Wikizine/2006-06

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                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week:06  Number: 12       

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

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Notice: Wikizine is sent early to able to inform you about the open Wikimedia meeting in time. 

=== Technical news ===

[passwd] It used to be possible to use a blank password on wiki accounts. Not anymore. There were even sysop accounts with no password. Users with an account with no password and no email address have no access anymore to there account. Brion is working on a solution for that.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/26502

[Dump] The full dump of last week is still running. The dump of ja, ko, ms, and th are on the Korean cluster.
http://download.wikimedia.org
http://download-yaseo.wikimedia.org/

=== Request for help ===

[Logo] Wikisource wiki is looking for a new logo. Logo submissions are welcome until February 14, 2006 
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:New_Wikisource_logo

=== Foundation ===

[OpenMeeting] Sunday February 5, 21.00 UTC is there a open Wikimedia meeting on IRC. The #wikimedia-meeting channel is accessible on the web via http://irc.wikicities.com/meeting/ for anyone who can not access IRC.

The meeting is to discuss the new committees organization of the Wikimedia Foundation. The committee organizers are reqested to attend. Anyone else with an interest in Foundation matters is very welcome. Please inform your home-wiki.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
http://irc.wikicities.com/meeting/
irc://chat.freenode.net/wikimedia-meeting

=== Community ===

[Award] Japanese Wikipedia has been awarded the 11th AMD Award, Digital Contents of the Year'05, Best Writer prize by Association of Media In Digital
http://amd.or.jp/

[Nominaton] User Amarant, the, so far as is known, very first user of the dutch language Wikipedia is been nominated for the Vosko award, for being the founder of WikipediaNL. The price is 10,000 EURO and a piece of art made from silver.
http://www.voskotrofee.nl/aanmelden.html

[GNU/FDL -> CC] German Wikipedia considers making unregistered users dual license their edits under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Creative_Commons-Migration_Teil_1
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikide-l/2006-January/016116.html

=== Special report ===

[de-sysop] A de-sysopping on the dutch language Wikipedia somehow became international "news". As promised last week, now a full report about it. 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikizine/2006-06/Special_report

=== Media ===

[wikipedia.de] Floricic vs. Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. - update
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/38682
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/38776

Letter to the parents of Tron
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Brief_an_die_Eltern_von_Tron
http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Brief_an_die_Eltern_von_Tron

=== Other news ===

[Podcast] nice podcast about Wikipedia
http://bicyclemark.org/blog/2006/01/bm99-behind-wikipedia/

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

... that you can not trust Commons for not deleting your pictures?

The idea of Commons is good. With alone +200 Wikipedias it is not a good use of resources to upload one picture 200 times on every project in its own database. If you upload a picture on Commons it can be used on all projects directly. And we build a great database of free media to be used for everybody. So far the theory.

On Commons the admins decided to delete all flags, even those with valid licence information, to replace them with version in svg (scalable vector graphics). Result: missing images on many projects. Images can be replaced by a "better version" so the image on the projects is suddenly different. Or the better version is uploaded with a different name and the old one is deleted.

Commons has its own rules for deletion, and of course also there, most users act responsible. But the procedure is far from perfect. Files can be deleted when files are still in use on the projects. The waiting period before deletion is only 7 days. The uploader should be informed about the nomination but even if he is still active on the projects there is a good change he will not visit Commons in those seven days. And the main problem is there is no way to restore a deleted file like sysops can do with textual pages. 

Commons is great but keep always copies of your files and do not delete files on your local wiki because they are on commons. You may need them one day.

Example about how commons works;
http://tinyurl.com/7vzkr

=== MediaZilla-IRC Quotes ===

- [Brion Vibber] "A captcha of course is that annoying little thing that makes you type in a word or code to continue, to prove that you're probably not an abusive bot. (Or a blind person. Whoops!)"
- [Raul654] "come on, isn't anyone here an admin on meta? [BillyH] I think Raul654 is."
- [anon] "We have to believe in free will. We have no choice."
- [Kate-] "(Jimbo)'s in hospital with total amnesia." [brion] "I started a *what* on the internet??"

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Editor(s): Walter, Oscar
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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