Wikipedia:2008

This page is a chronology of events in year 2008 directly related to Wikipedia and Wikipedians, both within Wikipedia and in the whole wide world. Wikipedia events and events in sister projects (Wiktionary, Wikibooks, etc.) are listed as long as they are related to Wikipedia.

Additions to this page must follow certain rules,^[a] because it is hoped that in 50 years or so this page will become a valuable source of scholar research.

Events

January: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, a book by User:John Broughton, released by O'Reilly (now available free online: Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual)
January 10: Access to Uzbek Wikipedia was blocked in Uzbekistan^[1]; the block was lifted 5 March, 2008.
January 13: 5th New York City Wikipedia Meetup
February 13: Deutsche Welle reported that Brockhaus Enzyklopädie announced it is likely to discontinue its print editions and place the encyclopedia on the Internet, as a free, ad-supported internet-based encyclopedia, while mentioning Wikipedia undercutting its sales.
February 20: It was announced that the 2008 print edition of French encyclopedia Quid was cancelled ^[2] citing French wikipedia as cause of suffering
March: Wikipedia crosses the threshold of 10,000,000 articles in all languages^[3]
March 5: Access block to Uzbek Wikipedia was lifted in Uzbekistan (blocked on January 10, 2008)^[1]
March 21: a single "Did You Know" hook contained a record number of six new Easter-related articles created by the same wikipedian. Together, 13 new articles were DYKed in 8 hooks of that post.
April 4: "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan", a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest coordinated with Columbia University and New York University students, aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles covering the wondrous sights on the island of Manhattan.
April 30: Access to Arabic Wikipedia has been blocked in Syria,^[4] lifted on February 13, 2009.
May 16: Anthere (Florence Devouard) was made a knight in the French National Order of Merit, proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as "chair of an international foundation".^[5]
May 24: "Wikipedia Takes Nashville", a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles covering the sights of Nashville, Tennessee. Inspired by "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan".
July 1: A New Jersey Superior Court judge dismissed^[6] a defamation-of-character suit against the Wikimedia Foundation; see Wikipedia Signpost article for details. The lawsuit marked the first test of the legal reasoning that underlies some decisions of the Wikipedia community and the WMF regarding treatment of material involving living people.
July 16: Wikimedia Commons reached the milestone of 3,000,000 uploaded files
July 17–19 m:Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt
July 18: Russian Wikipedia crossed the 300,000 articles threshold
August 12: English Wikipedia was expected to hit 2.5 mln articles in August 2008. This had happened. (6,912,292 articles today). Reportedly, in 2001 Larry Sanger predicted that "with a little luck, Wikipedia would have 80,000 articles by 2008"^[7] - a 30x off-mark.
September 29: the book How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It by user:Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, user:Tlogmer (Ben Yates) released ^[8]
November 4: For the first time Wikipedia displayed two Featured articles at its main page
November 18: Online version of the article Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia ^[9] of the December 2008 issue of Annals of Pharmacotherapy published, commented in Wikipedia Signpost.
December 3: The Wikimedia Foundation announced that it received a $890,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to make Wikipedia's editing interface more user-friendly.^[10]
December 4: a massive upload of ~100,000 images donated by the German Federal Archive to Wikimedia Commons, the largest single donation to Commons to date.
December 5: the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to a child pornography blacklist, considering the album's cover art "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18".^[11] This produced a Streisand effect^[12]
December 7: Estonian Wikipedian Andres Luure was one of the fifteen individuals recognized for volunteering in Estonia for 2008.^[13]^[14]

Features

July 18: Wikipedia:Article alerts tool proposed

Organizations

Establishments

January 10: A new category of wikipedians is introduced: those who are granted access to Wikipedia:Rollback feature.
January 23: Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars announced
July 22: Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles Needing Copy Edit, was initiated as a replacement for Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors deactivated a month earlier.

Dissolutions

June 22: Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors was deactivated. Started on November 22, 2006 with noble intentions, it was eventually recognized as unworkable.Its replacement, Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles Needing Copy Edit, was initiated on July 22.

