Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-10-02/News and notes

News and notes

Board welcomes Möller; feedback on election wanted

Following the conclusion of the Board of Trustees elections last week, where Erik Möller received the most votes and was declared the winner (see archived story), the Board officially welcomed Möller with a resolution accepting the results of the elections and inviting him to officially replace Angela Beesley, who resigned earlier this year. He will serve the remainder of Beesley's term, which lasts until 18 July, 2007.

In addition, this week the election officials also requested feedback from the community regarding the elections. The page, modelled after a "request for comments", asked users to provide their opinions on a variety of issues, ranging from the manner of voting used (approval) to the overall way the elections were run.

Assessment team reaches milestone

Last week, the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, a group of editors working together to evaluate the quality of articles in preparation to gather a list of articles suitable for release, assessed their 100,000th article. The assessments involve the grading of articles to place each page in one of six categories, ranging from featured articles to stubs. Multiple Wikiprojects are involved in making assessments, often utilizing collaborative "task forces" to streamline the process.

Danny's contest to conclude

Danny's third contest will conclude this week on Saturday, 7 October. The contest promotes the sourcing and improvement of current articles either in the list of vital articles or in an article related to history; the winner will receive $100 in books and media. As of press time, there were 12 initial entries; the improvements will be judged by a panel of Wikipedians.

Logo proposals proceed into third phase

Proposals for new logos for Wikibooks, Wikiversity, and Wiktionary proceeded into the third phase this week. Following the close of the second phase, which allowed for minor changes and readjustments to some of the proposed logos, the current phase allows for approval voting to select one variant of each proposal to be voted on in the next and final phase. Voting for all three projects concludes on 15 October.

Jimbo meets with Wikipedians in India

A meetup was held in Bangalore, India, on 29 September with Jimbo Wales and approximately 15 local Wikipedians. Wales, in India to participate in a conference, talked with the group for approximately three hours, discussing topics ranging from the need for more multilingual cooperation to the establishment of an Indian wiki-community.

Correction

Last week's article on the Board of Trustees elections erroneously implied that Wikimania 2005 and the publication of the book written by Erik Möller were following Möller's temporary departure from Wikimedia projects, when in fact they occurred prior to his resignation as Chief Research Officer (and his subsequent hiatus in contributions to Wikimedia). Möller returned to major editing in January 2006. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.