Wikizine - number: 79

[EN Wikizine]

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Year: 2007  Week: 33   Number: 79

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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community

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=== Technical news ===

[Single User Login] - also known as SUL - is again a step closer to  
implementation. For the newer readers; Single User Login is exactly  
what it sounds like; one login for all WMF wikis. Because many users  
have accounts on many wikis, at not always with the same username,  
making a system to support one login and not breaking to existing  
accounts is complex. This is in the works for several years now. The  
merge function is now live on the test-wiki in demonstration modus for  
testing. (demonstration -> testing = does not really work yet). Brion  
says that beta-testing could start in a couple of weeks.
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical

[pywikipediabot] - The "pywikipediabot" framework, which has been  
hosted at sourceforge for the last almost 4 years, has recently been  
moved to wikimedia servers. This means that robot users will need to  
go to a different server to update their version of the robot software.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikipedia-l -- New mailing list
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/98876 -- A message  
announcing the move

[Redirects] -  The now work with URL-encoded page titles (like  
"#REDIRECT [[foo%20bar]]").

[WP offline] - Building a (fast) Wikipedia offline reader; a user who  
wanted to have Wikipedia on his hard disk to take along explains how  
he done it.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/13/1939231
http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/~ttsiod/buildWikipediaOffline.html

=== Request for help ===

[Wikimania 2008] - Suggestions are requested for locations where to  
organize the next Wikimania in 2008.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2008/Bids

=== Policy ===

[CC 3.0 licence] - Wikimedia commons, our media files project, has  
accepted the 3.0 Creative Commons licence after long discussion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-13/CC_3.0

=== Foundation ===

[Wikimania 2007] - In Taipei Wikimania has accrued like planed. It is  
considered to be successful. At this time only very limited video  
recordings of the events are available. Photographs are present on  
commons and Flickr. The best way of getting the feeling of being there  
are the audio reports of the "Wikipedia Weekly World Service" about  
Wikimania.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.wikimania/309 --  
Refection Wikimania by Ant
http://wikimania.tw/streaming/ -- the available video
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimania_2007 -- images
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/wikimania2007/ -- and some more pictures
http://www.wikipediaweekly.org/  --- start with "Wikimania Day 1:  
Morning Update"

[Wikimedia USA?] - Options are explored about creating chapters inside  
the USA. Until now chapters are created on the national lever of a  
country. For chapters inside the USA the situation is different. There  
is no need for an organization for tax reasons because Wikimedia  
Sint-Petersburg covers that already. It is considered to organize the  
USA chapters by city and not by state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/US_chapter

=== Community ===

[EN Wikinews] - A wikinews reporter was able to get an exclusive  
interview with Tony Benn on U.K. politics.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews:_Tony_Benn_on_U.K._politics

[PL wiki on DVD] - In April was announced in Wikizine 68 that very  
soon a DVD of the Polish language Wikipedia would be on sale in shops  
in Poland. That "soon" is now. It is available for purchase in shops  
in Poland as well as online. The release contains 239 000 articles, 59  
000 images and the dedicated Java software WikiMiner. The DVD costs 39  
PLN (~ 10 EUR, $14). Soon the 8 GB image of the DVD will be available  
for download as well.
http://tinyurl.com/33c8xs

=== Awards ===

[Wikimania Awards 2007] - The Wikimania Awards where awarded. There  
where 7 categories in where people could nominate pictures. On the  
presentation of the winners only winners for 4 categories where  
announced.  Jury member [[User:Cspurrier]] explained that the reason  
was that the intended prices for the winners for the other categories  
did not seemed to exist. And because of that there where no winners  
for the other categories.
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Awards  --- And the  
winners are ...

=== Media ===

[Wikimania] -  What’s Next After Wikimania 2007?
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/08/11/taiwan-whats-next-after-wikimania-2007/

[Wikitracker] - See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a  
Campaign. About the results that you get from "Wikiscanner", a  
(public) database of edits done by anonymous users. And how company's  
and organisations edit there own articles.
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/vote-on-the-top.html
http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

=== Stats ===

[All wp] - All Wikipedias together have reached 8 million articles.
[ja wp] -  The Japanese Wikipedia reaches 400,000 articles.
[commons] -  The Wikimedia Commons has reached 1,750,000 files
[ps wp] - The Pashto Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles.

