Template:News-en/2006-7+

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Election concludes

The election for a position on the Board of Trustees concluded on Thursday, September 21, and results were released the following Sunday. Erik Möller was declared the winner and will serve the remainder of Angela Beesley's term, which lasts until July 2007. Beesley resigned earlier this year. Read more... (25 September 2006)

Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007 The Wikimania jury are pleased to announce that Wikimania 2007 will be held in Taipei, Taiwan. Taipei had the winning combination of a dedicated and experienced bidding team, a great venue with centralized accomodation and community areas, and strong sponsorship opportunities. Read more... (25 September 2006)

Vereniging in the Netherlands recognized as a chapter by the Wikimedia Foundation Wikimedia Foundation approved the Vereniging as its chapter in the Netherlands. Read more... (23 September 2006)

Florence Devouard attends Digital World Africa 2006, in Abuja, Nigeria Florence Devouard and Sj Klein attended the Digital World Africa 2006 Conference in Abuja, Nigeria. Florence gave a presentation about Wikimedia projects, focusing on empowerment, and Sj spoke as a Wikipedian about volunteer motivation. Read more... (17 September 2006) Wikipedia with five million articles in total On August 25, 2006, Wikipedia reached five million articles in total.

Jimmy Wales invited to a debate about encyclopedia reliablility Wall Street Journal Online invited Jimmy Wales and Dale Hoiberg, editor in chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Using email, they discussed their encyclopedias' editing systems and their approaches to ensuring reliability. The discussion is available online. (12 September 2006)

Regional Wikimedia conferences in Europe On September 2, two European cities hosted their nationwide conferences; Valentano, Italy and Utrecht, the Netherlands. The Italian conference was held for two days and there the third board of Wikimedia Italia was elected and inaugurated. (3 September 2006)

Chinese Wikimedia Conference 2006 CWMC 2006, the first Wikimedia event billed as such to be held in Asia, took place this past weekend, August 26 and August 27, in Hong Kong. Read more... (29 August 2006)

Operations report Servers are operating quite stable, compared to in previous months, with only an occasional hiccup. Increased budget allows the Wikimedia Foundation to acquire hardware before the systems are completely overloaded, instead of in response. Many changes have been made to system architecture lately as well, the way the systems store data, the way they serve and cache images, and text. Read more... (19 August 2006)

Wikimedia to create advisory board

Wikimedia chair Jimmy Wales announced at Wikimania 2006 the intention to create an advisory board for Wikimedia. (8 August 2006)

One Laptop Per Child Includes Wikipedia on $100 Laptops

Wikimedia announced today that the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) association has chosen to load a snapshot of select Wikipedia articles onto the laptops it is developing. OLPC is an MIT-based project established to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and the opportunity to explore, experiment and express themselves. The announcement took place at Wikimania 2006, a three-day conference focusing on Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the use of wikis to organize knowledge. Wikipedia is among the first content to be featured in OLPC laptops. Read more... (4 August 2006)

MediaWiki to be developed rapidly

MediaWiki, the software that the Wikimedia Foundation runs on, will be developed by full-time employees of private organizations Wikia and Socialtext. Wikiwyg will be the highlight of this update, allowing intuitive editing with a small learning curve. According to Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia projects are expected to upgrade to this version of MediaWiki, at uncertain date. (4 August 2006)

Wikimania hosts second annual free content contest

Wikimania 2006 is hosting the Wikimania Awards in Cambridge, Massachusetts in August. This will be the second annual contest for the best free content writing and media in the world. All are welcome to nominate their favorite media and writing that has been added to Wikimedia projects within the last year. Entries are eligible to win one of three Nokia 770 internet tablets, and print-on-demand books of Wikipedia content.

Angela Beesley resigns from Wikimedia Foundation board

Last week, on the 1st of July, Angela Beesley announced her resignation from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. She has been a Wikipedia contributor for many years, and was elected to the board in mid-2004. She intends to continue to contribute in an editorial capacity, and to assist in forming the Wikimedia Foundation's Australia chapter. Her vacant seat on the Foundation board will be filled in an election, the details of which will be forthcoming. Read more... (8 July 2006)

New Privacy Policy Is Official

The newly revised Privacy policy became official on July 1. It was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board in June, and now applies to all Wikimedia wikis. The primary modification includes coverage of CheckUser, which had not yet been implemented when the previous version of the policy was introduced. Read more... (1 July 2006)