Year: 2007 Week: 19 Number: 70

Technical news

• [Password security]  – After several user accounts on EN Wikipedia where cracked password security has been increased. From now on if an incorrect password is entered you will need to pass a captcha test when trying again. The passwords of the sysops on EN Wikipedia and Commons has been checked against very weak passwords and some are locked. Those users can login again by requesting a new password, at least if the provided a valid email address in there preferences. The check could be expanded to other wikis also and it is possible that additional security measures will be taken. It is highly recommended to make sure you have good password and a valid email address for your account.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/71181
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Admins_desysopped

Request for help

• [Board election] – WMF board member Jan-Bart de Vreede is looking for candidates for the “Election Committee” that will at least prepare and possibly also manage the upcoming board elections. Election committee members can not run as candidates for the board and are not allowed to vote. Applications can be send in until 13th of May. See lists posting for more information.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16727

Foundation

• [New chapter] – A new Wikimedia chapter is founded; Wikimedia Israel.
  • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Israel

Community

• [Re-branding] – WMF boardmember Erik Moeller has posted a proposal to change the names of the Wikimedia projects to a name starting with “Wikipedia” because that is the strongest brand. So for example Wikiquote would become “Wikipedia Quotes”. This proposal is a personal idea of Erik and is not a board idea. This idea does not seem to get  a lot of support.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16813  — Main thread
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16945
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16931
• [Sponsor] – A Norwegian Wikipedian is awarded a scholarship for working on the Nynorsk Wikipedia by an organization aiming to promote the use of Nynorsk as a written language .
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-07/Wikipedian_scholarship
• [EN Wikinews] – Get original reporting by asking someone else to do it.
  • http://wikinewsreports.blogspot.com/2007/04/wikinews-sends-reporter-to-province_30.html

Awards

• [DE Wikimedia] –  Wikimedia Deutschland, the german local WMF chapter, awards a price, the Zedler-Medaille, for an article (or the significant improvement of an article) in the german Wikipedia. The article must be in the area of humanities. The award is endowed with 3000 Euro and is funded by the German magazine “Gehirn und Geist” [“Brain and Mind”] and allocated in co-operation with the Academy of Science and Literature in Mainz as part of the german “Year of Humanities”.
  • http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Zedler-Medaille
  • http://www.wikimedia.de/zedler-medaille
  • http://www.abc-der-menschheit.de/coremedia/generator/wj/de/__Downloads/Pressemitteilungen__Partner/Zedler-Medaille.pdf

Stats

• [en.wikiquote] – The English Wikiquote has reached 10,000 articles. The milestone is Langdon Smith posted by Kalki.
  • http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Langdon_Smith
• [ar.wp] – The Arabic Wikipedia announces that the are almost at 30,000 articles. The are now 35th largest Wikipedia. The have made a celebration logo for the event.
  • http://ar.wikipedia.org
• [ga.wp] – The Irish Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
  • http://ga.wikipedia.org

Other news

• [Encyclopedia of Life] – Yet again a new encyclopedia project. But this one has very, very serious funding so most likely this one will not fail or at least not in the short run. There mission is ambitious; “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth available everywhere by single access on command.” And is exactly what the are planing to do. The content will primary be imported from several existing sources, authenticated by scientists and used in the encyclopedia. The first pages are expected to be live by mid 2008. The hope to get the work done for creating articles about every organism in 10 years.  The also plan to have the encyclopedia available in several languages. The licence the will use is not yet known. If the can make true what the announce the Encyclopedia Of Life will be a very strong competition for Wikipedia and Wikispecies for fauna and flora.  The Wikimedia Foundation is a partner of “Encyclopedia Of Life”.
  • http://www.eol.org/home.html — See the video and notice the interface
  • http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/08/226230
  • http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/05/09/encyclopedia-of-life/
  • http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/05/08/a-new-encyclopedia-of-life-announced/ — Larry Sanger about EOL
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/16907
• [kab.wp] – A new Wikipedia is born; number 251. This one is on Kabyle language, a language the can use an encyclopedia.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabyle_language
  • http://kab.wikipedia.org

Did you know …

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

“Peace is good for business” – Rule 35
“More is good. All is better.” – Rule 242
“After you’ve exploited someone, it never hurts to thank them. That way, it’s easier to exploit them next time.” – Rule 299 (Unofficial Rule)