Reports/October 2004/Wikipedia

aa (reserved)

The Afar Wikipedia, with the alphabetically superior two-letter code, remains empty and lacks a single word in Afar.

ab (reserved)

The Abkhazian Wikipedia, second only to the Afar Wikipedia in terms alphabetic two-letter code supremacy, remains empty, with the Main Page as its only 'article'.

• Sent an invitation, got a not-so-enthusiastic response. (it was to a guy whose friend speaks Abkhaz, not to a guy who actually speaks it himself). --Node ue 22:04, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ak (reserved)

No activity on the Akana Wikipedia. Danny 12:44, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Shouldn't that be Akan? Arj 16:19, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• • Yes. --Node ue 22:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

als

The former Alsatian Wikipedia has been extended to an Alemannic Wikipedia (includes also Swiss German for example). Due to this we have more than 200 articles now. Before this expanding there were just 20 articles (for months!). ---Melancholie, 21:32, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

am

There has been some "stirring" at the Amharic Wikipedia. I did a lot of single-word translation for teh directory area, and later a person whom I had invited came and translated some more, and then again later. Unfortunately, they're too busy right now to contribute regularly, although perhaps we could find some other Amharic speakers. --Node ue 22:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

arc

Likely to never have any content, as the code is for the Aramaic language. Would probably be better being deleted for now, and in its stead creating a new Wikipedia for Syriac ("Neo-Aramaic") at the ISO-designated syr:. --Node ue 22:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

as

There was an edit to the main page of this, the Assamese Wikipedia, but other than that, nothing. There are still no articles. Danny 00:16, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ba

Locked (as a "test case")

• I have invited two Bashkorts to contribute, and I have warned them that it is currently closed but if they want it might be re-opened. --Node ue 22:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

closed_zh-tw

Remained closed. For details on the Traditional Chinese Wikipedia, contact Node.

de

The German Wikipedia had an overall successful month. Eleven user were elected as sysops (Benutzer:Unscheinbar, Benutzer:Mijobe, Benutzer:DaTroll, Benutzer:Blaite, Benutzer:Kellerkind, Benutzer:Richardfabi, Benutzer:Skriptor, Benutzer:Vic Fontaine, Benutzer:Filzstift, Benutzer:Finanzer, Benutzer:Sigune). One user was banned in a public poll. A poll is still running about a new design for the main page. Copying an idea from the Dutch Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia held a Wikipedia:Schreibwettwerb|writing contest where the jury had the difficult duty to choose from 45 articles the ten winning candidates. The most spectacular event was the first Wikipedia-CD, produced in a cooperation of German Wikipedians and the Berlin company Directmedia. It was released on 19th October, two weeks later than planned due to production problems. Since the Wikimedia servers were overloaded with requests, people from freenet offered a mirror for the download version and had some terabytes more traffic than usual (According to them, the interest in the CD was only comparable to a new counter strike release ;-). 35.000 copies of the CD are now distributed already, Directmedia is currently producing more. In two tests of German CD and online encyclopedias, one by the computer magazine c't and the other by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit Wikipedia beat Brockhaus and Microsoft Encarta in the category quality of content (we lost desperately in multimedia).

en

10+ new administrators, 1 new bureaucrat.
30+ new featured articles, ~30 new featured pictures.

fr

Wikimédia France, a French non-profit association, was officially founded on October 23rd in Paris, with 19 founding members including the Wikimedia Foundation and final bylaws were adopted. The goals of Wikimedia France are to promote all Wikimedia projects, with a focus on, but not exclusively, French-speaking projects. Wikimedia France will also act as a representative of the Wikimedia Foundation in France and other countries where her help is required. Wikimedia France will not exercise any editorial influence on the French-speaking Wikipedia, and may only intervene in case of legal matters. Wikimedia France elected its Board members on October 25th via IRC, Ryo was elected president, Yann secretary and Shaihulud treasurer. The founding members and other interested users are working on putting together a set of internal policies for Wikimedia France, destined to further define the goals and means of Wikimedia France. A publication of bylaws needs to take place with the French authorities in order for Wikimedia France to be offcially founded. This should happen before the end of 2004.

