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Volume 3, Issue 12 20 March 2007 About the Signpost
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WikiWorld comic: "Wilhelm Scream" News and notes: Bad sin, milestones
Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
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SPV

WikiWorld comic: "Wilhelm Scream"

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By Greg Williams

WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential.

Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.


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SPV

News and notes

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By Ral315

Bad sin

Wikipedia became the subject of news coverage over the past week over a report that actor Sinbad had died. The claim was made in a revision that was quickly reverted; however, links to the revision(s) that mentioned his death spread quickly. Rumors of Sinbad's death had circulated days before they were introduced to Wikipedia; however, they did not become as widespread until after the message was posted on Wikipedia. Commenting on the incident, Sinbad joked, "I wish that people would've called me back like this when I was alive. I gotta die more often. I'm writing a movie about this now... Seriously, my death is gonna be my comeback."

Community manager hired

Cary Bass, or Bastique, was hired this week by the Wikimedia Foundation, to serve in the new role of Volunteer Coordinator. He will work full-time at the Foundation office in St. Petersburg, Florida. In the announcement, board member Erik Möller said, "The entire Board and Staff has met Cary this weekend in St. Petersburg, and I believe it's fair to say that we're all very happy to have him onboard. ... Hiring Cary is part of our long term commitment to making sure that the global volunteer community will be involved not just in project-level work, but also in all aspects of what our organization is doing. Expect some exciting initiatives from him in the near future. :-)"

Policy changes

Jimbo Wales reverted the merger of Verifiability, No original research and Reliable sources into Attribution this week, saying:

Merging "Wikipedia:Verifiability with Wikipedia:No original research, while also streamlining Wikipedia:Reliable sources into a simpler FAQ at WP:ATT/FAQ" was a big mistake, and the result is completely incoherent. This needs to be reverted immdiately [sic] because it is just wrong. It is bad policy all around, and this is not the right way to make policy.

Verifiability and No Original Research are conceptually distinct: they are different things, not the same things. Reliable sources, too, is quite different from the other two, although arguably a subset of Verifiability. The resulting confusion is apparent in many arguments around Wikipedia, as editors are getting confused about two very different concepts.

There is no logical reason for the merge, as the information contained in this unified policy can be more sensibly separated back out into the two separate policies. As a first step, I am removing the claim on [Wikipedia:Attribution] that is supercedes [sic] the other two, and restoring the other two to their rightful place in the pantheon of Wikipedia.

In response to criticism over the change, Wales said, "I think that it probably was a more or less accurate merger of the three separate policies. But merging three separate policies into one, even when that change is not intended to make any actual policy change, is not trivial and in this particular a monumentally bad idea. ... We must not merge these separate concepts, or we have no means of distinguishing them."

In an unrelated change, the semi-protection policy has been merged into the protection policy, which now contains information and policy on all forms of protection, including cascading protection.

'Wiki' enters Oxford English Dictionary

The term wiki entered the Oxford English Dictionary this week. Its definition:

wiki, n. A type of web page designed so that its content can be edited by anyone who accesses it, using a simplified markup language.

Erin McKean, the editor of United States dictionaries for Oxford University Press, is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation advisory board.

300 boosts article ranks

The movie 300, based on the comic book of the same name, boosted the rank of many related articles, including Battle of Thermopylae (the 2nd most popular page, behind only the Main Page), 300 (film) (4th), Sparta (7th), 300 (comic book) (25th), 300 (29th), Xerxes I of Persia (32nd), and Leonidas I (44th). Having boosted 7 articles into the top 50, it is believed to be the most wide-scale jump for a series of related articles since by-article statistics were tracked. The seven articles, according to WikiCharts, are believed to have generated over 5 million page views in the last 20 days.


Briefly


SPV

Features and admins

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By Extranet

Administrators

Five users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Orderinchaos78 (nom), Rklawton (nom), Xiner (nom), Natalie Erin (nom) and Shimeru (nom).

Featured content

Twenty-three articles were promoted to featured status last week: The Smashing Pumpkins (nom), Ernest Emerson (nom), Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (nom), Hurricane Kenna (nom), Mars (nom), The Log from the Sea of Cortez (nom), Cape Feare (nom), Maximus the Confessor (nom), Nigel Kneale (nom), Mozambican War of Independence (nom), F-Zero GX (nom), Adam Gilchrist (nom), Technopark, Kerala (nom), Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War (nom), HMS Royal Oak (1914) (nom), Compsognathus (nom), Trembling Before G-d (nom), Flag of Portugal (nom), 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · (nom), Irish phonology (nom), George VI of the United Kingdom (nom), Wii (nom) and The Notorious B.I.G. (nom).

Four articles were de-featured last week: Bullfighting, Zeppelin, People's Republic of China and Canadian Heraldic Authority.

Two lists were promoted to featured status last week: 2006 NCAA Division I FBS football rankings and List of U.S. state name etymologies.

No sounds were promoted to featured status last week.

No topics were promoted to featured status last week.

One topic was delisted this week: Final Fantasy X

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Cricket World Cup, Same-sex marriage in Spain, Hurricane Iniki, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Jocelin, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and Uranium.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Red-crested Pochard, Saturn, Geisha, History of photography, Orlando furioso, Black-headed Gull and Richat Structure.

