Wiki143:2007

Events

• January 4, The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
• January 6:
  • The English Wikipedia reached 7,000,000 total pages (of which over 1,570,000 are articles) (m:Wikimedia News)
  • The Romanian Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
• January 18: user:Hu12 discovered an elaborate, running for 8 months linkspam scheme, see WT:WSPAM: "Reference Spam, 8 Months of S.E.O.", WP:AN: "Community ban of sneaky spammer"
• February 13: Fuzzy Zoeller filed a wikipedia-related defamation lawsuit
• February 16, Turkish historian, sociologist, author and professor Taner Akçam was detained at Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, because of his vandalized Wikipedia bio claiming him to be a terrorist.
• February 20: Wikipedia hits daily alexa rank of 8 for the first time
• February 26: The onset of the Essjay controversy: The New Yorker publishes the correction to its article with an interview with Essjay
• March 10: Wikipedia:Meetup/Singapore 3
• March 17: Wikipedia:Meetup/Jakarta
• March 24: a "Who's Meatpuppet Who" precedent is established, later referred in other arbitration
• March: Wikipedia enters top 10 for 3 month average alexa rank with rank of 10 for the first time
• April 19, went on an inexplainable vandalism spree
• April 23, Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide/Meetup 2
• April 24, Wikipedia:Meetup/Perth/2
• April 25, Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/April 2007
• April 27, Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne 5
• April 28, Ranveig Mossige Thattai (known as Ranveig), was awarded a scholarship of 50 000 NOK (approx. 8 170 USD) for writing articles on the Nynorsk Wikipedia.
• May 1, a heated discussion about applicability of fair use for screenshots in TV episode lists.
• May 2, Wikipedia was hit by the spam of the postings of the HD DVD key.
• May 7, Four admin accounts were hijacked because of weak passwords, prompting the call for increased password security.
• May 28: Wikipedia Selection for Schools launched
• June: Polish Wikipedia DVD released, Template:ISBN. See m:Polska Wikipedia na DVD (z Helionem)/en for details.
• June 16: inserted false statements into wikipedia. the test was reported in media on June 28
• July 3: Mike Godwin's appointment as general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation announced (He is the namesake of the Godwin's Law)
• July 23: Controversial edits of the Rein Lang article caused attention of Estonian media
• August 3-5: Wikimania 2007 in Taipei
• August 14:
  • WikiScanner released, "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike," in author's words.
  • WP:BJAODN controversy sparkled
  • WikiMiniAtlas is enabled in wikipedia articles with geographical coordinates
• September 9, 8:21 UTC, 2,000,000th article created in English Wikipedia, El Hormiguero
• September 10, WikiDashboard: visualisation of edits on Wikipedia; alpha-release announced
• October: Veropedia, a for-profit selection of wikipedia articles beta site launched (the domain registered 26-aug-2007)
• October 23: Wikipedia hits 3 month average alexa rank of 8 for the first time
• October 28: "The first-ever university-sponsored examination of the online encyclopedia that is written and edited by the general public"
• December 13: The Register's story about criminal record of the departed Wikimedia Foundation employee Carolyn Doran caused some stir.

Features

• January 14: cascading protection feature introduced in Wikipedia, to protect a page and all pages included into it
• September: RSS feed for RecentChanges added to all pages
• October 28: Wikipedia:Article wizard was devised by (see also Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0)

Organizations

Establishments

• January 2: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Pharmacology was (re)started (after a March-October 2006 attempt fizzled/deleted)
• February 10: Wikipedia:Community sanction noticeboard was established (shut down on October 11, 2007)
• July 14: Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron was established, with the purpose to fix articles that are or may be threatened with deletion.
• October 13, the operation of RedirectCleanupBot (talk • deletion log), a bot whose sole purpose is to delete broken redirects, was approved. It is the first bot in Wikipedia with administrator status. See the Signpost story.
• September 26: an idea of Wikipedia:WikiCup introduced: a contest in the skill of editing
• November 25: Wikipedia:The Core Contest ($$$ prizes for improvements of wikipedia:Core topics) started

Dissolutions

• January 1, a wikiProject Esperanza was deleted and the page rewritten with its brief history.
• January 10, Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention noticeboard (created Oct. 7,2005) was shut down as deteriorated
• January 29: Wikipedia:Requests for investigation board (initially established on 1 December 2001 as VANDALISM IN PROGRESS for investigation of vandalism & abuse and renamed to the current title on March 11, 2006) was shut down, itself becoming a magnet for abuse.
• March 7: wikiProject Concordia was deleted
• May 25: Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates (created in 2004) was discontinued (page tagged as "historical")
• September 19, Siberian Wikipedia was closed after a long and heated debate. After that the creator confessed that it was a hoax.
• October 11: Wikipedia:Community sanction noticeboard (created February 10, 2007) was shut down, merged back into WP:AN/I

