The Official Wikizine Archive: 2009/07

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 31 Number: 113

Technical news

[arwp: New namespace] - the Arabic Wikipedia Community has agreed to create a new namespace called "Supplement". It will contain most of date pages (days, months, years, decades, etc.), disambiguation pages and lists to give the exactly number of encyclopedic articles. There are about 6000 pages that will be moved to the new namespace. It may be possible that your community would like to apply the same idea.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19357 -- bug report
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Supplement -- guideline of namespace

[Commons: Off-site archive] - A off site archive for Commons and the XML snapshots will be added. Thanks are due to eBart consulting and User:Milosh for proving a backup server and storage array at their colocation facility in Europe. This server will store archives of our publicly available data of Wikimedia Commons and the XML snapshots.

http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/were-adding-an-off-site-archive-for-commons-and-the-xml-snapshots/ -- techblog post

[Passwords plz] - Watchlistr.com was an outside site that asked for Wikimedia passwords in order aggregate user watchlists across all projects for them. Although in this case it did not have a malicious intent, use of external sites asking for passwords place in risk the accounts used. Users are asked not to share their user password with any external site. Not even toolserver tools are allowed to request your password for any service. The site has now been shut down, and further analysis revealed that it had important vulnerabilities. Magnus Manske has created an alternative tool for people to use if they liked this feature.

http://www.watchlistr.com/
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044238.html -- initial thread
http://magnusmanske.de/MetaWatchlist/ -- alternative proposed by Magnus

[TS: Multi-maintainer tools] - the toolserver is pushing multi-maintainer tools and will be actively discouraging single maintainer ones. They want to encourage collaboration amongst toolserver users and make tools last even when one of the users disappears

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.toolserver/1515

[SVN account requests] - there's a new process for requesting SVN accounts to the MediaWiki source code. Brion announced that he'll be going through the queue every week, so if you have request throw them up on MediaWiki wiki. ;-)

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/44683 -- mailing list post
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Commit_access_requests -- requests

Proposals

[Geonotice + Wikinews/Commons?] - Sage Ross recently proposed something interesting: using an opt-in geonotice (notice that displays based on the location of your IP) to show local reporting or photographing opportunities. Hopefully this will help with one of the great frustrations that inhibit original reporting.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044367.html

Foundation

[Board elections: Voting] - the Foundation's Board elections has finally entered into the voting phase (voting is open until August 10) and translation is continuing. Visit the Meta pages for election information (including a "Questions" page), the Wikipedia Signpost also has interviews with the candidates.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009#voters -- voter requirements
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Board_elections#Candidate_interviews -- signpost interviews

[More donation buttons] - the second round of donation button designs has been posted, feedback is appreciated to determine which designs we'll end up using!

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade

[Audit Committee] - the new members of the 2009-2010 Audit Committee have been announced.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053280.html -- foundation-l post

[wm2009: Registration] - Media Registration for Wikimania 2009 has opened. For regular registration, there is a new update: it is also possible to extend your stay past the Wikimania dates, but you need to contact the hotel directly.

http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration#Accommodations -- extending stay options
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimania_2009_Media_Registration -- media registration

[Strategy: "Office Hours" & Wiki] - the Strategic Planning team has announced their "office hours" which are teams that they will be on the channel to answer questions and participate in discussions, everyone's invited! The team has also "soft-launched" their wiki (most of its content is also available for translation).

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40527 -- soft-launch post

[TS donation] - the Wikimedia Foundation has awarded a US$40,000 grant to the Toolserver toward improving the toolserver's reliability. With that money they will buy three database servers, so they can keep two copies of each wiki database instead of just one. This should greatly improve the availability of up to date data in the wiki databases.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2009-July/002278.html -- announcement
http://journal.toolserver.org/entry/2009/07/29/wikimedia-foundation-grants-40000-to-the-toolserver/ -- blog post
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_DE/Improve_toolserver_reliability -- original grant application

[Active ombudsmen?] - there was a discussion on the DE Wikipedia (and then foundation-l) about whether or not the Ombudsmen commission (the group that hears privacy violations) is actually fulfilling its mission actively.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40241

Community

[NY Wiki-Conference] - the first New York City Wiki-Conference was a success with more than 100 people attending. The Signpost has a write-up about the event and there was also a twitter "report" with the tag #nywikiconference.

