Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Old

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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)
When I looked at it the home page and village pump were both littered with web links / advertisements. The sort of thing you expect in blog comments. The pump hadn't been cleared of vandalism in 6 days. The Main Page had 3 hours before I reverted it. It's clearly being well-kept already... jnothman talk 04:19, 21 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)

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)

Wikifun

The eleventh round is up and running. Dmn 22:05, 9 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)

The account that the author mentions creating in the article, mickmouse (talk · contribs), is a real user name. I've left a {{welcome}} message on the page, but the account should probably be watched for vandalism. BlankVerse 15:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
They published a well-argued letter to the editor on the subject: Wikitopia. Thue | talk 18:36, 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)

Anti-pedophile group targets users; rebuked

Not to toot my own horn, but take a look: http://www.perverted-justice.com/opinions/?article=11#response. Alex Schenck (that's Linuxbeak to you) 04:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Good stuff! - RoyBoy 800 00:54, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Nature asks scientists to help Wikipedia

Nature has published a story which says that "the accuracy of science in Wikipedia is surprisingly good: the number of errors in a typical Wikipedia science article is not substantially more than in Encyclopaedia Britannica." Also, the story encourages scientists to help with the project, and says that "That crazy idea [Wikipedia] is starting to look anything but stupid.". Perhaps a full story on this? Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 20:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I've just created Wikipedia:External peer review to keep track of such things. violet/riga (t) 21:52, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Great! I'll add this list to the page. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
You might want to make note of their sidebar/popup 'Challenges of being a Wikipedian', which includes comments by Vaughan Bell (User:Vaughan) and William Connolley (User:William M. Connolley) on editing the Wikipedia as scientists. BlankVerse 01:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
The Associated Press ran a story about this too: [3]. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 01:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Pedia in news

Wikipedia mentioned

the United States disappears

There's proof! Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 23:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

A number of prominent articles came under page move attack about an hour ago. What makes this interesting is that in the frenzy of reverts and deletions of leftover redirects, somehow United States got deleted and nobody could undelete it for almost an hour until developer Brion fixed it. (page history) There is no log of United States being deleted, which may relate to the database locking up briefly during this period. - BanyanTree 23:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

"Noble minds", swedish nobel TV program gives merit to Wikipedia

In a program called "Noble minds", with the nobel prize winners of 2005 in a round table talk with the BBC reporter John Simpson Wikipedia got merit. The medicine prize winner Barry Marshall mentioned the Wikipedia article about their discovery (he got the prize together with Robin Warren) and he said that they could not have written a better article themselves.

Good to hear, and guess it should elevate the article to featured as well! Ulflarsen 22:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Helicobacter pylori has been a Featured article since September 2004. It appeared on the Main Page on 26 March 2005.-- ALoan (Talk) 03:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Popularity & Traffic

Hitwise says "Wikipedia Tops Information Sites", with over twice the market share of nearest competitor dictionary.com. Our three-month rank on Alexa is currently #34, and our daily went as high as #27 during the media coverage these past weeks. — Catherine\talk 00:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Any future mentions of hitwise in the signpost should state that it produces figures for the U.S. only. It tends to understate wikipedia's overall traffic when compared with any site that is mainly of interest to Americans. 62.31.55.223 11:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser

Bluemoose's AutoWikiBrowser is pretty sweet. I'm not sure how long it has been out (~ 2 weeks, but it has been updated [betterified] many times since), it couldn't hurt to have some publicity for it. Broken S 02:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Next week. Ral315 (talk) 05:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Macintosh

Part of this is advertising for the Wikiproject, but in a matter of two weeks the project has acquired 18 members! We ant to gather all the Mac Wikipedians who don't know about us yet. If you could just have a link to the project page we'd appreciate it. --HereToHelp (talk) 13:44, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Ward Cunningham quoted on Wikipedia

The Oregonian, Portland's local paper had a profile on Ward Cunningham, & Wikipedia had some passing mentions. Most intreguing was Cunningham's comments about Wikipedia:

To Cunningham, though, focusing on the occasional malicious act overlooks the site's greater successes. Wikipedia is fragile, he concedes, but it works much more often than not because of the good will of people who use it.
"I could build a house out of wood and nobody comes and burns it down," he said. "Isn't that cool? And that's what our culture is built on. It's that trust.
"And of course there are people who do burn down wooden buildings," he said. "As a society, we have to deal with that, but if that's all we think about then we've given up on creativity."

