Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-17/News and notes

News and notes

New anti-vandalism tool released

A new anti-vandalism application, dubbed VandalProof, was recently released. Created by AmiDaniel and inspired by CryptoDerk's Vandal Fighter, the tool makes finding vandalism, warning users, checking out other contributions by vandals and watching articles easier. Because of security reasons, users must first be approved by the moderators of the application in order to use it. As of April 29, over 200 users had been approved for the tool. Please note that the application is exclusively for use with Windows based PCs with Internet Explorer.

Bengali Wikipedia campaign

Ragib, a native of Bangladesh and administrator on both the English and Bengali (or Bangla) Wikipedias, reports some developments with the Bengali Wikipedia in addition to its recent milestone (see below). He relates that the project was mostly dormant until a publicity campaign starting last month in Bangladeshi media brought in a number of new volunteers. Underrepresentation of particular languages has been a longstanding concern for Wikimedia Foundation projects. Bengali is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, ranking somewhere between fourth and seventh, depending on how speakers are counted and whether non-native speakers are included.