Wikizine/2006-05

***************************************
 __    __ _ _    _     _            
/ / /\ \ (_) | _(_)___(_)_ __   ___ 
\ \/  \/ / | |/ / |_  / | '_ \ / _ \
 \  /\  /| |   <| |/ /| | | | |  __/
  \/  \/ |_|_|\_\_/___|_|_| |_|\___|
                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week:5   Number:11        

***************************************

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

///////////////////////////////////////

=== Technical news ===

[Captcha] For anti-spam reasons you have to enter the code displayed as a graphic to sign-up for an account on the smaller wikis. There is not yet a solution for visually limited users. 
http://fy.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&type=signup

[Anti-spam] Tim Starling has made spam-removing scripts. I your wiki is infested with url-spam, Tim can wipe it clean. Ask at #wikimedia-tech.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/21785

[New Dump] of the database of all projects is running.
http://download.wikimedia.org/

=== Request for help ===

[WikiAuthors] - A new project proposal for the disambiguation of authors' names
in MEDLINE, an online database of biomedical literature.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5949
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiAuthors

=== Foundation ===

[reform] The board of the Wikimedia Foundation decided to reform their organisation. The official positions are to be supplemented with a series of new committees. Like the "Financial committee", "Executive committee" and so on. All together 8 committees. The actual form how those committees will work is still under development. Angela welcomes suggestions from people who have experience with the organisation of non-profit organizations. 

This board-meeting was special because of the high number of physical present key figures of the Wikimedia Foundation. The meeting toeck place in Sint Petersburg, Florida from January 13th until the 15th. The board members; Angela, Jimmy (Jimbo), Michael Davis, and Tim Shell where present. And 5 others involved with the Foundation; Brad Patrick (legal counsel), Delphine (notafish), Danny Wool, Daniel (mav), and Jean-Baptiste Soufron (Wikimédia France). Florence (Anthere), Brion VIBBER and Domas Mituzas (Midom, dev&system-admin) joined by telephone.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings/January_14-15%2C_2006 - (does not yet exist on 2006-01-29)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5957
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5996 - concerns by Erik Moeller

[Almost] Wikimedia Canada and Wikimedia Netherlands do not yet exist but there founders are confident it will not take much longer.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Canada
http://nl.wikimedia.org/
http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ledenlijst - list of users interested to become a member

=== Community ===

[WikiNews] does original reporting. Suggestions are made by the Wikinews community as to who should be interviewed. And in the best Wikimedia-tradition there is a vote about it. And then they attempt to make it happen. Recent interviews were with Ricardo Lobo, Brazilian online journalist, and Danny O'Brien, Electronic Frontier Foundation's Activism Coodinator.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Interview_with_Brazilian_blogger_Ricardo_Serran_Lobo
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Interview:_Danny_O%27Brien_of_the_Electronic_Frontier_Foundation - The interview
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Interview_of_the_month
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.wikinews/204

=== Media ===

[Print] Directmedia, the company who brought us the German Wikipedia on CD and DVD, announced that they will publish the German Wikipedia in full print, 100 volumes with 800 pages each, starting with the letter A in October 2006, to end with Z in 2010. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26459
http://www.wp10.de/
http://www.pcwelt.de/news/unterhaltung/130716/index.html?NLC-Newsletter&id=130716

["News"???] A de-sysopping on the dutch language Wikipedia somehow became international "news". Next week more about this.

[pants down] - Wikipedia Entries 'Cleaned' By Political Staffers from the U.S. House of Representatives and it becomes big news in the USA general media.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prompt_Wikipedia_investigation
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/29/1732238
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/United_States_Congress
http://news.google.com/news?q=wikipedia+meehan&filter=0

=== Stats ===

[Fund Drive] User:Tobacman has created statistics about the Wikimedia fund drives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tobacman/Stats/Fundraising
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/5938

=== Other news ===

[Nature] - All the errors that "Nature" discoverd in the 50 articles the checked on EN Wikipedia are now corrected. 50 done, only 943881 to go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_peer_review/Nature_December_2005/Errors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases/Nature_compares_Wikipedia_and_Britannica

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

... there is a special FireFox Wikipedia-toolbar?

The toolbar gives a easy way for inserting formatting commands, dialog based creation of tables, many special characters and more. A very useful function is the pull-down menu for selecting and inserting templates. Even if you do not find it extremely useful you can always install it and deactivate the toolbar. (right click on the toolbar) and use it when you need it. It works for all MediaWiki-wikis, so its name should actually rather be "MediaWiki-toolbar".

http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/
http://wikipedia.mozdev.org/screenshots.html

=== The last Q4 fund drive quotes ===

"Information wants to be free; and I'm willing to pay for its freedom." by Mike Sollanych
"Stuart Brand said "information wants to be free." We have to pay its bail." by Bob McCoy
"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin" by Jonathan Rosen
"Sterling stuff. If it wasn't for Wikipedia I'd have learned next to nothing this week about norse gods, diamond mining, Rubik's cubes and Braille" by Chris Rae
"The price I would pay monthly to Britannica I'd rather donate to Wikipedia." by Piotr Przemyslaw Karwasz

"This project has been helpful in my graduate studies." by William Myatt
"I want to thank you (and your daughter) for this site - I owe my 'A' grades this fall to Wikipedia and I thought you should know. As a student, this is all I can afford! For now, anyway..." by anonymous
"I am a physics graduate student from China. I enjoy using Wikipedia!" by Meng Lu

=== Privacy and Wikizine ===

The subscribers list of Wikizine was only available to the readers of Wikizine. For a real discussion list that is not unreasonable because by posting you expose also your identity and email address. But Wikizine is a read-only list and that is not the same. The list settings are now changed to hide the subscribers' addresses. 

///////////////////////////////////////
Number of subscribers:277
Editor(s): Walter, Oscar
E-mail: ihavenews@wikizine.org
///////////////////////////////////////

Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of validity. 
Wikizine.org is not a publication of the Wikimedia Foundation. 
Publisher:[[meta:user:Walter]]