Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Old

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Contents

Raul654 to talk to NSA about setting up wiki

According to Raul654, he has been asked to give a couple talks at the NSA some time before Thanksgiving, to help them set up their own (presumably) NSA-wide wiki. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-28 01:39

Just for the record - I was originally asked to have two talks with the NSA -- a small round-table discussion on November 14th and a big one in January. The former was cancelled because of NSA budget issues, but the latter is still going-ahead. &rarr;Raul654 01:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Also, about the topic of the talk - they don't want technical assistance - they just want to know everything there is about Wikipedia. &rarr;Raul654 01:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Will do as it gets closer. Ral315 (talk) 06:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd prefer not to discuss it until after the January meeting, so I actually have something to talk about :) &rarr;Raul654 21:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

CNET starts a wiki

CNET has an article on wikis and the Wikipedia (see [1]), and in conjunction with the article they have started a wiki at http://www.takebackwiki.com. It looks like they desperately need some help from some Wikipedians. At least they are using MediaWiki software, so after you've set your preferences and changed the skin it will look familiar.

They only created the Main Page before they went live! (The first non-admin edit was at 07:42, 14 November 2005.) Among all the other items, Community Portal page is currently missing. Even the copyright page was missing until recently, and it still isn't a proper copyright page. Will this experiment end quickly like the LA Times attempt? Stay tuned. BlankVerse 17:24, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Not reporting on it for now; apparently, CNet didn't pay their bills, so it's suspended :) Ral315 (talk) 15:37, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
The link is working again, so I'm guessing that it may have been a DNS or domain name registrar problem. On the other hand, the current status of the Take Back the Web Wiki provides an interesting counterpoint to the LA Times experiment—what if someone created a wiki and no one shows up? Since they are so totally unprepared, it will be interesting to see what happens if they get hit by trolls or spammers, or they get slashdotted. BlankVerse 12:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
If anyone removes old entries, please leave this up...I'd be interested in reporting a follow-up perhaps in a month or two. Ral315 (talk) 18:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Server loads/orders and new/malfunctioning/setting up

I use to frequent OpenFacts to get updates on hardware status, I tried it just now but was refused connection. I don't check often these days because it usually is difficult to find the skinny on current events in that realm as it is buried in discussion or server status notices. Could there be a weekly/bi-weekly or even monthly update on our precious servers and their relative performance vs. traffic. Actually that gives me an idea... call it the Wikipedia Traffic Report, or something like that. Since the Signpost already does updates on Wikipedia's popularity, server info could simply be added to that; or it can be broken off as its own section. And in case you don't know, Signpost = sweetness! - RoyBoy 800 22:57, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You know, that would be interesting. I'll try and talk to a dev at some time this week. Ral315 (talk) 23:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
They're not great about updating it with timely news, but there is a "Wikitech" livejournal that some devs post to at times -- and yes, it IS on livejournal, Kate just wrote an LJ style that makes it look eerily like monobook...! {There's also a non-tech, community-oriented "Wikipedians" journal.)
There's also the Server admin log, Stats center, Zachte's stats and Ganglia in addition to OpenFacts -- no, I don't know what half of it means! That's why I agree that this would be a useful feature for the Signpost. Advertise for a tech-savvy writer, or talk to the devs about the best way one of us could put together a weekly skeleton article on "this week's Traffic Report", based on some of those sources. Then we might be able to send it to a dev who has a few minutes to proofread the skeleton and add any significant behind-the-scenes details (if any); perhaps that way this wouldn't take up too much of their time.
I think something like this would really help the average Wikipedian stay in touch with the weekly technical challenges we face, and see how hard our devs work to keep such a rapidly growing site functional.
Another thought -- this report might periodically include news from Meta:Hardware orders and Meta:Budget (and related pages) on hardware and other expenditures -- help people see where their donations are going. Maybe check in with mav (our volunteer CFO) to see if he has suggestions. — Catherine\talk 03:19, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Would be good with a weekly note on; traffic, new boxes, significant downtime and what's being done about it, size of content (in Gigabytes) could also be something. The various info can be found, but various places, and good if it could be a kinda standard report on it. Ulflarsen 21:46, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Invasion of the User boxes

The last few months have seen an enormous increase in use and popularity of so-called user boxes. It started with Wikipedia:Babel, the language boxes that originated on Commons. Then people started to satirize these (see e.g. {{User_en-B}}), and nowadays you can come across all sorts of boxes, from the browser one is using ({{User fox}}), the instrument played ({{User euphonium}}) to humorous ones like {{tonofedits}} and {{user pope}}. The new place to be is apparently Wikipedia:Userboxes. — mark ✎ 17:43, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not touching this one with a ten foot pole, though I agree. Ral315 (talk) 21:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

New York Times

Wiki was mentioned in Friday's NY Times; it was in an obituary on a Majdanek female death camp guard who was recently discovered to have died in Germany in the late '90s. Babajobu 13:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Icelandic Wikipedia to hold Votes-for-Deletion process on meta

Will cover in News and Notes. Ral315 (talk) 18:25, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Just a note on this; I chose not to cover it, since there's not a ton of information on it at this time, the meta VFD was stopped, and the En AFD was significantly in favor of keeping. I'll report next week, should the process restart. Ral315 (talk) 21:49, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Macintosh WikiProject

A new WikiProject for all articles related to Apple Macintosh has been started by User:Wackymacs in an effort to bring every Apple Macintosh and Apple Computer article to featured article standard in a team effort. The project is looking for valuable participants who want to help improve hundreds of computing articles to make Wikipedia a more reliable and concise source of information about topics relating to computer hardware, software, businesses and biographies. The project is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Macintosh.

