Wikizine/EN2007-85

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                                    .org 

Year: 2007  Week: 48  Number: 85        

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

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=== Technical news ===

[MediaWiki Parser] - There will be (another) attempt on rewriting the parser which handles the wikitext. A new mailing list has been created for discussion of what can be done.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitext-l

[New Preprocessor] - Mediawiki's preprocessor (which expands templates and does parserfunctions) has been rewritten by Tim Starling. The changes include creating a DOM document, caching template expansion and skipping unused cases. The pre-expand include size limit has been changed into a "preprocessor node count". This changes the rules for uncovered 
syntax, so having "<ta" on one template and "ble>" on another will create a table. However, such uses are discouraged. It's not live on wikimedia project yet. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/35451

=== Request for help ===

[Wikibooks technical] - For a quick grant related to the production of Wikibooks in Agriculture Florence Devouard (Anthere) is asking for input regarding wished for technical improvements for Wikibooks.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2007-November/001163.html

[Asterisk] - German Wikipedia OTRS helpdesk and press relations group are still looking for someone who can support the development and implementation of an asterisk software solution featuring LRU call management, forced log-off and a web frontend to display status information. Queue size dimensioning would be nice, as well as a web/sms front end for the press people to configure call diversions. Anyone able to help please contact w:de:User:-jha- or, if you can read German, go to
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OTRS/Asterisk-Projekt

=== Policy ===

[Logo] - Wikibooks and Wikijunior are considering a new logo.
http://tinyurl.com/39txry
http://tinyurl.com/2j7gpw

[GFDL re-licensing] - On Foundation-l there is a big discussion going on about the GNU Free Documentation License that most projects are using and the possible migration to a new license for those projects. Mike Godwin, the WMF legal counsel, is involved in the discussion. 
http://tinyurl.com/2l9thn

=== Foundation ===

[ED] - The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed Sue Gardner as Executive Director. She was the Management Consultant of the Wikimedia Foundation. 

[Ombuds(wo)men)] - Anthere announced that a new ombuds(wo)man committee has been appointed. It consists of the enwiki users Mackensen and Rebecca and dewiki user Hei_ber . 

[Fundraiser blog] - A blog has been started by Cary Bass (Bastique) to mobilize potential donators. It is all about answers to the question "Why give to Wikimedia". The posts on the blog are not official Wikimedia Foundation statements. Users are encouraged to add their own reasons, moderators are choosing the best contributions and post them on the blog. This is a test run for now. Should the blog help in increasing donations, it will be started in languages other than English, too.
http://whygive.wikimedia.org/ -- blog
http://whygive.wikimedia.org/2007/11/22/why-wikipedia-does-not-run-ads/ -- interesting post
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/Why_Give_blog -- give your answer

=== Community ===

[Stewards] - The stewards nominations (elections) have started. There are currently 20 candidates. Users active on all Wikimedia projects can vote. 
http://tinyurl.com/26fror

[Stewards II] - Also the current stewards are going through confirmation. You can make remarks on their functioning, and afterwards all stewards together will decide which stewards will be confirmed. 27 stewards are up for confirmation.  
http://tinyurl.com/26b4ew

[EWW] - December 3 - 8, there will be the first ''Edit Wikipedia Week''. People are extra encouraged to edit Wikipedia in this week. 
http://tinyurl.com/2fejf4

=== Media ===

[Little China] - The Dutch press reports on the Dutch ministry of legal affairs blocking the website Wikipedia.org . Now it is also for judges impossible to watch what's on Wikipedia. In total 30.000 civil servants have been cut off from Wikipedia. The sysops of Dutch language Wikipedia where not contacted about this by ministry of legal affairs. 
http://tinyurl.com/2g3ult

[Burn Wiki, burn!] - Or at least I would be if Wikipedia was in print. In the USA several schools are uniting in banning wikipedia from the school. Not everybody agrees with that.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004025648_wikipedia21.html
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/chalkboard/archives/126657.asp

=== Other news ===

[Main stream] - A (English) Wikipedia search tool by default included in the webbrowser FireFox for some time now. Recently several new computer products are launched the give prominent attention for Wikipedia in there default setup. 

Amazon presented there own e-book reader. In there description of there readers Amazon explicitly writes; "Includes free wireless access to the planet's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org." Viewing other websites on the device in not free of charge. Wikipedia is here used as a sales argument because when you get this reader you have free wireless access to Wikipedia  (inside the USA).

A large supermarket in the USA is selling a budget computer. On the taskbar of the desktop there is large  Wikipedia-globe icon to query Wikipedia.

Also a new micro laptop of Asus, the  Eee PC, includes a prominent icon for Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle
http://www.thinkgos.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC

=== Stats ===

[Fundraising totals] - After roughly a month of fundraising, USD 835,334 has been raised by the Wikimedia Foundation on November 24. 
http://tinyurl.com/2c3v4h

[FR Wiktionary] - On November 26th, the French language Wiktionary reached 593,000 pages and was therefore larger than the English language version (592,000). This is as far as we know the first time that an EN project has been passed by a non-English version in terms of size.

[HTTP Requests] - Also November 26th the Wikimedia servers for the first time counted a total of 50,000 (fifty thousand!) HTTP requests *per second* on all WMF projects during peak time. This a five times higher peak of page requests per second than in May 2006.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-November/035250.html

=== Was ist das? ===

[Free] - There are many definitions of free. Because language is not a perfect tool, people often confuse different meanings of the word. There is a difference between "for free" as in beer and "free" as in Wikipedia and Linux. The latter also means you can re-use the content, change it and spread the improved version even further, even commercially. 

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

[Not for profit] - That the Wikimedia Foundation is a not for profit organization? And that the WMF is dependent on mainly small donations from individuals like you? This results in a shoestring budget, especially if the targets are not being reached. 

=== Fundraising quotes ===

"Harnessing a universe of brainpower to make knowledge accessible" -- Anonymous
"Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax ..." -- William Sherman
"Stone by stone we can build the house, says an arabic proverb. I hope that my humble donation will help to build a free Wikipedia." -- Hicham ben Hassine
"Who would have thought this would work?" -- Anonymous

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