Wikizine/EN2007-83

******************************************
 __    __ _ _    _     _            
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __   ___ 
\ \/  \/ / | |/ / |_  / | '_ \ / _ \
 \  /\  /| |   <| |/ /| | | | |  __/
  \/  \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
                                    .org 

Year: 2007  Week: 44  Number: 83      

******************************************

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

//////////////////////////////////////////

=== Technical news ===

[Upload limit] - The upload limit is 20 MB. Now that the recent changes have resulted in good support for video, it was suggested to increase this limit. There are concerns for a dramatic growth in bandwidth and storage need.

=== Request for help ===

[Fundraising translations] - Most translations for the 2007 fundraising have been done, but some still remian. Cary Bass, volunteer coordinator, requests your help. 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007

=== New project proposals ===

[Chain of reasons] - This proposed new project aims to be a reference for people who simply want to learn about the reasoning behind particular beliefs -- moral, political, scientific, religious, or whatever.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chains_of_Reason

=== Policy ===

[Page creation on EN Wikipedia] - Page creation for anonymous users has been disabled for the English Wikipedia since December 2005. There will probably soon be a trial of one week during which page creation is enabled again.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/84133
http://tinyurl.com/yw6gvj -- discussion at the village pump

=== Foundation ===

[Priorities] - Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees, has stated priorities for her next term as a chair. She also summarizes the major developments of last year. 
http://tinyurl.com/325sjo

[Fundraising] - The 2007 fall fund raising has started on October 22 and will run until December 22. People are encouraged to place web buttons on their private websites. At present around US$130,000 has been donated. The live stream of donations from Paypal can be seen in the IRC channel #wikimedia-donations on freenode.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2007 -- feedback from the visitors of the projects on the fund raiser
http://chat.wikizine.org -- provides access to #wikimedia-donations

[Budget] - Together with its fundraising, the Wikimedia Foundation has also published its budget for 2007-2008. The Foundation plans to spend US$4.6M in total, of which 57% is reserved for technical services. The rest is going to overhead, staff and other activities such as Wikimania. 
http://tinyurl.com/3bxpwa

[New chapter] - Wikimedia Sweden was founded in Stockholm, Sweden. Lennart Guldbrandsson was elected Chair. For the board several members of community were elected as well as persons from the free knowledge movement of Sweden. One of them is Lars Aronsson, founder of susning.nu, which was the second largest wiki in the world before it was closed.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige

[Treasurer] - The foundation is looking for a treasurer who will succeed Miles Davis on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
http://tinyurl.com/2y9ryy

[Job openings] - As a result of the relocation of the Wikimedia Foundation's headquarters from St. Petersburg, Florida, to San Francisco, several positions are to be filled.
http://tinyurl.com/24ow5e 

=== Community ===

[Dutch Conference] - On October 27, Wikimedia Nederland held a conference in Amsterdam about Wikimedia, Wikis and Education. Most of the program was in Dutch; however, a few presentations were in English. Florence Devouard was one of the keynote speakers.
http://tinyurl.com/2r9e4p -- conference website
http://tinyurl.com/2r2na9 -- Wikinews report on the conference

[Russian Conference] - The Wiki-Conference 2007 was held on October 27 and 28 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
http://tinyurl.com/35axup

[Wikijunior] - It is proposed that stable versions of the Wikijunior books hosted on the English Wikibooks will be published on www.wikijunior.org. Also there are discussions on a new logo.
http://tinyurl.com/32vh9b 
http://tinyurl.com/3afhp3

=== Media ===

[Wikicomics] - "Wikimedia fundraiser highlights webcomic community's frustration with Wikipedia guidelines" reports Wikinews
http://tinyurl.com/2z8mda

[Edit for grades] - Some schools may ban Wikipedia, but the story about a teacher of the University of Washington-Bothell who makes her students write Wikipedia articles for grades was in the news this week.
http://tinyurl.com/2hjnmm

[Anons best?] - "Anonymous Wikipedia entries the most accurate" writes Brockpress.com.
http://tinyurl.com/3c4895

=== Stats ===

[Commons] - Three years have passed since Commons started selecting their best pictures; now, the 10,000th featured picture has been selected. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/21385
http://tinyurl.com/2e4xab -- the 10,000th featured picture

[hu.wp] - The Hungarian Wikipedia just reached 75.000 articles.
http://hu.wikipedia.org

[haw.wp] - The Hawaiian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
http://haw.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language

[simple wp] - The Simple English Wikipedia has reached its 20,000th article with "Mandurah railway line, Perth". Simple is looking for editors to write even more articles.
http://simple.wikipedia.org

[Erratum] - Wikizine 82 reported that the Vietnamese Wikipedia had reached 100,000 articles. This is not correct. The count was 100,000 pages in total, not just articles. The Vietnamese Wikipedia has over 25,000 articles.

=== Editorial ===

Dear readers,

Today, Wikizine has existed for three years.  A couple of weeks ago, I was seriously considering to stop contributing to Wikizine. My reason was that it became too difficult to continue creating weekly a new and good edition of Wikizine virtually alone. 

At this time, the start of the third year of Wikizine, I want to inform you, my readers, that Wikizine will continue. This is possible because of the recent assistance in creating Wikizine that has been provided to me by users londenp and effeietsanders and a slightly less pessimistic state of mind.

It will not longer be a goal of Wikizine to have a weekly issue. The new publication frequency will be "You will get a new Wikizine whenever one is ready".

The Spanish and Indonesian language edition of Wikizine will mostly be terminated soon because of lack of activity of the people who started them. For the German edition there is just a new volunteer so there is hope that this one can stay.

Thanks for reading Wikizine. That is the reason for existence of a newsletter. This newsletter is "for the members of the Wikimedia community". The main purpose of Wikizine is to inform you, the Wikimedia community, what is going on in the community. That is across all projects and languages. 

Only what is known by the (small) staff of Wikizine can be reported. Currently Wikizine fails in reporting what is going on in the global community due to lack of information.  Please take a minute to send notice to Wikizine if there is something of interest to report from your home-wiki.

Greetings,
[[meta:user:Walter]]

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

... that the income of the Wikimedia Foundation is mainly based on small donations from individuals who appreciate the Wikimedia projects? The Wikimedia projects are hence mainly supported by the large public, not by major organisations. 

=== Fundraising quotes ===

"For tripling the number of Elephants in Africa!" US$500 --Anonymous. 
"Instead of a banner asking for donations, why don't you just have a banner with an ad, and skip the middle step." --Anonymous. 
"Wikipédia est d'une utilité publique colossale." -- Lionel Bolnet
"Who's that guy? The guy on the banner looks like Osama bin Laden." --Anonymous
"Your efforts to educate the world are highly admirable. Keep up the good work." -- Alison Dwyer
"Symbolisch bedrag en mijn hartelijke dank voor jullie geweldige site." -- Tejo Hoekman

http://tinyurl.com/2rlb39  -- more quotes

//////////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers: 695
Unique Visitors website last week: 167
Editor(s): Walter, Effeietsanders, Londenp
Corrector(s): Oliphaunt
Thanks to: Tgr, Joakim Larsson, Borgx  
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
//////////////////////////////////////////

Wikizine.org makes no guarantees of accuracy, 
validity and especially correct grammar and spelling. 
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]],
and is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikizine is a weekly publication as long as there is noteworthy news (and time)
Content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html  