Wikizine/EN2009-114

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                                    .org 

Year: 2009  Week: 32  Number: 114   

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Full downtime] - All of Wikimedia's services (sites, mailing lists, etc.) were down on July 31 at 12:00 (UTC) to allow the primary router at the Tampa hosting facility to be rebooted.
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/pmtpa-router-reboot-scheduled-downtime/
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-July/044406.html
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Downtime

[SysAdminDay] - System Administrator Appreciation Day was held on July 31st; it's the day where you appreciate and thank all the system administrators who make your lives easier!
http://www.sysadminday.com/

[Override this function] - on August 6, users were temporarily getting the message 'Override this function' when visiting pages on Wikipedia, due to a server only partially getting an update.  The issue was supposedly fixed but the sysadmins are still getting reports, it needs further investigation of the problem.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20081

=== Request for help ===

[WikimediaMobile] - Wikimedia Mobile, the mobile interface for Wikipedia, has started accepting translations on betawiki. Help is greatly appreciated in localizing it for your local Wikipedia.
http://m.wikipedia.org/
http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Wikimedia_mobile

[Flickr tool maintainers] - Bryan Tong Minh posted a request for co-maintainers for his flickr tools on the toolserver. The bots are written in Python and use the mwclient library to edit and upload.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2009-August/004976.html

[Best practices team] - "Best practice in public outreach" is a collection of articles describing experiences in winning new volunteers, partners, content and audiences.  The group will help coordinate the creation and enhancement of the best practices documentation pages on Meta-Wiki, which will help share the knowledge about engaging new target groups or deepening relationships to new Wikimedians.  Volunteers are needed!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Best_practices_documentation_team

[BLP task force] - Cary Bass is in the process of launching a new task force on Biographies of Living People (as a result of the board resolution on the subject).  The task force will be focusing on the English Wikipedia, but its recommendations and guidelines will probably be useful on other projects too.  Volunteers are needed, see the blog post for more information.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-August/102667.html -- call for volunteers
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people -- resolution

=== Proposals ===

[Strategic Proposals (Call)] - the Strategic Planning team has sent out a call for proposals. They'd like to encourage people to put their ideas into proposals for what the Wikimedia movement should be doing over the next five years.  What's more is that you can write it in the language of your choice. 

=== Foundation ===

[Guidestar] - the Wikimedia Foundation has finally received a profile on GuideStar, one of the largest American databases for non-profits.  Be sure to visit the profile and write a review!
http://tinyurl.com/wmfGuidestar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuideStar -- article on the site

[Usability: Babaco] - the Usability team is preparing for its next release and has some new designs and ideas that need feedback from users, community members, and interested parties.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/07/29/the-abcs-of-usability/ -- blog post
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Babaco_Designs -- designs

[Transcom newsletter] - the Translation committee (the people whose job it is to coordinate translations of Wikimedia Foundation-related items) has released its newsletter, which is a summary of open requests.  If you speak another language, please look and see if there's anywhere that you can help out!
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-July/000982.html

[LSS: foundation-l] - a new list summary of foundation-l posts between July 16-31 has been published.  Phoebe has also posted a request for help, reminding others that she's not the only one who can do it and there are other lists that could be summarized too!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_July_16-31
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS -- main LSS page

=== Legal ===

[EFF&NPG update] - Another update on the National Portrait Gallery legal issue, the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, Fred von Lohmann, has posted a legal analysis of the situation.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/eff-defends-wikipedi

=== Agenda ===

[PL: pl.wp meeting] - the Polish Wikipedia is having its annual working meeting in Sopot, Poland from September 11-13.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GDJ_2009 (pl)

[SE: Book Fair] - Wikimedia Sweden will have a booth at the largest book fair in Scandinavia with 100,000+ attendees.  The fair will be September 24-27, 2009.
http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Projekt:Bok_och_Biblioteksmässan_2009 -- WMSE's page about the booth (sv)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_Book_Fair -- enwp article about the fair

[JP: Conference] - Wikimedia Conference Japan has opened up its official website and has finalized its details: November 22 at Tokyo University!
http://www.wcj2009.info/ (ja)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_Japan/en -- summary on Meta (en)

[BE: Fosdem] - FOSDEM, the FOSS conference, has announced the dates for its 2010 conference: February 6-7, 2010
http://www.fosdem.org/2010/

=== Community ===

[GLAM-WIKI] - GLAM-Wiki, Wikimedia Australia's conference for galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and how they can collaborate with Wikimedia, is being held this week (August 6-7) and a live "play-by-play" can be found via twitter.
https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23GLAM-WIKI -- twitter posts
http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/230/glam-wiki-day-one -- blog post summarizing day 1

[Simple Wikipedia] - this little known Wikipedia works since 2004 on a encyclopedia that is using fewer words and easier grammar then the English Wikipedia. The small community has managed to get again at the 54,000 articles mark, after falling down 2000 articles due to a quality cleanup. For those who find other Wikipedias has become to large to be happy there a small project like Simple could be attractive.
http://simple.wikipedia.org

