Wikizine/EN2008-96

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                                    .org 

Year: 2008  Week: 25  Number: 96       

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

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=== Technical news ===

[Upload] - When you upload an image that is already online with another name you get a warning about it. It works by calculating the hash of the file and compares it with the already online files. 

[Move] - sysops have now the option to rename all sub-pages in one move when moving the parent page.

[Global user groups] - a WMF-global user group can now be created that has a much or as little user rights as desired. Users can then be added to that group. Global user members then have the user rights assigned to that group on all wikis. Currently this function is only used to give stewards administrative rights on all wikis. 

=== Proposals ===

[Global sysops] - there is a proposal and a poll about the possibility of creating a "Global sysops user group".  That is creating users who are sysop on all wikis. The idea is to make it more easy to maintain the many small wikis. Users who would be "global sysop" would be only allowed to use there rights on small wiki where there is no local community or one that not yet take care of there own wiki.  The opposition against this idea does not like that "Global sysops" would also have the technical sysops rights on large wikis, like the English Wikipedia, despite it would not be allowed to use it. 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_sysops
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapub#Global_sysops_.28poll.29

[Restrict upload] - there is a proposal to restrict upload rights of new users on all wikis except commons to autoconfirmed users. That are users who have an account that it at least 5 days old. The idea is that this will prevent the upload of a lot of problems.
http://tinyurl.com/56z4fs

[Interwiki] - a proposal to introduce the Interlanguage Extension on Wikimedia projects to change the system of the language interwiki links.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_newer_look_at_the_interwiki_link

=== Policy ===

[Draft] - Mike Godwin has drafted a new version of the privacy policy. Feedback and input is requested. 
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/31075
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_Privacy_Policy_June_2008

=== Foundation ===

[Board elections] - the election for one position on the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation is open. There are 15 candidates. You can vote until 23:59 21 June 2008 (UTC). Note that the voting system has changed. Read the manual. The result are expected to be announced on or around 26 June 2008.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Candidates/en

[Enquête] - In July 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with UNU-Merit, plans to launch the first general survey of Wikimedia readers and contributors. Attempts are made to make it available in as many languages as possible. Translation assistance is requested.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/06/06/help-translate-our-first-survey-of-readers-and-contributors/

[Lawsuit Germany] - a German publishing company sued Wikimedia Deutschland over their article in the German Wikipedia. This because there was critical information in the article. The court ruled that it was legal to include to critical information and rejected the claim that Wikimedia Deutschland was legally responsible for the article in question. The publishing company intents to appeal the decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-05-26/News_and_notes

=== Media ===

[Live; dead on wiki] - Wikipedia vs Associated Press.
http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2008/06/wikipedia_vs_ap.html

=== Stats ===

[Voters stats] - parcial statistics of the voter turnout indicate that few actually vote. The Hebrew Wikipedia has most users who use the voting right. Most in numbers is the English language Wikipedia.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/30693

[Bla-bla] - Wikipedia NL has more spoken articles (735) then EN Wikipedia (728).
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_en_Ernie -- example (press play button)

=== Other news ===

[Britannica]  - a new website run by the Encyclopaedia Britannica will be a bit like wikipedia. EN hopes to created a community of people who work on their encyclopedia under thiee real name and revise articles and write articles.  The EB Staff keeps editorial control. Submissions will need to be approved to be included in the article.
http://tinyurl.com/5upqb3  - Britannica blog
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/06/ency.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/alamedacounty/ci_9599914

=== Offtopic request for help ===

[Vote for Oscar!] - this is an experiment. This to see what, if any, the responds is. You are requested to vote for Oscar, a Belgian cat (you can see that because of the beer bottle) in a competition of Whiskas. 
1) go to the vote page (link below)
2) enter your name ("Voornaam" and "Naam") and email. 
3) ignore the check box (check if you like to get Dutch catfood emails) and the lower input options
4) click on the purple "Breng je stem uit" button.
5) You get an email from "makeyourcatastar@whiskas.be" - click on the purple button "Ik bevestig mijn stem!" to confirm your vote
6) done 
Oscar says; "burp" (= thank you)
http://tinyurl.com/6eubno

=== Quote ===

"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham

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Number of votes for Oscar: 21
Editor(s): Walter
Thanks to: Spacebirdy, Nathan
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