Wikizine/2006-19

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                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week: 19  Number: 24       

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Update Renameuser] The contributions limit for [[Special:Renameuser]] is increased to 200,000. This means a bureacrat now can rename an user account for so far the have not done more then 200,000 edits. According to the available information the bot [[w:en:User:Rambot]] has made the most edits of all users on the English Wikipedia with 131,511 edits so it is not likely users will have limit problems. 

[Bug 5284] Resolved: [[Special:Mypage]], and [[Special:Mytalk]] can now take arguments in their URLs
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5284

[Bug 3309] Resolved: When undeleting a page a reason can now be given. Including a reason is not obligatory

=== Request for help ===

[Mediawiki-i18n] A new mailing list dedicated to centralising discussion regarding MediaWiki internationalisation. Maintainers for each language for helping to keep their specific language up to date is requested.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/23486

=== Foundation ===

[Wikimania] Registration for attendance and housing opens for Wikimania 2006.  Community members are encouraged to register early while housing is available.
http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/

[InstantCommons] The WMF special projects committee recommends the implementation of the InstantCommons project. 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/InstantCommons

=== Community ===

[No reference] The English Wikisource decides to exclude all reference material.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:News/2006-05-02/Recent_vote_ends_excluding_reference_material
Example of information that is not welcome anymore
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hello_world 
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mercury

[Polish Wikimeet] A meeting of Wikimedia Poland was held in Wroclaw April 29 - May 1
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Polish_Wikimedia_Meeting_2006
http://zlot.wikimedia.pl/

=== Awards ===

[Planetizen] The [[w:en:Portal:Architecture]] and [[w:en:Category:Urban studies and planning]] of the English language Wikipedia have jointly won an award, being rated one of the top ten best planning, design, and development websites. Now, this isn't an award which can be won annually; it is only given to new or dramatically improved web sites. One thing to notice is this is a trade magazine. That is, the people who are reading this magazine are professional designers, particularly community engineers and architectural designers. This indicates Wikipedia is being used professionally by the people who work in this field.
http://www.planetizen.com/websites/2006#10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Architecture

=== Stats ===

[4 million] Wikipedia reached 4 million articles in its various languages on Sunday. Of the 4 million articles, over 25% (~1.1 million) were in English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-05-01/News_and_notes

[131 million] comScore World Metrix, a new global internet tracking system has placed what it calls "Wikipedia Sites" seventh on its list of "Online Properties Worldwide", with an estimated 131 million unique visitors aged 15+ in March 2006, or 19% of all internet users aged 15+, based on comscores estimate that there were 694 million of them that month. (see also the "quote" section)
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20060504/CGTH06704052006-1.html

=== Other news ===

[CFP 2006] Three Wikipedians presented Wikipedia at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Washington, DC.  Author Vernor Vinge gave the conference's closing address, discussing Wikipedia as an example of a fantasy 'that might have been proposed at CFP 5 or 10 years ago' as a result of giving everyone networked computers.
http://www.cfp.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

=== Did you know ...  ===

... that you can falsify the history of an article?

At least if you are a sysop. First delete the article, then go to the restore page of that article. There you see history of the page. Every edit has a tick box. Select all of them. (select the first box and the last one while pressing <shift>) Now you can de-deselect edits which you want to disappear, and restore the page.

=== Quote ===

"While the 'big three' properties remain consistent among worldwide and U.S. audiences, Wikipedia has emerged as a site that continues to increase in popularity, both globally and in the U.S.  Wikipedia's popularity demonstrates the global power of the Web to unite and provide information across countries and languages, but the full extent of its global appeal is only measurable through this new worldwide measurement,"  -- Mr. Daboll, comScore Networks

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Number of subscribers: 391
Editor(s): Walter, Amgine
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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