Year: 2008 Week: 17 Number: 94

Technical news

• [Suggestions] - A function has been enabled on the projects that gives a drop-down menu with search suggestions.
  • http://leuksman.com/log/2008/04/21/suggestion-search-drop-down/
• [New search tests] - Testing is underway of a new search system to replace the current wiki-search function. The new system is supposed to give a more "google-like" search experience.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37611
  • http://ls2.wikimedia.org/ - location of experimental search system
• [Global blocking?] - A MediaWiki extension has been created that makes global blocking of IP addresses on all WMF wikis possible. Discussion is opened about whether this is a good idea, how it can be used, and by whom.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37704
  • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_blocking
• [Global login] - Users who already have a global account for the projects still need to login to every wiki independently. There is a global login but no global session. The developers are working on this. Brion explains a possible way for doing this and the security risks.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37661
  • http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_session_threat_assessment
• [OpenID] - Regarding the possible implementation of OpenID on the WMF-projects, Brion says: "We may [implement this] at some point, but it's a much lower priority atm, and requires more review to make sure we're happy with how it'll look and behave."
  • http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37671
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID

Foundation

• [Board Treasurer] - A non-elected seat on the Board of Trustees has been filled by Stuart West, who is the new Treasurer of the Board.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28722 -- announcement on Foundation-l
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28753 -- "Hello" from Stuart West
  • http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board#Stuart_West
• [New jobs] - the Wikimedia Foundation has job openings for 3 functions related to the organisation of future fundraising drives.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28517
• [Wikimania 2008] - Requests for scholarships (financial support) to go to Wikimania in Egypt were opened but are now closed again. Sorry. The timeframe was to short to make it in time for Wikizine.
  • http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
• [Large donation] - the WMF has received a new large donation. It is US$500,000 from Vinod and Neeru Khosla.
  • http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_Releases/Khosla_Gift
• [WMF blog] - a Foundation blog has been started. WMF staff will post news and information about the work they're engaged in that is not large enough to need a press release, but is still noteworthy.  Also, guest contributors, board members and so on can post... but anyone can comment!  
  • http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/11/welcome/

Community

• [Wikiportret] - the Dutch Wikimedia chapter presents a service to make it more easy for famous people or there managers to submit pictures for use on the projects.
  The front-end is a basic website with clear and easy instructions to submit a picture. After this an email is sent to the OTRS team (who need to verify the submission) and if is is accepted they put in on Commons.
  Currently there is only a Dutch language version of this service in use, but support for more languages is possible and intended.  (However, for many languages this already exists by use of a page on the wiki Contact form.)
  To support this project templates are placed on (Dutch) articles of people who have not yet a picture to point to the special website. Also an advertisement is created that can be used for publication by people who wish to support this project.
  • http://www.wikiportret.nl
  • http://www.wikiportrait.org -- multi-language version (only Dutch works)
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Photo_submission -- English Wikipedia (and four other language versions linked from the sidebar)
• [EN Wikinews] -  a bot active on the English Wikipedia is helping to bring the news articles of the sister project Wikinews to the attention of the Wikipedia readers. This bot will update pages on Wikipedia with relevant Wikinews articles, including the addition of Television portal links to recent Wikinews articles that are about television related topics.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikinews_Importer_Bot
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Television

Media

• [Documentary] - On the Dutch (Netherlands) public television, a 50-minute documentary about Wikipedia has been broadcast at prime time, and uninterrupted by commercials. An English-language version is available on YouTube.
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0
  • http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/39405191/

Stats

• [By page view] - Overview of how much traffic the different Wikipedias receive. English gets 50%, German 10% and Japanese 9.5%.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/27602
• [2000th featured article] - the English language Wikipedia now has 2000 featured articles. The latest Signpost features an interview about it.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/2000th_FA
• [Wiktionary] - the Japanese has 30,000 definitions, the French has 800,000 definitions and the English also has almost 800,000.
  • http://ja.wiktionary.org
  • http://fr.wiktionary.org

Other news

• [Britannica free!] - ... at least for bloggers. The Encyclopædia Britannica is now giving away free accounts for their encyclopedia to "web publishers". Also articles of EB are now free for all to read, if you go to the article by means of an hyperlink posted online. You can only read that one specific article, if you jump to any other article the text is shielded by a subscribe option.... at least if you have javascript enabled. If you disable javascript in your browser, everyone (without the need to login) can read all articles of Britannica.
  • http://britannicanet.com/?page_id=15
  • http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/
  • http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192818/Wikipedia  -- The "Wikipedia" article on EB (if this doesn't work use the online link on en.wikizine.org)
  • http://www.britannica.com/bps/home -- MainPage (disable javascript)
• [Wikipedia book] - come autumn 2008, the publisher Bertelsmann will publish a German-language printed edition of Wikipedia that contains information on about 50,000 topics on 1000 pages. The price will be EUR 19.95 (US$32). The Wikimedia Foundation will receive EUR 1 for every copy.
  • http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/22/wikipedia-in-german-book-form/
  • http://tinyurl.com/4fx4n2   Slashdot news item
• [Wikipedia Chemistry] - Yet another book: KnowledgePublications is publishing an English language book about hydrogen (H). It contains large parts of the chemistry related articles of EN wp.  The book is titled, "The Chemical Educator: for The Chemistry and Manufacture of Hydrogen". The published says it is one of the best books ever written on the manufacture of hydrogen.  
  • http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-04-0416-003.shtml
  • http://tinyurl.com/65c49c -- view of the book
• [ID Wikizine] - the Indonesian language edition of Wikizine has been closed due to lack of interest and assistance.

Did you know ...

... that even changes that were active during a very brief amount of time can pop up for a long time afterwards as the version a visitor will see?

On the first of April was the tag-line changed several times. That is the string of text that normally says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Seven days later, when requesting an article as a visitor, the version of the article displayed contained the version of the tagline that was active for only one minute on the first of April.

The reason is that for the servers to be able to take care of the very large volume of traffic the sites get, pages are cached. Anonymous users get a previously saved version to see. The cache of a page expires after 31 days.

Moral of the story: even a "joke edit" that is only live for a minute or so can show up to visitors up to a month later.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/37598
 

Quote

 

"Spanking or hitting a skunk is not recommended"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-14/WikiWorld

 

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