Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-11/News and notes

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News and notes

By Flcelloguy, September 11, 2006

Voting continues in Board elections

Voting in the Board of Trustees elections continue this week. The vote, which uses approval voting, will end on Thursday, September 21. All active users who meet the suffrage requirements - over 400 edits on one Wikimedia project prior to August 1, 2006 with at least one contribution 90 days before that date - are invited to vote. As of press time, approximately 1,800 users had voted.

Voting on new logos for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiversity

Votes on a logo for Wikiversity, on a new logo for Wikibooks and on a new logo for Wiktionary are currently ongoing. They started on 7 September and will continue until 21 September.

Foundation hires networking coordinator

Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and interim executive director Brad Patrick announced on August 31 that the Foundation had hired Mark Bergsma as networking coordinator. Bergsma will only be working part-time because of his continuing studies; however, Patrick called Bergsma's "dedicated manpower" a "critical" part of the Foundation's technical team. Bergsma will be responsible for helping maintain the Foundation's infrastructure, including "network reliability [and] independence".

Danny's contest to re-open

This week, Danny Wool, an assistant to the Wikimedia Foundation, announced the start of his third contest. In the past, he has sponsored two previous competitions, each encouraging competition between Wikipedia editors in improving the project. The first contest, held in October of 2004, searched for the best new requested article, and the second contest, which took place in November of that same year, sought the article most improved from stub status. However, this third competition will now involve editing an "unsourced article" either "related to history" or included on the list of vital articles and carefully sourcing and improving that article. Citing the need to focus on improving existing articles rather than creating new ones, Wool also asked that the line of requested articles on the recent changes header instead be modified to articles that have been requested to be improved to featured article status.

The contest will run through October 7, and the winner will receive approximately US$100 worth in educational materials from Amazon, an online commerce company. It should be noted that Wool, while sponsoring the contests, is not acting officially from his position in the Wikimedia Foundation office.

Briefly

• The Vietnamese Wiktionary has reached 200,000 edits.
• The Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Haitian Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 100,000 registered users.
• The Min Nan Wiktionary has reached 3,000 entries.
• The Tajik Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Belarusian Wikipedia has reached 500 registered users.
• The Volapük Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
• The Urdu Wikipedia has reached 500 registered users.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Bengali Wikipedia has reached 9,000 articles.
• The Turkish Wiktionary has reached 5,000 entries.
• The Portuguese Wiktionary has reached 20,000 entries.
• The Japanese Wikisource has reached 1000 articles.
• The Uyghur Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Albanian Wikipedia has reached 9,000 articles.
• The Latvian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.

Also this week: — Carnildo resysopped — Hungarian Wikipedia — News and notes — Features and admins — Technology report — Arbitration report