WWN sample

This is a sample of what a Wikipedia Weekly News issue could look like.

Disclaimer:This is a creative sample--any resemblance to reality or truth is purely coincidental.

This is the Wikipedia Weekly News for the week of May 20 - 27, 2022

Welcome aboard, Britannica!

The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company announced on May 26 2022 that they will be abandoning their traditional methods of encyclopedia publication, and will instead focus their efforts on reviewing and publishing Wikipedia articles under the Encyclopaedia Britannica brand. In making this transition, they have released the latest version of their encyclopedia under the GFDL, and their editorial staff will be integrating this material into Wikipedia over the coming months. Please give our newest Wikipedians a warm welcome!

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2022-May/309984287.html
http://www.britannica.com/press/wikipedia.html -- Britannica's press release

Jimbo Wales honoured by MIT

MIT granted an honourary degree to Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales on May 26, 2022. In his speech to the graduating class of 2022, Wales emphasized the importance of balance between control and freedom in information systems, and how the open content and Internet collaboration movements played critical roles in countering the short-sightness of so-called "intellectual property" law in the early 2000s. Jimmy was well received, although Prof. Noam Chomsky said, "Personally, I think [Wales] is a kook-and-a-half on toast. Wikipedia is really cool, though."

http://www.mit.edu/convocation2022.html
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_MIT_speech -- text of the speech

Theme song flops

The Wikipedia theme song, "Monkeys at Typewriters", has been dumped. Although the proposal originally was received with great enthusiasm by the Wikipedia community, the actual song proved disappointing to most people. The final nail in the coffin was an email of complaint received from the Society of Intelligent Primates, whose membership found the song insulting. Wikipedians drafted an apology as no offense was intended, and invited the society's language-using members to contribute to the project.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/media/monkeys_at_typewriters.ogg -- the theme song in Ogg Vorbis format
http://www.soip.org/wikipedia_situation.html -- SOIP's complaint
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOIP_letter_of_apology -- Wikipedia's apology

Spanish reunification efforts continue

Wikipedia diplomats met with their Enciclopedia Libre counterparts for another round of reunification talks. English-speaking representitive Daniel "maveric149" Mayer said, "I think the two Spanish projects are a little closer together on this issues this time around, but sometimes I wonder if this thing is ever going to happen." The Spanish team has produced a report which has been translated into all of Wikipedia's active languages.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_reunification_report_345902 -- the latest report,

translated into English from Spanish

http://www.enciclopedialibre.org/ -- Enciclopedia Libre
http://www.wikipedia.org/intlwiki-l/68787321.html

Another new edition of Wikipedia!

Speaking of languages, the Tikar language Wikipedia is scheduled to go live on May 29. Tikar Wikipedians have already translated a large base of articles from English, Mandarin, Polish, Swahili and Esperanto, and a number of Tikar scholars have expressed interest in the project. This brings Wikipedia's active language count to 347.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wikipedia-l/309987721.html
http://tk.wikipedia.org/ -- Wikipedia in Tikar (not yet active)

Hardware and software status

It has been 12 years since our last lag; however, Wikipedia has again upgraded its hardware and rewrote the software (now Phase 23), because... uh, well, because. As a result, Wikipedia now automatically reconciles edit-conflicts perfectly. The software developers have already started planning Phase 24 with full AI capabilities. The usual suspects have started issuing their complaints.

Housekeeping?/Operation?/Wikipedian Activity?

Developer Breena Veebah will be off for the next 3 months, please direct concerns to Dleela Beeper.
Madonna and Cher joined Wikipedia, making them the 132rd and 133rd Wikipedian Hollywood singer-actors. Both have made public releases of photos of them typing up articles for Wikipedia. Wikipedia experienced major vandalism for several hours after that, but also gained nearly one hundred new articles -- not stubs -- within a few days, by newly registered users.
Former Admin Gelori has left Wikipedia because of an unreconcilable point of view.

Interesting new articles

Nanotechnology in everyday life - Some practical advice on the use of nanotechnology for housecleaning, dishwashing and heat shielding.
Star Wars -VIII: Attack of the Killer Amoebas - George Lucas latest prequel in the Star Wars cycle
Mausoleum of Genghis Khan: after centuries of searches, a team of Mongolian and Chinese archeologists have finally found the body of the Great Khan hidden in an abandoned cave.

Wikipedia Weekly News is colaboratively maintained by Wikipedians at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Weekly_News. If you find some news of interest to the Wikipedia community, please write it up and post it.