[[User:Notafish|notafish }<';>]] 04:05, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC) (French translation here)

gl

Once advertised by --Elian 11:47, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC), a first report: Galician wikipedia, named awithin us as 'galipedia', is growing in number of articles, links, users, etc, in a rate that represents near 10% monthly. Galipedia was news in several websites and also in paper news, and is ensured their growing.--Agremon 20:31, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unha vez advertidos por --Elian 11:47, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC), un primeiro informe: A wikipedia galega, nomeada entre nós como 'galipedia', está crecendo en número de artigos, ligazóns, usuarios, etc, a razón próxima ó 10% mensual. Galipedia foi nova en varios sitios web e tamén en xornais, e está asegurado o seu crecemento.--Agremon 20:31, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

gn

An anonymous passed by and wrote "Bill Gates is considered the richest man in the world". Two edits on talk pages, one bot visit and one bot edit to the two-line article gn:Don Quijote. --Elian 11:37, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

he

The Hebrew Wikipedia continued its successful growth, with new interesting articles added each day, and continued improvement of old articles. With more than 11,000 articles the Hebrew Wikipedia is becoming a main source of knowledge in Israel. Two notable additions in October:

• A series of articles about the history of China, mainly translated from the English Wikipedia
• A series of articles about the history of Ireland
• Some new articles on a continued project about traitors

David Shay 02:23, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ht

I started to look at the smaller Wikipedias to see what was happening with them. Haitian Creole seems to be stirring. There are two articles, both on the language, and the main page is being translated, slowly. Under ten edits the past month, but even that is something. Danny 12:35, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• I am responsible for 99% of the mainpage translation (I'm not responsible for "Mèsi tout moun!"), the two pages of which you speak were created a very long time ago. But there has been some stirring, yes. --Node ue 22:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ii

No activity in the Yi-language Wikipedia. Danny "little"

is

The Icelandic wikipedia is still very small with approximately ten users and fifteen hundred articles so we were most delighted to have two new users join this month and would like to welcome them. There has been some talk in Potturinn (Community portal) about articles which are too Iceland-centeric, ignoring the global view on the subject at hand.

it

Italian wikipedia is constantly growing, at a rate of about 80 new articles for day; 30.000 articles should be reached before December. Currently, the most important project is aimed at enlarging italian comuni's articles. A new project has also started, dedicated to Anthroponymy.

ja

Japanese Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles at the end of October. According to the statistics by 利用者:Carbuncle reported on his blog, there were were 129,371 edits including 106,359 edits on article. On average, 274 new articles are contributed and 4173 edits are made per day. 8504 new artcles were created on October. Edits from IP addresses were 55675 times, 43% of the total edits. Roughly from 15 to 20 new users a day have registered, from 80 to 110 users (counting IPs as users) a day contributed according to another statistics by 利用者:Mintleaf. As of November 3, Japanese Wikipedia has 13386 registered users and 27 sysops (including 3 inacitve).

After 4 months discussion a vote has begun at the end of October. It serves to make a new rule for handling requests for adminship on Japanese Wikipedia. The vote will end on November 7, and after a discussion, if necessary, the new rule will be introduced by the end of November. Other administrative issues around adminship and deletion are under discussion, too.

