Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive 1

May 9

 * I think it's also time to declare to the arrival of Wikipedia in the popular press. A Lexis-Nexus search of all minimally notable hometown newspapers in just the US for Wikipedia either as a subject, source, or passing by reference in only the last 6 months yields 211 results  (this does not include the newspapers of some ~1800 colleges in this country), and all ther other recognition such as the 100+ mentions/source/subject law review & law journals articles in the past years.  From repeated citiations about the papacy by the LA Times to chess tournaments by the Omaha World-Journal - it might be worth mentioning that the task of documenting these mentions in the wikipedia as a press source document is now hopelessly overrun. Lotsofissues 13:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * The positive LA Times commentary today also revealed a small organized half attempt by a right wing blog to vandialize wikipedia. The blog has moved on and I don't want to renew attention to the site.  The Times mention already informed enough people for what was a minor effort.  Let's pass over mentioning the blog too. Lotsofissues 01:21, 5 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Google indexes 10 million pages of Wikipedia content - see Wikipedia:Village pump (news)#Ten million pages indexed and User:Alterego/Number of pages in Google Thryduulf 12:23, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Followup? Any visible results?  Still rising?
 * Quarter Million Users Past this milestone today. Lotsofissues 18:29, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Is there any more information about this anywhere? Worldtraveller 19:41, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks like very little fanfare over this. Sorry wouldn't know. :-| Lotsofissues 17:17, 1 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep an eye on WikiNews TV and report when they go live. - Mgm|(talk) 17:53, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC) (DV left)
 * Mailing-list threads : HTML email?? horrors (hanging)
 * Bambara Wikipedia launched on Wednesday... (postponed)


 * Astonishing similarity of an article from the Brockhaus web site from May 3rd compared to a wikipedia article from April 26th. And some press or blog coverage. -- 84.176.226.92 19:50, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Brockhaus has removed the article from their web site. more press and more blogs

Press

 * Jimbo is created a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School  --  Lotsofissues 01:24, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Now ncluded in 'wikipedian meeting' notes.
 * Wikipedia was featured in the newspaper comic strip FoxTrot on May 7th, which should mean a very widespread 'press coverage'. The articles mentioned experienced some bursts of nonsense, and one of them was briefly protected from editing.

Controversy over exploding animals
There has been some controversy over all meta articles concerning exploding animals. Firstly, List of animals that explode was speedily deleted which User:Ta bu shi da yu opposed. This was then recreated by an anonymous user, who put their displeasure on the page itself, so then it was submitted to VfD. User:Ta bu shi da yu then added it to votes for undeletion, so for a time we all had the pleasure of observing that this article had the unique distinction of being on listed on votes for deletion and votes for undeletion. TBSDY then created an article called List of exploding animals, and made a note of this on WP:AN, noting that this time if an admin wanted to delete it that they should use VfD. User:Pcb21, incidently, noted that articles about exploding animals had become a running joke on Wikipedia and that TBSDY was in part to blame, also noting that TBSDY split it off from the Sperm whale and Gray whale articles, something TBSDY disputes (see his talk page).
 * Template:Exploding animals is also up for deletion at TFD, though it looks as if it will be kept. the wub  "?/!"  12:28, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Random public interest

 * Talk:Henry Miller

Collaborations of the week
Collaboration of the week has been replaced this week by a trial period of having two articles as collaborations of the week. The new page is Collaborations of the week. This arose due to some discussion on Wikipedia talk:Collaboration of the week. Talrias (t | e | c) 21:52, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Projects

 * Wikipedia offline viewer improvements: RfC / tar
 * Blog entry


 * Directmedia Publishing has release the software for its reader for Linux (and MacOSX) under the GPL. Savannah-Page CVS Repository DirectWiki-Page
 * Note that the director of Directmedia, Erwin Jurschitza, is also an active de: Wikipedian (Benutzer:Vlado) +sj +


 * Two items from WikiProject Trains - First, the Trains portal launched on May 17 following a suggestion made on the Trains project talk page from the 16th. Second, in building the portal, I found that there isn't as much summary information about rail transport as we really need.  For example, a very large number of Rail transport in REGION pages had yet to be created, including Rail transport in the United States; I've started the latter page, but I don't have enough information on the other nations shown as redlinks in Rail transport by country. slambo 19:18, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Microsoft notice board

