Wikizine/2006-35

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                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week: 35  Number: 40       

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

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Technical news
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[The Return Of The Stats] - On a wikipedia long ago, before MediaWiki and the WMF, there where webalizer visitor stats. You could see which pages where the most popular of Wikipedia. Now, many years later, this information can be again available for your wiki. w:de:User:LeonWeber has created a tool to count the requests. See the page on Meta for the information how to get it. But I can be a good idea to discuss this in your community first to avoid problems.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCharts
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27848/focus=27848

[Time] - Tim Starling has written a new parser function for time and date formatting, called 
#time and it is live now on the projects. It gives many options for displaying the time and date. One of the possibility's is that it can give the current time +X-hours (or minus) or the same with dates. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/26416/focus=26416
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions#.23time

[Linksearch]] -  There is special page named Special:Linksearch. By entering there a domain name or part of a domain name you can see on wish page those external links are placed. Can be useful to clean up linkspam vandalism.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Linksearch

Request for help
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[Candidates] - There is still for to do in translating that statements of the candidates for the board.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_translations_2006/En#Candidates

Politics
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[Election] - The registration of candidates for the board election is closed. There are about 20 candidates now, some have presented thyself near the end, some have withdrawn thyself. And some will probably be excluded because the have not confirmed there candidacy like requested. The actual voting is supposed to start on September first and will close on the 21th September. Wikizine has done an attempt to present to you the candidates with the extra editions. Also the Signpost has done a special effort. A sort of written interviews with the candidates who responded to there questions. If you are interested in this elections this is a must read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-28/Board_candidates

Foundation
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[New committee] - The WMF board approved the creation of the "fundraising committee". The function of this committee is not defined in the resolution. 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_fundraising_committee/membership

[CFO resigns] - Daniel Mayer resigns as Chief Financial Officer of the Wikimedia
Foundation. Daniel Mayer remains involved with the WMF finances as member of the newly created "fundraising committee". The WMF has hired a professional experienced bookkeeper who will work to start with on a part-time basis. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9689/focus=9689 - Daniel resigns as CFO
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/9728/focus=9728 - New bookkeeper hired

[SP-com] - The WMF Special projects committee is holding a public meeting on IRC. This on September 2 or 3 arround 20u UTC. See the meta-page for more information.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Special_projects_committee#SPC_Public_Meeting_.232

Community
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[Beta] - The announced Beta Wikiversity is now live. This wiki is an incubator for Wikiversities in various new languages. And also a global platform aiming at coordinating Wikiversity projects in several languages. This coordination should deal with Wikiversity's mission and general guidelines of the project's scope. For example, about original research.
http://beta.wikiversity.org/

[Logo] - A new project (Wikiversity) so there is need for a new logo. The start is given for that process by collecting possible logos for Wikiversity.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/logo

[Verifiability] is a policy on the English Wikipedia. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." That means that what is written must be proven by sources, the fact that it is true is not enough. Not all Wikipedias have the same policies. Local wikis are looking for policy inspiration on other projects and sometimes the adopt policies form other wikis. Currently the Russian Wikipedia is holding a vote regarding the question to adopt also the policy of verifiability for there wikipedia. Verifiability has currently on the ru.wp with 53 votes more support then "no" with 32 votes.  
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия:Голосования/Проверяемость

[Signpost Radio] - w:en:user:Omaryak provides now audio versions of the English language Wikipedia Signpost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Audio

[userboxes] - On userpages are sometimes loaded with boxes to inform about the most unexpeted topics. Those boxes can give controversy about them. One way of dealing with userboxes that some wikis are using is the "German solution". The Spanish comunity has decided to implement the German solution for the userboxes, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:German_userbox_solution

[Swedish Wikipedia] shows everything the are proud of from there community in the interwiki report of the Signpost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-08-21/Interwiki_report

Media
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[China] - News about Wikipedia/media in the Chinese press; "Wikipedia chief says no to censorship"
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=51805

[Africa] - "African Languages Grow as a Wikipedia Presence" article about the african languages Wikis and the lack of africans working on them. Publised several newsparers including the NY Times, Herald Tribune and Slashdot. 
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/BIZ04/608270326/1013
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/27/1757237

Stats
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[ku.wp] - The Kurdish Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles. This is the work of the 15 active users and mostly of only 5 very active users.
http://ku.wikipedia.org

[tg.wp] - The Tajik Wikipedia has reached 500 articles. And that is mostly the work of only 3 very active users of a total of 9 active users.

[Wikizine] has now 500 subscribers by email.
Editorial remark: Thank you. Walter

Did you know ...
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... how to enter directly a search query to the wiki?

You enter [alt]+F The result is that the cursor is blinking in the search box. Type what you look and press enter. But it can even more easy. If you add some code to you Special:Mypage/monobook.js then the cursor will always be waiting by default in the search box for your request.

Include;

// Park the the cursor allways in the search box - by w:en:User:Splarka
addOnloadHook(function() {document.getElementById('searchform').elements[0].focus(); return false;;});

IRC Quote
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<Toazt> "Too few women on the internet?
<Toazt> There are lots of women on the internet,
<Toazt> only most of them are naked and in JPG-format."

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Number of subscribers: 500
Unique Visitors website this week: 962
Editor(s): Walter
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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