This page is a chronology of events in year 2007 directly related to Wikipedia and Wikipedians, both within Wikipedia and in the whole wide world. Wikimedia 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,[1] because it is hoped that in 50 years or so this page will become a valuable source of scholar research.
Events
- January 4, The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
- January 6:
- 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[2]
- 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[2]
- April 19, Robdurbar (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights) 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, ISBN 978-83-246-0469-2. See m:Polska Wikipedia na DVD (z Helionem)/en for details.
- June 16: Matthewsweet20007 (talk · contribs) 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:
- 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 [2]
- October 28: "The first-ever university-sponsored examination of the online encyclopedia that is written and edited by the general public" [3]
- December 13: The Register's story about criminal record of the departed Wikimedia Foundation employee Carolyn Doran[4] caused some stir.
Features
Organizations
Establishments
Dissolutions
Wikipedians
Adminship granted
- January 8: Nilfanion (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
- January 30: Daniel.Bryant (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
- January 30: Yandman (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
- January 30: Qwghlm (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
- February 1: Chrislk02 (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
- February 2: Jersey Devil (t · c · b · p · d · m · r)
- 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)[5], 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
Bot accounts
Other
Death and retirement
- January 15: Crzrussian (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) 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: dr31 (talk · contribs) (was dryazan (talk · contribs) 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, Essjay (t · c · b · p · d · m · r), 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.
- Robdurbar (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) 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: David Shear (talk · contribs) 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.[6]
- September 14: User:Dalf (Scott Laws) died of colon cancer
- October 14: Rbraunwa (talk · contribs) (Robert Braunwart) died of melanoma
- October 20: Tregoweth (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) requested their desysopping and thoroughly disappeared themselves
- December 5:Jeffrey_O._Gustafson (t · c · b · p · d · m · r) disappeared (still lurking during 2008 (5 edits during Apr-Aug))
- December 15: CanadaGirl (talk · contribs) (Carli Ann Ward) dies of adenocarcinoma
See also
References
- ^ 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 WP: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.
- ^ a b c meta:Wikipedia.org is more popular than..., a version of
- ^ Larcon, Geoff (28 October 2007). "Wikipedia has plenty of pros and cons". The Ann Arbor News. http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-25/1193552002225980.xml&coll=2.
- ^ "Wikipedia COO was convicted felon", The Register, 13 December 2007
- ^ User:PumpkinSky says he is the guy
- ^ Obituaries at LiveJournal