Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-08-11/News and notes

Wikipedian Jeffpw passes away
Wikipedian Jeffpw passed away on 7 August. Jeff, a resident of Amsterdam, made over 9,000 edits since joining Wikipedia in May 2005. He was active in the LGBT studies WikiProject, and was largely responsible for bringing James Robert Baker to featured article status, and bringing Daniel Rodriguez to good article status.

Over the past few weeks, Jeff had been coping with the death of his husband, Isaac, something that friends within the Wikipedia community had been helping him with. Jeff's death was brought to the attention of the community by his sister, Debbie, who left a note on Jeff's talk page, thanking his friends:

"Hello, I'm Debbie. Many of you have given your support and condolences to Jeffpw over the last many weeks since he lost Isaac. I'm Jeff's sister (and know nothing about Wikipedia, except that my brother enjoyed the site, the friendship and support).

I hope I'm going about this in the right way, if not, I'm so sorry.

My brother died yesterday- I suppose of a broken heart. But he received so much compassion from all of you, and you all made these last days (almost) bearable to him. I am so grateful to you and HE was so grateful. He intended to acknowledge each condolence sent to him individually, but since he can't, I thought I'd let you know.

The world will have a little less color without him. I love him and miss him already."

This statement was confirmed by checkuser evidence.

In Jeff's memory, a user sub-page has been created, containing condolences from the community. Jeff was 46 years old.

2,500,000th article
On Monday, the 2.5 millionth English article was created. No official attempt was made to determine what the milestone article was, although it has been suggested that Joe Connor, one of 35 pre-written stubs added by Wizardman, might be the milestone article.

Tech job openings
Three new job openings at the Wikimedia Foundation were all advertised this week, all within the technology department. The jobs are:


 * Mid-level software developer: A full-time position; responsible for MediaWiki development, and configuration of Wikimedia websites and third-party software.
 * Entry-level software developer/IT support: A full-time position; responsible for development of MediaWiki and open-source software used by the Foundation, and for providing technical support for the Foundation's office.
 * Mid-level system administrator: A position open to remote work; responsible for configuring software, maintaining servers and backups, and assisting with the planning of hardware configuration.

All positions are open until August 27.

Briefly

 * Newyorkbrad has returned to editing, and to the Arbitration Committee. His term is scheduled to expire in December 2010.
 * Videos from Wikimania 2008 are now available for download in .mpg format.
 * After a long wait, the IRC Group Contacts have been allowed to set new cloaks for all Wikimedia projects.
 * The Upper Sorbian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
 * The Hebrew Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles.
 * The Korean Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles.
 * The Irish Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
 * The Malayalam Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
 * The Malayalam Wiktionary has reached 3,000 entries.
 * The Gujarati Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.