Table of Contents
Technical news
- [Babel on all Wikis] – There are a great deal of templates and signs that one can put on there user page. One of the most useful are the Babel-templates that indicate the knowledge of different languages. Now is there an extension active on all wikis for that. No need to manually setup all those templates on all wikis. The structure is easy; see the excellent blog posting of Mister Internationalisation himself – Gerard Meijssen.
- [New mobile gateway] – There is a new mobile gateway active for the Wikipedias. The the other projects will follow. This is provided by new extension of MediaWiki 1.17, the software our wikis are using. This replaces the old mobile gateway.
- [MediaWiki 1.8] – As announced in the TechFlash upgrade of the wikis is in progress. New functions in MediaWiki 1.8 include;
– Support for gender-specific user pages: languages that have different words for User whether the user is male or female will be able to show the male or the female version, if the user has specified their gender in their preferences.
– MediaWiki 1.18 will make it easier for left-to-right and right-to-left text to coexist on the same page.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/
- [Fundraiser-time?] – You could encounter the well known gigantic donation banner “personal appeal by …”. But no, it is not again the big fundraiser event. But only a banner test. If you see it then you where lucky. It is only at EN Wikipedia for anonymous users and generally only in certain countries. The tests are currently being conducted for 1 hour once a week. The real fundraiser will proably be in November. But, test or not, donations are welcome.
- [Techs share knowledge] – Running a massive infrastructure like the WMF is using also mean that collect knowledge how to do that. In line with the mission of the WMF detailed information about the configuration of the system has been released so that others can learn from it.
- [Operations Engineer goals] – In another post, Ryan Lane gives a longer story about his goals for the past year.
Request for help
- [Petition to UNSECO] – Wikimedia Foundation, with full support of founder Jimmy Wales, is asking to support the request to the UNESCO to recognize Wikipedia as the first “digital World Cultural Heritage Site”. Over 51,000 people have signed the petition already. Your are suggested to spread the word of this petition (after you signed) by all the communication channels of the modern day. If you sign the petition need to confirm by a link send by e-mail
- [Sign-up for translation] – Frequently there are messages that need to be translated in, if possible, all the languages of the projects. If you like to volunteer to be a translator you can register yourself (see link) so when you are needed you can be contacted.
Bureaucracy
- [Stewards election] – You can vote in the election for new stewards until 6 October. According to the present situation, 9 Wikimedians have a good chance to become stewards: Axpde, Bencmq, Bennylin, Quadell, Quentinv57, Teles, Trijnstel, Vituzzu and Wikitanvir.
Movement
- [German Wikipedia] – On 15 September a poll on the German Wikipedia questioning participants about the proposed image filter was closed. German Wikipedians rejected implementation of an image filter on the German Wikipedia by a 86.23% majority (430 votes, 357 against, 57 in favour, 16 neutral).
- http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068502.html
- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Einf%C3%BChrung_pers%C3%B6nlicher_Bildfilter (proposal, arguments and votes)
- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Einf%C3%BChrung_pers%C3%B6nlicher_Bildfilter/en (proposal and arguments translation to English)
- [Germanophone WikiConvention] – Wikimedians from the three major German speaking countries gathered to share their knowledge about Wikipedia, Wikimedia and other wikis at the first ‘WikiConvention‘. More than 170 participants attended.
- [Deletionism] – “Wikipedia needs to return to simplicity” is a blog post by Urpo Lankinen in which the author explains why deletionism is bad.
- [European Year of Volunteering 2011] – On September 12, 2011 a group of Polish Wikimedians took part in an open public event of the European Year of Volunteering in Warsaw.
- http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=pl&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.pl&sl=pl&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://wyborcza.pl/1,91446,10276273,W_Pawilonie_ERW_dzien_e_wolontariatu.html&usg=ALkJrhjmnsC5XwCIo-fZsSmYuiR8RmFKCA
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ERW-2011
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_volunteering
Foundation
- [WMF; no test] – The Wikimedia Foundation declined to allow developers to make a trial for restricting non-autoconfirmed users from creating articles on English Wikipedia. The rejection comes despite the support of around 2/3 of involved participants (~500 editors took a part). Discussion about the proposal on English Wikipedia started on 3 April 2011 and concluded on 27 May. Discussion about the implementation started on 11 July and concluded on 18 August. A bugzilla bug request was filled on 3 August, but developers refused to implement it. On 14 September Erik Moeller said that “[WMF] believe that creating a restriction of this type is a strong a statement of exclusion, not inclusion, and that it will confuse and deter good faith editors” and rejected the proposal, which sparked long discussion and resignation by community.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Proposal_to_require_autoconfirmed_status_in_order_to_create_articles
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Proposal_to_require_autoconfirmed_status_in_order_to_create_articles/Trial_duration
- https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208
- https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208#c43
- http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068494.html
- [Board minutes] – The Board has published minutes from Wikimania meeting of 3 August.
