Wikizine/EN2009-113

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                                    .org 

Year: 2009  Week: 31  Number: 113       

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

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=== Technical news ===

[arwp: New namespace] - the Arabic Wikipedia Community has agreed to create a new namespace called "Supplement". It will contain most of date pages (days, months, years, decades, etc.), disambiguation pages and lists to give the exactly number of encyclopedic articles. There are about 6000 pages that will be moved to the new namespace.  It may be possible that your community would like to apply the same idea.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19357 -- bug report
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Supplement -- guideline of namespace

[Commons: Off-site archive] - A off site archive for Commons and the XML snapshots will be added. Thanks are due to eBart consulting and User:Milosh for proving a backup server and storage array at their colocation facility in Europe. This server will store archives of our publicly available data of Wikimedia Commons and the XML snapshots.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/were-adding-an-off-site-archive-for-commons-and-the-xml-snapshots/ -- techblog post

[Passwords plz] - Watchlistr.com was an outside site that asked for Wikimedia passwords in order aggregate user watchlists across all projects for them.  Although in this case it did not have a malicious intent, use of external sites asking for passwords place in risk the accounts used. Users are asked not to share their user password with any external site. Not even toolserver tools are allowed to request your password for any service. The site has now been shut down, and further analysis revealed that it had important vulnerabilities. Magnus Manske has created an alternative tool for people to use if they liked this feature.
http://www.watchlistr.com/
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044238.html -- initial thread
http://magnusmanske.de/MetaWatchlist/ -- alternative proposed by Magnus

[TS: Multi-maintainer tools] - the toolserver is pushing multi-maintainer tools and will be actively discouraging single maintainer ones. They want to encourage collaboration amongst toolserver users and make tools last even when one of the users disappears.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.toolserver/1515

[SVN account requests] - there's a new process for requesting SVN accounts to the MediaWiki source code.  Brion announced that he'll be going through the queue every week, so if you have request throw them up on MediaWiki wiki. ;-)
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/44683 -- mailing list post
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Commit_access_requests -- requests

=== Proposals ===

[Geonotice + Wikinews/Commons?] - Sage Ross recently proposed something interesting: using an opt-in geonotice (notice that displays based on the location of your IP) to show local reporting or photographing opportunities. Hopefully this will help with one of the great frustrations that inhibit original reporting.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044367.html

=== Foundation ===

[Board elections: Voting] - the Foundation's Board elections has finally entered into the voting phase (voting is open until August 10) and translation is continuing.  Visit the Meta pages for election information (including a "Questions" page), the Wikipedia Signpost also has interviews with the candidates.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009#voters -- voter requirements
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Translation -- translation page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Board_elections#Candidate_interviews -- signpost interviews

[More donation buttons] - the second round of donation button designs has been posted, feedback is appreciated to determine which designs we'll end up using!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2009/Donation_buttons_upgrade

[Audit Committee] - the new members of the 2009-2010 Audit Committee have been announced.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053280.html -- foundation-l post

[wm2009: Registration] - Media Registration for Wikimania 2009 has opened.  For regular registration, there is a new update: it is also possible to extend your stay past the Wikimania dates, but you need to contact the hotel directly.
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration#Accommodations -- extending stay options
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimania_2009_Media_Registration -- media registration

[Strategy: "Office Hours" & Wiki] - the Strategic Planning team has announced their "office hours" which are teams that they will be on the channel to answer questions and participate in discussions, everyone's invited!  The team has also "soft-launched" their wiki (most of its content is also available for translation).
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40527 -- soft-launch post

[TS donation] - the Wikimedia Foundation has awarded a US$40,000 grant to the Toolserver toward improving the toolserver's reliability. With that money they will buy three database servers, so they can keep two copies of each wiki database instead of just one. This should greatly improve the availability of up to date data in the wiki databases.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2009-July/002278.html -- announcement
http://journal.toolserver.org/entry/2009/07/29/wikimedia-foundation-grants-40000-to-the-toolserver/ -- blog post
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants/WM_DE/Improve_toolserver_reliability -- original grant application

[Active ombudsmen?] - there was a discussion on the DE Wikipedia (and then foundation-l) about whether or not the Ombudsmen commission (the group that hears privacy violations) is actually fulfilling its mission actively.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40241

=== Community ===

[NY Wiki-Conference] - the first New York City Wiki-Conference was a success with more than 100 people attending. The Signpost has a write-up about the event and there was also a twitter "report" with the tag #nywikiconference.
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23nywikiconference -- twitter feed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-27/Wiki-Conference -- signpost update

