Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-05-29/News and notes

News and notes

Wikimedia Foundation Board passes resolutions

The Wikimedia Foundation Board passed seven resolutions in May. One resolution approves the hiring of an employee to answer phone calls and to respond to emails, currently handled under the OTRS system. Other resolutions deal with access to the Foundation wiki, the scope and membership of two committees, and trademarks.

Mistress Selina Kyle and Blu Aardvark unblocked, reblocked

Mistress Selina Kyle and Blu Aardvark, previously banned by the community for general disruption, were briefly unblocked by Linuxbeak, who had offered both a second chance under mentorship. Linuxbeak has previously mentored several banned users, such as MARMOT and JarlaxleArtemis, with varying degrees of success. The move to unblock the users was met with both criticism and praise, though as of press time, both remain blocked, with the restoration of the users' blocks by SlimVirgin and FeloniousMonk, respectively. FeloniousMonk cited the re-block of Blu Aardvark as temporary "until more information is provided and a consensus is reached".

English Wikipedia statistics updated through February 2006

Erik Zachte's statistics for the English Wikipedia were updated Wednesday, days after the update of other languages (see archived story). However, due to the difficulty in creating a database dump of the English Wikipedia, which is significantly larger and more complicated than other languages and projects, no dumps have been successfully completed since February. As a result, data on the reports is only current through February. The statistics can be found here.

Wikipedia Version 0.5 accepting nominations

Wikipedia Version 0.5, an effort to collect and identify high-quality articles of importance for a potential CD release later this year, has begun accepting nominations. As of press time, nearly 100 articles, encompassing both featured articles and good articles, had been nominated. The deadline for nominations is 31 August.

Wikisource modifies logo

Wikisource, the free-content library and a sister project of Wikipedia, recently updated their logo following months of discussion. The previous logo, a photomontage of an iceberg depicting much of the iceberg hidden beneath water, was replaced with an illustration of the iceberg. The logo change affects all Wikisources.

Video game guides prohibited from Wikibooks

Jimbo Wales prohibited video game guides from Wikibooks last month, saying that "in general, game guides are not appropriate for Wikibooks." He added, though, that "some content about video games could be appropriate, such as a textbook for an existing course on the impact of video games in our culture." Several video game guides were moved to different wikis.

WikiBrain, WikiPoll, and WikiActivism proposed

Three new projects were proposed recently. WikiBrain would serve as a collection of all information, including knowledge that is inappropriate for Wikipedia, such as unencyclopedic content or information that is debatable and unverifiable. WikiPoll would propose and suggest polls, and WikiActivism would act as a central place for activists and reform movements.

Briefly

The Basque Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
The Greek Wiktionary has reached 25,000 entries.
The Indonesian Wikisource has reached 100 articles.
The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 8,000 articles and 250,000 edits.
The Korean Wikipedia has reached 24,000 articles and 4,400 registered users.
The English Wiktionary has reached 145,000 entries.
The Ladino / Judeo-Spanish Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
The Bambara Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
The Uzbek Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
The French Wikipedia has reached 290,000 articles.
The Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
The Swahili Wikipedia has reached 500 articles, the first Wikipedia in a language of African origin to reach the 500 article benchmark.
The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 150,000 registered users.
The Italian Wikipedia has reached 160,000 articles.
The Estonian Wikipedia has reached 18,000 articles and 1,400 registered users.