Wikipedia:Announcements December 2001

Announcements for December 2001

December 26, 2001

AxelBoldt has written a number of Bookmarklets (http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/bookmarklet) that make it easier to search Wikipedia.

December 25, 2001

An AP story (http://www.rr.com/v5/my/news/story/0,1800,90636,00) by Anick Jesdanun prominently mentions "Wales' Wikipedia encyclopedia." Merry Christmas, Jimbo!

December 20, 2001

National Public Radio ("future tense") this morning featured an interview with Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the Wiki concept. Wikipedia was mentioned, along with its URL. A real audio version of the interview (http://news.mpr.org/programs/futuretense/daily_rafiles/20011220.ram) is available.

Quotes from Ward:

• "The Wiki concept is much closer to the way the web was initially intended than static web pages."
• "I'd much rather have a community than a shopping mall."

Please see this page (http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Neutral_point_of_view--draft) for a draft of a new statement to replace the current contents of neutral point of view. Your positive input and edits are encouraged!

December 18, 2001

The free (GNU) word processor Abiword comes with a wikipedia plugin.

Other worthwhile plugins for Wikipedia authors are:

• Dictionary plugin
• babelfish plugin
• freetranslate plugin

December 14, 2001

Wikipedia statistics/Size of Wikipedia: 19,000 articles announced.

December 9, 2001

Wikipedia is listed at number six (http://www.shift.com/mag/9.6/html/9.6shiftlist.asp) on this month's Shiftlist at Shift Magazine (http://www.shift.com), one of the best known Internet culture magazines.

The current issue of the New York Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/) looks at The Year of Ideas. There is an article called Populist Editing (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/magazine/09POPULIST) which is about the idea of wikis. Wikipedia is mentioned as "[t]he most ambitious Wiki project to date"! (Access to the New York Times requires free registration).

December 8, 2001

Erik Moeller announced on the mailing list (http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/) that he has created an IRC channel called #wikipedia on the server irc.openprojects.net. Drop by and chat! See Wikipedia Chat for more information on how to connect.

December 7, 2001

Wikipedia statistics/Size of Wikipedia: It was recently announced (by Malcolm Farmer, who kindly keeps track of these things) that Wikipedia has over 18,000 articles.

December 6, 2001

Wikipedia has a new logo, inspired by the old one, but with the text "Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia", and a nifty new epigraph for Wikipedia:

Man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but by this singular passion from other animals, which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceeds the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.

In other words, Wikipedia is better than sex (and other carnal pleasures). We have this from the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The final deliberations were made on this Meta-Wikipedia page (http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Logo_suggestions/leading_candidates). The new logo was designed by The Cunctator.

December 1, 2001

Hmmm... why isn't our chief administrator working today... could it be because today he got MARRIED????. A hearty congratulations and best wishes to Larry Sanger and his bride Rita from everyone at the Wikipedia.