Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-07-17/News and notes

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News and notes

By Flcelloguy and Treebark, 17 July 2006

Blocking changes implemented

The blocking changes announced last week were put into place on Tuesday. In light of the potential effects this would have on logged-in users working from a shared IP address, it was suggested that the change might warrant a range block of AOL proxies. These have been a chronic problem due to the difficulty in blocking vandals while still allowing legitimate editors to participate. However, soon after this was proposed Angela Beesley reported that AOL had agreed to set XFF headers, which will hopefully allow administrators to block one AOL user without affecting others.

Single-user login nearly ready

Single-user login, a long-awaited technical feature, is nearly ready to be implemented. The change would allow users to register a username once and have it serve as an universal username across all languages and all Wikimedia projects. To prepare for the change, developers requested that people make their email addresses and passwords uniform in all of their accounts; after the implementation, "all old accounts will be valid on all Wikimedia wikis, using a consistent username and password everywhere" after the migration of any conflicting accounts.

Fair use amendment implemented

An amendment was added to the fair use criteria after three weeks of discussion (see archived story). It allows deletion of newly uploaded images that claim fair use but fail to satisfy the criteria 48 hours after the uploader has been notified.

Voting continues on Incubator logo

The process of choosing a new logo for the Incubator entered a new step this week when voting proceeded to a new phase. After a previous vote resulted in an overwhelming result for a "meddie egg" logo, the community is now deciding between three variants of the logo. Each of the variants differs in the orientation of the middle of the "egg". A poll on the name of the Incubator wiki also continues, as does a vote on a logo for the developers' Test Wikipedia.

Briefly

• The English Wikipedia has reached 1,250,000 articles.
• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 28,000 articles.
• The Bosnian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
• The Haitian Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The German Wikipedia has reached 250,000 registered users.
• The Armenian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Friulian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
• The Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles with more than 300,000 edits.
• Articles on Marathi Wikipedia have been edited 25,000 times.
• The Manx Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 500 registered users.
• The Finnish Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles.
• The Polish Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
• The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 50,000 registered users.
• The Greek Wiktionary has reached 40,000 entries.
• The English Wikiquote has reached 7,500 articles.
• The Icelandic Wikipedia has reached 1,000 registered users.
• The Norwegian Wikibooks has reached 100 Wikibook modules.
• Wikibooks in all languages has reached 40,000 Wikibook modules.
• The Polish Wikipedia has reached 60,000 registered users.
• The Vietnamese Wiktionary has reached 40,000 entries.
• The English Wiktionary has reached 160,000 entries.

Also this week: Archive deals — Deletion requests — M.A.N.I.A. — News and notes — Press coverage — Features and admins — T.R.O.L.L.