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23nywikiconference -- twitter feed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Wiki-Conference -- signpost update

[Institutions editing] - the Tropenmuseum, a Dutch museum, was preparing to upload images to the Dutch Wikipedia until it's account was blocked due to its name. Erik Möller (User:Eloquence, Deputy Director WMF) suggested on Commons-l that this is something we want to avoid -- "these institutions are helping expand our content, we should Assume Good Faith and let our first impressions be friendly and professional".

http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/07/tropenmuseum-is-blocked.html -- Gerard's blog post on the museum
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/5006 -- Erik's commons-l post

[WMUK: Schools project ML] - Wikimedia UK has started a new mailing list for its schools project, dedicated to creating a Wikipedia version with selected articles for schools. Interested parties are welcome to subscribe.

http://wikimedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/schools-project-l_wikimedia.org.uk

Media

[Wikipedia flawed, but that's okay] - Wikipedia is a flawed and incomplete testament to the essential fallibility of human nature. An interesting blog post from the BBC about Wikipedia being okay. ;-)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/07/wikipedia.shtml

[Mobile Wikipedia tips] - Wikipedia Expert Tips: How to Keep the Facts at Your Fingertips. The article talks about different ways to serve Wikipedia content, from tweaking the skin to a random article screensaver to mobile phone versions.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/168655/wikipedia_expert_tips_how_to_keep_the_facts_at_your_fingertips.html

[NIH] - a few more media outlets have covered the National Institutes of Health Academy with article titles ranging from "Should you trust health advice from the web?" to "NIH Gets Schooled on Wikipedia".

[CK-12 Foundation] - Jimmy Wales joined the Advisory Board of the CK-12 Foundation, a Silicon Valley non-profit organization with a mission to provide online up-to-date and standards-aligned textbook content to K-12 students around the world.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/jimmy-wales-joins-advisory-board-of-ck-12-foundation,897842.shtml

[NPG] - the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has sided with the National Portrait Gallery *against* Wikipedia, as the NPG incident continues.

[Jimmy on CNN Money] - Jimbo did a piece on "CNN Money" where he talked about Wikipedia's non-profit status and it's usability and stategic planning projects.

http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2009/07/28/n_co_wikipedia_wales.cnnmoney/

[Rorschach censors] - the New York Times covers the Rorschach controversy: whether or not we should include the ink blot tests in our articles (for "ethical reasons").

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/internet/29inkblot.html

[WP has poor photos?] - the NY Times ran an article a few weeks ago called: "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It's a Desert for Photos" which pointed out that Wikipedia has some trouble with good quality pictures in its articles (especially ones of celebrities). This caused a bit of controversy on the mailing lists, with image contributors complaining that the Foundation didn't steer the article in the right direction -- highlighting good works instead of bad ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/20funny.html -- article
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053282.html -- mailing list thread

Stats

[50k] - the Galician and Nynorsk (Norwegian) Wikipedias have both reached 50,000 articles.

[mhr.wp] - the Meadow Mari Wikipedia is less than a month old and already has over 500 articles (almost 600)!

http://mhr.wikipedia.org/

Other news

[Facebook] - the Wikipedia fan page on Facebook, managed by Cary Bass (Bastique) Volunteer Coordinator WMF, now has a URL. If you use Facebook, make sure to add yourself as a fan.

[Wikipedia Art] - some awesome posters/t-shirts from last year have resurfaced, they display people with a common theme: "I [edit] Wikipedia". They show ordinary people surrounded by words that display their editing interest depending upon their personality.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeeperez/sets/72157604803121347/

[Attracting newbies?] - David Gerard pointed out an interesting article with tips about attracting newbies and making them effective. Although the author is talking about software development, it definitely could relate to our projects.

http://denise.dreamwidth.org/23600.html

Did you know ...