Chapters
- [WM UK grants] – Wikimedia UK gives scholarships for traveling to the Wikimedia India conference for Wikimedians from UK. Deadline for applications is 27 September, 19:30 BST (UTC+1).
- [Wikipedia promo] – Wikimedia Sverige will be present at the Gothenburg Book Fair, around 100,000 visitors are expected to come by so it will be busy. WM Sverige has made 3 short silent movies to play at there stand. Because the are silent the can be used easily also by other Chapters, Wikimedia events. Wikimedia Sverige is even willing to localize it for you on request.
Chapters reports
- [Wikimedia UK] – Wikimedia UK has published August 2011 report.
- [Wikimedia Philippines] – Wikimedia Philippines published annual report for 2010.
Science
- [Wikimedia Ambassador survey] – Results from first Wikipedia Ambassador survey released by WMF.
- [Wikipedia on WikiSym 2011] – The technical session during WikiSym 2011 “Understanding Wikipedia” will feature four presentations: “WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance”, “Gender Differences in Wikipedia Editing”, “Finding Patterns in Behavioral Observations by Automatically Labeling Forms of Wikiwork in Barnstars” and “What Wikipedia Deletes: Characterizing Dangerous Collaborative Content”.
- [Wikipedia’s gender imbalance] – Paper “Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance” from Wikisym 2011 has been published. The CBC interviewed Sue Gardner and published a story about it.
Media
- [Wikipedia Signpost] – A new edition of the Wikipedia Signpost has been published. Harry Burt (User:Jarry1250), the Signpost’s editor-in-chief, leaves the Signpost to User:SMasters and User:Skomorokh, as his studies are going to begin soon. In this edition you can read the following stories and more: On the Wikinews fork, Back to school, ArbCom narrowly rejects application to open new case and so on.
Anniversaries
- [Slovak Wikipedia] – 23 September 2003 is the best possible approximation of the date when the Slovak Wikipedia was created [1][2]. Slovak is a West Slavic language [3][4] spoken by 7 million people, mostly in Slovakia. Slovak Wikipedia has more than 127,000 articles [5] and more than 550 active users. Statistics [6] shows that Slovak Wikipedia is among the stable projects, which have a more or less constant number of new, active and very active Wikipedians.
- [1] http://sk.wikipedia.org/
- [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20030923070746/http://sk.wikipedia.org/
- [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_language
- [4] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=slk
- [5] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=slk
- [Waray-Waray Wikipedia] – On 25 September the Waray-Waray Wikipedia[1][2] will be six years old. Waray-Waray[3] is an Austronesian language[3][4] spoken by 3.1 million inhabitants of Visayas[5] and Masbate[6] provinces of Philippines. It is used as a trade language, too. The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has more than 102,000 articles. Counting the number of speakers and considering the economic situation in Philippines, Waray-Waray Wikipedia is quite an active and successful project [7][8] (note the increase of new editors in 2010 in comparison to the number of new articles added to Wikipedia). Here is a short story about the beginnings of the Waray-Waray Wikipedia by war:User:Harvzs [9], the initiator of the Waray-Waray Wikipedia.
- The proposal for the Waray-Waray Wikipedia was made on or about June 23, 2005. The native speakers who volunteered to help edit was myself (User:Harvzsf in Meta) and User:v.oyzon. User:Katimawan2005 and User:Bentong from the Kapampangan and Cebuano Wikipedias were also among those who lent their support. The test-wikipedia was set up in Meta shortly after although test wikipedias weren’t mandatory at that time and Incubator hadn’t been in existence. The reason for the test Wikipedia was for the double purpose of creating content in the event that the request to create the wiki was granted and also to get some practice on how to create and edit the wiki. The Waray Wikipedia was created on or about September 24, 2005 along with the Neapolitan and Judeo-Spanish/Ladino Wikipedias. By a coincidence, the ISO codes for the 3 wikipedias coincided with actual one-syllable words in the English language war, nap and lad respectively
) Shortly after, I obtained administrator rights on the Waray-Waray Wikipedia. Ten days after the Waray-Waray Wikipedia was created, it reached 100 articles (the 100th article was war:Guiuan, Eastern Samar).
