GCS Step 1

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Year: 2008 Week: 17 Number: 94

Technical news
Foundation
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.
  • [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.
Media
Stats
Other news
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

 
Number of subscribers: 710 , Unique Visitors website last week: 86 , Editor(s): Walter , Corrector(s): Philippe, Oliphaunt, Cbrown1023 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  
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Thursday, April 03, 2008

Year: 2008 Week: 14 Number: 93 Extra

Foundation
  • [Wikimania 2009] - on March 28, after a long wait since February 28, the jury that would determine the location of Wikimania 2009 chose Buenos Aires, Argentina.  This is the first time that a Spanish-speaking country will harbor the largest gathering of Wikimedians.  Other bids for Wikimania 2009 were from the cities of Toronto (Canada), Brisbane (Australia), and Karlsruhe (Germany).
This is the first occasion that the convention will be done in two languages (English and Spanish) and will be carried out in the southern hemisphere of the planet, on August 28-30, 2009, according to information presented by the local organization.

Backing this bid was Wikimedia Argentina (presided by Patrician Lorente), which did everything to present to the capital of Argentina as a place for Wikimedians to come and visit.

The jury picked the Latin American city due to the large Spanish-language projects of the Foundation (wikipedia, wikinoticias, wikilibros, etc.) and the cultural significance of the city.  The jury also emphasized the great commitment of the organization and the activity that has developed Wikimedia Argentina from December 2007.
  • [Interview] - In a brief interview, Patrician Lorente (President of Wikimedia Argentina) responded to questions about Buenos Aires as headquarters of Wikimania 2009.
This interview was arranged and published in the Spanish language edition of Wikizine ( ES2008-93 extra). A machine translation of it is in included below.

<babelfish translation>

Wikizine: How arose the restlessness from Wikimania in Wikimedia Argentina?

Patricio: It even arose before organizing to us like Wikimedia Argentina formally. Our sensation is as much the Spanish-speaking world as the South hemisphere has, by different reasons, a marginal participation in the global community of Wikimedia, that does not correspond with the real participation in the projects. Even let us remember that the Wikipedia in Spanish second more is visited and than the Spanish-speaking community, with its overwhelming heterogeneity and complexity is growing and it is being organized of admirable way.

W: Which were the main problems that were in the organization?

P: We have not had serious problems still, but the hard work just begins. Until now we have had to work in the development of a project, from the resolution of the jury of Wikimanía 2009 we will have to take that project to the practice.

W: What is the hope of this event?
P: We hope to turn to the Spanish-speaking community and the South hemisphere assets protagonists of the global dynamics of the Wikimedia projects. We want to show our European and North American friends whom an anxious community exists here and worker who is perhaps sometimes invisible for many. Perhaps that the ideal of the free knowledge has a more meant and particular importance in these places of the world in which the difficulties to the access to the education and the knowledge are multiplied for vast social sectors.

W: A message for the readers of Wikizine.
P: That we waited for them in Buenos Aires! The projects brothers of the Wikipedia already take own flight and is necessary to show them the community.

</babelfish translation>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos Aires
http://wikitravel.org/en/Buenos_Aires
http://www.wikimedia.org.ar - Wikimedia Argentina
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Buenos_Aires - Candidatura de Buenos Aires para Wikimania 2009

Editor(s): Dennis Tobar ([[meta:User:Superzerocool]]) Translator: Casey Brown  Thanks to: Patricio Lorente Construction: Walter
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
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