... parody is the highest form of flattery?

[Bigipedia] - BBC Radio launched a "broadwebcasting" show parodying the internet by mocking pop-ups, search boxes and other aspects of online activity. Produced and directed by Pozzitive, the four-part series is called 'Bigipedia' and has taken its inspiration from Wikipedia. If you can appreciate British humor, check it out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lpr29/Bigipedia_Episode_1/ -- first episode (30 min)

Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Platonides , Thanks to: OsamaK, Rand, Stu, Sage, Daniel Kinzler, Skenmy, Frederic, Brion, Jay, Philippe, David, River, Roan, Galio, Cary, Signpost, Gerard , 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]]. 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 and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 30 Number: 112

Technical news

[Media server problems] - there were some media load problems on all the sites, which caused "extreme slowness or temporary inaccessibility". The sysadmins took advantage of this downtime to redo the way we access media files internally which will help reduce the impact on the rest of the site when load problems on the file servers occur, and also spreads out the load among multiple servers to improve things even more. They had to shut off all uploads for a while to get this done!

[Wikipedia Weekly interviews the Usability Team] - Wikipedia Weekly, a podcast for and by Wikimedians, interviewed the Usability team.

[MediaWiki:Sharedupload change] - MediaWiki:Sharedupload became MediaWiki:Sharedupload-desc-here. Admins in other projects should rename the first one to the second in order to customize messages for images from Commons. (That's the text shown when a Commons image is shown on another project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doorknob_buddhist_temple_detail_amk.jpg )

Request for help

[Translation of the week] -- the Translation of the Week needs help! If you speak another language and would like to translate "History of pizza" into your language, TOTW is for you. ;-)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_of_the_week

Foundation

[Board elections] - the candidate deadline for the elections to the Board of Trustees has been extended to July 27 due to some technical issuets for which the CentralNotice had to be turned off. The questioning of the candidates has also begun and translation is ongoing.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates -- candidates
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/Questions -- questions
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation

[New "Strategic Planning" Staff] - the Foundation announced that they filled two positions for their Strategic Planning project.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053165.html -- project manager
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053168.html -- facilitator

[National Portrait Gallery] - the English National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London (UK) has threatened to sue a U.S. citizen, Derrick Coetzee. The legal letter followed claims that he had breached the Gallery's copyright in several thousand photographs of works of art uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, a free online media repository. More information in the extremely detailed Wikinews article. *Update*: The WMF and NPG have entered into good-faith negotiations, according to Erik Moeller.

[Academy: NIH] - the Wikimedia Foundation announced and had its first Wikipedia Academy (outreach event to teach people to become contributors) in the United States this week.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/NIH_and_WMF_announce_first_WP_Academy_July_2009 -- press release
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23nihwiki -- twitter coverage from the event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academy/NIH_2009 -- project writeup

[Advisory Board changes] - Angela, chair of the Advisory Board, has updated the "Advisory Board" page to show that 8 members have left, bringing the current total to 15 advisory board members.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/?diff=39660

[Fundraising 2008: Post-Mortem] - Rand Montoya, the Foundation's Head of Community Giving, has posed a post-mortem (basically "what went wrong, what went right and what can we do better?") on the 2008 Fundraising Drive.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2008#Post_Mortem_for_the_2008_Annual_Fundraiser

Community

[Board elections: Inspiration] - some Wikimedians suggested that it might be better if prospective candidates knew *why* they should run for board member; what's it really like to be one? Stu West (appointed member, treasurer) responded and explained why serving on the Board is rewarding.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053211.html

[wm2009: schedule & flu] - the Wikimania 2009 team posted two updates this week where they created a draft schedule for the conference on their wiki and posted a message about swine flu concerns to a few mailing lists.

http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule -- schedule on wiki
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2009-July/001433.html -- mailing list post (swine flu)