Press coverage

Not including the Seigenthaler/rules-tightening coverage:

Wonderfool

Would Wonderfool being an arse merit a place in the Signpost? It got a pretty damn long section in the wp:an at least, and the story spills over onto Wiktionary, Meta and Commons too --Foumidable 20:41, 7 December 2005 (UTC) (a brand new WF puppet, let it be known - who's not in the mood for vandalism any more)

It's a bit old to publish, so I don't know. Is he still banned? Ral315 (talk) 14:23, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Considering the staleness, and the fact that this is apparently Wonderfool hunting for more attention, I would say it's not worth a story. We're not here to gratify publicity-seeking forms of disruptive behavior. --Michael Snow 17:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Quite right too! --Foumidable 21:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Dershowitz

(Note: The text below is from User:Xed, and does not reflect the views of the Signpost, or myself.) Ral315 (talk) 14:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

In a similar incident to the recent Adam Curry and John Seigenthaler Sr affairs, Alan Dershowitz has edited his own article, removing unflattering info and adding flattering info. Then he was banned. Presumably, he complained to Jimbo, who deleted most of his article and allowed only admins to edit it.

Looking thru the history of Alan Dershowitz, you'll see on the 5th, 6th and 7th of December several edits by three users:

The IP numbers come from Harvard University - probably Dershowitz or his assistant Mitch Webber. A member of Wikipedia has identified "FakeName" as the same person as whoever the IPs are. FakeName has been banned, see his talk page [3]

"FakeName" makes a legal threat here: [4]

A couple if edits that the Harvard vandal makes:

  • [5] (Lengthy addition of all awards he has received and how wonderful he is)
  • [6] (removed info on conflict with finkelstein)

Other edits from the Harvard vandal include complete or partial blanking of the article [7] [8]

For more discussion, see the Alan Dershowitz talk page.

- Xed 00:45, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

A note from Ral315 - the page was protected by Jimbo, who suggested that admins edit the article (against normal page protection guidelines) to vet most of the information. It's still protected now. Perhaps we should cover this... Ral315 (talk) 14:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
As the most famous professor at Harvard -- he probably has defenders. If you really believe he was likely the editor of the article, then please don't touch the Dershowitz article. Lotsofissues 21:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure as to whether he was the editor or not; all I'd say is that it might be newsworthy, especially given Jimbo's request for admins to edit it. Ral315 (talk) 21:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo's request to admins to edit the protected page is a departure from the normal role of admins. See User:Splash's comment at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Jimbo.27s_challenge_to_admins.-gadfium 21:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Praise in The Guardian

[9] - Worldtraveller 17:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Another comic-strip ref

See User Friendly. We have an article on the comic at User Friendly.-gadfium 17:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

User Friendly are continuing the theme with [10].-gadfium 01:20, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, Kernel Panic has been updated, still on the Wikipedia deletion theme.-gadfium 18:15, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun

The eleventh round is up and running. Dmn 22:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

NYT Bans WP as Research Source

I wrote up all I know at The New York Times#Wikipedia Banned as Research Source, but figured this is newsworthy. <>< tbc 00:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


German publisher is selling third edition of DVD with wikipedia content

Directmedia Publishing (to be more specific: its subsidiary Zenodot Inc.) in Berlin has started selling a handbook for wikipedia, volume 1 of a new series of paperback specific single volume reference works called "WikiPress". The DVD contains about 300.000 articles from the german wikipedia and is licence compliant. The DVD is distributed via Bittorrent and many FTP servers (mostly universities). The DVD has a size of about 8GBytes (however, there is a image-less version for single layer DVD-Rs). The last edition rose to sales rank 1 of amazons software category for a couple of days. This time, the book is in the much larger and much more popular book section, so we might be unable to beat Harry Potter and other novels. However, after the announcement on heise, the book jumped from sales rank 4500 to 358 on saturday and is still climbing up. The book is also being released as a PDF file under the GFDL. Upcoming versions include "Nobel Peace Prize winners", "Bicycles" etc. Editors of the book projects are being paid, the company has been donating collections of images to wikipedia. This release of the German DVD has also attracted certain attention to English media (including the Register).

Mentioned in Wired News

The third page of Wired News' article on audio formats (December 9) directs users to the Wikipedia article on audio file formats. [11] The same article previously appeared on Webmonkey, but I haven't checked to see if you've covered that already. – Minh Nguyễn 20:06, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Folding@home

Just wondering what team Wikipedia is listed as? - RoyBoy 800 16:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia.org, I believe. The article is corrected as such. [[Sam Korn]] 22:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Seigenthaler prankster identified

New York Times

I noticed that too! — Ambush Commander(Talk) 19:55, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Questions about Wikipedia articles on Canadian politicians

See Free online encyclopedia fuels gossip on candidates. With the upcoming elections, there will probably be more mischaracterizations occuring.

"A selected Citizen review of Wikipedia for biographies about Ontario federal election candidates found many have none and, of those who do, the majority are innocuous, even bland.But there are other exceptions...."

It also might be interesting to see if any info can be gleaned from who edited the articles that they question. BlankVerse 22:11, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The Times editorial

A vitriolic editorial from the Times. See also the village pump discussion.

After reading that editorial, I could have sworn that The Times had to be tabloid of the worst kind. However, according to the Wikipedia article the newpaper seems to be a respected newspaper. IMO, that editorial is a perfect example of the imperfection of traditional media :). Thue | talk 12:39, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Class action lawsuit

OfficialWire, which seems to be a front for the not quite legitimate QuakeAID, which is not very thrilled that Wikipedia does not have high thoughts about it, briefly had a webpage up which were looking for participants in a class action lawsuit against Wikipedia. The base of the lawsuit was to be people who were lied about in Wikipedia. See also the village pump. Thue | talk 12:33, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

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