Year: 2008 Week: 45 Number: 101

Technical news

• [Image: => File:] - Brion announced that he will be fulfilling a long-time wish: renaming the "Image:" namespace to "File:" due to the fact that it contains much more than just images.  He will be making this change soon, so please update any scripts that rely on it *when* it is live. "Image" will remain as an alias.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/39998
• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44
• [Ubuntu] - The Wikimedia Foundation tech team decided to simplify things by moving all of their servers to a GNU/Linux distribution: Ubuntu.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/40064
• http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116787
• [New Search] - Another long-awaited tech improvement: the search feature!  Thanks to some work by Robert Stojnic, we are currently migrating to lucene-search 2 which includes new features like much better searching and interwiki matches.  When a search matches a title from another project in the same language, a box on right appears which holds the link to the sister project page.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/40346
• http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/152/new-mediawiki-search-features-on-wikipedia (blog post with pictures)
• [RenameUser] - There are now additional options when renaming an account: automatically recreate and block the old account.  Previously, all this had to be done by the bureaucrats themselves -- this process is now simplified.
• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15181
• [CodeReview] - Brion enabled the CodeReview extension on MediaWiki.org.  This is an extension that greatly helps with the review of coding and will hopefully allow the sites to be updated with newer code more quickly.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-October/039569.html
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/CodeReview_todo_list
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CodeReview
• [Textbook-l] - Wiki-to-print and ODT are now live in all Wikibooks editions.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2008-October/001367.html
  

Proposals

• [Essentialpedia] - A more concise Wikipedia, containing only the most essential topics.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Essentialpedia
  

Policy

• [GFDL 1.3 released] - A new version of the GNU Free Documentation License, which is used by most of the WMF projects, has been released. The new version makes it possible to migrate to the Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 license.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/34061
  

Foundation

• [Fundraising 2008] - This year, the fundraiser has started discretely. By the time you read this, or soon after it, the classic site notice will be live. The donation pages have been redesigned, the Jimbo video is back, and a new feature is a form to give your answer to the question "How has Wikipedia made your life easier?". Like in previous years, the listing of the donations and their comments remains.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Stories/en
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:ContributionHistory/en
• [Annual Report] - The first annual report of the WMF has been released. This is like a PR publication that contains financial information about the WMF. It may be useful to explain what the WMF actually does.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
• [New Chapters] - Two new chapters were approved in the October and November 2008 board meeting. Let's all welcome Wikimedia Brasil, Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia Hungary, and Wikimedia Norway to the group of chapters!
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters
• [Chapter news list] - A new mailing list has been launched. It is meant to be an announce-only mailing list, for those who wish to keep in touch with what the chapters around the world are doing. It will receive regular updates from various chapters about their activities.
• https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports
• [Meeting Report] - Michael gave an unofficial recap of the recent October Board of Trustees Meeting.  In it, he discussed updates to two policies, update on board calendar, discussions about open standards, file formats, and some changes to the Advisory Board.  He also said that the minutes will be posted soon after they are approved.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046554.html
• [Sub-national Chapters] Another topic of discussion at the board meeting was sub-national chapters.  The board supports the development of sub-national chapters where appropriate and is starting a workgroup to figure out how the sub-national chapters will be handled.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046590.html
• [Wikimedia Argentina] - is going to give the "Wikipedia Academy" conferences and workshops next November 6th.
• http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/wiki/Academia_de_Wikipedia
  

Community

• [General Survey] - A multilingual Wikipedia survey has been launched by the Wikimedia Foundation and UNU-Merit.  Currently, there are versions available in Dutch, Tamil, and Vietnamese with many other languages (including English) going live in the next few days to weeks.  Please complete the survey so that the Foundation can more accurately get a picture of who contributes to the projects!  Don't worry, no personally identifiable information will be released by UNU-Merit or the Wikimedia Foundation without permission of the respondents.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046736.html
• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/10/24/multilingual-wikipedia-survey-launched/
• [Wikipedia Logo Updates] - A project spearheaded by the Foundation and Wikipedia community members to fix the errors on the globe of Wikipedia's logo and to fill in the blanks on the "other side" has begun.  This project was started in response to many concerns over the years that there were many errors in the globe.  Community and staff members both agreed that it would also be nice to have a full globe for memorabilia and for a 3D prop at events.  It is requested that all community members join in on the discussion at Meta-Wiki!
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/comproj/2008-October/000661.html
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia/logo
• [Wikis Take Manhattan] - A scavenger hunt and free content photography contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and the transportation-oriented Streetswiki (covering sites in Manhattan and New York City) was held.  It was coordinated by New York City Wikimedians, Free Culture Columbia, Free Culture NYU, and The Open Planning Project with 23 teams and over 50 participants (the great majority non-Wikimedians). The grand prize winners will be having a free dinner with Jimmy Wales.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan
• http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/wikis-take-manhattan/
• [Wikinews Meets Google News] - After a long series of discussions with Google, Wikinews is finally listed in the search results of Google News site: http://news.google.com/.  The problem was that Google did not think it was reliable enough to be included (since anyone could edit), but after Wikinews had FlaggedRevs enabled it was finally deemed reliable!
• http://news.google.com/news?q=source:%22wikinews%22
  

Awards

• [DE wp] - The German Wikipedia won the audience award "OnlineStar" in the category "knowledge, news & information".
• http://www.onlinestar.de/gewinner-2008.html?&no_cache=1
  

Other news

• [Probably off-topic] - nevertheless - A 6-year old, heavily brain-damaged girl is now able to talk to hear parents with a computer that tracks her eye movements. She's also able to browse the internet, and maybe to read Wikipedia one day?
• http://tinyurl.com/6nokso
  

Quote

"Wiki is 2/3 of planning, the rest is a loop in the dark" (Napoleon
Bonaparte, according to Eric Johnson at Wikimania 2008)

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