 * Have kicked this off because I've noticed lots of out-of-date, inaccurate, POV information. Have also noted that many topics don't exist, for instance Microsoft Management Console! I was hoping that discussion here might lead to a Wikiproject and a decent strategy for completing MS related info. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:50, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

India interwiki
The India page has achieved a new wikipedia record -- that for the most interwiki articles @ ~112. Though a few other languages are stubs, it is the highest for any article. = Nichalp ( Talk )= 08:31, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * (How to say this delicately...) Are the articles all in the relevant wiki's language? I have noticed a certain, ah, controversy about English-language stub articles appearing in certain foreign wikis... -- ALoan (Talk) 11:31, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On-line version of civilization chronology published

 * 
 *  "The operation will be similar to the Wikipedia," a popular Web-based free content encyclopedia written by volunteers, said organizer Lu Jun, president of the China Culture Research Society. Sounds fishy to me. Is the "China Culture Research Society" a government organization? Is the Chinese government, in any case, going to let its citizens write things contrary to its point of view? Like a honeypot for dissenters...or maybe i'm just cynical =) --Alterego 05:35, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * The announcement is rather vague and the site turns out to be rather empty. It is quite common for PR guys to compare everything with wikipedia nowadays if it has at least an interactive smell. -- 84.176.238.156 18:11, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Support and oppose templates
Support, Object and Oppose and the target of one of the largest WP:TFDs I've seen, regarding their use in talk page votes. violet/riga (t) 17:04, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, their use on WP:FPC (following commons:Featured picture candidates), but then WP:FAC and WP:FLC, and potentially a myriad of other places were votes are taken. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:25, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry, yeah - that's what I was meaning. violet/riga (t) 17:33, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * The other part of the story is the suggestion to partly-circumvent the decision . violet/riga (t) 17:36, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New name change
There was an article about Ta bu shi da yu leaving Wikipedia a while back. I'm not leaving Wikipedia per se, but I have decided to do a name change after a year with the project and over 17,000 edits. My old name was User:TheCustomOfLife. I won't cry if you decide not to do anything with it, but I figure I'm in the same ballpark as ta bu is, so why not? That's hot 03:53, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On-line version of civilization chronology published

 * 
 *  "The operation will be similar to the Wikipedia," a popular Web-based free content encyclopedia written by volunteers, said organizer Lu Jun, president of the China Culture Research Society. Sounds fishy to me. Is the "China Culture Research Society" a government organization? Is the Chinese government, in any case, going to let its citizens write things contrary to its point of view? Like a honeypot for dissenters...or maybe i'm just cynical =) --Alterego 05:35, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * The announcement is rather vague and the site turns out to be rather empty. It is quite common for PR guys to compare everything with wikipedia nowadays if it has at least an interactive smell. -- 84.176.238.156 18:11, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Since I posted this here it's started slowly circulating the blogosphere. It seems this page is being used, without giving back credit, as a news source...something to think about. I know these guys don't read Xinhua =) Anyway, after studying the source code of the website i'd have to agree. They are using canned Macromedia Dreamweaver MX javascript functions, the layout of the website is obviously amateurish (giant text floating in front of your face? c'mon!), and i've found errors in the source such as " file:///D|/BianNianShi/images/chazhao.gif ". It's just the thought of a legitimate mainland chinese wiki.... /me shivers in his revisionist boots --Alterego June 29, 2005 16:40 (UTC)

2005 National Educational Computing Conference
Apparently, David Weinberger said the following about Wikipedia:
 * Wikipedia: In a couple of hundred years, people will point to wikipedia as an "epochal event." If you want to understand what the Internet can be, you should point to Wikipedia. "By all rights it should be the world's biggest crap magnet.... But in fact, Jimbo Wales has done something remarkable." (Source).

Thought that was pretty interesting. - Ta bu shi da yu 1 July 2005 04:26 (UTC)

Sun president notes Wikipedia
"president and chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz told the 10th annual JavaOne conference:

'Six months ago yesterday, the tsunami hit Asia. Blogs covered that event before CNN did. Everyone got involved. Now, with things like Wikipedia, individuals are taking responsibility,' he said." &mdash; South China Morning Post lots of issues | leave me a message 7 July 2005 04:27 (UTC)