Year: 2009 Week: 41-42 Number: 120

Technical news

• [Wikimedia data sets] - Wikimedia XML data sets have been released on Amazon Public Data Sets.  This should help Wikimedians who do analysis on project data.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/wikimedia-xml-data-sets-released-on-amazon-public-data-sets/

• [Media Features Gadget] - there is a "New Media Features" gadget on Commons.  When it is enabled, you can test out the new media developments from the Kaltura sponsorship.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/new-media-features-gadget/
• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/23/kaltura-sponsors-michael-dale-open-source-video-developer/

• [Click Tracking Deployed] - click tracking has been deployed for the edit toolbar.  This collects information about which buttons are clicked on the toolbar during editing for the Usability Initiative.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/click-tracking-on-edit-toolbar-deployed/

• [Babaco: Now ready] - preview of the second set of usability features, Babaco, is now available through user preferences.  Be sure to try out the new tools.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/babaco-is-ready-for-tasting/

• [Book creator updated] - the new version of the Book creator interface has been deployed within the Wikimedia projects.  The extension is now a lot more intuitive and useful.
• http://blog.pediapress.com/2009/10/create-books-easily-new-version-of-book.html

• [WP Mobile Update] - Hampton Catlin, the Wikipedia Mobile developer, posted a blog entry detailing the updates done to the Mobile interface this month.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/october-mobile-update/

• [en.wp: FlaggedRevs update] - two people, William Pietri and Howie Fung, have been signed on as contractors to help with the deployment of Flagged Revisions on the English Wikipedia.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-October/104938.html

Request for help

• [Perspectives from other projects] - the Wikipedia Signpost is calling for editors active in one or more non-English Wikipedias to write accounts comparing governance, process and policy, and editing culture across languages. The key questions are: how is it different working on another Wikipedia?; and what could English Wikipedia learn from that project—and vice versa?
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-10-12/From_the_editor

Foundation

• [Bookshelf Project: Manager Announced] - Frank Schulenburg (Head of Public Outreach) announced that Wikimedia's Bookshelf Project will be led by Marlita Kahn.  The Bookshelf project aims to develop a slate of basic educational materials -- print, online and video -- to attract new authors and editors to Wikipedia.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-October/055518.html

• [Office hours] - the log of the Office Hours with Mike Godwin, the Foundation's General Counsel, has been published.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-October/055517.html
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2009-10-09

• [Job openings] - two job openings are now open:  Chief Development Officer (a fundraising-related position) and Code Maintenance Engineer (a technical position).
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Chief_Development_Officer
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Code_Maintenance_Engineer

• [Wikimedia Report Card] - Erik Zachte has published the first Wikimedia "report card" that aims to help everyone get a quick overview of trends in the Wikimedia projects.
• http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/10/the-wikimedia-report-card/
• http://stats.wikimedia.org/reportcard/RC_2009_08_detailed.html

• [Multimedia Usability: Product Manager] - Guillaume Paumier ("guillom") has been announced as the Project Manager for the Ford Multimedia Project.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-October/055659.html

• [Report to the Board August 2009] - Sue Gardner, the Executive Director, has published her Report to the Board for October 2009.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-October/055639.html

• [OpenMoko Launches WikiReader] - OpenMoko, a company that previously created an open source smartphone, has just launched The WikiReader, a dedicated reader device with an offline copy of the entire English Wikipedia (without images) stored on a small chip.
• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/13/openmoko-launches-wikireader/
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.community/51135/focus=104640

Community

• [Nobel Prize] - when announcing the recipients of its Nobel Prize, the Nobel Prize committee used free photos from Wikimedia Commons to depict two of the prize winners.
• http://bit.ly/2BWN4Q

• [German ArbCom dissolves] - the German Wikipedia has dissolved its Arbitration Committee.  On projects that have them, the Arbitration Committee (or "ArbCom") is the final step in on-site dispute resolution.
• http://bit.ly/3hg64n

