Wikizine News – Year: 2011 Week: 40 Number: 130

Movement

• [30 September] – The last day of the project Wiki Loves Monuments for this year is September 30th. So if you still have pictures of monuments, it is not yet to late to share them on Commons and maybe win a prize. Currently there are already more then 125,000 new pictures added to commons in this one month of Wikimedia Loves Monuments. Yes – 125,000 – that is correct. And … one country is  Done – Andorra has now 100% of the monuments photographed!

  http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu

  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

• [Image filter] – Discussion about ethical problems with image filter implementation on Wikisource started by John Vanderberg, one of the most active Wikisource editors and the chair of Wikimedia Australia.

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Image_filter_on_Wikisource

Technical news

• [Automatic photo orientation] – Brion Vibber informs us about automatic photo orientation in MediaWiki 1.18. At least if the orientation information is available in the EXIF-information.

  http://leuksman.com/log/2011/09/23/automatic-photo-orientation-in-mediawiki-1-18/

• [New look on statistics] – Erik Zachte created a new new look for Wikimedia statistics. Interpretation of data in editorial of this week’s Opinion edition.

  http://infodisiac.com/blog/2011/09/summary-reports-for-all-wikimedia-wikis/

• [Wikimedia India conference] – India Hackathon 2011 will be held during Wikimedia India conference (18-20 November).

  http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/25/india-hackathon-2011/

Foundation

• [Google Summer of Code] – Sumana Harihareswara, WMF’s Volunteer Development Coordinator, published a report on Wikimedia-related projects from the Google Summer of Code.

  http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/22/gsoc-students-reach-project-milestones/

  http://code.google.com/soc/

• [Jon Harald Søby becomes Community Fellow] – Jon’s fellowship will run until February 2012. His project priorities include recruiting and coordinating more translators for more languages, building pages and processes that make it easier for new volunteers to get started, and improving systems for producing high-quality translations.

  http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/announcing-community-fellow-jon-harald-soby/

  https://sugar.corp.wikimedia.org/translators/translators.php?referrer=wikizine — Sign up to be a translator

Jimmy Wales

• [London startup competition] – Jimmy is leading the jury for a new startup funding event kicking off in London this December.

  http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/09/22/wikipedia-co-founder-jimmy-wales-heads-up-new-london-startup-competition/

• [On Wikipedia and Facebook] – Jimmy on Wikipedia and Facebook for The Huffington Post.

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/26/wikipedia-jimmy-wales_n_982243.html

  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/27/wales_no_outing_wikipedia_on_facebook/

• [Why ‘like’ button isn’t enough?] – Jimmy thinks that the ‘like’ button isn’t enough.

  http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/fast-chat-jimmy-wales-135257

Chapters

• [Wikimedia India] – Wikimedia India opened blog.

  http://wikimedia.in/?p=26

• [Wikimedia Germany] – Wikimedia Germany published the book “Alles über Wikipedia – und die Menschen hinter der größten Enzyklopädie der Welt”, which is the first ever book in the catalogue of a traditional German publisher that is published under a free license.

  http://wikimedia.de/wiki/Wikipedia_Buch

  http://philippebeaudette.com/great-news-from-wikimedia-deutschland/

• [Wikimedia Poland] – Wikimedia Poland celebrated 10 years of the Polish Wikipedia. The Polish media covered the event.

  http://www.poland.pl/news/article,Polish_Wikipedia_is_10_Years_Old,id,461162.htm

  http://www.thenews.pl/1/12/Artykul/55748,Polish-Wikipedia-marks-10th-anniversary

• [Wiki Loves Monuments] – Wiki Loves Monuments officially ends on 30 September, although there will be some events after the official end.

  http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/wiki-loves-monuments-comes-to-a-close/

• [Wiki Takes Cologne] – Wiki took Cologne, Germany in one of the last events of this year’s Wiki Loves Monuments campaign. Jimmy Wales got Leonardo Award in Cologne.

  http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/2011/09/25/wiki-loves-monuments-cologne-koeln/

  http://blog.wikimedia.de/2011/09/25/wiki-loves-monuments-koln/ (in German)

  http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/leonardo-award-in-cologne/

• [Wikimedia UK CEO] – Jon Davies is the new CEO of Wikimedia UK.

  http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/welcoming-our-new-chief-executive/

• [Wikimedia UK charity status] – Wikimedia UK wants to get charity status. It will hold an Extraordinary General Meeting (a formal and required step for the organization) on 16 October to organize those efforts.

  http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2011/09/egm-16th-october-help-us-become-a-charity/

Languages

• [The difference #Urdu makes] – Gerard Meijssen published a blog post on Philippe Beaudette’s blog about Urdu writing systems.

  http://philippebeaudette.com/the-difference-urdu-makes/

• [RTL support] – Amir Aharoni wrote on Gerard Meijssen’s blog about MediaWiki RTL support during the upgrade to the version 1.18.