Wikipedians

Adminship granted

• January 8: Template:Admin-abbr
• January 30: Template:Admin-abbr
• January 30: Template:Admin-abbr
• January 30: Template:Admin-abbr
• February 1: Template:Admin-abbr
• February 2: Template:Admin-abbr
• February: Cuchullain (nom), Hu12 (nom), Riana dzasta (nom), VegaDark (nom), Persian Poet Gal (nom), Heimstern (nom), ShadowHalo (nom), Zzuuzz (nom), Delldot (nom), Llama man (nom), and Heligoland (nom).
• March:
  • 1st week: Fram (nom), Trebor Rowntree (nom), Rlevse (nom), BigHaz (nom), Andrwsc (nom), Georgewilliamherbert (nom), Deryck Chan (nom), Adam Cuerden (nom), Bubba hotep (nom), Harryboyles (nom), Jesse Viviano (nom), Veinor (nom) and AuburnPilot (nom).
  • 2nd week: Seraphimblade (nom), John Reaves (nom) and Ryanpostlethwaite (nom).

De-adminship

• January 15: Template:Admin-abbr Voluntary: A new admin corps must rise to deal with new challenges. I am happy to report that I have been instrumental in promoting several high caliber individuals who will carry on my work.
• February 4 *Template:Admin-abbr voluntarily relinquished his sysopness upon Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Philwelch, i.e., in controversial circumstances, hence may be resysopped only via WP:RFA
• 23 February: As a result of Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war the following editors were desysopped
  • Template:Admin-abbr
  • Template:Admin-abbr
  • Template:Admin-abbr, reinstated by the March 8 decision of the ArbCom.
• March 4 Template:Admin-abbr : (wikipedia:Bureaucrat) resigned as a result of the Essjay controversy
• March 24 Template:Admin-abbr was desysopped by their request
• 5 April Template:Admin-abbr desysopped by Arbcom
• April 19, Template:Admin-abbr deadminned and banned after his inexplainable vandalism spree. Account hijacking conjectured.
• May 2 Template:Admin-abbr voluntarily desysopped after the checkuser revealed their sockpuppetry on April 28
• May 23 Template:Admin-abbr desysopped for sockpuppetry; also banned until he responds to ArbCom
• June 13 Template:Admin-abbr desysopped and indef-blocked after the account was compromized after 18 months of inactivity
• October 20: Template:Admin-abbr requested their desysopping and thoroughly disappeared
• December 7: Template:Admin-abbr resigned adminship after a controversy related to his speedy deletion of Mzoli's (reinstated after RFA 23 February 2008)

Bot accounts

• January 27: The AlexNewArtBot was created to sift through new articles and announce them in the relevant wikiprojects, see the Signpost article.

Other

• February: Template:Admin-abbr announced his resignation from the wikipedia:Arbitration Committee.

Death and retirement

• January 15: Template:Admin-abbr Good-bye words: I am abandoning this account and all the baggage that comes with it. This is not some kind of a third-rate Wiki-drama. It's just that life is moving on....I have registered another account and will continue as an editor, but will probably not be as prolific.
• January 26: (was during 2003-2005) announced his departure (Enough is enough. Bye, Wikipedia. <-- I really am gone for good this time. The amount of in-fighting and the easiness with which one's hard work is wiped out is incredible.-->)
• March 3:
  • Following the Essjay controversy, Template:Admin-abbr, admin and freshly appointed member of Arbitration Committee was asked by Jimbo Wales to resign. Last words: I've enjoyed my time here, and done much good work; my time, however, is over, and leaving is the best thing for me and for Wikipedia. I walk away happy to be free to go about other things. I hope others will refocus the energy they have spent the past few days in defending and denouncing me to make something here at Wikipedia better.
  • Template:Admin-abbr announced his departure (I've closed this account off because I've decided I want to spend more time doing other stuff.), but on April 19 the account went on an inexplainable vandalism spree and was banned. Account hijacking assumed.
• April 21: died
• May 20: Emil Petkov (Espetkov) Emil Petkov (Емил Петков), one of the first editors of the Bulgarian Wikipedia, died.
• May 23, Norwegian Wikimedian, journalist, and author Tron Øgrim (no:User:Togrim) died.
• May 26, User:Rydel (Uladzimir Katkouski) died after almost a year struggle for life after being hit by a fire truck in Prague on June 15, 2006.
• September 14: User:Dalf (Scott Laws) died of colon cancer
• October 14: (Robert Braunwart) died of melanoma
• October 20: Template:Admin-abbr requested their desysopping and thoroughly disappeared themselves
• December 5:Template:Admin-abbr disappeared (still lurking during 2008 (5 edits during Apr-Aug))
• December 15: (Carli Ann Ward) dies of adenocarcinoma