=== Other news ===

[Wikipedia on stage] - In New York City a small theatre company has  
preformed a play with the name "The Wikipedia Plays" inspired more or  
less on certain articles. The play was made up of 17 very small plays.  
The Signpost has written detailed reporting about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipedia_Plays
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-08-06/Wikipedia_Plays_Review

[Wikizine about underweare??] - When Wikizine was started there was so  
far as could be found nobody else using or had been using the name  
"Wikizine" for an online activity. But that has changed. There is now  
a website the provides a sort of blogs that anyone can edit and those  
blogs are called "Wikizines". The can be about anything.
http://www.zimbio.com/
http://www.zimbio.com/Men's+Underwear+Wikizine+by+UndiesDrawer

[Similpedia] - This is not again yet an other wiki-project. Similpedia  
is a website the finds articles inside the English language Wikipedia  
that are related to the url or text you past inside the search box of  
Similpedia.
http://similpedia.org/

=== Editorial ===

The community of Wikimedia exists on the internet. But sometimes there  
are large gatherings of Wikimedians in the real world; Wikimania. Even  
when Wikimania is a great success with a high numbers of visitors  
there remains a group of very interested Wikimedians who want to  
follow the events but are not physical present. In these modern times  
of one global digital village that can not be a problem. Especially  
for an online technological community as Wikimedia.

The first Wikimania, in 2005 (Frankfurt), there was no live-streaming  
nor archives. But that was very first Wikimania, time to learn and  
grow is necessary, so that is understandable.

For the second Wikimania in Boston, in 2006, there was live-streaming.  
Yes, it was a RealMedia stream but it worked and also for all  
operating systems. The archives of the recordings where a problem.  
During that Wikimania and at several times after it was announced that  
the video archives would come available soon. The never did came  
available.

Now for this Wikimania in 2007 I expected that the online experience  
would be better then in 2006. It was not. It was even significant  
worse. The live-streaming was provided by a sponsor. So far no  
problem. But to see the live-stream you needed to go a website that  
contains advertisement. There you could see the stream on a web-based  
player that starts with a commercial.

For any other organisation or community that would be totally normal.  
But when you consider that the Wikimedia community, with the English  
language Wikipedia on the first row, is fundamentalistic against even  
the smallest form of advertisement or suggesting of commercial  
activity, then it is very weird that the official live-stream of  
Wikimania is so clearly commercial.

Even worse; the live-stream solution provided was Windows-only! By day  
2 I had installed Windows XP in an emulator. The stream was not very  
stable, frequent buffer under-runs and this together with no working  
function to get a full screen video made the user experience not very  
good to say the least.

Video archives where announced to be available be the end the day. One  
week after the end of Wikimania; are not yet available.

Wikimania 2007 was a success, but the online experience was not. Will  
next year be better? Maybe the people who where providing the on the  
spot put together Ogg Theora streams could do that. Considering that  
it was an ad hoc solution the did a great job.

Walter, Editor of Wikizine

=== Did you know ... ===

... that you can buy a listing in Wikipedia on eBay?

Ebay user diremine, who has a 99,9% positive feedback, provides the  
service of getting an article about you business inside Wikipedia, 10  
interwiki links to your article and 2 external links to your website.

The comments in his feedback indicate that has sold successful several  
of these packages and the his customers are satisfied. This suggests  
that there are spy's and traitors on Wikipedia who assist with this.
http://tinyurl.com/yqyr78 -- article on sale for only US $99.99
http://myworld.ebay.com/diremine

=== Donation Quotes ===

"gott sei dank fur Wikipedia -- Anonym
"Knowledge is Fun" -- Eugene Demeter
"I don't google as I used to, it has thankfully been replaced by  
Wikipedia" -- Anonymous

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Editor(s): Walter, me and myself
Thanks to: Pathoschild, Rob Hooft
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Website: http://www.wikizine.org
New: Wikizine Auf Deutsch and en Español
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