Archive:Current events

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Wikipedia wins two Awards in Italy
At the Premio WWW event of the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore Wikipedia was honored as "best website" in the category Education and Work. The free encyclopedia also received a special award from Il Sole 24 Ore in cooperation with the Italian ministry of Technology and Innovation. (elian, 14 December 2005)

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Wikimedia Foundation supporting non-profit medical research....
The Wikimedia Foundation is supporting non-profit medical research by participating in the Folding@Home program, donating computer-time on servers when these do not have any other work to do.

• fah-web.stanford.edu
• article.gmane.org

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A meeting of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees was held on irc on November 13, 2005
Notes may be found at Meetings/November 13, 2005. (Florence Devouard, 27 November 2005)

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The Wikimedia Foundation is honored by a World Technology Award in Communications Technology
This week, the Wikimedia Foundation was honored by a World Technology Award in communication, joining the ranks of other World Technology Network members. See http://www.wtn.net/2005/summit/ (Florence Devouard, 15 November 2005)

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Wikimania 2006 will take place in Boston, USA
After a very tight vote (5 to 4 and 1 abstention), Boston has been chosen to host Wikimania 2006, the second International Wikimedia Conference. All information about the location can be found on this page. We wish to thank all participants for the work they have put into their bids, and especially the supporters of Toronto whose city made it to the shortlist. Definite dates and agenda to be confirmed shortly. (Delphine Ménard, 22 October 2005)

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Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership
1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition software will be linked from the English Wikipedia Tools page. Please see the press release and discussion for more information. (Florence Devouard, 20 October 2005)

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Vote over the creation of a new project: Wikiversity
The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, has started a vote to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will last until November 1. Wikimedia Foundation board of Trustee will have the final decision over the creation of that new project after the community gave its opinion (a two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period). The potential project was presented at the Floss Workshop in september by Florence Devouard. (User:Anthere)

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End of fall fundraising
The Wikimedia fundraising drive ended late Thursday, with the final tally of $243,930 USD, more than 20% over the initial goal. A decline in donations was noticed over the last third week, with relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in the spotlight, however, donations still came pouring in from all over the world. A minor edit war resulted at some point when the administrators of the english wikipedia argued over whether linking to the Red Cross or other charities from the fundraising sitenotice was prudent, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The argument ended when Jimbo Wales removed the links, and ordered other users not to add it back.

The 3 weeks long fundraising drive started on August 19, aiming to pay in particular for the significant m:server costs, which have risen dramatically recently. Next fundraising should probably be expected at the end of 2005. (Florence Devouard)

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New Chief Research Officer
James Forrester has been appointed to the position of Chief Research Officer by Jimmy Wales. The exact nature of the role is in the process of being changed; initial discussions can be found on Meta. (Angela Beesley, 12 October 2005)

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New license for Wikinews
The Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License [CC-BY 2.5] was the favored license in the recent poll at meta:Wikinews/Licensure Poll. 31 people supported the license, which was an 82% supporting vote; including over 87% of the Wikinewsies who voted. Many other options had few voters. Of the options with more than 12 voters, the GFDL was supported by 21% of voters, and Wikinews License 0.2 by 60% of its 17 voters (64% of Wikinewsies).

CC-BY 2.5 has now been agreed upon by the Wikimedia Foundation to be the new license for all existing and future versions of Wikinews. Any edits made previously remain public domain - only new edits will need to be under this Creative Commons License.

The license can be read at creativecommons.org (that page links to other language versions of the license, and the full legal code). (Florence Devouard - 8 October 2005)

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A very successful fundraising : $243,930 USD raised
The third quarter 2005 fund drive was held from Friday 19 August to Friday 9 September 2005 (2005.08.19 – 2005.09.09). The primary goal was to raise US$200,000 (Yahoo! Currency Converter) to meet income requirements in the third quarter 2005 budget. More information can be found at Fund drives/2005/Q3. (Florence Devouard)

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Boston and Toronto shortlisted as host cities for Wikimania 2006:
After a long debate from the jury to chose among 4 excellent propositions, namely Boston, London, Milano and Toronto, the shortlist for host cities for Wikimania 2006 comprises Boston in the US and Toronto in Canada . The second round of deliberations will elect the host city for the conference in mid-October. (Delphine Ménard), 5 October 2005

• News before September 2005 are found on past events.

Other news

These news are maintained by volunteers on an indipendent basis.

• announce-l, home of the "Wikizine" e-mail newsletter.
• Wikimedia News. Cross-project news, primarily project milestones.
• Goings-on. More cross-project news.
• Server admin log. Technical software/hardware news.