- The proposal for the Waray-Waray Wikipedia was made on or about June 23, 2005. The native speakers who volunteered to help edit was myself (User:Harvzsf in Meta) and User:v.oyzon. User:Katimawan2005 and User:Bentong from the Kapampangan and Cebuano Wikipedias were also among those who lent their support. The test-wikipedia was set up in Meta shortly after although test wikipedias weren’t mandatory at that time and Incubator hadn’t been in existence. The reason for the test Wikipedia was for the double purpose of creating content in the event that the request to create the wiki was granted and also to get some practice on how to create and edit the wiki. The Waray Wikipedia was created on or about September 24, 2005 along with the Neapolitan and Judeo-Spanish/Ladino Wikipedias. By a coincidence, the ISO codes for the 3 wikipedias coincided with actual one-syllable words in the English language war, nap and lad respectively
- [1] http://war.wikipedia.org/
- [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waray-Waray_Wikipedia
- [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waray-Waray_language
- [4] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=war
- [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visayas
- [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masbate
- [7] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaWAR.htm
- [8] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaWAR.htm
- [9] http://war.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Harvzs
- [Polish Wikipedia] – On 26 September the Polish Wikipedia [1][2] Will be 10 years old. Polish is a West Slavic language spoken by more than 40 million speakers [3][4], mostly from Poland. With more than 831,000 articles [5], the Polish Wikipedia is the fifth largest Wikipedia by number of articles. During its first years of existence, the Polish Wikipedia was filled with a lot of bot-generated articles, which created significant positive feedback from Polish speakers and made the Polish Wikipedian community one of the most vital ones [6].
Wikimedia Poland [7][8] was created on 15 August 2005 thanks to the work of Polish Wikipedians. Wikimedia Poland recognizes its 10th anniversary of the project by organizing a conference to be held on September 24-25, in Poznan, Poland [9][10].
- [1] http://pl.wikipedia.org/
- [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Wikipedia
- [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language
- [4] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pol
- [5] http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specjalna:Statystyka
- [6] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaPL.htm (cf. new articles per day and new editors)
- [7] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Polska
- [8] http://pl.wikimedia.org/
- [9] http://10lat.wikipedia.pl
- [10] http://tinyurl.com/42tkjub (Google translate)
Press release of Wikimedia Poland is below:
- The Polish Wikipedia was founded on September 26, 2001, being the eighth eldest Wikipedia to be established. Over the years, Polish Wikipedians have created over 830,000 articles, of which almost 500 have received a “Featured Article” status and additional 1,000 being categorised as “Good Articles”.
- In a continuation of the year-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of Wikipedia, the Polish Wikipedia community is going to celebrate the 10th birthday of the project, with a conference being held on September 24—25 in Poznań, Poland. Two weeks earlier, on September 10, the public exhibition of the winning POTY (Picture of the Year) pictures has been opened in one of the most prestigious shopping and art centres in Poland, the Stary Browar (Old Brewery). 16 pictures, chosen by Wikimedians from all over the world in an annual POTY contest, are shown at the exhibition, with descriptions provided in Polish, English and German.
- The conference will take place in the heart of the very best location in Poznań. It will be open to the public, as one of the main goals of the organisers is to involve people from outside the Wikimedia movement; therefore, the conference is heavily advertised in the local media, with increasing daily press coverage.
- The event will consist of about 15 presentations and talks about Wikipedia. They will discuss Wikipedia’s place in court judgements; Wikipedia’s role as a source of information; the now-hot topic of women in the Wikipedia community, and many more topics. They will take an outside look at Wikipedia with a public screening of the documentary film Truth in Numbers?, which will be followed by a discussion, a short surprise from the organising team, and the real celebration: a massive Wikipedia birthday cake.
- The Polish chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation has generously decided to refund the costs of coming to the conference for Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe; as of September 20, 13 Wikipedians from Azerbaijan, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine and even Philippines have signed up for the conference. If you can’t join us and you understand some Polish, don’t worry — all talks from the conference will be streamed live on a special Internet radio. After the event, all talks – audio and video – will be released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence and made available on-line.
- Polish Wikipedians hope to have a great event, and even if you can’t join them, please keep your fingers crossed!
Stats
- [RU WP] Russia Wikipedia has overtaken Japanese Wikipedia by the articles’ count on 21 September 2011.
- http://tinyurl.com/3cv7tlk — RU Wikipedia
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikipedias%2FTable&action=historysubmit&diff=2916894&oldid=2913733
Events and meetups
- [24 September] – Wiki Takes de Zaan (Netherlands) will be held on September 24th.
- [24 September] – Wikipedia Takes Göteborg, Sweden
- [24 September] – Wikipedia Takes Porto, Portugal
- [24-25 September] – Polish Wikipedia community, supported by Wikimedia Polska, is going to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the project (founded on September 26, 2001) with a conference to be held on September 24-25, in Poznan, Poland.
- http://10lat.wikipedia.pl
- http://tinyurl.com/42tkjub (Google translate)
- [25 September] – Wikipedia Takes Cologne, Germany
- [25 September] – Wikipedia Takes Lisbon, Portugal
- [3-5 October] – WikiSym – The International Symposium on Wikis and Open collaboration -2011 with the session “Understanding Wikipedia”.
Wikizine
- [Your reports] – Post your news for the next edition of Wikizine on Meta or in our Google form.
Quote
“Wikinews: Just because we wrote it in our pyjamas doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take us seriously.” — IRC quote
