News and notes

Contribute —

By Ral315

Wikipedia appears in Encarta

A mention of Wikipedia has recently been added to the Encarta article on encyclopedias. The relevant passage, which comes at the end of the article, reads as follows:

In the early 21st century a new type of online encyclopedia, known as Wikipedia, enabled readers to create and edit encyclopedia articles. A wiki is a type of server software that enables users to create or alter content on a Web page. Wikipedia was closely associated with the open source software movement and rapidly expanded to include hundreds of thousands of articles, many on popular culture topics, in a number of languages. The philosophy behind Wikipedia was that a community of volunteers could pool their knowledge and crosscheck their work to create a free encyclopedia. Due to Wikipedia’s openness, it is often the target of vandalism.

Encarta is one of the first traditional encyclopedias to acknowledge Wikipedia in an article. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Brockhaus encyclopedia in German will give Wikipedia its own article in its new edition (see archived story).

Wikiversity vote ends

The vote on whether to create a new Wikiversity project ended today. Wikiversity, which currently resides on Wikibooks, started a vote on 15 September to move to wikiversity.org, currently hosting a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. Discounting votes made after the deadline, the vote, unofficially, ended approximately 71% in favor of the project. A two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period.

Briefly

The Korean Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
The Võro Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
The Vietnamese Wikipedia now has over 3,000 registered users, less than two weeks after their previous milestone of 2,000 registered users.
The Frisian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 pages.
The Scots Wikipedia gains 252 articles overnight to reach 1,000 articles.
The Greek Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
The Thai Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
The Macedonian Wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.
The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
The Neapolitan Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
The Norwegian (Bokmål) Wikipedia has reached 40,000 articles.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-31/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-31/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-31/In focus

2005-10-31

The Report On Lengthy Litigation

Contribute —

By Ral315

The Arbitration Committee closed three cases this week.

Rainbowwarrior1977

A case against Rainbowwarrior1977 has closed, affirming the indefinite ban imposed by Redwolf24 in September.

DotSix

A case against DotSix has closed. DotSix was banned for one year. The Arbitration Committee cited DotSix's constant edit-warring, lack of positive edits, and "malicious comments" on user talk pages.

Keetoowah

A case against Keetoowah has closed. Keetoowah was warned against making legal threats, and put on personal attack parole.

Stevertigo case reopened

A case against Stevertigo for inappropriate use of administrative powers has been re-opened. Stevertigo was originally ordered to reaffirm his adminship at RfA; however, after many community members viewed the process of community de-adminship as wrong, the case was returned to the ArbCom. The dispute regarded Stevertigo's violation of the three-revert rule, and subsequently unblocking himself a number of times.

Other cases

A case was accepted this week against Copperchair. It is in the evidence phase.

A request against Silverback has received 5 "accept" votes. A minimum of 4 votes is needed for arbitration cases to move forward.

Other cases against Ultramarine (user page), Maoririder (user page), numerous editors on Bogdanov Affair, REX (user page), Rangerdude (user page), numerous editors on Ted Kennedy, numerous editors on Polygamy, Lightbringer (user page), and Jguk (user page) are in the evidence phase.

Cases against Zephram Stark (user page), DreamGuy (user page), Everyking (user page), 12.144.5.2 (user page, a.k.a. Louis Epstein), BigDaddy777 (user page), Instantnood (user page), and Stevertigo (user page) are in the voting phase.

A motion to close is on the table in the case against Onefortyone (user page).

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-31/Humour

If articles have been updated, you may need to refresh the single-page edition.

The Signpost needs your help putting together the next issue.

Home

About