Year: 2008 Week: 30 Number: 97

Notice from the editor: this edition does not includes all relevant news for the time frame between the previous Wikizine and this one. I decided that getting something out is more important then more delays. Walter

Foundation

• [New board chair] -  The board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has a new chair. All board members where in favour to appoint Michael Snow for the job. Michael, who is a board member since February 2008, is best known as the founder of the Wikipedia Signpost. The former chair, Anthere (Florence Devouard), was Chair since October 2006 and board member since 2004. She is now not longer a WMF board member. Anthere has joined the WMF Advisory board.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31723
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board
• [Board election] - [[meta:user:Wing]] (Ting Chen) is elected as a community board member to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. His term will expire in July 2009. 3019 valid votes where registered.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Results/en
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board#Ting Chen
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31722
• [New hires] - The WMF has hired 5 new staff members; Erik Zachte (Tech stats guy), Sara Crouse (Head of Partnerships and Foundation Relations), Rebecca Handler (Major Gifts Officer), Rand Montoya (Head of Community Giving), and Frank Schulenburg (public outreach coordinator).  Erik Zachte starts in September as a part-time contractor. Erik is a Wikipedian from the Dutch language Wikipedia but is mostly know for his volunteer work in creating detailed statistics for the Wikimedia projects. As a contractor for the WMF Erik will also work on this.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31508 -- Erik Zachte
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31661 -- Sara Crouse
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31367 -- Rebecca Handler / Rand Montoya
• http://stats.wikimedia.org/ -- the stats of the WMF by Erik Zachte
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff  -- overview staff
  

Technical news

• [SUL] - Bureaucrats can now rename a user to a name that is already migrated to the Single User Login. This at least when if the global account and the local account have the same email address or password.
• [Video on wiki] - Kaltura, Inc is sponsoring Michael Dale, lead developer of the MetaVid project, to work in the Wikimedia Foundation offices in San Francisco beginning in  August. Michael will work on adding support for video editing operations and other video-related functionality to MediaWiki.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31756
• [ERATA] - the item "Restrict upload", section "Proposals", in Wikizine 96 was not correct. Restricting uploads to auto confirmed users only is not a proposal but is live on all wikis ... except those wikis who have requested to disable this function explicitly.
  

Request for help

• [Wikizine] - assistance would be useful (understatement)
• http://report.wikizine.org  
  

Proposals

• [Front door] - Just like most people have a very hard time to understand that a domain of a website can end with something else then .com have visitors the urge to put "www" before everything. The means the url "www.wikipedia.org" is an important page and the front door for many visitors of Wikipedia. 10 Wikipedias have currently the honour to be listed very prominently around the wikipedia-globe, the Wikipedias who have the most articles. When a Wikipedia breaks the 100,000 articles milestone the also like to move up and get a spot around the globe. But space is limited. This a long standing source of discussion.

A poll is currently opened to find a solution. Users can indicate there support for different ways to present the Wikipedia-options to the visitors. The poll is open until July 31, 2008 at 23:59 UTC.

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Wikipedias/poll

Community

• [Wikimania 2008] - For this year is it over. WikipediaWeekly provides audio reporting about Wikimania.The 2009 Wikimania conference will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• http://wikipediaweekly.org/ -- podcasts 52 / 57
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2008_Alexandria -- some
• http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gallery pictures from Wikimania 2008
• http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki/index.php/Wikimania_Sessions -- If you are very lucky you can find some video recordings there
• http://tinyurl.com/6l4gwr -- Bibliotheca Alexandrina Webcast
• http://linuxawy.org/node/28 -- how to get those streams working
• http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2008/07/wikimania-alexandria.html -- Impression by GerardM, who was there
• http://tinyurl.com/6fu5hy -- and also one from User:Pfctdayelise
• [Most read] - The English Wikinews has a new page that displays the top 20 of the most read articles of the last hour. This is not done by MediaWiki but by means of the Domas's wikistats.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Popular_articles
• [The Other Side] - Once was it a mystery and cause to speculation how the dark side of the Moon would look like. Now the question is raised; how does the other side of the Wikipedia globe looks like?
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31763
  

Other news

• [Knol] - Google has gone live with their project to create user written information articles. It is not like Wikipedia in the sense that an article is owned by an author, at least as default. When you start a new "knol" you can also allow everyone to edit if logged in. That author can write about what he wishes to write, even when there is already an article about that topic. Other people can give a rating (stars) and give comments. Authors received a part of the earnings of the advertisements displayed on there articles if the switch the advertisements on. The default license is "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0". It is currently not clear of the GFDL-licence that Wikipedia is using is compatible. But you can also pick a licence that does not allow commercial use or you can disallow all use elsewhere. So knol be very open or very restrictive depending on what you chose as author of a knol.
• http://knol.google.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knol
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYO-fN_VgU -- Jimmy Wales gives his idea about Knol & Wikipedia
• [China] - The Chinese language Wikipedia is now, months after the unblocking of the other languages editions, also unblocked. At least in some parts of China. It is expected the will be blocked again as soon as the Olympic fire is extinguished.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia_unblocked_by_government
  

Quote

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)

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


Number of subscribers: 710 , Editor(s): Walter , Thanks to: Platonides, bawolff , 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. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]], and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikizine is a irregular 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