Wikizine/2006-13

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                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week: 13  Number: 19        

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An independent internal news bulletin 
for the members of the Wikimedia community

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=== Community ===

[WP] Fourteen new wikipedias have been created: Dutch Low Sakson, West Flamish, Ligurian, Kalmyk, Tetum, Papiamentu, Romany, Samogitian, Ripuarian, Pennsylvania German, Franco-Provençal/Arpitan, Cantonese, Banyumasan, and Norman.

The new Pennsylvania German Wikipedia has reached 26 articles. According to  Mark Williamson, the new Cantonese is very active in its first two days.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages#Recently_created_wikis
http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26968

=== (Very) old technical news ===

[Account creation] the number of new accounts that can be created from a specific IP address is limited to 6 every 24 hours. This is an anti-vandalism function.  It can cause problems for serious users on larger Wikis. The message that users see when they hit the limit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Acct_creation_throttle_hit

[PDA editions] In addition to the TomeRaider copies of Wikipedia (last available dump : January 2006), there are a number of commercial software packages available for viewing Wikipedia on your PDA.  The most recent commercial tool is Quickipedia.
http://download.wikimedia.org/tomeraider/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TomeRaider_database
http://palmtops.about.com/od/palmtoppicks/tp/wikipedia_pda.htm

=== Request for help ===

[Slogans] An attempt is made to create a list of all project slogans and logos in all languages (such as "the free encyclopedia").
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Slogans

[Meta clean-up] A proposal to rearrange meta and make it more useful:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta

=== New project proposals ===

[Wikikernel] A proposal for a project incubator for new Wikimedia project proposals
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikernel
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_proposals_group

=== Politics ===

[Steward]  - A steward temporarily loses stewardship.  
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6552

=== Media ===

[Britannica Vs. Nature] In December 2005 the famous journal "Nature" published a news article comparing the science content of Encyclopedia Britannica with that of the English Wikipedia. The message of the article was that both Britannica and Wikipedia contain errors, that there are more errors in Wikipedia then in Britannica, but that nevertheless Wikipedia is not so much more innacurate than Britannica.  Britannica has finally responded to the article. They find that the way Nature conducted their inquiry was unfair, and that the results are invalid.  Nature disagrees with Britannica's POV and stands by their article. This does not directly affect Wikipedia; it is Nature that claimed that Wikipedia is almost as good as Britannica, not the Wikimedia Foundation.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html - the original Nature article, from December 2005
http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf - Britannica's response
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf - Nature's reply to the response
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6053754.html  - A news.com article about the matter
http:// tinyurl.com/lprbg - A podcast with a Britannica representative
http:// tinyurl.com/pz5so - more related content on Meta

=== Stats ===

[Commons] now has over 500,000 files. 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/

[80.000 persons alive] the EN Wikipedia has biographical articles on over 80,000 living people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people

=== Other news ===

[Book] Chinese wikipedian KaurJmeb published her first book about Wikipedia - ''Wikipedia: Forefront of knowledge sharing'' (維基百科 : 知識分享最前線) ISBN 9867075064
http:// tinyurl.com/l8fvp - A page about it on the new Chinese Wiknews
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:KaurJmeb - The author's userpage
http:// tinyurl.com/lq5ks - The book on eslite books

=== Last weeks feedback ===

- The reason that non-sysops get an inactive "block" link in Meta's RC is: it is included in the summary for the user creation log.  This can be changed by removing the $4 value from [[MediaWiki:Newuserloglog]]. If you do that there will be no "block" link for that user in the logfile of new created accounts.

- Not only on EN Wikipedia but also on EN Wikinews can blocked users can still edit their own talk page.  [[meta:User:Eloquence]] knows how to enable this function.

=== Did you know ...  ===
... that you can do free positive promotion for Wikipedia?

A lot of websites give away free stuff or let you register to make a change to win tickets for something. That is nice but you need first to have something before you can give it away. 

Google Gmail invites. After 2 years, there are still many people who would like to have an account but do not know how to get one. You can give these away with the greetings of your language Wikipedia or sister project.

1# make a "WikipediaXX@gmail.com account
2# make additional accounts like wikipediaXX01@, wikipediaXX02@, etc. for harvesting invites
3# put in the external links section of your gmail signature a mailto:link . "If you would like to receive free invite Wikipedia can give you one. Send an empty mail to wikipediaXX@gmail.com"
4# give invites to you visitors with the greetings of your project.  If you are low on invites request that they send you one back.

This way you can give a freebie, and your visitors get a positive association with Wikipedia. The Dutch Wikipedia has been providing this service since the Summer of 2004, and has sent many hundreds of invites in that time. If you need a invite yourself, contact Wikizine.

=== Quote ===
"A large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - unidentified Britannica representative, via podcast. 
Source: http:// tinyurl.com/lprbg

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Number of subscribers: 337
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter, Sj
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org

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