Wikipedians

Bureaucrats

Signpost Week of July 28: Granted bureaucrat status via the Requests for Burueaucratship process this week: Rlevse.
Signpost Week of September 8: Granted bureaucrat status: Dweller and Bibliomaniac15 (nom).

Adminship granted

January 10: Archtransit (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (RFA)
February 23: ^demon (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) reinstated after RFA following his December 2007 resignation after a controversy related to his speedy deletion of Mzoli's
July 2: Frank (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (RFA)
July 3: Lomn (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (RFA)
July 7: thedemonhog (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (2nd RFA)
July 7: Tanner-Christopher (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (2nd RFA)
July 8: TomStar81 (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (3rd RFA)
Signpost Week of July 14: Cailil (nom), StephenBuxton (nom), Matthewedwards (nom), Happyme22 (nom), and Ben MacDui (nom)
Signpost Week of July 28: Okiefromokla (nom), Stevenfruitsmaak (nom), J.delanoy (nom), Good Olfactory (nom), and L'Aquatique (nom).
August 4: Gazimoff (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (nom)
August 5: Peripitus (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) (nom)
Signpost Week of August 11: WilliamH (nom) and Nev1 (nom)
Signpost Week of August 18: Paul Erik (nom), SheffieldSteel (nom), and JGHowes (nom)
Signpost Week of August 25: Choess (nom), Ice Cold Beer (nom), and Moni3 (nom)
Signpost Week of September 8: Malcolmxl5 (nom), Lankiveil (nom), and Smashville (nom).
Signpost Week of September 21: Cirt (nom), Aitias (nom) (desysopped August 3 2009^[15]), and Dougweller (nom)
Signpost Week of September 29: Cbl62 (nom), Juliancolton (nom), SoWhy (nom), and Tadakuni (nom)
Signpost Week of October 6: Buckshot06 (nom), G.A.S (nom), Gladys j cortez (nom), and Spencer (nom)
Signpost Week of October 13: Thingg (nom), Ameliorate! (nom), Lazulilasher (nom), Xymmax (nom), Ale jrb (nom), Jac16888 (nom), and JPG-GR (nom).
Signpost Week of November 8: Protonk (nom), Magioladitis (nom), Ynhockey (nom), Berig (nom), and Addshore (nom).
Signpost Week of November 17: Euryalus (nom) and Aervanath (nom)
Signpost Week of November 24: Efe (nom) and Mizu onna sango15 (nom)
Signpost Week of December 1: SilkTork (nom), Thehelpfulone (nom), Jclemens (nom), Ruslik0 (nom), and Seddon (nom)

De-adminship

February 19: Archtransit (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) desysopped by Arbcom for improper conduct and abusive sockpuppeting
July 18: Can't sleep, clown will eat me (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) was temporarily desysopped in a summary motion, on 18 July, pending his contacting the committee, because of his failure to communicate regarding a large number of administrative actions he had taken since April 1 when he ceased to edit.

Death and retirement

February 9: Adam Cuerden (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) WP:VANISH after being accused of improper use of admin tools
February 12: Oryanw (talk · contribs) died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis
May 5: Last edit of Humus sapiens (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
May 17: Patrick Devlin (Padraig) died of cancer.^[16]
September 1: Oded Schramm, a mathematician who contributed to mathematical articles on Wikipedia as OdedSchramm (talk · contribs), died of a fall while mountain climbing
October: Pete Fenelon died at the age of forty.^[17]
August 7: Jeffpw, an active member of WikiProject LGBT studies, died several weeks after his partner died of complications due to AIDS.
December 22: Clayton Olney (Cumulus Clouds died.^[18]

Notes

^
While formally Wikipedia:Verifiability and others of Wikipedia's content-controlling policies do not apply outside the main namespace, they must be strictly followed here, for the sake of scholarly discipline:
- The listed event and its date must be mentioned in a wikilinked or externally linked reference. It is advised to consider an external link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page rather than a wikilink, if this page is linked for a critical but volatile piece of information.
- Credible sources must be used only. Within Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost is one of them.
- Trivial events must be avoided:
  - Random mentioning of Wikipedia belong to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media.
  - Routine Wikipedia activities, such as a promotion of an article to featured state, are generally not listed here, unless such events generate significant buzz outside its normal working scope.

