Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-09-08/News and notes

Oded Schramm, an Israeli mathematician who worked at the University of California, San Diego and at Microsoft Research, died on Monday, September 1. Schramm fell to his death while climbing Guye Peak in Washington. Schramm invented stochastic Loewner evolution, a family of curves in probability theory and conformal geometry, and received many prestigious prizes for his work within the field.

On Wikipedia, OdedSchramm made nearly 900 edits, focusing on mathematics-related articles. Schramm created his account and made a few edits in 2005, but began editing actively in March 2008. He was 46 years old.

After a poll showed over 80% support to change Meta-Wiki's logo to the "community logo" first introduced in 2006, the change was officially made this week. The main reason for changing the logo was over apparent confusion between Meta-Wiki and the Wikimedia Foundation, which shared the same logo. Another benefit to the change is that the new logo has been released into the public domain; the Wikimedia Foundation-based logo, meanwhile, was copyrighted by the Foundation and could not be used elsewhere without an assertion of fair use. Former Foundation Chair Florence Devouard emphasized that the public domain license was intentional, in order to allow the community freedom over the logo.

The newer logo retains the green, blue and red color scheme of the old logo, but instead of featuring a stylized person, it features a globe, emphasizing the worldwide nature of the Meta-Wiki. It has been used on other community sites as well, including Planet Wikimedia.

• The German Wikipedia has reached 800,000 articles.
• The English and French Wiktionaries have both reached 900,000 articles.
• The French Wikipedia has reached 700,000 articles.
• The Georgian Wiktionary has reached 100 entries.
• The Polish Wikinews has reached 8,000 articles.
• The Kapampangan Wikipedia has reached 6,000 articles.
• The Spanish Wikisource has reached 38,000 pages.