Finally a reason to meet Erik’s odd suggestion that WikiAngela should contain hippos. The millionth file has been uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons and it’s a picture of hippos at Singapore Zoo by Terence Ong! See my previous post about the mosaic created to celebrate this milestone.
There are many ways of assessing whether a web site is going to be useful, but one way is to see whether or not Wikipedians think a link to the site is worthy of inclusion in a Wikipedia article. A new search engine is using this idea to create their search index.
The site is in beta testing by Wikians at the moment. It searches Wikipedia, and every site linked from Wikipedia. It also displays relevant Wikipedia categories as you type and lets you search within those. It’s a great way to narrow down a search and to find trusted sites.
If you’d like to try it, see Wikia for details on becoming a beta tester. If it works, we hope to launch this as a Wikia-run service for all wiki communities and to donate 51% of the advertising revenue to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Disclaimer: Wikipedia is a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation. This search engine is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation.
The critically endangered Kanab Ambersnail became the 1500000th article on the English Wikipedia on November 24th, almost 10 months after the Scottish Jordanhill railway station became the millionth. Uncyclopedia have their own version with Kanab Ambersnail as an environmental activist from Utah.
Other recent Wikipedia milestones include the German Wikipedia reaching 500,000 and the Czech Wikipedia reaching 50,000 articles. The French Wikipedia will soon reach 400,000 and the Commons will soon reach 1 million uploads. The English Wikipedia will also pass 100 million edits soon (though those stats don’t count the first 18 months of the project).
Thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions for wiki-related blogs to rebuild my blogroll after I accidentally deleted everything in my bloglines account. The result is a list on my wiki of 85 blogs about wikis or written by people who are very involved with wikis (plus 35 that aren’t really wiki-related but kind of relevant or interesting anyway). If you know of any others, please add suggestions to my wiki.
In light of the recent discussion about systemic gender bias in Wikipedia, it’s sad to note that less than 20% of these blogs are by women. Are there any female wiki-bloggers that I’ve missed from the list?
Wikia has new features! My favourite allows the addition of YouTube videos to any wiki page. I’m hoping to see lots more examples soon which I’ll list on the wiki. One good one so far is showing snippets of the 3D strategy game Glest on the Glest Wiki. We’ve also added “digg this” and “save to del.icio.us” links in the footer of every page, allowing people to share their favourite content more easily, and author attribution at the end of every article as a way of more prominently crediting the writers. Wikia’s development office in Poland is quickly expanding, so expect lots more soon.
Wikia has passed a new milestone of 20 featured wikis. These wikis are nominated and voted on by the Wikia community and then featured on the home page for around a month. Featured wikis serve as good examples for the new wikis to learn from. For example, the wiki might show great support for newcomers, fast membership growth, a creative use of categories, innovative templates, or the best use of various wiki techniques and practices. Thanks to CocoaZen, who has been doing a great job of organising the featured wiki process since it started in early 2005.
Here is Wikia’s official top 20, from the most recent to the oldest:
It’s my Australian anniversary. I’ve been here a year! 50 weeks longer than I expected this time last year. :)
The photo by Jasabella shows me meeting the Sydney Wikipedians in front of Sydney Harbour Bridge on my first full day in Australia.
It looks like Wikipedia is yet again blocked in China. :(
Andrew Lih had some ideas of why the unblock happened, but whatever the reason, the decision seems to have been reversed. See Andrew’s blog for updates and theories on why this happened.
Related posts:
See also:
So many milestones; China, the Commons, and now Wikizine. Wikizine has published its 50th newsletter. If you want a short summary of the most important goings on across Wikimedia, I strongly recommend that you subscribe to Wikizine by email or RSS. Walter Vermeir does a great job of gathering wiki news from a range of sources including mailing lists, blogs, IRC, and the wikis themselves. His weekly publication has an excellent signal-to-noise ratio.
If you have longer, read the Wikipedia Signpost as well. Also published weekly, this has eight sections with summaries of bug fixes, arbitration cases, Wikipedia in the news, new admins, featured articles, and other important information for the Wikipedia community.
If you prefer your news in audio, listen to Wikipedia Weekly - a great podcast led by Tawker and Fuzheado for everyone involved with Wikipedia. In the first few episodes, they’ve covered advertising on Wikipedia (which I’m predicting will happen before the end of 2007), Citizendium (which I’m predicting will fade into obscurity before the end of 2007), Wikimedia Local Chapters, and all of the latest project news, including a look at Wikipedia’s most read articles.
As the Chinese Wikipedia reaches 100,000 articles, the Wikimedia Commons is getting ready to celebrate a milestone of its own — 1 million files. Brianna came up with a great idea for the community to mark the occasion by creating a mosaic that represents the Wikimedia Foundation logo. The aim is to visually represent the breadth of images that are available on the project. If you want to help improve the mosaic, you can get involved in selecting better images.
Wikia
WikiChix