Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-09/News and notes
News and notes
$100,000 donation to Wikimedia Foundation
A $100,000 donation was made to the Wikimedia Foundation from Stephen J. Luczo, Chairman of the Board of Seagate Technology, on March 19, 2007. This is one of the largest single donations received from a single individual in the history of the Wikimedia Foundation, not counting matching funds-related donations.
Wikipedia 0.5 released
Version 0.5 has been released on CD. The CD can be purchased from WikipediaOnDVD.com; torrents are also available for free.
Article Assessment Drive completed
The February-March month long WikiProject Biography Spring 2007 Assessment Drive recently closed with unprecedented success. Through the efforts of over forty Wikipedians, 44,324 articles were assessed, reducing the number of unassessed articles by an astounding 33% - from 135,345 to 91,021. In addition, many of the assessed articles further were linked to the appropriate work groups, such as sports and games, arts and entertainment, and science and academia, thereby significantly improving the chance that these articles will be improved. The drive was organized by Mocko13, Ozgod, and Jreferee. Outriggr also worked closely with the drive to bring wide applicability to his article assessment script, allowing the quick and easy assessment of articles. Users wishing to contribute to on-going assessment efforts can visit WikiProject Biography Assessment for more information.
Wikipedia again appears on U.S. primetime television
On the 5 April, 2007 episode of the United States television series The Office, entitled "The Negotiation," Wikipedia ("the best thing ever") was extensively used by Michael Scott, who printed out a list of raise negotiations during salary negotiations. He explained his reasoning for using the article, stating "anybody in the world can write anything they want, about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information." This is the second time that The Office has mentioned Wikipedia (see archived story), and the third time it has been mentioned on an NBC sitcom.
After the article was mentioned on the show, Negotiation (process) was semi-protected due to the vandalism it received in the thirty minutes following the mention -- 50 edits were recorded in a little over a half hour, from 9 anonymous and 2 newly-registered users.
Briefly
- The GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association wrote about the WikiProject LGBT Studies in their Spring 2007 issue (pdf). This appears to be the first documented case of the promotion of a WikiProject in a print source.
- In another policy organization change, the undeletion policy was merged into the deletion policy this week.
- The English Wikipedia has reached 125,000,000 edits, 750,000 media files (excluding Commons files), and 1,337 featured articles.
- The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
- The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 200 users.
- The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 1,000,000 edits.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 70,000 edits.
- The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 220,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles.
- The Classical Chinese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Japanese Wikipedia has reached 350,000 articles.
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