[WMNL: Partnership] - just in time for GLAM-WIKI, Wikimedia Nederland officially announced a partnership with the Tropenmuseum (one of the largest museums in the Netherlands).  This new partnership will bring over 2100 high quality images to the Wikimedia Commons!
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/05/wikimedia-netherlands-and-the-tropenmuseum-bring-2100-images-to-the-commons/ -- blog post and press release

[Wiki-Conference NY] - Archive.org is hosting a few videos of the proceedings at Wiki-Conference New York, so far Jimmy Wales's keynote and Cary Bass's OTRS presentation have been published but more will come soon.
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Wiki–Conference%20New%20York

[IRC Meeting] - a general IRC meeting was hosted by the Group Contacts.  There was a high number of participants (~80 people) and a wide array of topics, from contacting the GCs and new cloak options to public logging and alternate channel management techniques.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Meetings/August_2009

[WMDE: Report from the Office] - the new Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland, Pavel Richter, has published his first "Report from the Office" on the WMDE blog.  He shares his new priorities and introduces himself.
http://blog.wikimedia.de/2009/07/31/1-bericht-aus-der-geschaftsstelle-juli-2009/ (de)

=== Media ===

[GLAM-Wiki] - As described above in the "Community" section, GLAM-WIKI is being held this week and it has been covered by a few media outlets.
http://wikimedia.org.au/w/images/b/ba/GLAM_WIKI_-_Media_Release.pdf -- WMAU press release
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/313846/wikimedia_event_seeks_open_up_australian_culture
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26683/1231/

[Judges & Strippers] - Wiktionary was quoted when defining a lap dance in a legal case!
http://www.dbs.id.au/blog/law/lap-dance-wikipedia.html
https://twitter.com/Wittylama/status/3102455466

[Anecdote] - there's a nice, thoughtful blog post from a paleontologist/geoscientist and his experiences with contributing to Wikipedia.
http://triassiccritters.blogspot.com/2009/08/contributing-to-wikipedia-as.html

[Experts obliged?] - experts and people who find errors in Wikipedia are obliged to correct them, a blog post says.  "Whether you like it or not, Wikipedia is the source that people go to for information."
http://blog.k1v1n.com/2009/08/if-tree-falls-in-forest-part-1.html

[We're NC-17] - Apple has rated us NC-17!  Wikipanion, an iPhone/Pod application giving access to Wikipedia (nicely formatted with extra features), featured a warning when downloading: "Rated 17+ for the following:  Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes".
http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/covering-your-click/ -- blog post about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17 -- in case you have no idea what we're talking about

=== Stats ===

[comScore: down to #5] - Facebook is now the 4th largest site in the world and has pushed the Wikimedia Foundation down to the 5th largest web property. Wikipedia is still far above an beyond the most popular non commercial website. By the way; the ranking of Wikizine is 50% up to become the 2,983,528th most popular site :)      (Source:Alexa) 
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/04/facebook-is-now-the-fourth-largest-site-in-the-world/

[African Wikipedias] - Swahili Wikipedia "has raced ahead with great momentum" and surpassed Afrikaans as the largest African Wikipedia by number of articles.  There's also stats about the other African Wikipedias and sister projects.
http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=614 -- blog post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa -- African languages

[Wikipedias] - the Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500,000 articles, the Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 90,000, and the Latin Wikipedia reached 30,000 articles with the addition of "Magninovilla".

[EN Wikinews] - Not really a direct goal of Wikinews to have many "articles" but nevertheless the English language Wikinews has surpassed 15,000 news stories.
http://en.wikinews.org

=== Other news ===

[wikiHow&MediaWiki] - wikiHow showcased an interesting article (on its twitter feed) about how to make a MediaWiki skin, worth a read if you're ever in the need for a new skin. :-)
https://twitter.com/wikiHow/status/3111069632

[Mobile Feedback] - the Mobile Wikipedia site requested feedback from its users and got a few interesting results, you might get a laugh out of them!
http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/08/amusing-mobile-feedback/

[Correction: WMUK&Schools] - we previously reported that the new WMUK schools project was about revisiting its "Wikipedia Version for Schools" project.  This is actually a new initiative, one focused on going into schools and teaching the staff and students how to effectively use and contribute to Wikipedia.
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Schools_project

[Wiktionary users] - Dvortygirl posted an interesting blog post about the type of users who are attracted to writing a dictionary.  She found that most of the people in the #wiktionary IRC channel all shared similar characteristics to her (and a Dutch Wiktionary visitor), more information in the blog post.
http://dvortygirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/wiktionary-type.html

=== Quote ===

"About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all."  - Rita Mae Brown

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Editor(s): Casey, Alex, Walter
Thanks to: Cary, David, Brianna, Phoebe, Bryan, Steve, Brion, Sage, Hampton, Signpost, Naoko, Bark, ErikZ, Jay, wikihow, Mecredis, Liam, Jessica, Pavel, Leinad, Mile K., Dvortygirl, St-Lemur
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
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