Wikizine/2006-16

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                                    .org 
Year: 2006  Week: 16  Number: 22       

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

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=== Technical news ===

[ParserFunctions] The extension for mathematical expressions and conditional constructs has been enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc/27087/

[Single Login] is coming. The previous time frame for it was "end of February, early march". The current time frame is "It'll be done when it's done. - Brion".  Make sure that you use for all your accounts the same email address so the can be merged when it is time.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/23027/focus=23029

=== Request for help ===

[Wikimania]  There are two weeks left to submit presentation ideas for Wikimania.  The design of the conference site is being discussed.
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_participation
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Sandbox

=== Policy ===

[Privacy policy] suggestion of a revised version of the policy
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/6833/focus=6833

=== Community ===

[Answers.com] End of 2005 the Foundation announced a partnership with Answers.com The agreement included that Answers.com would provide a search tool where some of the revenue of the use of this tool would go to the Wikimedia Foundation. The tool is now available. There is controversy about this partnership. Anwsers.com is accused to be a company using dishonorable ways of doing business.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/4627/ 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/44025/
http://wikipedia.answers.com/

=== Media ===

[Content review] BBC Focus magazine had experts compare three entries in Wikipedia, Britannica, Encarta and Infoplease in a quick study.  Wikipedia was ranked http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.english/44112/

[Fake Bio] of "war hero" caught the attention of the media. 
http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/307381.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mcilwraith

=== Stats ===

[pdc.wp] The Pennsylvania German Wikipedia has reached 500 articles. 
http://pdc.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch

[Alexa] rankings on a by-country basis
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awareness_statistics#Alexa_country_rankings

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

... that it is not so difficult to chat to many users of different instant messaging systems?

It can be very useful that you can contact your fellow Wikimedians in real time, to chat with them. But of course instant messaging is not like e-mail, a universal system that works. There are many incompatible systems for instant messaging. But you can use one program for that. There are several solutions. A good solution is Gaim.

Works with Windows, BSD and Linux. MacOS X can but not easy. Better use http://adiumx.com/

You chat with users of almost any system with one client. You can also access IRC and use it to join the Wikimedia IRC-channels. Very useful is that you can add IRC-users to you watch list just like with users of MSN, AIM and so. This way you can IRC easy for direct person to person contacts without the need to ask for authorisation or to know there exact user name because you find them in the chat rooms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaim
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_channels

=== Microsoft bashing Quotes ===

The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners. - Ernst Jan Plugge
"The box said, Win95 or better required... so I used a Mac !"    — Tim Scoff.
When you say: "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say: "Hey, I got those with the system -- for free." (Linus Torvalds)
*Welcome to Hell. Here's your copy of Windows.

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Number of subscribers: 375
Editor(s): Shizhao, Walter, Sj
E-mail: ihavenews AT wikizine DOT org
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