Another major issue on discussion is on copyright and licence. Under the assumption that Japanese Law should be applied for the Japanese Wikipedia contents, Japanese Wikipedia maintains a bit rigid attitude for legal issues. In order to deal with untagged images, introduce Terms of Use, and handle other issues, it is necessary to make a clear guideline for legal issues, and the analysis of copyright and GFDL is the biggest problem in the community. A banned user led Tomos to make reports on issues around copyright violation in Japanese courts [1] [2]; The user, along with a number of less-known users and non-wikipedians, stated continually that he was treated unfairly by many active Wikipedians, many of his contributions are wrongly labeled as potential copyright violations, and that it could be a libel to say his contributions were copyright violations. In order to improve the situation, the reports showed detailed analysis of the opinions of different wikipedians, and legal precedents. As for legal issue, an artist who uses a pseudonym complainted to Japaense Wikipedia recenly that the article on her revealed her real names in birth and by marrige and asked to delete the information. The article was deleted after some hours and the best way to treat such issues is currently under discussion.

As a bright side, some improvements and new attempts made the community more lively and strenghed the friendliness. New portals were introduced and began to be planned under the initiatives of 利用者:Electric goat. Soon before of the 80,000th article 10 Wikipedians held a meetup in en:Osaka which had been announced first on the Wikipedia in advance (if you want to look the photos, please ask 利用者:Ghaz). The meeting was held just the moment of Chuetsu Earthquake, but at least now no Wikipedian was reported to be involved. Images from the suffered area have report the earthquake vividly [3]. Newly started Monthly New Article Award was given to three new articles contributed on September. Monthly Appliciation Award, starting on May, has been now totally a necessary part of the community. at the end of month everyone is invited to express their appliciation to certain users in public and the user who is thanked by the largest number of users become the awardee of the month. This month 23 nominees were appreciated for many reasons and Gleam was awarded with appreciation for his patience on discussion and his cool guide to How to donate on PayPal in Japanese, provided during the Fund Drive at the beginning of this month. --Aphaia (partly modified by Tomos)

jbo

Activity in the Lojban wikipedia has been very low recently. There are now 27 articles, maybe ten of which were written in the last month, mostly by the same user. User interface is still mostly in English, but this doesn't seem to be a reason for concern, as all Lojbanists know at least some English. Arj 13:37, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

kj

No activity in the Kuanyama Wikipedia. Danny 12:54, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Wikipedia Otjiwambo.

km

All seems quiet on the Khmer front, unfortunately no users whom can write in this language have joined km wikipedia. Waerth 10:34, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• This is not true. In fact, there are currently at least two users who are fluent, and one who can write in Khmer. --Node ue 22:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

li

No activity. One user with one edit. Number of articles: 0 --Elian 11:30, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ln

No activity. one article (by number). --Elian 11:32, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

lo

The Laotian wikipedia is quiet, Waerth has optained sysop status in case there is some vandalism, but unfortunately no Laotians have found the wikipedia as of yet. Waerth 10:34, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Perhaps we should invite some Laotians rather than hope some will simply stumble upon it. --Node ue 22:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

mh

No activity. Danny 03:52, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

ng

No activity in the Ndonga Wikipedia. Danny 12:48, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

nl

The Dutch Wikipedia found itself in rough waters this month, with hard conflicts among users and between users and admin. Some people from the Wikimedia foundation joined in to try to help. - Andre Engels 14:59, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

nn

Active editing on the Nynorsk (Neo-Norwegian) wikipedia started only in early September 2004, but by the start of October the number of articles had already reached 527 [4]. In October we had an increase of more than 100%, as we reached our 1000th article on 27 October. Currently (3 Nov) we have 1111 articles. We have been following the ideal of a flat organisational structure and given three regular contributors sysop status, and there are now 8 active sysops out of 55 registered users. New users arrive regularly as the word spreads. One person was elected to go to a national conference arranged by an umbrella organisation (Nynorsk kultursentrum) of NGOs for the promotion of Neo-Norwegian language, all Norwegian universities as well as local governments. The conference is about Neo-Norwegian contents on the Internet and is aiming to form the basis for the development of an online knowledge database in Neo-Norwegian. Wikipedia has been given speech time at the conference. Funding for conference fees and travel/accommodation expenses was received from a local group of companies Leikanger næringshage in exchange for a lunch-time presentation about wikipedia. This was held on 1 November to an enthusiastic audience. BjarteSorensen 07:17, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC) (en:, nn:)

External links

• Some information about Nynorsk language in English
• About the conference (in Norwegian)

om

No real activity on the Oromo Wikipedia. Danny 12:50, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hanga yoomitti 'no real activity' nun jeedhu? Mee kaanee walitti haa dirmannu ka!

