minute to send notice to Wikizine if there is something of interest to report from your home-wiki.

Greetings,
meta:user:Walter

Did you know ...

... that the income of the Wikimedia Foundation is mainly based on small donations from individuals who appreciate the Wikimedia projects? The Wikimedia projects are hence mainly supported by the large public, not by major organisations.

Fundraising quotes

"For tripling the number of Elephants in Africa!" US$500 --Anonymous.
"Instead of a banner asking for donations, why don't you just have a banner with an ad, and skip the middle step." --Anonymous.
"Wikipédia est d'une utilité publique colossale." -- Lionel Bolnet
"Who's that guy? The guy on the banner looks like Osama bin Laden." --Anonymous
"Your efforts to educate the world are highly admirable. Keep up the good work." -- Alison Dwyer
"Symbolisch bedrag en mijn hartelijke dank voor jullie geweldige site." -- Tejo Hoekman

http://tinyurl.com/2rlb39  -- more quotes

Number of subscribers: 695 , Unique Visitors website last week: 167 , Editor(s): Walter, Effeietsanders, Londenp , Corrector(s): Oliphaunt , Thanks to: Tgr, Joakim Larsson, Borgx  , Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org , Website: http://www.wikizine.org ,  Wikizine.org makes no guarantees of accuracy,  validity and especially 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