References

^ ^a ^b Oʻzbekcha wikipedia yana yopildimi?^(Uzbek)
^ "France's favourite encyclopaedia falls victim to Wikipedia"
^ Wikipedia Statistics
^ (in Arabic) Arabic Wikipedia Disappears From The Internet in Syria
^ Decree of May 16, 2008
^ Judge dismisses defamation suit
^ The Wikipedia War, by Eric Hellweg, Technology Review, December 16, 2005
^ How Wikipedia Works at amazon
^ "Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia"
^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-03/News and notes#MediaWiki interface to get a facelift
^ Schofield, Jack (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography'". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 December 2008.
^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-03/Virgin Killer
^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-01-24/News_and_notes
^ an ETV archive of the award ceremony. Andres Luure's time segment: 39:48-41:33
^ [1]
^ The death has occurred of Patrick DEVLIN of London and formerly of Strabane, Tyrone
^ Pete Fenelon Memorial
^ Clayton Taylor Olney: The Issaquah Press. Accessed January 22, 2009.

[1] While formally Wikipedia:Verifiability and others of Wikipedia's content-controlling policies do not apply outside the main namespace, they must be strictly followed here, for the sake of scholarly discipline:
The listed event and its date must be mentioned in a wikilinked or externally linked reference. It is advised to consider an external link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page rather than a wikilink, if this page is linked for a critical but volatile piece of information.

Credible sources must be used only. Within Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost is one of them.

Trivial events must be avoided:
Random mentioning of Wikipedia belong to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media.

Routine Wikipedia activities, such as a promotion of an article to featured state, are generally not listed here, unless such events generate significant buzz outside its normal working scope.

[2] The listed event and its date must be mentioned in a wikilinked or externally linked reference. It is advised to consider an external link to a specific version of a Wikipedia page rather than a wikilink, if this page is linked for a critical but volatile piece of information.

[3] Credible sources must be used only. Within Wikipedia, Wikipedia Signpost is one of them.

[4] Trivial events must be avoided:
Random mentioning of Wikipedia belong to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media.

Routine Wikipedia activities, such as a promotion of an article to featured state, are generally not listed here, unless such events generate significant buzz outside its normal working scope.

[5] Random mentioning of Wikipedia belong to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media.

[6] Routine Wikipedia activities, such as a promotion of an article to featured state, are generally not listed here, unless such events generate significant buzz outside its normal working scope.

[uforum-2] Oʻzbekcha wikipedia yana yopildimi?^(Uzbek)

[3] "France's favourite encyclopaedia falls victim to Wikipedia"

[4] Wikipedia Statistics

[5] (in Arabic) Arabic Wikipedia Disappears From The Internet in Syria

[6] Decree of May 16, 2008

[7] Judge dismisses defamation suit

[8] The Wikipedia War, by Eric Hellweg, Technology Review, December 16, 2005

[9] How Wikipedia Works at amazon

[10] "Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia"

[11] Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-03/News and notes#MediaWiki interface to get a facelift

[12] Schofield, Jack (8 December 2008). "Wikipedia page censored in the UK for 'child pornography'". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 9 December 2008.

[13] Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-03/Virgin Killer

[14] Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-01-24/News_and_notes

[15] ETV archive of the award ceremony. Andres Luure's time segment: 39:48-41:33

[16] [1]

[17] The death has occurred of Patrick DEVLIN of London and formerly of Strabane, Tyrone

[18] Pete Fenelon Memorial

[19] Clayton Taylor Olney: The Issaquah Press. Accessed January 22, 2009.

[a]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

v t e History of Wikipedia
By year	2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2023 2024
Wikipedians	First Settlers Wikipedians with articles (cat) Missing Wikipedians Deceased Wikipedians