News and notes

News and notes

Candidate rules for Board election released

Rules and requirements for the candidates in the upcoming Board elections were released. The rules were approved by all three election organizers: Essjay, Aphaia, and Datrio; candidates may start registering on 1 August for the September elections. In addition, candidates must have at least 400 edits on a Wikimedia project, and the first edit must have been made at least 90 days before the start of candidate registration. Finally, candidates may not be anonymous or use a pseudonym, and must be at least 18 years of age. Brief candidate statements are also strongly encouraged.

Milestones

The English Wikipedia reached five million total pages this week. Included are all articles, talk pages, policy pages, user pages, redirects, and pages in other namespaces. Of the five million pages, approximately one-fourth are considered articles. In addition, the Swahili Wikipedia reached 1,000 articles this week, marking the first African-language Wikipedia to reach such a milestone (correction). Swahili is a common language in Eastern Africa with approximately five million native speakers and 50 million total speakers.

Project: Combine German encyclopedia, Austrian newspaper

A project was undertaken by the Institute of Information Systems and Digital Media at the Graz University of Technology in Austria to combine Brockhaus multimedial, the little brother of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, and Die Presse, a major newspaper based in Vienna. The project will be based on a community-driven model, with users bringing and collecting data. It is unclear whether the project will incorporate a true wiki or use another system to accumulate information.

Incubator name kept

A vote to change the name of the Wikimedia Incubator was closed this week after a month of discussion and voting. The results were heavily in favor of keeping the current name; the only other proposed name with a significant amount of support was Wikimedia Hatchery. Several other proposed names received few votes.

Briefly


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What about the finished logo votes on Test Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator? —Nightstallion (?) 08:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
These didn't make it in time for this issue, so will be covered in this week's issue. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Gladly! Keep on rockin', you're doing great work here. :)Nightstallion (?) 12:02, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Swahili

The Swahili Wikipedia isn't the first African language Wikipedia to reach 1000 aricles; the Afrikaans Wikipedia currently has 5520 articles. Jon Harald Søby 11:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is Afrikaans an "African" language? Its heritage is mostly European, isn't it? Stevage 16:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The first African language bit was taken directly from meta, where it was reported that the Swahili Wikipedia was the first to reach 1000 articles. A correction will be printed this week. Thanks for [pointing] this out! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

















Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-07-31/News_and_notes