[Open Source Schools] - Wikimedia UK's secretary is presenting a piece on the subject of "using Wikipedia in schools" at the Open Source Schools "un"conference in Nottingham (UK) next Monday 20th July. If you're in the area, it sounds like it'll be interesting! (Conference admission is 55 pounds.)

http://opensourceschools.org.uk/node/11659 -- presentation
http://www.ncsl.org.uk/lcc-map.pdf -- venue

[Spotlight] - Many projects must have there projects to improve the quality if an article. The English Wikipedia has there project "Spotlight". It not a new thing, the started end of 2006. But the news is that it has lost it {{historical}} - label. The spot is again on!

http://en.wikipedia.orgwiki/Wikipedia:Spotlight

Media

[Rorschach Test Censorship] - English Wikipedians had an interesting argument about whether or not to include the Rorschach ink blot tests in the article on the subject. No, it's not because of licensing, the files are in the public domain. It's actually about ethics, people are worried it will ruin the validity of the tests. The Wikipedia discussion was picked up by blogs/news outlets.

[WikiWars Conference] - the first conference to be held in Bangalore (India), called WikiWars, invites participation from users, scholars, academics, practitioners, artists and other cultural workers, to share their experiences, ideas, experiments, innovations, applications and stories about Wikipedia

http://cis-india.org/research/conferences/wikiwars

[NPG Coverage] - the user who was threatened with legal action by the National Portrait Gallery is keeping a list of media coverage.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_threat/Coverage

[WLA/NL] - The Dutch Wiki loves art initiative by Wikimedia Nederland ended and gained a total of 5447 photos of art objects from 45 museums photographed by no less than 292 enthusiastic volunteers. In a few weeks the pictures will become available on Commons, but the pictures can already be viewed on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/wikilovesart/

Stats

[en.wp] - Erik Zachte, Wikimedia status guru and owner of infodisiac.com, has published new wikistats data for the English Wikipedia for the first time since October 2006. This also allows publication of much wanted totals for all wikipedias combined, and trend forecasts.

http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/new-statistics-for-the-english-wikipedia/ -- blog post #1
http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/new-statistics-for-the-english-wikipedia-2/ -- blog post #2 (in-depth technical post)
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm -- new tables (click "charts" on the upper right to see pictures too)

[sv.wp biographies] - LA2 posted some research on the breakdown of articles on the Swedish Wikipedia. The Wikipedians found out that 26.6% of articles are biographies and that the overall ratio of biographies is 1 woman to 4 men (but that ratio gets worse as you go back in time).

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044149.html -- mailing list post
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA2-gender-age.png -- gender vs. age graph

Other news

[New Book] - a new freely licensed book has been launched about wikis in the workplace.

http://WikiWhileYouWork.com

[LSS: foundation-l] - two new list summaries for the foundation-l posts have been posted, covering the second half of June and the first half of July.

Did you know ...

... that there is an easy solution to Wikipedia's vandalism problems?

According to one humorous website, "ALL WE NEED TO DO is direct our vandalism entirely to the article about chickens. Imagine a Wikipedia free of vandalism!"
http://www.everytopicintheuniverseexceptchickens.com/

Note: that is a humorous website. It does not mean you are allowed to ... with Wikipdia's chickens.

Quote

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." - Thomas H. Huxley

Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter , Thanks to: Sue, Anoop, Patricio, Galio, Effe, Brianmc, Signpost, Andrew Turvey, Angela, Sage Ross, Philippe, Phoebe, Chzz, MarkW 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

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 28 Number: 111

Proposals

[Logo Wiktionary] - End of 2006 a winner of a new logo selection process was declared for Wiktionary. Some Wiktionary accepted and used the new logo, others did not. (like the English Wiktionary). In any case once more a new logo selection process is in motion on Meta for Wiktionary.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo -- "we have a winner (2006)"
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo/refresh -- new logo Wiktionary 2009

Foundation

[Board elections] - the Wikimedia Foundation Board is holding its community elections again, this time for 3 board seats (the next regular election will be in two years). Candidates are being accepted until July 20. Help is needed with translating many pages for the election. (including the CentralNotice displayed all over Wikimedia's sites)!

