Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-11/News and notes

News and notes

Voting continues in Board elections

Voting in the Board of Trustees elections continue this week. The vote, which uses approval voting, will end on Thursday, 21 September. All active users who meet the suffrage requirements - over 400 edits on one Wikimedia project prior to 1 August, 2006 with at least one contribution 90 days before that date - are invited to vote. As of press time, approximately 1,800 users had voted.

Voting on new logos for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiversity

Votes on a logo for Wikiversity, on a new logo for Wikibooks and on a new logo for Wiktionary are currently ongoing. They started on 7 September and will continue until 21 September.

Foundation hires networking coordinator

Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and interim executive director Brad Patrick announced on 31 August that the Foundation had hired Mark Bergsma as networking coordinator. Bergsma will only be working part-time because of his continuing studies; however, Patrick called Bergsma's "dedicated manpower" a "critical" part of the Foundation's technical team. Bergsma will be responsible for helping maintain the Foundation's infrastructure, including "network reliability [and] independence".

Danny's contest to re-open

This week, Danny Wool, an assistant to the Wikimedia Foundation, announced the start of his third contest. In the past, he has sponsored two previous competitions, each encouraging competition between Wikipedia editors in improving the project. The first contest, held in October of 2004, searched for the best new requested article, and the second contest, which took place in November of that same year, sought the article most improved from stub status. However, this third competition will now involve editing an "unsourced article" either "related to history" or included on the list of vital articles and carefully sourcing and improving that article. Citing the need to focus on improving existing articles rather than creating new ones, Wool also asked that the line of requested articles on the recent changes header instead be modified to articles that have been requested to be improved to featured article status.

The contest will run through 7 October, and the winner will receive approximately US$100 worth in educational materials from Amazon, an online commerce company. It should be noted that Wool, while sponsoring the contests, is not acting officially from his position in the Wikimedia Foundation office.