• [Wikinews: new Main Page and skin] - in addition to selecting "Vector" (the Usability skin) as its default skin, Wikinews has also created a new Main Page design.  There are even "copy us" and "social networking" links on the page, like other news sources.
• http://bawolff.blogspot.com/2009/10/wikinews-gets-new-main-page.html
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/feedback#English_Wikinews_-_New_Main_Page
• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19865

• [Academy: Telugu wiki] - on October 6, the first Telugu Wikimedia Academy was held in Chirala, India.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2009-October/000209.html

• [Wiktionary lookup gadget] - A new gadget is being developed on English Wikinews and slowly being spread to other wikis.  The gadget looks up the wiktionary definition for the language of the wiki you are reading, but what it returns is the definition in your user-preferences language.
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/WN:WiktLookup

• [Bing search] - Bing.com, the Microsoft search engine, is offering "Bing Reference", a way to search "enhanced Wikipedia articles".  The Wikipedia Signpost has a detailed story on this.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-10-12/Bing_search

• [WikiTrust demo now live] - demos of WikiTrust are now up on some Wikipedias.  WikiTrust is a Firefox add-on that changes the color of the text based on how reliable or unreliable it seems to be.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikiquality-l/2009-October/000560.html

Media

• [Encyclopedias + China] - CNN published a very good article about the situation in China with regards to Wikipedia and other encyclopedia sites.
• http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/14/wiki.china/

• [Meet Jimmy Wales] - the newspaper of Yale, a prestigious university in the United States, recently interviewed Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia).
• http://www.yaledailynews.com/scene/interview/2009/10/09/meet-jimmy-wales-founder-wikipedia/

• [Real fight becomes Wikipedia War] - a rivalry fight on a college campus turned into a big edit war on the English Wikipedia.
• http://www.yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2009/10/10/war-over-bladderball-extends-wikipedia/

• [Wikipedia + Olympics Committee?] - Wikipedia seems to be at the center of a recent copyright battle between a photographer and the International Olympics Committee.
• http://ragesoss.com/blog/2009/10/09/wikipedia-and-olympics-committee-heading-for-collision/

Did you know...
...about the proposal for global sysops on Meta-wiki?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysop

Quote

"I really have no idea what most of those languages are, but I'm also super happy to support them." - Hampton Catlin, Mobile Wikipedia developer, after reporting the localization status of the Mobile Wikipedia site.

Editor(s): Casey, Alex Corrector(s): None Thanks to: Frank, Cary, Daniel, Philippe, Rodrigo, Liam, Infodisiac, Signpost, Tomasz, Sage, Michael Dale, Nimish, Bawolff, ShakataGaNai, ErikZ, Naoko, Arjun, Brianmc, Sage, Phoebe, Hampton, Sue, Jay, Luca, Erik, Greg 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/

Year: 2009 Week: 41 Number: 119

Technical news

• [Announce: Brion moving to StatusNet] - Brion Vibber, the Chief Technical Officer, announced that he's leaving the Wikimedia Foundation after four years.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/announce-brion-moving-to-statusnet/
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-September/055358.html

• [Labs: FlaggedRevs] - due to some miscommunications, a lot of people didn't realize that the FlaggedRevs labs test wiki has been active and waiting for people to poke at it for a month.  The developers need interested people to be set up as local administrators to try out the per-page stabilization settings (accessed via the "protect" tab); by default most pages do not activate FlaggedRevs in the configuration we're testing for English Wikipedia.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/09/flaggedrevs-test-wiki-awaits-you/

• [Labs: LiquidThreads] - another Wikimedia Labs wiki has been created, this time for Liquid Threads.  Liquid Threads aims to clean up the way we communicate about articles, turning talk pages into cleaner/threaded discussion pages.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/mediawikis-new-discussion-system-in-testing-on-wikimedia-labs/

• [Supporting translatewiki.net] - the Wikimedia Foundation has hired Siebrand Mazeland as a contractor.  He will get paid one day a week to work on translatewiki.
• http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/10/supporting-translatewiki-net/

Foundation

• [WMFI and WMMK] - Wikimedia Suomi (Finland) and Wikimedia Macedonia were recently approved.
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_Macedonia
• http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Approval_of_Wikimedia_Finland