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/en -- candidates
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation

[Annual Plan] - the Foundation has published its 2009-2010 Annual Plan and a set of Questions & Answers to go along with it.

[wm2009: Registration] - registration for Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires is now open! If you register before July 30, it's US$15 cheaper. (= US$45)

http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration

[Orange] - In April the Wikimedia Foundation announced a partnership with the telecommunications company "Orange". The Spanish Wikipedia is now being showcased on the Spanish Orange site.

http://wikipedia.orange.es
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Orange_and_Wikimedia_announce_partnership_April_2009 -- original press release

[New chapters] - the Board recently approved three new Wikimedia chapters: Wikimedia Danmark (Denmark), Wikimedia Portugal, and Wikimedia Ukraine. This brings the total number of chapters to 24.

Agenda

[fossevents] - a new site (run by the same people who run IRC network Wikimedia uses, Freenode) just opened up that showcases FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Events around the world, big and small. Be sure to add your upcoming Wikimedia events and look for others that interest you!

http://fossevents.org

Community

[New Wikipedia] - The founding of "Wikipedia", the large Western language Wikipedias, may seem to lay in the distant past, new Wikipedia's are still founded. The Mari Wikipedia is the newest family member

[GLAM] - in the lead up to GLAM-WIKI (August 6-7), Wikimedia Australia is holding an editors' challenge (like a friendly competition) with the overall theme of "Australian GLAM" (GLAM stands for "Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums"). The idea is to pick your own editing theme and submit it, along with the edits you make related to it. Prizes will be awarded for the most extensive, creative, impressive, novel, broad, deep, etc. edits.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/GLAM_challenge -- GLAM challenge
http://glam.wikimedia.org.au/ -- GLAM wiki

[WMDE: ED/Vision] - we previously noted that Wikimedia Deutschland was looking for a new Executive Director; they've finally found one after a year! The new director is Pavel Richter (w:de:User:Schreibvieh) and he was the unanimous choice of both the search committee and the board. Sebastian, chair of WMDE's board and the current director, also published a blog post describing the newly defined vision for Wikimedia's first and largest chapter.

http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/02/neuer-geschaftsfuhrer/ -- blog announcing ED (German)
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/06/eine-vision-fur-wikimedia-deutschland/ -- blog discussing vision (German)

[ENWP: 3 million?] - What will the 3 millionth article on the English Wikipedia be? A few community members are making guesses on what article that will be, be sure to add your guess too!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Three-millionth_topic_pool

[India: Meetup] - everyone seems to be linking to a report on the third Bangalore, India meetup. The meetup seems like it was pretty successful and the agenda included a large number of topics, these are discussed in the meetup report.

http://tinucherian.blogspot.com/2009/07/indian-wikipedians-meet-in-bangalore09.html

[Wikinews] - the English Wikinews is doing good. It has an active community, does exclusive interviews, is indexed by Google News and now the have almost 15000 news story's written. But not all Wikinews editions are so. On Meta is there now a proposal to close down the dutch language Wikinews due to a structural lack of activity.

Media

[WP: Accurate enough] - everyone always has something to say about us, at least this time it's a favorable article from the Kansas City Examiner.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13637-Kansas-City-Social-Media-Examiner~y2009m7d7-Wikipedia-accurate-enough-for-me

[Wiki Goes to War] - the U.S. Army is creating MediaWiki-based sites for seven of their 550 manuals. There will be a 90 day experiment, where troops can edit manuals, and leave comments.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htcbtsp/articles/20090702.aspx

[Egocentric introverts] - a study by Israeli psychology researchers say that their study shows Wikipedians are egocentric, disagreeable, socially awkward and closed to new ideas. Australian Wikipedia have "hit out" at this report.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wikipedians-are-a-bunch-of-egocentric-introverts-study-20090708-dcnk.html

[Sued Over Wikipedia] - a county commissioner and political consultant have filed a defamation lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court against three men for allegedly editing false and defamatory information into a biographical entry on Wikipedia.

http://michiganmessenger.com/22336/grebner-files-libel-suit-over-wikipedia-edits

Stats

[MJ] - another analysis of the Michael Jackson+Wikipedia problems was made by Erik Zachte, Wikimedia's statistics analyst, with graphs and comparisons between different Wikipedia language versions.

http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/07/michael-jackson/

[Commons Uploads] - Ilmari Karonen has been collecting image statistics for a while now (how many bytes we have per file type) and now he has graphs illustrating the changes too.