Harr'a illee an kara adeemaa dha. Yero bira deebi'ee dhufu jira. Hanga wal itti deebiinutti, nagayaan.

Iddo Surraa 5/2/05

ps

There are apparently four articles in Pashto, a language of Afghanistan, but no article-building activity this past month. Danny

Actually 0 articles, the 4 article count is due to "Project Sourceberg" (Wikisource) formerly squatting there. [5]

ro

The Romanian Wikipedia has a mildly-successful month in terms of article growth, with around 400 new articles. However, quite a few things were achieved in promotion and image. Firstly, there was the candidature of Cluj-Napoca as meeting place for Wikimania 2005. Even though this candidature was lost, we felt Cluj-Napoca made it really far! Secondly, the Romanian Wikipedia launched the idea of greater integration of Central and Eastern European Wikipedias. We launched the proposal for Wikimedia meetup Central and Eastern Europe. The next step is a planned project, CEEWikiLink (Central and Eastern Europe), which seeks to establish a committee of co-operation between all Central and Eastern European Wikipedias. This includes having articles about each CEE country, co-operating on common issues, etc. The impetus behind this is that CEE wikis need to integrate more in order to grow with the concept of synergy.

The main aim of the Romanian Wikipedia in the future is to strengthen its position as one of the most active and important Wikipedia communities. Press coverage this month consisted of an article in the Clujeanul newspaper of Cluj-Napoca about Wikimania 2005. We have already set clear goals for the year 2005. They include:

• The creation of Wikimedia Romania
• A Wikimedia meetup in Romania (probably Wikimedia meetup CEE)
• The reaching of 20,000 articles by the end of 2005
• The reaching of 80 K interwiki links by the end of 2005
• Re-entering the top 15 Wikipedias in terms of articles
• Co-ordinating innovative new projects

Problems and issues: Although the Romanian Wikipedia has become more well-known in recent times, it faces two problems that need to be solved: Lack of article growth, lack of active contributors. Recently, while Romanian Wikipedia has been growing in terms of awareness (co-ordinating initiatives on meta, translation, etc) it has not grown particularly well in terms of articles and it has NOT reached its benchmark of 10,000 articles (though it should reach this before the end of 2004). Another problem is the lack of contributors - there are around 2-3 active contributors currently, which is too few to sustain the present level of growth and awareness that Romanian Wikipedia wants to project. To sustain a level of growth that puts us in the top 15 Wikipedias, we need at least 5-10 active contributors with an article growth of 1000 articles per month, of which at least 250 are not stubs or mass-articles (such as cities in a country, etc).

Big ambitions for a small-language Wikipedia: The road towards 10,000: Romanian Wikipedia will launch a large promotion campaign when it reaches 10,000 articles. This will not only include a press release distributed to the major newspapers, but also an online adveritising campaign on the main page. This will seek to highlight the achievements of Romanian Wikipedia in the past, a history of its progress and encourage more people to contribute. It will be combined with a catchy slogan. We are currently exploring the possibility of using MediaWiki:Sitenotice template in a way to promote Wikipedia - while it is important that Wikipedia remain free of advertisements, I think Sitenotice can be used to promote certain intra-Wikipedian issues very well.

