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.org
Year: 2007 Week: 28 Number: 77
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
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=== Technical news ===
[Spam-blacklist] - For a long time is there on meta the spam
blacklist. That list is used to make it impossible to save a page the
contains the domains the are listed on the blacklist. More recent but
also since a long time the local wikis have a local white-list to
overrule the global blacklist on Meta. Now there is also a local
blacklist. So if you want to block a domain it can be blocked by
requesting to include it on the global list on meta or you can put it
on your local list so it is only blocked on your wiki.
[[MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist]]
[[MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist]]
[New special page] - There is new special page and it is even a useful
new special page. [[Special:DeletedContributions]]. By means of this
page a sysop can very easy get a list of all the deleted contributions
of any user.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/32551
[Ugly bug] - One of the fundamentals of concept of the wiki-software
is that you can see in the history who has edited what and when.
Tuesday there was a bug in the system of the wikis that resulted in
random edits being saved to an other specific article on that wiki. On
the dutch Wikipedia the edits ended up in the article about Albert
Speer. This bug is fixed now. The result is that users could have done
a normal edit from there point of view edit but when you look the edit
is saved and logged in an totally other article. So it could look like
you have vandalized that article when reviewing the history.
=== Request for help ===
[Wikizine] - The English edition of Wikizine is looking for a core
editor, the German version for a translator. Please only respond if
serious.
http:/report.wikizine.org
[Wikimedia Canada] - The people attempting to found a Canadian chapter
are looking for people to help out, especially with the legal stuff.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Canada
=== Foundation ===
[Board elections] - The elections are closed. The results are expected
to be announced on July 15. There are 4179 votes counted. Invalid
votes are not yet deducted from that number.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-07-09/Board_elections
https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Reports/Day_10
[New hire] The WMF has hired Mike Godwin as "General Counsel and Legal
Coordinator" = the WMF lawyer. Mike Godwin is the person most geeks of
us know from "Godwin's Law".
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/17982
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-07-09/New_hires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin
[Wikimania] - The first draft version of the schedule for Wikimania is
online. Being a draf it can change but at least now you can have an
idea about what will happen.
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule
[Board meeting] - Report of the in person board meeting in june in
the Netherlands.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/June_1-3%2C_2007
[Removal] - Carolyn Doran, who works as Chief Operating Officer since
January 2007 for the WMF, is removed from the list of the current
staff of the WMF. This suggests that Carolyn does not work anymore for
the WMF.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff
[Wikimedia Taiwan] - The WMF has given Wikimedia Taiwan the formal
status as a Wikimedia Chapter.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Taiwan
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Taiwan
=== Community ===
[Murder he wrote] - On the EN Wikipedia an anonymous users included in
the article about [[w:en:Chris Benoit]], professional wrestler, that
his wife was dead. This was many hours before the police discovered
the wife of Chris benoit (and himself and son) dead. Writing that
someone is dead before the police knows about it is suspicious
behavior. It was noticed and reported by EN Wikinews. Also the police
noticed this event and investigated it. The anonymous user posted on
the talk pages of EN Wikinews extensive statements that it was all a
coincidence and that he had nothing to do with the dead. The police
was able to locate the anonymous users was after interrogation
convinced that he was not involved with the murders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-07-02/Wrestler_death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Death_of_Nancy_Benoit_rumour_posted_on_Wikipedia_hours_prior_to_body_being_found
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit_mystery_editor_confesses:_Claims_%22terrible_coincidence%22
[DE Wikipedia] - The German Wikipedia will get support from the German
state. The idea is to pay experts to work on certain articles on the
DE Wikipedia that are about or related to renewable resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-07-02/German_chapter
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/26/159232
[Wikiclosed] - The Chocktaw Wikipedia has been closed. Chocktaw is a
Native American language with arround 9200 speakers. Also Wikipedias
in Kwanyama, Muscogee and Hiri Motu languages are closed. End the
Wiktionaries in Rhaetian and Tibetan languages are closed also.
http://cho.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_language
=== Media ===
[japan] - Newspaper obituary plagiarizes Japanese Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-07-09/Japanese_plagiarism
=== Stats ===
[Vote stats] - Gregory Maxwell has made some graphs to help to
understand the impact of the Board elections across projects. That
graphs are very clear: the board is elected by the English Wikipedia.
Only when you put all the non-EN Wikipedia votes together and besides
the votes from the EN Wikipedia the number of votes comes in the
neighbourhood of the number of EN Wikipedia votes. Many users have not
voted. Depending of the project between 2,5% and 20% of the possible
voters have voted. Not only the voters where not very enthusiastic
about these elections. From the 15 candidates only 5 accepted the
invitation of Wikizine to present them self to the communitity.
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/election_analysis/ivote3/graphs.html
[nds.wp] - The Low Saxon Wikipedia now has reached 10,000 articles
with the article on Erskine Caldwell
http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Caldwell
=== Other news ===
[Wiki Maps] - Openstreetmaps.org is a community project to make free
maps of the world. These are made by a community of volunteers. The
collect the information needed to make the maps from volunteers who
import data from GPS-units that then is used as the raw data for
making the maps and drawing the roads. There are places where the
streets are present in great detail but in general there maps are
still largely empty. The company Automotive Navigation Data has
decided to release there street database of the Netherlands under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence. This will mean
the there will become a free streetmap available of the Netherlands on
Openstreetmaps.org when the data is processed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap
http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=223
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
[Special offer] - Wikizine will provide mailing list hosting service
on request to its readers for Wikimedia related activities. This most
explicitly is not indented to replace the mailing list hosting
service of the WMF. This service is intented as a supplementary
service when a WMF list is not practical or possible. This is in
situations you need very quickly a list for some small temporary
project or as an temporary mailing list while waiting for the creation
of the official WMF list. Creation is subject to approval by the
editor of Wikizine.
== Did you know ... ==
... What WikiGroaning is?
It is the art of comparing the level of two things nerdyness based off
Wikipedia results.
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning.php
http://www.wikigroaning.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikigroaning#Systemic_bias_in_coverage
=== Quote ===
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. -- Mike Godwin"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
//////////////////////////////////////////
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Unique Visitors website last week: 294
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Slomox, NielsF, 555
Contact: reply or http://report.wikizine.org
Website: http://www.wikizine.org
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Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy,
validity and especially but not limited to,
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
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