Wikizine/2006-01

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                                    .org
Anno Domini MMVI  Week I  Number VII        

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Berlin roundup] Brion has gone to Berlin for a conference and to meet some people like Magnus and JeLuf and posted  a report about that on Meta. Very interesting. Like that it seems that the mythical Universal Login will become reality soon. 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Brion_VIBBER/Berlin_roundup

[New Specialpage] Filepath that allows user agents to get the full path of a file from its name. Active on all wikis, for all users 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Filepath

[Cite] Cite.php is a Cite extension that adds two parser hooks to MediaWiki, <ref> and <references>, these operate together to add citations to pages.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php

[SSL] Brion is experimenting with a HTTPS interface to the wikis. This service is *not* ready for the general public or even real use. Do not send your visitors to those url's. It is also buggy for some wikis. For example on the dutch Wikipedia you get the message that the database is locked when you try to edit. And when you block a user it appears successful but it is not.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/21277
Example;
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ English Wikipedia
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiquote/fr/wiki/ Frensh Wikiquote
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikinews/de/wiki/ German Wikines
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/ Meta

=== Request for help ===

[Q4] A Personal Appeal from Jimbo for donations. Please help translate the personal appeal from Jimbo Wales. EN, IT and PT version are now online. 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Personal_Appeal
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4_planning/Translations#Personal_Appeal

=== Community ===
[Book/DVD] A 139 page book in German explaining Wikipedia, its history and policies was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles and 100,000 images from the German language Wikipedia. The book with DVD is sold for 9.90 Euro; both are also available for free download.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/German_DVD/Book_release_-_december_2005

=== Media ===
[W$k$p€d$a] with ads? "Wikipedia chief considers taking ads" reports Times Online.
Responds of Jimbo about this; 
"Somehow a statement from me "I continue to oppose having advertising on 
Wikipedia" is transformed into a headline "Wikipedia chief considers taking ads"

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-1962714,00.html

=== Stats ===

The year 2005, and the month of December, were both record-breaking for Wikipedia.
The English Wikipedia more than doubled its body of articles in 2005, to almost 900,000; just over 50,000 of these were added in December alone - the first time we've grown by 50,000 articles in a single month. The Wikipedia project as a whole added almost 1.8 million new articles in 201 languages, 200,000 of them in December. With the exception of September, when the Italians and Poles went on a bot-rampage, December was the first time that the project gained 200,000 new articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Announcements

=== Did you know... ===
... that the only difference between non-digest and digest delivery of Wikizine is that digest readers have to wait between 12 and 24 hours longer before the receive the copy?

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-l

=== Q4 fund drive Quotes ===
*"Wissen ist Macht. Und die Macht sollte beim Volk liegen und nicht bei
Verwertungsgesellschaften." by anonymous 
(Knowledge is power. And the power should lie with the people and not with copyright collecting agencies.) 
*"Knowledge will never be burnt again" by anonymous
*"How could I not donate to the Encyclopedia Galactica (well, in a hundred years or so... give it
time)?" by Craig Hirsch
*"Wikipedia is better than corn chips, and I really like corn chips." by Chris Kilgour 	
*"Wikipedia is to the 21st Century what the library of Alexandria was to antiquity" by anonymous
*"With the stones of the past we build our future, and knowledge is how to use those stones." by
Daniel Scallon

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Number of subscribers:225
Non-digest:193
Digest:32
Editor(s): Walter, Shizhao
E-mail: ihavenews@wikizine.org 
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Disclaimer: this message is not an 
official publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. 
Wikizine makes no guarantee of validity.