Ten pictures were promoted to featured status last week:


SPV

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Simetrical

As always, it may take some time for software changes to go live on the site. This week may take a particularly long time, because changes must be made to the very large revision table (well over 100,000,000 rows for the English Wikipedia alone). (The large revision-deletion change committed recently needs to be reviewed by a core developer before it can be activated, but it was rolled back temporarily so the code can go live before then.)

A contractor, Joerg Baach, was hired to work on an implementation of the "stable versions" concept, that would present only reviewed versions of pages to users who did not explicitly request the very latest (possibly unreviewed) revision.

New features

Special:Listusers is now case-insensitive with respect to the first letter, as usernames themselves are. That is, typing "bob" in the search box will return User:Bob (if that user exists), which makes sense because it is impossible to have a User:bob: the first letter of a username must always be capital. Subsequent letters are still case-sensitive, as usernames themselves are; in principle, it is not prohibited to have a User:Bob and User:BOB on the same project (although with the recent enabling of similarity checks for new users, neither could sign up anymore if the other is signed up). (Raimond Spekking, r20382)

On Special:Log, it is now possible to search for log entries relating to pages beginning with a particular prefix rather than just being able to search for exactly one specified page. (Raimond Spekking, T5984, r20409)

An oversight-like feature now exists in the software for not just old page revisions, but also log events and file revisions. It will also be possible to block users so that their usernames do not appear on the user list or block list, in case they are defamatory, reveal personal information, etc. (Aaron Schulz, T5576, r20448 et al.)

It is now possible to retrieve entire categories of articles via Special:Export, without having to list all the articles by name. (This feature was added a short time ago, but had to be removed due to bugs in the implementation.) (Daniel Kinzler, r20454)

When a user uploads an image under a name that's already used, a thumbnail of the existing image will now appear on the resulting warning page. (Raimond Spekking, r20491)

"Anonymous only" has no effect on blocks of users, only of IP addresses, so if the option is enabled for a user block, it will no longer be written into the block log. (Raimond Spekking, r20512)

It is now possible to use Special:Linksearch for URLs beginning with https://, ftp://, irc://, or news://, in addition to the standard http://. Existing links to such URLs will not be indexed until the page is edited. (Raimond Spekking, T10324, r20530)

Fixed bugs

Special:Log will now display correctly if there are no results. (Aaron Schulz, r20433)

Attempting to edit a nonexistent section (perhaps due to following a bad link) will now generate an error message rather than accepting the edit but not doing anything. (Steve Sanbeg, T11244, r20459)

Protection can no longer "cascade" to included pages for semi-protection (or similar protection levels, should others be enabled). This will prevent users who can edit semi-protected pages from including other pages so as to protect them. (Aaron Schulz, T10796, r20461)

If a deleted image exists with a particular name, someone attempting to upload a new image with that name will no longer receive a warning. (Aaron Schulz, T11019, r20490)

Internationalization

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.


SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By David Mestel

The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed no cases.

New case

Evidence phase

  • Falun Gong: A case regarding the conduct of various editors on the Falun Gong article. Olaf Stephanos and Asdfg12345 allege that Samuel Luo has edit-warred in removing pro-Falun Gong material from the article, while Luo, Tomananda and others allege that Stephanos, Asdfg and others have edit-warred (including page blanking) in removing anti-Falun Gong material.
  • Armenia-Azerbaijan: A case, brought by ex-arbitrator Dmcdevit, regarding a dispute between Armenian and Azerbaijani editors on a large number of articles.

Voting phase

  • InShaneee: A case involving the actions of Inshaneee. 81.179.115.188 (formerly Worldtraveller) alleges that InShaneee inappropriately blocked him in a dispute in which he was involved in violation of WP:BP, and that he responded agressively to criticism. InShaneee in his statement points to an apology admitting the block was premature, and denying any aggressive response. Paul August has proposed a remedy admonishing InShaneee, which has a majority of five to two, and another desysopping him is split at 3-3.
  • Barrett v. Rosenthal: A case brought by Peter M. Dodge involving the actions of Ilena and Fyslee. According to Dodge, Ilena was initially reported to AN/I for "posting links to sites that some considered to be attack sites". Various users attempted to assist Ilena, but "This was sabotaged...when Fyslee posted a link to a site that attacked Ilena in a personal manner". The title of the case refers to Barrett v. Rosenthal, a decision of the Supreme Court of California, which ruled that internet users and providers were not liable for the republication of defamatory statements, which some editors believe provides protection for Wikipedia. It has been alleged that some editors were involved in the real-life litigation of the case. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies banning Ilena for one year (with the support of nine arbitrators), and prohibiting her and Fyslee (9-6) from editing the articles in question.

Motion to close

  • Starwood: A case involving links to Starwood Festival-related articles from various pages. Paul Pigman, who brought the case, alleges that Rosencomet "persistently and systematically" added these links, perhaps to an extent that violates WP:SPAM, and raised allegations against several other editors, which they have denied. If closed, Rosencomet would be cautioned "to avoid aggressive editing of articles when there is a question of conflict of interest".

Under review - Closed

  • Waldorf education: In pursuance of a remedy passed in the initial case, Fred Bauder initiated a review of all parties' behaviour. Following the review, Pete K was banned from editing Waldorf education and related articles indefinitely.


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