[Going for he 8th place] - the Spanish and Portugees Wikipedia are very, very close in the number of articles and are so competing for the honour of being the 8th largest Wikipedia..

http://pt.wikipedia.org -- 491 671 artigos
http://es.wikipedia.org -- 491.663 artículos

Other news

[Image Search] - this should make searching for images to upload to Commons a lot easier: Google adds Creative Commons Selection to Advanced Options.

[Serious reading] - a doctoral thesis, by Jos ́ Felipe Ortega Soto, that analize quantitatively the evolution of the top ten Wikipedias. An their problems (in English, 228 pages).

http://libresoft.es/Members/jfelipe/thesis-wkp-quantanalysis -- pdf download

Did you know ...

... what a "sock puppet" is?

No??? - Strange, are you sure that you are a Wikimedian? - In any case, you can look it up now. No, not (only) in "the dictionary the anyone can edit", but also in the more traditional "Merriam Webster's 2009 dictionary of English". It says it is "a word to describe a false account used for deceptive purposes".

http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords09.htm
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sock_puppet

Quote

There is a world market for maybe five computers – Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943

Editor(s): Casey, Walter , Corrector(s): Alex , Thanks to: Veronique, Sebastian, Kul, DarkoNeko, Ziko, Mathias, David, Gnangarra, the Wikipedia Signpost (Erik Zachte), Steve Bennett, Brion, Peter, Cary, Crazy Lover , 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]]. 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 and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 27 Number: 110

Technical news

[Michael Jackson Kills WP] - Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop", died this week and nearly took Wikipedia down with him (as well as many other websites). Wikimedia sites were unresponsive for a whole due to the large number of page hits. The Michael Jackson article got nearly 6 *million* hits on June 26, more than the Main Page.

In the evening of the 2th July (UTC) Wikipedia&Co was virtually down because of power outage of the European servers. The remaining servers choked on the additional traffic routed to them.

http://stats.grok.se/en/200906/Michael_Jackson -- page hit statistics
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/current-events/ -- techblog explanation of issues
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/News_of_Michael_Jackson's_death_overloads_Internet_sites_and_sparks_hoaxes -- wikinews article
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/power-outage-in-wikimedias-european-servers/ -- wiki down

[Usability] - the Usability team has released its first set of usability improvement (the "acai" release) for testing. As of press time, the new "vector" skin has been made available on all wikis for users who select it from their preferences, please help test the new features!

http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/first-usability-release-is-coming-up-soon/ -- blog post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases#Acai -- "acai" release description

[Usability BIS] - one aspect is already live by default; the new design of the search results. Just use the internal search and see.

http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Designs#Search_Results

Request for help

[Fundraising 2009] - the Wikimedia Foundation is preparing for its next fundraiser and would like feedback from the community on some of the pages it has developed so far. In addition to the creation of a new survey that they would like comments on, the Foundation is also trying to enhance the visibility of the donate button. The new buttons will be placed on the skin and will be viewable on every page. There are also several design proposals that need community input!