Wikimedia Commons: Romanian Wikipedia seeks to be a forerunner in the use of Wikimedia Commons. We will post a message to all active contributors telling them to upload all media files on Commons instead of on Romanian Wikipedia.

roa_rup

The Aromanian Wikipedia has performed disappointingly this month. One of the smallest Wikipedias, with just 16 articles, it has become virtually inactive. This is a far way off our initial predictions of transforming the Aromanian Wikipedia into a large Wikipedia. The reason behind the problem is that, as of the current moment, we have no Aromanian speakers at all contributing. Ronline and Danutz, both Romanian Wikipedians, have used the linguistic relationship between Romanian and Aromanian and taken words from Aromanian media sources to form the interface and main page for the Wikipedia. However, other than that, there are no real articles yet, and the Aromanian Wikipedia is still very much co-ordinated by the Romanian Wikipedia community.

We are planning on putting an end to that by writing to Aromanian media sources such as magazines and asking them to promote the Wikipedia. The response is expected to be good since Aromanian is a mildly-endangered language and promoters are generally excited at the first opportunity at making the language grow. Therefore, by the end of 2004, we should attract Aromanian-language contributors to contribute to this Wikipedia.

rw

Some talk (in English) about getting this Wikipedia going. Danny 12:38, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

scn

The Sicilian Wikipedia commenced proceedings in October. It's obviously early days, with only a handful of articles, even fewer members and many instructions and guidlelines, currently in Italian, yet to be translated. But I am quite confident that within six months we will be fully operational with many more members, all preliminary materials translated into Sicilian, and with many original articles written in Sicilian, lu patri dâ lingua taliana scritta. Wow! We are a part of the world community of languages. Who knows where this may eventually lead us, but I have extremely high hopes for the Sicilian Wikipedia and the broad appeal this will eventually have on all speakers of Sicilian who are to be found in every part of the globe. Salutamu. --165.228.128.11 23:00, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC) pippu

so

No activity in the Somali Wikipedia. Danny 00:18, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• "little activity" would be more appropriate.

sq

There is close to no activity since its opening. Dori | Talk 02:02, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

sv

Swedish wikipedia has just passed 48 000 articles (Nov 7) and seems to be accelerating toward the 50 000 mark, 40 000 was passed only a week before (Sept 13) the collected wikipedias passed the one million mark. In the last month we have been seeing new record numbers of visitors, and now have over 2000 registered contributors.

th

The Thai wikipedia is growing slowly but steadily, at time of writing it has 667 articles. There are three regular thai speakers whom are contributing and User:Ahoerstemeier and user:Waerth regularly come by as well, although neither can read thai. All of the 3 thai language regulars and the 2 non thai reading regulars have sysop status. On october 27th th.wikipedia was site of the week in the bangkok post. Because it is an english daily it didn't give the expected influx of thai editors. Also most thai editors are located outside of thailand and not in thailand itself. Waerth 10:39, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

za (reserved)

No activity in the Zhuang Wikipedia. Danny 12:52, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

zh

2004年10月21日，中文维基百科的正式条目突破15000条。user:向柏霖成为wikipedia:管理员。在10月，中文版也迎来了他的2岁生日。建立了wikipedia:特色条目的评选机制。繁简体转换的工作也在进一步的进行中，目前正在对转换表进行校对工作。

Translation, please?

• Why should they?

• Okay, I try. Be warned that I didn't learn Chinese much... Anybody's help would be appreciated. Tomos 08:41, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Oct. 21, 2004. Chinese Wikipedia surpassed the milestone of 15,000 articles. user:向柏霖becameadministrator. During the month of October, Chinese Wikipedia celebrated its 2nd birthday. We started wikipedia:Featured articles's Selection process The simplified/trational chinese conversion is making progress, now trying to finalize the conversion table."

zh-min-nan

We are awaiting the means for localising month and week names, etc. without the use of a language file (which takes up developer resource). More than a hundred articles remain to be migrated. A-giâu 03:25, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(For basic stats, please see Wikimedia projects.)

Update: In October the Wikipedia broke the 500-article milestone. However, only 7 editors were responsible for them, of whom 2 were responsible for a significant portion. Haphazard attempts have been made to promote the Wiki Way to literate language users. A-giâu 01:56, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)