  http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/09/mediawiki-rtl-support-when-upgrading-to.html

• [Better localization support] – Niklas Laxström presents a new way of localization in MediaWiki.

  http://laxstrom.name/blag/2011/09/26/mediawiki-grows-up-no-more-playing-with-lego/

Media

• [Wikipedia Signpost] – A new Wikipedia Signpost has been published. In this edition you can read: Opinion essay: The global mission, the image filter and the “German question”, WikiProject Automobiles, Top female Wikipedians, reverted newbies, WikiSym previews and so on.

  http://www.wikipediasignpost.com/blog/?p=438

Anniversaries

• [1 October] – Newari Wikipedia will become five years old. Newari or Nepal Bhasa or Newah Bhaye is a Sino-Tibetan language of Tibeto-Burman branch spoken by more than 800,000 people, mostly in Nepal. Newari Wikipedia has around 70,000 content pages, but it is barely active.

  http://new.wikipedia.org/

  http://new.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=4

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal_Bhasa

  http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=new

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibeto-Burman_languages

  http://new.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

  http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaNEW.htm

• [Other anniversaries] – During the next month the Korean and Malay Wikipedias will become nine years old, while Abkhaz and Albanian will become eight years old. Wikimedia France will become seven years old, while Wikimedia Sweden will become four years old.

Wikizine

• [Your reports] – Post your news for the next edition of Wikizine on Meta or in our Google form.

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/EN2011-131

  http://tinyurl.com/wikizine-feedback

Events and meetups

• [21 August – 6 October] – Stewards election.

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2

  • [21 August – 6 October] – Questions to candidates.

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Questions

  • [15 September – 6 October] – Voting.

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2011-2/Guidelines/en#Voters

• [19 September – 4 October] – Wikimedia servers upgrades to MediaWiki 1.18

  http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/16/mediawiki118iscomin/

  • [19 September] – Monday, September 19, 23:00-01:00 UTC — Production test: test2.wikipedia.org – this stage will ensure that 1.18 is compatible with the rest of our production infrastructure. There’s a small chance that changes here could affect all wikis.
  • [21 September] – Wednesday, September 21, 23:00-03:00 UTC — Stage 1: simple.wikipedia.org, simple.wiktionary.org, usability.wikimedia.org, strategy.wikimedia.org, mediawiki.org, he.wikisource.org
  • [26 September] – Monday, September 26, 23:00-03:00 UTC — Stage 2: meta.wikimedia.org, en.wikiquote.org, en.wikibooks.org, beta.wikiversity.org, eo.wikipedia.org, nl.wikipedia.org
  • [4 October] – Tuesday, October 4, 23:00-03:00 UTC — Stage 3: remaining wikis.

• [30 September] – The last day of the project Wiki Loves Monuments for this year is September 30th.

  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2011

• [1 October] – A Backstage Pass tour is an event aimed at sharing the expertise of real-world cultural institutions with our wiki-expertise. Wikimedia UK organizes it at Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, UK.

  http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Backstage_Pass

• [1 October] – Washington DC meetup #23. Wiki DC board elections.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC_23

• [3-5 October] – WikiSym 2011 with the session “Understanding Wikipedia”.

  http://www.wikisym.org/category/wikisym-2011/

  http://www.wikisym.org/2011/09/14/session-preview-understanding-wikipedia/

• [7-8 October] – Board meeting, San Francisco, California, USA

  http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Minutes/2011-08-03&oldid=68235#Welcome_.26_Housekeeping_Items

• [8 October]: Cambridge 12 meetup

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Cambridge/12

• [8 October]: National Archives (Wikimedia DC meetup 24)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA_2

• [14 October]: Wikimedia UK’s Extraordinary General Meeting

  http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/EGM_2011

• [26-30 October] – Wikipedia conference in Esperanto will be held in Svitavy’s Esperanto museum, in Svitavy, Czech Republic.

  http://www.vikimanio.estranky.cz/

  http://www.transparent.com/esperanto/wikipedia-conference-in-esperanto-oct-26-30-2011/

  http://www.muzeum.esperanto.cz/eo/cxefa

Did you know …

… what protocol relative URLs are?

Normal URLs look like: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page or https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
Both of these URLs define the protocol that will be used. Protocol relative URLs look like this: //test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Dropping the protocol from the URL allows the browser to assign the current protocol to the URL. So, if you are visiting the site in HTTPS mode, links will point to HTTPS, and if you are visiting the site in HTTP mode, links will point to HTTP.

• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/07/19/protocol-relative-urls-enabled-on-test-wikipedia-org — full post about this by Ryan Lane
• http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/09/27/protocol-relative-urls-enabled-on-all-wikimedia-foundation-wikis/ — protocol relative URLs are now live

Quote

“I’m sort of the anti-Julian Assange. I’m actually a nice person. I don’t mean to say anything negative about him, but he’s widely regarded as difficult.” — Jimmy Wales

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/fast-chat-jimmy-wales-135257