Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-07-21/News and notes

Michael Snow selected as Board Chair
At a Board meeting in Alexandria, prior to the opening of Wikimania 2008, the Board of Trustees formally appointed Ting Chen to the Board to fill the spot of Florence Devouard, who declined to seek re-election. To fill Devouard's spot as Chairperson, meanwhile, the Board unanimously chose Michael Snow for a one-year term as Chair.

Snow, who was born in Germany, currently resides in Seattle, where he practices law. Snow was appointed to the Board in February 2008. He becomes the third Chair in the history of the Foundation, after Jimmy Wales, who served as Chair from the board's inception in 2003 through October 2006, and Devouard.

Chen, meanwhile, is the first Chinese Wikimedian, and the first Wikimedian born in Asia, to serve on the Board. Chen was born in Shanghai, China, but currently lives in Germany, where he works as an IT specialist. He is the 14th person to become a member of the Board.

Two compromised accounts desysopped, blocked
The accounts of inactive administrators Zoe and RickK were desysopped and blocked this week, after the passwords to both accounts were apparently obtained by other users. Kelly Martin alleged on Wikipedia Review that both accounts had the same guessable password, a claim that was apparently proven when another user (purportedly Gmaxwell) logged into both accounts and posted onto the administrators' noticeboard to notify the community of their compromise. The accounts were desysopped almost immediately afterward by Drini, a steward and English Wikipedia administrator.

Briefly

 * This week, the three-millionth media file was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The milestone file was Image:Haishan-Station.JPG, an image of Haishan Station, a Taipei railway station.
 * The Hungarian Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles.
 * The Russian Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
 * The Danish Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
 * The Persian Wikipedia has reached 40,000 articles.
 * The Czech Wikisource has reached 5,000 pages.
 * The Romanian Wiktionary has reached 15,000 articles.
 * The Icelandic Wiktionary has reached 14,000 entries.
 * The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 6,000 users.