Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-02-05/News and notes

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News and notes

By Ral315 and Michael Snow, 5 February 2007

More legal citations

Following up on the earlier New York Times report of courts citing Wikipedia (see archived story), a law professor asked his research assistant to determine how many law review articles cite Wikipedia. The answer: 545 articles listed in Westlaw cite Wikipedia, and another 125 mention the project without citing it as an authority.

Business school case

Harvard Business School published a case study about Wikipedia, focusing on the debate over whether to delete an article on Enterprise 2.0. Professor Andrew McAfee, who coined the term the article describes and also co-wrote the case, also offered some additional questions about the competing philosophies of deletionism and inclusionism, and the contrast between Wikipedia and Nupedia.

Protected titles

Thanks to cascading protection, deleted articles can now be protected via syntax at protected titles without having to create an article with {{deletedpage}} to enforce protection. The system has already been used on several vandal targets, and articles frequently recreated by spambots, though the system has not replaced {{deletedpage}}.

Commons Picture of the Year competition

The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year competition has begun. In the first round, which lasts until February 14, users with at least 100 edits on any local project or Commons can vote on up to 5 of the 321 pictures. 10 finalists will be selected for a final round of voting from February 15 through February 28.

Briefly

• The English Wikibooks has reached 50,000 registered users.
• The English Wiktionary has reached 325,000 articles.
• The Greek Wikisource has reached 1,000 text units.
• The Italian Wikisource has reached 5,000 text units.
• The Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
• The Italian Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
• The Bengali Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles .
• The Lao Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 300,000 registered users.
• The Estonian Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
• The Portuguese Wikisource has reached 10,000 text units.
• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
• The Swedish Wikipedia has reached 30,000 registered users.
• The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 110,000 articles.

Also this week: — Board changes — IRC — Astroturfing — WikiWorld — News and notes — Press coverage — Features and admins — Technology — Arbitration