Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-07-25/News and notes

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Wikimania 2021

Wikimania, Wikipedia's annual conference, will be held virtually this year for the first time, after missing last year due to the pandemic. Conference sessions will be held from August 13 through August 17.

Registration is open using Eventbrite. Attendance is free and open to everybody as long as you register. The Friendly space policy will be in effect as usual.

Russian Wikinews tops 1.2 million articles

How did Russian Wikinews get 1.2 million articles – a number that rivals or surpasses the number of articles on the main Chinese Wikipedia? These stories were not all written by bots; they were uploaded from the now closed archive of the once famous liberal Russian broadcaster NTV. The archive was later renamed NEWSru and then closed about two months ago.

Ssr reports that the news stories were written by professional journalists about notable events and are reliably sourced.

Perhaps more important to historians, the archive represents a specific time in Russian history with a type of news coverage that may no longer be possible.

Brief notes

New administrator: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator BusterD.

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25 July 2021 (all comments)

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OK, you got me there. I was expecting a really long list of items. Jr8825 • Talk 01:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was started 2.5 hours before publication deadline. The Signpost needs more contributors. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:17, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Shame the Russian wikinews story wasn't written up. Did you check if anyone at WT:RUSSIA would be interested in helping? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:30, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- @Piotrus and Ssr: Piotrus meet Ssr, Ssr meet Piotrus, Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:15, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Hello! This Russian Wikinews upload actitity, since the Signpost publication yesterday, today has been reported to cause mass outage of all Wikimedia sites. This is a known issue with server software, a plugin to MediaWiki, called DymanicPageList or DPL. This DPL is a very outdated and badly-made piece and is known long ago to cause high server load if actively used. Russian Wikinews use it actively, but other projects also use it, particularly Wiktionary. During previous incidents, DPL was coined a "time bomb" that "might explode", and this time, it has "exploded". This is now being discussed at Phabricator and there is a new separate thread Decide on the future of DPL. --ssr (talk) 17:27, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Additionally, Russian Wikinews has multilingual versions, including English section: n:ru:English Main Page --ssr (talk) 20:30, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Ssr: I think this is quite interesting. Maybe you could write up a story for the next issue of TS? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:48, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      - @Piotrus: TS stands for The Signpost? Yes I think I can write on it, but I need assistance in proof-reading and maybe fact-checking (and time: I see there is enough time until next issue). Krassotkin has already prepared a Wikinews publication in English: n:ru:The Wikimedia Foundation broke Russian Wikinews again — but I did not participate in its writing and I am not totally agree with Krassotkin, I believe he makes a number of mistakes (I am an admin at RWN longer than him). --ssr (talk) 06:20, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        I can volunteer to proofread the final article; is there any way you and User:Krassotkin could work together to present something as a compromise? If not, maybe the final article can contain both of your explanation of what is it that you disagree on? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:45, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        This is as you wish: I will make my initial version of article, and Krassotkin will be free to add to it, and then the Signpost crew will be able to edit it for publication. Just point me to the place where I should start. --ssr (talk) 08:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        
        I trust Sergey. But I am also ready to discuss with him in advance and read the final version. --sasha (krassotkin) 10:24, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        Were the NTV articles originally written under open license? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:03, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        No. The copyright holder did this after our request and after the approval of his US lawyers. --sasha (krassotkin) 22:16, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Krassotkin has started massive discussion in English with all of Board of Trustees candidates (in English). --ssr (talk) 13:01, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- And a thread at Jimbo's talk page --ssr (talk) 08:33, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
im not goingLeapcake123 (talk) 09:52, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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