Year: 2007 Week: 31 Number: 78

Foundation

• [Wikimania 2007] – In a few days the Wikimedia event of the year will start: Wikimania. From 3 Augusts until 5 Augusts in Taiwan. For so as possible Wikizine will attempt to provide reports about Wikimania during the event. Extra editions are probable but the blog that used to post Wikizine in English will be updated frequently during the days.  Wikizine is at present one person who is not at Wikimania. So all coverage will be limited to availability to online access to the event. Attempts will be made to create audio recordings of some of the presentations from the audio live-stream if present and to put those online very soon. Contributions from people who are there are very welcome.

• [Wikipedia Academy] – Wikimedia Deutschland is organising the second Wikipedia Academy to be held in Mainz on August 24th and 25th, 2007.  The conference will focus on the humanities in Wikipedia, aiming for a dialogue between researchers and Wikipedians. The Wikipedia Academy will be sponsored by the German Ministry for Education and Research. The conference will be opened by Doris Ahnen, Minister of Education, Research, Youth und Culture in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, and Elke Lütjen-Drecoll, President of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. A price, the “Johann Heinrich Zedler Medal” will be awarded. Wikimedia Deutschland and the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature award this prize for an outstanding encyclopedia article in the area of the humanities. The Zedler Medal comes with 3,000 Euro and is sponsored by the German scientific journal “Gehirn&Geist”. The selection jury consists of seven renowned scientists.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/18958  — Read more
• [Correction of Wikizine 77 Extra] – regarding the results of the board election; Michael Snow has the 5th place (and not the 6th), Danny Wool has the 6th place (and not the 7th)
• [Request for comments] – the community is invited to provide feedback about the proceedings of the recent board election.
  • http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comments/Board_Election_2007

Technical news

• [Special:ProtectedPages] – Now specifies whether pages are cascade protected or not
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Protectedpages

Request for help

• [Checkuser] – Request for feedback about the current check-user policy and related matters.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/18974

Community

• [Natinalistic Wikipedia?] – The topic was raised on the mailing list Wikipedia-l that the Armenian Wikipedia was using a Wikipedia logo with colors of the Armenian flag. Anthere (WMF chair) said about that “Whilst I am supportive of temporary (as in “24 hours”) fun logo for special events, setting up a permanent derivative logo is really wrong, in particular when it refers to a nation.”.  The Armenian Wikipedia has changed the logo back to the normal one.
  • http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/30344
• [Wikigame] – The first computer game in the Piedmontese language is created,  a clone of Colonization.  For this BetaWiki, the wiki used for the localization of MediaWiki was used. Piedmontese is a small language spoken in a part of Italy and has its own Wikipedia.
  • http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/First_computer_game_in_Piedmontese_language

Media

• [“The Wikipedia Story”] – A half-hour BBC Radio 4 radioshow about Wikipedia.
  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ram/wikipediastory.ram  — RealAudio
  • Get “file not found?” If it does not work anymore and you wish to hear the recording contact Wikizine
• [SpyWiki] – A story has appeared on /.  about an article claiming that an admin on the English Wikipedia is a secret agent. Jimmy Wales responded;  “This story is demented and broken on so many levels, it is quite difficult to know where to begin, even. Here we have an excellent Wikipedia administrator who has been victimized by lunatic conspiracy theorists, a private person who has absolutely no relation to the wild stories that this article promulgates.”
  • http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=374006&rel_no=1
  • http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/27/1943254
  • http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=256781&cid=20018335
• [Thank you wikipedia.com] – Not new but original. To make sure that is no confusion about it; this is not a real commercial for Wikipedia by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du1XrldPzn8

Stats

• [Wikipedia] – Can Teenagers Write An Encyclopedia?

<quote>
Google has changed its search algorithm in late 2005-early 2006. I have been monitoring 154 keywords on Google since 1999. Of these, the number one (#1) search result in 128 keywords is now a Wikipedia article. More than a quarter (38 out of 128) of these “articles” are what the Wikipedia calls “stubs” (one or two sentences to be expanded by Wikipedians in the future). Between 7 and 10 of the articles that made it to the much-coveted number one spot are … empty pages, placeholders, yet to be written! (These results were obtained in early 2007).
</quote>

• • http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=3134&cid=1&sid=112

Other news

• [Metapedia] – not a Wikimedia project – is the “alternative encyclopedia dedicated to the pro-European cultural struggle”. It uses the racistic POV.
  • http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/23/metapedia/
  • http://www.metapedia.org/

Quote

“But even with all of its flaws and failures, America is still a democracy, and Americans still enjoy certain basic freedoms that are unknown to the average Chinese. In our panic over economic questions, we’ve forgotten that many, if not most, Chinese citizens are still living in desperate conditions under a repressive government. Jimmy Wales hasn’t forgotten that. May the founders and executives at Google, Yahoo and others learn from his example.” — From “Free wikis for China” by Caille Millner

• • http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/29/EDGGDR5N211.DTL