Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-10-10/News and notes

French contributor dies
Treanna passed away on 18 September 2005. With over 30,000 edits, of which about 25,000 were in article space in just two years, Treanna was the most active contributor of the French Wikipédia. Aged 31, he had just started to contribute again after a coronary incident which had landed him in the hospital in July. The french speaking community was informed of his condition thanks to one of his sisters, Anne, by email and on this page, throughout the summer. Treanna will be remembered as a great contributor in all domains, but especially in the domains of history, archeology, genealogy, palaeography and related topics. The French Wikipedia community has decided to honour him in working together on a WikiReader about the Middle Ages, a part of Wikipédia to which he has greatly contributed. According to Myriam, his youngest sister, the WikiReader could "help us, his family, to better realise the extent of what he knew and loved to share... the knowledge he did not have time to teach us". Many contributors have expressed their condolences to the family here.

Article rescue contest
An "article rescue contest", modeled after Danny's contest, has started. The goal is to salvage articles nominated on AFD that otherwise would get little attention, and that merit an article. Entries can either be rewrites of kept articles, or recreations of deleted articles with significant new information. The deadline for entries is 23:59 UTC on 22 October.

Esperanza update
Esperanza, the new community group within Wikipedia (see archived story), has enacted sweeping changes and initiated Advisory Committee elections. The group, which has faced some controversy for its perceived bureaucratic-style setup, has focused on welcoming new users, and helping out users dealing with WikiStress. Redwolf24 says of the group, "The number one benefit I personally have gotten from Esperanza is that I've made a lot of new friends. It's a pretty fun, rather fraternal community."

Wikiversity vote continues
The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, started a vote on 15 September to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will remain open until 1 November. Currently, the vote is about 69% in favor of the project (a two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period).

Briefly

 * The Croatian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
 * The German Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
 * The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has reached 100 articles, about 10 days after being created.
 * The Friulian Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.