The Signpost
Single-page Edition
WP:POST/1
12 March 2007

Paid editing
Report of diploma mill offering pay for edits
What you don't know can't hurt you
Essay tries to clarify misconceptions about Wikipedia
Blog aggregator
Blog aggregator launched for Wikimedia-related posts
WikiWorld
WikiWorld comic: "Cartoon Physics"
News and notes
News and notes: Wikimania 2007, milestones
Features and admins
Features and admins
Technology report
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Arbitration report
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
 

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/In the media

2007-03-12

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

New features

The sizes of old revisions are now displayed in page histories. (River Tarnell, T3723, r20221)

When visiting Special:Contributions directly, without any username provided, the user will now be given a form asking for a username (or to search for contributions of new accounts) instead of being given an error message. Also, the same form will appear at the top of Special:Contributions for any user, allowing the viewer to switch to other users' contributions easily. (Sui Min and Raimond Spekking; T11009; r20164, r20226, et al.)

Special:Popularpages will now show pages from any content namespace, not just the main namespace. (Some wikis have "content" namespaces that aren't the main namespace, such as the English Wikibooks' "Cookbook" namespace.) Special:Popularpages is not enabled on the English Wikipedia. (patch by Jim R. Wilson, T11231, r20275)

Special:Log/block, /delete, and /protect will now have links next to each entry to unblock, undelete, or change protection level, respectively. (Raimond Spekking and Sui Min, T8997 and T11117, r20293)

When viewing a diff of multiple revisions (such as this), clicking "undo" will now undo all the edits covered by the diff, not just the last. (Aaron Schulz, T10133, r20317)

After discussion on Wikitech-l, the addition of a checkered background behind transparent parts of images on image pages (as is common in image editors to distinguish transparent from white) was reversed. Users can still add it to their own stylesheets manually. (Erik Moeller, r20340)

Fixed bugs

Underlining in backlinks for references will now be immediately under the letter, not at the bottom of the entire line, for those with underlining enabled for links. (Raimond Spekking, T8906, r20190)

A coding error made in refactoring a function was fixed. The error could have led to error messages, and possibly the failure of either limitations of actions per user per unit time (e.g., a limited number of account creations per IP address per hour) or exemptions from such limitations. (Patch by Rob Church, T11216, r20210)

Usernames that look like IPv6 addresses are no longer allowed. MediaWiki does not yet support IPv6, but it probably will at some point in the indefinite future, at which point this will prevent conflicts. Standard IPv4 addresses have been invalid as usernames for a long time. (River Tarnell, r20242)

Page titles (and, therefore, user names) can no longer contain three consecutive tildes (~~~). They can therefore no longer interfere with the signature/date syntax. (Brion Vibber, T11223, r20274)

ImageMap tags will now work correctly with multiple polygons. (Brion Vibber, T11236, r20298)

Internationalization

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/Opinion

2007-03-12

News and notes

Wikimania 2007: Registration and Call for Participation

Wikimania 2007, the third annual international Wikimedia conference, will be held from 3 August to 5 August in Taipei, Taiwan at Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center (CTOYAC). The technically-oriented preconference for developers, Hacking Days, will occur in the two days leading up to the conference. There are still two other events, Hacking Days Extra and Citizen Journalism Unconference, which will be held on 2 August.

Online registration for conference has opened, and will be closed on 30 July, with discounted rates for Wikimedia community members. Accommodation at CTOYAC is provided and the available time is 31 July - 5 August, and visa assistance for overseas travellers is available. See Registration page in official website for details.

On the other hand, the Call for Participation for Wikimania 2007 is out; submissions for posters, presentations, workshops, and discussion groups are being accepted now. The conference themes this year include Wikimedia Communities, Free Content, and Technical Infrastructure. Six types of submission are available. Nominations for speakers and speaker panels, and suggestions for other activities are welcome too. Details can be found in the official call for participation.

New article categorization bot

Many WikiPortals and WikiProjects have the "New Articles" feature: a section or a page where all newly created articles related to the project are supposed to be announced. When done properly it is a very usable feature: the project participants are the best people to weed out hoaxes and vanity articles, merge duplicates, polish new articles, and enjoy the newborn masterpieces. Unfortunately, digging out the related new articles is quite a chore that requires lurking through thousands of articles that appear everyday.

To facilitate this work Alex Bakharev has created a bot named AlexNewArtBot that does this work automatically. It "reads" the latest articles every night, checks them against some rules, and if they're found suitable for a project, includes them into the corresponding new articles list. The bot also compiles a list of suspected bad articles — entries that are likely attack or vanity articles.

Currently twenty "New Articles" lists are supported (see the bot's userpage) but more are planned. Ideally, every new article should go to at least one list to find readers and reviewers. If you are interested in collaboration to create such a feed for your project please contact Alex Bakharev.

Volunteer Coordinator position advertised

The Wikimedia Foundation has posted a job opening for a Volunteer Coordinator. The position, which would ideally be based in the Foundation's office in St. Petersburg, Florida, involves organizing and coordinating volunteer efforts to assist the Foundation in its day-to-day work. Either part-time or full-time work is possible.

Alexa ranks remain steady

Wikipedia's 3-month Alexa rank remains at 11th; however, daily ranks over the last week have fluctuated, ranking anywhere from 9th to 11th. Should growth remain steady, it appears that Wikipedia will break the Top 10 in the next month. By-country rankings show that in Germany, the site ranks 6th. Not including search engines, the site is the second-most popular site in Germany, behind eBay. Wikipedia ranks 7th in Colombia and the Philippines, 8th in the United States, 9th in Canada, Mexico, Spain, Singapore and the Netherlands, 10th in the United Kingdom and Australia, and 14th in France.

Briefly

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/In focus

2007-03-12

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed four cases.

Closed cases

New case

Evidence phase

Voting phase

Under review

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-03-12/Humour

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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2007-03-12