Full article can be found here. You may have to answer some questions (first 5 digits of your post code, age & gender) to read the article. -- llywrch 02:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Winners and Losers of 2005

In this week's "Tech Tuesday" at Yahoo! News (a pcworld.com exclusive), the Wikipedia is one of three organizations that rate as both winners and losers (the other two are Google and Apple Computer). [4] BlankVerse 08:11, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Also appears in Google's year-end Zeitgeist. --Michael Snow 00:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Particularly the phenomena section. violet/riga (t) 13:18, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Beat CNN.com for the first time

On 18 December Wikipedia's daily Alexa rank was 23 and CNN.com's was 32. Wikipedia is likely to beat BBC.co.uk for the first time any day now - the BBC's ranking on the 18th was 22. 62.31.55.223 11:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

no, it is actually the third time but this one the gap was larger. -- 84.132.194.14 10:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation under alleged subponea over MLM-related article

http://www.webraw.com/quixtar/archives/2005/12/orrin_woodward_takes_wikipedia_to_court.php

The article in question is TEAM (company).

The subponea requests:

Any and all records submitted to Wikipedia.com and/or Wikimedia Foundation from January 1, 2002 to the present time concerning the terms "Team of Destiny", "Team", "Orrin Woodward" and/or "Chris Brady" including but not limited to: all records, documentation, emails, and/or electronic information, and correspondence.

Ze miguel 22:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The term "Team"? As in The A-Team, and football team? Including this talk page, in fact... -- ALoan (Talk) 23:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia vs. publishers

A challenge facing publishers and information professionals is the changing perception of information value. " Wikipedia for example may well become 'good enough' for students and that is a challenge we will have to look at closely," Knight said, adding" Students might well say that something which is free and does 80% of the job is OK, so they don't want to pay for 100%."

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2147804/publishers-face-web-challenge


"Google buys Wikipedia"

"I wouldn't be surprised to see Google go after a company like Wikipedia," the online encyclopedia created and edited by its readers, said Beal.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1903946,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Oh gosh - how much would you pay for open source? 1 April 2005 all over again. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:49, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Radio broadcast about one of de.wikipedias admin

http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/profil/450738/

22.12.2005 · 10:50 Uhr U-Bahn in Berlin (Bild: Wikipedia) U-Bahn in Berlin (Bild: Wikipedia) Ab in den Untergrund! Wie ein 15-Jähriger den U-Bahnen dieser Welt verfiel Von Ralf Bei der Kellen

Während andere 15-Jährige Gangsta-Rap hören oder Graffitis sprühen, fotografiert Cornelius Kibelka lieber U-Bahnen. Der "metrophile" Schüler hat seine Leidenschaft im Netz veröffentlicht und wurde als Vielschreiber einer der Administratoren der Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia.

-- 84.132.182.121 10:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)


Encyclopaedia Britannica does not blog any more

The EBlogger, a weblog run by an Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. employee and dedicated to news about Britannica and Wikipedia is now dead since November 16. In October 2005, the EBlogger announced a series of postings about "misconceptions" relating to wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to attempt to address some of these misconceptions in a series of blog posts. As I do, I’ll update this post with links the subsequent entries, so that this post can serve as a sort of index of related entries.

So far, there have been two postings, one relating to Wikipedia as being open source or/or not open source software and one about vandalism. The OSS posting was sometimes considered not to be very helpful in addressing "misconceptions". -- 84.132.182.121 12:43, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio

The latest firestorm in the blogosphere is the fact that Jimmy Wales has edited his own article. That may not be news to Wikipedians, but it is to them. The first blog report was apparently Rogers Cadenhead's blog, Workbench, and the first major media report was probably in Wired (Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio). BlankVerse 22:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia alternative aims to be 'PBS of the Web'

re: Wikipedia alternative aims to be 'PBS of the Web': USWeb founder Joe Firmage and Larry Sanger have announced a potential Wikipedia competitor to be launched in January, 2006, named Digital Universe. BlankVerse 22:13, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

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