[Institutions editing] - the Tropenmuseum, a Dutch museum, was preparing to upload images to the Dutch Wikipedia until it's account was blocked due to its name. Erik Möller (User:Eloquence, Deputy Director WMF) suggested on Commons-l that this is something we want to avoid -- "these institutions are helping expand our content, we should Assume Good Faith and let our first impressions be friendly and professional".
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2009/07/tropenmuseum-is-blocked.html -- Gerard's blog post on the museum
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/5006 -- Erik's commons-l post

[WMUK: Schools project ML] - Wikimedia UK has started a new mailing list for its schools project, dedicated to creating a Wikipedia version with selected articles for schools.  Interested parties are welcome to subscribe.
http://wikimedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/schools-project-l_wikimedia.org.uk

=== Media ===

[Wikipedia flawed, but that's okay] - Wikipedia is a flawed and incomplete testament to the essential fallibility of human nature. An interesting blog post from the BBC about Wikipedia being okay. ;-)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/07/wikipedia.shtml

[Mobile Wikipedia tips] - Wikipedia Expert Tips: How to Keep the Facts at Your Fingertips. The article talks about different ways to serve Wikipedia content, from tweaking the skin to a random article screensaver to mobile phone versions.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/168655/wikipedia_expert_tips_how_to_keep_the_facts_at_your_fingertips.html

[NIH] - a few more media outlets have covered the National Institutes of Health Academy with article titles ranging from "Should you trust health advice from the web?" to "NIH Gets Schooled on Wikipedia".
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327185.500-should-you-trust-health-advice-from-the-web.html?full=true
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/07/nih_gets_schooled_on_wikipedia.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072701912.html

[CK-12 Foundation] - Jimmy Wales joined the Advisory Board of the CK-12 Foundation, a Silicon Valley non-profit organization with a mission to provide online up-to-date and standards-aligned textbook content to K-12 students around the world.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/jimmy-wales-joins-advisory-board-of-ck-12-foundation,897842.shtml

[NPG] - the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has sided with the National Portrait Gallery *against* Wikipedia, as the NPG incident continues.
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=866109
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/40549

[Jimmy on CNN Money] - Jimbo did a piece on "CNN Money" where he talked about Wikipedia's non-profit status and it's usability and stategic planning projects.
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2009/07/28/n_co_wikipedia_wales.cnnmoney/

[Rorschach censors] - the New York Times covers the Rorschach controversy: whether or not we should include the ink blot tests in our articles (for "ethical reasons").
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/internet/29inkblot.html

[WP has poor photos?] - the NY Times ran an article a few weeks ago called: "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos" which pointed out that Wikipedia has some trouble with good quality pictures in its articles (especially ones of celebrities).  This caused a bit of controversy on the mailing lists, with image contributors complaining that the Foundation didn't steer the article in the right direction -- highlighting good works instead of bad ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/20funny.html -- article
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-July/053282.html -- mailing list thread

=== Stats ===

[50k] - the Galician and Nynorsk (Norwegian) Wikipedias have both reached 50,000 articles.
http://gl.wikipedia.org/
http://nn.wikipedia.org/

[mhr.wp] - the Meadow Mari Wikipedia is less than a month old and already has over 500 articles (almost 600)!
http://mhr.wikipedia.org/

=== Other news ===

[Facebook] - the Wikipedia fan page on Facebook, managed by Cary Bass (Bastique) Volunteer Coordinator WMF, now has a URL. If you use Facebook, make sure to add yourself as a fan.
http://www.facebook.com/wikipedia 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Privacy 

[Wikipedia Art] - some awesome posters/t-shirts from last year have resurfaced, they display people with a common theme: "I [edit] Wikipedia".  They show ordinary people surrounded by words that display their editing interest depending upon their personality.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeeperez/sets/72157604803121347/

[Attracting newbies?] - David Gerard pointed out an interesting article with tips about attracting newbies and making them effective.  Although the author is talking about software development, it definitely could relate to our projects.
http://denise.dreamwidth.org/23600.html

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

... parody is the highest form of flattery? 

[Bigipedia] - BBC Radio launched a "broadwebcasting" show parodying the internet by mocking pop-ups, search boxes and other aspects of online activity. Produced and directed by Pozzitive, the four-part series is called 'Bigipedia' and has taken its inspiration from Wikipedia. If you can appreciate British humor, check it out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lpr29/Bigipedia_Episode_1/ -- first episode (30 min)

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Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Platonides
Thanks to: OsamaK, Rand, Stu, Sage, Daniel Kinzler, Skenmy, Frederic, Brion, Jay, Philippe, David, River, Roan, Galio, Cary, Signpost, Gerard
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
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