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/25/would-you-press-this-button/ -- blog post about it
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade -- buttons
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Survey -- survey

Foundation

[Licensing] - The "licensing update" changes have now been rolled out to all languages and projects, with the new license being featured in the footer and new interface items to translate for your wiki.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/30/licensing-update-rolled-out-in-all-wikimedia-wikis/ -- blog post
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-June/000959.html -- translation steps
http://tinyurl.com/LU-interface-trans -- betawiki trans interface

[Board election] - Once again an election for the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation is coming up. It is for 3 seats this time. But before there can be elections there must be someone to vote for. Submissions of candidacy are open between 6th and 20th July.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009

[New grant: Commons] - the Wikimedia Foundation was just awarded a US$300,000 grant that will research problems with and design new tools/fix current tools for uploading files to the global Wikimedia image repository, the Wikimedia Commons.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/02/ford-foundation-awards-300k-grant-for-wikimedia-commons/ -- blog post
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Ford_Foundation_Grant_July_2009 -- press release
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_Ford_Multimedia_Participation_Project.pdf -- full grant proposal

[Job: "Bookshelf"] - as a further development from the "Scribus operator" volunteer position noted in Wikizine a few months ago, a new job opening has been posted for project manager of the "Bookshelf" project. The "Bookshelf" project strives to develop a slate of basic educational materials (print, online and video) to attract new authors and editors to Wikipedia.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Project_Manager_Bookshelf -- job opening
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Public_outreach/Get_involved -- volunteer position, scribus operator

Community

[David Rohde] - it turns out that Wikipedia, along with tons of other media outlets, kept the kidnapping of journalist David Rohde out of its article on him. This has caused a few Wikipedians and Wikipedia critics to note this and either scream censorship or just point out the fact that it was unsourced information that could help save someone's life by erring on the side of caution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html?ref=media -- nytimes article
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/06/29/was-wikipedia-correct-to-censor-news-of-david-rohdes-capture/ -- blog post about censorship
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/29/2120257/Wikipedia-Censored-To-Protect-Captive-Reporter -- slashdot discussion

[A reliable article?] - A new tool tries to help make scholars feel better about using Wikipedia by telling how reliable an article seems to be by using "wikibu-points". These points are based on statistical criteria and represent only possibilities, the creators hope that warnings will help people think to look at the discussion pages or article history. Wikibu is only available on the German Wikipedia at this time.

http://www.wikibu.ch/ -- site/tool
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2009-July/000833.html -- mailing list post

[EN Wikibooks] - is now using Meta's unified "user language" template. It will enable greater collaboration on the textbooks that teach foreign languages.
[enwp AFD] - An interesting AFD (deletion discussion) on the English Wikipedia was recently closed -- it resulted in the deletion of 4077 articles, probably the most ever from a single AFD on enwp!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anybot's_algae_articles -- deletion discussion

Media

[No tourists] - an article by a New Zealand newspaper tells that "references to gang violence and crime on Palmerston North's Wikipedia page have seen overseas investors and professionals shy away from the city"!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/2516472/Wikipedia-entries-slag-off-Palmerston-North

Stats

[bn.wp] - The Bengali Wikipedia (bn) has reached 20,000 articles.

http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/আন্তর্জাতিক_প্রকৃতি_ও_প্রাকৃতিক_সম্পদ_সংরক্ষণ_সংঘ -- 20,000th article

Other news

[Who owns transit schedules?] - Only marginally related but interesting nevertheless, the subject of a recent battle has been pretty simple: who owns the copyright to bus arrival times? Public transportation agencies are trying to assert that they own the times and stop people from making iPhone apps (and similar items) off of the content, so that they can do it themselves and charge people. Not very FOSS of them!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090628/1419595382.shtml

[Wikizine@Foundation-l] - Wikizine will now be featured on foundation-l too! Thanks to Milos for proposing it and the list members for agreeing.

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation

[Firefox 3.5] - ... is finally out. This main stream browser supports natively Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis, the media file formats our projects are using.

http://www.mozilla.com/

Quote

"Programming languages are like cats. It is easier to get a new cat than to get an old cat fixed." -- Douglas Crockford

Editor(s): Casey, Walter , Corrector(s): Alex , Thanks to: Rand, Steve Bennett, Brion, Domas, Nando, Erik, Belayet, Naoko, Chad, Kul, Jay, Signpost, Adrignola, rainman-sr , 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]]. 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 and also the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

GCS Step 1

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 31 Number: 113

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 30 Number: 112

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 28 Number: 111

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Year: 2009 Week: 27 Number: 110