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Welcome! WikiProject Australia is a WikiProject, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. This newsletter exists simply to notify Australian Wikipedians of ongoing events within the project and relating to Australia on Wikipedia.
Australian Wikimedia chapter
Wikimedia chapters are independent organisations run by Wikimedians to further promote the Wikimedia projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally". This means that we in the chapter can promote Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis and their contributor's work in our area. Currently, a chapter for Australia is in discussion. If you're interested in helping the Wikimedia Foundation in more ways than just creating articles, and by promoting Wikipedia and other projects so people can start to read your work and become contributors, then consider adding yourself to the interested participants list at www.wikimedia.org.au
The proposed chapter also has an IRC channel on the freenode network: join #wikimedia-au next time you are online. The seventh IRC meeting for Wikimedia Australia will also be held in this channel at 8 pm (AEDT-UTC+11) on January 6 (WA at 6pm, SA at 7:30pm and QLD at 7pm). For more information, visit this page.
Recent happenings
2007 has been an excellent year for WikiProject Australia and its members – a sudden rise in article quality (see "Quality watch"), more article collaboration, portal creation, gap-filling article creation, image requests fulfilled, newsletter writing and award awarding. Success!
A sudden surge in new Portals took place late in the year, with numerous new portals being created and later being promoted to featured status, the best a young portal can get. Among the portals currently being worked on are: South Australia, New South Wales, Australian cars, Music of Australia, Powderfinger, Queensland, with portals for a lot of other topics to come very soon in the new year.
Portals and "topics" go hand in hand (not really), and many within the project and throughout Wikipedia aspire to achieve featured topic status for a particular topic. Goals to promote all capital cities to featured status, and among others, a Powderfinger featured topic, and a featured topic on The Invincibles cricket team. It's for sure that 2008 will be filled with Aussie pride, so hang in there with those flags, everyone! Especially on Australia Day, *hints surprises* :)
Of course, writing featured articles and making up clever hooks for use on "Did you know" isn't the only way to contribute. Many users contribute day-in, day-out, maintaining the project and portals, tagging and assessing articles, making suggestions at featured article candidacies, coordinating collaborations within the project, responding to peer reviews, save valid articles in deletion debates, in short, the stuff that if not done, will cause the whole project as we know it to slowly deteroriate. Many users who don't qualify for awards like Durova's Triple Crown award, qualify for others.
Moondyne recognised the users who work tirelessly every day to make sure that every thing is running smoothly by introducing a new award – the Drover's Award. Initiated in December, eight users have already received an award that is set to become a prestigious award for all Australia-related topic editors; SatuSuro, Longhair, Spebi, Moondyne, Grahamec, Mattinbgn and ScottDavis and more are sure to be awarded. If you know of any users who work tirelessly behind the scenes and have not yet been recognised for their greatly appreciated efforts, award them the Drover's Award.
More users have been awarded Durova's Triple Crown award for WikiProjects. This award was given to WikiProject Australia after 5 users who qualified for Durova's standard crown (one DYK, GA, FA). New recipients include Matilda, Moondyne, Mattinbgn, VirtualSteve, Gnangarra, RaNdOm26, and Thebainer. If you believe you qualify, leave a note at Durova's talk page.
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