Wikipedia:2008

Events

 * January:  The Missing Manual, a book by User:John Broughton, released by O'Reilly (now available free online: Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual)
 * January 10: Access to Uzbek Wikipedia was blocked in Uzbekistan ; the block was lifted 5 March, 2008.
 * January 13: 5th New York City Wikipedia Meetup
 * February 13: Deutsche Welle reported that Brockhaus Enzyklopädie announced it is likely to discontinue its print editions and place the encyclopedia on the Internet, as a free, ad-supported internet-based encyclopedia, while mentioning Wikipedia undercutting its sales.
 * February 20: It was announced that the 2008 print edition of French encyclopedia Quid was cancelled citing French wikipedia as cause of suffering
 * March: Wikipedia crosses the threshold of 10,000,000 articles in all languages
 * March 5: Access block to Uzbek Wikipedia was lifted in Uzbekistan (blocked on January 10, 2008) [[Image:Easter-Eggs-1.jpg|100x100px|right]]
 * March 21: a single "Did You Know" hook contained a record number of six new Easter-related articles created by the same wikipedian. Together, 13 new articles were DYKed in 8 hooks of that post.
 * April 4: "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan", a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest coordinated with Columbia University and New York University students, aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles covering the wondrous sights on the island of Manhattan.
 * April 30: Access to Arabic Wikipedia has been blocked in Syria, lifted on February 13, 2009.
 * May 16: Anthere (Florence Devouard) was made a knight in the French National Order of Merit, proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as "chair of an international foundation".
 * May 24: "Wikipedia Takes Nashville", a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles covering the sights of Nashville, Tennessee. Inspired by "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan".
 * July 1: A New Jersey Superior Court judge dismissed a defamation-of-character suit against the Wikimedia Foundation; see Wikipedia Signpost article for details. The lawsuit marked the first test of the legal reasoning that underlies some decisions of the Wikipedia community and the WMF regarding treatment of material involving living people.[[Image:Wikimania 2008.svg|right|250px]]
 * July 16: Wikimedia Commons reached the milestone of 3,000,000 uploaded files
 * July 17–19 Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt
 * July 18: Russian Wikipedia crossed the 300,000 articles threshold
 * August 12: English Wikipedia was expected to hit 2.5 mln articles in August 2008. This had happened. ( articles today). Reportedly, in 2001 Larry Sanger predicted that "with a little luck, Wikipedia would have 80,000 articles by 2008" - a 30x off-mark.
 * September 29: the book How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It by user:Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, user:Tlogmer (Ben Yates) released
 * November 4: For the first time Wikipedia displayed two Featured articles at its main page
 * November 18: Online version of the article Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia of the December 2008 issue of Annals of Pharmacotherapy published, commented in Wikipedia Signpost.
 * December 3: The Wikimedia Foundation announced that it received a $890,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to make Wikipedia's editing interface more user-friendly.
 * December 4: a massive upload of ~100,000 images donated by the German Federal Archive to Wikimedia Commons, the largest single donation to Commons to date.
 * December 5: the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to a child pornography blacklist, considering the album's cover art "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18". This produced a Streisand effect
 * December 7: Estonian Wikipedian Andres Luure was one of the fifteen individuals recognized for volunteering in Estonia for 2008.

Features

 * July 18: Article alerts tool proposed

Establishments

 * January 10: A new category of wikipedians is introduced: those who are granted access to Rollback feature.
 * January 23: Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars announced
 * July 22: WikiProject Articles Needing Copy Edit, was initiated as a replacement for WikiProject League of Copyeditors deactivated a month earlier.

Dissolutions

 * June 22: WikiProject League of Copyeditors was deactivated. Started on November 22, 2006 with noble intentions, it was eventually recognized as unworkable.Its replacement, WikiProject Articles Needing Copy Edit, was initiated on July 22.

Bureaucrats

 * Signpost Week of July 28: Granted bureaucrat status via the Requests for Burueaucratship process this week: Rlevse.
 * Signpost Week of September 8: Granted bureaucrat status: Dweller and Bibliomaniac15 (nom).

Adminship granted

 * January 10: (RFA)
 * February 23: reinstated after RFA following  his December 2007 resignation after a controversy related to his speedy deletion of Mzoli's
 * July 2: (RFA)
 * July 3: (RFA)
 * July 7: (2nd RFA)
 * July 7: (2nd RFA)
 * July 8: (3rd RFA)
 * Signpost Week of July 14: Cailil (nom), StephenBuxton (nom), Matthewedwards (nom), Happyme22 (nom), and Ben MacDui (nom)
 * Signpost Week of July 28: Okiefromokla (nom), Stevenfruitsmaak (nom), J.delanoy (nom), Good Olfactory (nom), and L'Aquatique (nom).
 * August 4: (nom)
 * August 5: (nom)
 * Signpost Week of August 11: WilliamH (nom) and Nev1 (nom)
 * Signpost Week of August 18: Paul Erik (nom), SheffieldSteel (nom), and JGHowes (nom)
 * Signpost Week of August 25: Choess (nom), Ice Cold Beer (nom), and Moni3 (nom)
 * Signpost Week of September 8: Malcolmxl5 (nom), Lankiveil (nom), and Smashville (nom).
 * Signpost Week of September 21: Cirt (nom), Aitias (nom) (desysopped August 3 2009 ), and Dougweller (nom)
 * Signpost Week of September 29: Cbl62 (nom), Juliancolton (nom), SoWhy (nom), and Tadakuni (nom)
 * Signpost Week of October 6: Buckshot06 (nom), G.A.S (nom), Gladys j cortez (nom), and Spencer (nom)
 * Signpost Week of October 13: Thingg (nom), Ameliorate! (nom), Lazulilasher (nom), Xymmax (nom), Ale jrb (nom), Jac16888 (nom), and JPG-GR (nom).
 * Signpost Week of November 8: Protonk (nom), Magioladitis (nom), Ynhockey (nom), Berig (nom), and Addshore (nom).
 * Signpost Week of November 17: Euryalus (nom) and Aervanath (nom)
 * Signpost Week of November 24: Efe (nom) and Mizu onna sango15 (nom)
 * Signpost Week of December 1: SilkTork (nom), Thehelpfulone (nom), Jclemens (nom), Ruslik0 (nom), and Seddon (nom)

De-adminship

 * February 19: desysopped by Arbcom for improper conduct and abusive sockpuppeting
 * July 18: was temporarily desysopped  in a summary motion, on 18 July, pending his contacting the committee, because of his failure to communicate regarding a large number of administrative actions he had taken since April 1 when he ceased to edit.

Death and retirement

 * February 9: WP:VANISH after being accused of improper use of admin tools
 * February 12: died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis
 * May 5: Last edit of
 * May 17: Patrick Devlin (Padraig) died of cancer.
 * September 1: Oded Schramm, a mathematician who contributed to mathematical articles on Wikipedia as, died of a fall while mountain climbing
 * October: Pete Fenelon died at the age of forty.
 * August 7: Jeffpw, an active member of WikiProject LGBT studies, died several weeks after his partner died of complications due to AIDS.
 * December 22: Clayton Olney (Cumulus Clouds died.