Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-23/News and notes

Expanded coverage of municipal governments
Every five years, the U.S. Census Bureau performs the Census of Governments, a nationwide survey of American government at all levels, including local-level and special purpose governments, like housing, stadium, and parking. Two editors from WikiProject Pennsylvania, Dthomsen8 and Blargh29, proposed using a bot to create stubs for about 1,700 municipal authorities in Pennsylvania. Even though this was to be a Pennsylvania specific endeavor, it was thought that this could be the first step to creating stubs for every special purpose government in the United States.

However, consensus developed at the Village pump against such an article-creating bot. Instead, the data from the Census of Governments was used to create Pennsylvania county-specific lists of these municipal authorities. For instructions on how to manipulate this data to get lists created quickly, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania.

President of Suriname visits WMF-partnered museum exhibit
The 10 August edition of The Signpost reported that the Tropenmuseum of Amsterdam had partnered with WMF Netherlands and the Open Progress Foundation to hold a collaborative exhibit about the cultural history of Suriname. Suriname is the smallest sovereign state in terms of area and population in South America. The country is the only Dutch-speaking region in the Western Hemisphere that is not a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. According to the Tropenmuseum's official Twitter feed, President Ronald Venetiaan of Suriname visited the museum to see the exhibit this past weekend. First Lady Lisbeth Venetiaan came to the Tropenmuseum last Saturday and was so impressed that she returned with her husband the following day. The Suriname exhibit at Tropenmuseum is the first time a Wikimedia chapter has collaborated with a major museum to hold a joint exhibit.

Edit count
Rich Farmbrough became the first user to pass 500,000 edits on Wikipedia, with over 68,000 edits this month alone (many made with AWB). Rich Farmbrough has been one of the top three contributors to Wikipedia by edit count for around three and a half years, dipping only once to fourth place in that time. The Wikipedian with the next highest edit count currently, Rjwilmsi, has made over 360,000 edits (again many with AWB).

Usability study update
The second user study has been posted by the Wikimedia Usability project. The study included 8 in-person interviews about editing Wikipedia, focusing on the effectiveness of the beta interface changes the usability project has made so far. The full report including videos is available on the usability wiki.

Briefly

 * Sue Gardner was awarded the Huffington Post media gamechanger of the year award, coming in first in a field of ten choices.
 * It was announced that the 2nd Chinese Wikimedia conference will be held on 26 and 27 December in Macau; information and links are on meta.
 * Ongoing fundraiser statistics can be viewed here, while donor comments can be viewed here. Fundraiser notices continue to be switched out based on performance, with the message "Wikipedia is there when you need it—now it needs you" running at 60% of the time on the English Wikipedia last week.
 * A new essay at Make stubs encourages editors to build the encyclopedia by making stubs instead of red links.
 * Notability is described as a "measure of the topic's impact" at the new essay at Notability means impact.
 * A new how-to at Using WebCite gives tips on using WebCite to prevent linkrot.
 * A simple mobile interface for Wikipedia has been posted; it's available in French and English.
 * Laura Hale, founder of the Fan History wiki, has proposed that the project join the Wikimedia Foundation projects. Discussion ensued on the Foundation-l mailing list, including whether there should be an entertainment-focused Wikimedia project, and whether Fan History's copyright and mission is appropriate for Wikimedia.

Milestones

 * The Ukrainian Wikinews have reached 500 news articles.
 * The Serbian Wikinews have reached 20,000 news articles.
 * The Serbian Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles with Paklinska ostrva.
 * The Acehnese Wikipedia reaches 500 articles.
 * The Navajo Wikipedia reaches 1,000 articles.
 * The Kikuyu Wikipedia reaches 100 articles.
 * The German Wikipedia has reached 980,000 articles
 * The Portuguese Wiktionary has reached 70,000 entries.
 * The Lojban Wikipedia has reached 49,000 edits.
 * The Sorani Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
 * The Occitan Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.

This week in history

 * 2005 Creative Commons releases initial draft of a license compatible with GFDL
 * 2006 Winners of Danny's writing contest
 * 2008 200th issue of The Signpost