• [Report to the Board] - Sue Gardner has posted her Report to the Board for the month of July 2009.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-September/055326.html

• [Fundraising page demos] - Rand Montoya, the Head of Community Giving, has posted some demos of the new Fundraising pages.  Your feedback would be appreciated.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Website_Design

• [WMF IRC Office hours] - Following the Wikimedia Foundation Office hours with Sue Gardner, one with Rand Montoya was held on Thursday.  The log is available on Meta.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2009-09-25

Agenda

• [NO: Academy] - Wikimedia Norway is planning a Wikipedia Academy for October 14-15, 2009.
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Academy#Wikipedia_Academy_Bergen.2C_Norway_2009
• http://no.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Academy_2009 (no)

Community

• [DE: New Wikimedium] - Wikimedia Deutschland has published its third newspaper.  This German newspaper is intended for sponsors, partners, friends and fans of Wikimedia.  It's very visually appealing and even includes content about Wikimedia "around the world".
• http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/09/30/neue-ausgabe-der-vereinszeitung-wikimedium/ (de)

• [Bug: Google News and Wikinews] - the recent MediaWiki updates caused yet another problem:  now Wikinews isn't being indexed by Google News anymore!
• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20818
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2009-September/001654.html

• [Translatewiki.net as a WMF project?] - Siebrand asked what Translatewiki (the website where the MediaWiki interface is translated) and the Wikimedia Foundation would gain by translatewiki being made an official Wikimedia project.  Gerard offered a few of his own thoughts.
• http://twitter.com/translatewiki/status/4366006901
• http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-benefit-of-translatewikinet-as-wmf.html

• [Wikipedia Journal] - Liam Wyatt made a proposal about a peer-reviewed journal for academics to write Wikipedia articles.  It might be interesting to read the proposal and discussions about it.
• http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.research/844

• [en.wn "Report"] - an English Wikinews user posted a mini-report about what happened in September 2009 on the project.
• http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikinews-l/2009-October/001671.html

Media

• [BD: Chapter planning] - there has been more coverage on the planned Wikimedia chapter in Bangladesh.
• http://www.theindependent-bd.com/details.php?nid=144160

Stats

• [sr.wn] - the Serbian Wikinews became the largest Wikinews version (by number of articles), ousting the English Wikinews from that spot. This is the second time that a Wikimedia project has surpassed the English version, the first time being the French Wiktionary.
• http://wikinews.org/
• http://sr.wikinews.org/wiki/Vikivesti_na_srpskom_prve_po_broju_%C4%8Dlanaka -- (sr) Wikinews article on its own milestone

• [fr.wikt] - the French Wiktionary has reached 1,500,000 entries.
• http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%A9coredevance -- 1.5 millionth article

• [ru.ws] - The Russian Wikisource has reached 50,000 texts.

• [hy.wp] - The Armenian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.

Other news

• [Google Search] - Google Search results now actually link directly to the section that you're looking for.
• http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/jump-to-information-you-want-right-from.html

• [WikipediaVision] - A student from Helsinki has created "WikipediaVision", a live visualization of anonymous edits to Wikipedia by location. The site combines Wikipedia's Recent Changes feed with Google Maps.  Although this seems to have been around for a while, the link has resurfaced after it was exhibited live at MFK in Bern (from April until August).
• http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html

• [Why do they edit?] - Ziko offers some suggestions on the different reasons people choose to edit (and what/where they choose to edit).
• http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/why-do-they-edit-ego-subject-wiki-and-language/

Did you know ...

...that you can even upload home movies to Wikipedia?  Wikipedia's video support is improving, Wikimedians have even been uploading videos of their children illustrating certain Wikipedia topics.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-September/104617.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_reflex

Quote
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -- Mohandas Gandhi

Editor(s): Alex, Casey Corrector(s): Thanks to: Sue, Liam, Kat, jeblad, Rand, Judson, Belayet, Shizhao, bawolff, David, Brion, Otourly, Cary, Sage, Gerard, Signpost, @WikimediaDE, Andrew, Ziko, Erik, Philippe, Filip, Milos, Belayet, Jon, Platonides 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/