Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-07-11
Stepping down
After thirteen months as the Signpost's editor-in-chief, I am now stepping down. I think that the Signpost serves a very important role in informing the community, and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience working to fulfill this with the members of the Signpost's core team and the many more people who are constantly helping us with occasional tips, contribute one-off stories, make suggestions on how to improve the Signpost, or just do some copyediting and fact-checking. Jarry1250 is overseeing the publication of this issue (besides his regular duty on the "Technology Report" beat), while discussion about the future organization of the Signpost's editorial process continues.
The reason I am resigning as editor is that I am taking up work for the Wikimedia Foundation, supporting movement communication activities as part of the WMF's communications team. While I see this work as ultimately directed toward the same goal of informing the community (and an opportunity for myself to devote more consistent and sustained activity toward it), it would make it too much of a conflict of interest if I were to continue to make final editorial decisions for a community-run publication. To cite my predecessor Ragesoss' remarks when he left last year for similar reasons: "Holding the powerful to account is a core purpose of the broadsheets we've tried to emulate. I've always viewed the Signpost's independence from, and constructively critical stance toward, the Foundation as a key part of the Signpost's identity—if at times an underdeveloped one." As a regular writer for the Signpost's "News and notes" section, I have tried to provide that kind of independent coverage, now it is other writers' turn. However, I will continue to support the Signpost both as a WMF employee and as a volunteer, offering to write from an explicit Foundation perspective or about non-COI issues.
Around a year ago when I took up the editorship, we had many discussions about the Signpost's direction, and a consensus emerged to increase coverage beyond the English Wikipedia, symbolized by a slight rename from "Wikipedia Signpost" to "The Signpost". I think we have managed to follow through, while staying strong in our reporting about the English Wikipedia, e.g. in the revamped Featured Content section. The global Signpost subscriptions on other Wikimedia projects that we introduced last September have been a success, and the global message delivery service set up by MZMcBride for this purpose has now found numerous other uses for movement-wide communications. Another testament to the Signpost's enduring popularity is that its publication process and template system were adapted by two other movement newsletters founded this year, WikiPatrika and This month in GLAM.
Another important trend is the role of social media (outside the wikis), especially microblogging, which appears to be taken up by more and more Wikimedians. The Signpost's Identi.ca and Twitter presences have proven important to gather and disseminate timely news (with the latter currently approaching 2000 followers).
A recent first for the Signpost is having one of our writers attend a conference as a dedicated Signpost correspondent, in this case at the invitation of the Foundation's Public Policy Initiative – you can read the resulting coverage in this issue and the upcoming one.
Thank you for reading and contributing to the Signpost.
Regards, Tilman Bayer
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Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit recap
The Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit was held July 8–9, 2011 at Simmons College in Boston. Approximately 120 students, professors, online and campus ambassadors, and Wikimedia Foundation staff involved with the Public Policy Initiative gathered to review how the past year went, and discuss the future of the program as it expands globally.
Friday
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Archivist of the United States David Ferriero opened the summit with a keynote, talking about challenges for Wikipedia in working with institutions of higher education, which tend to be wary of anything radical. For Ferriero, the National Archives had to be involved with Wikipedia because "that's where people are" and because it's a way to make its content "more transparent and available". He suggested the best way in experience of the Archives to overcome skepticism about Wikipedia is to encourage people to use and work with it, and that students writing for Wikipedia is a terrific learning opportunity.
Public Policy Initiative staff Rod Dunican, Amy Roth, Annie Lin, LiAnna Davis, and Sage Ross shared results from the past year. In 2010–2011, 24 universities, 47 courses, and 800 students in the United States participated in the initiative—200 students in the Fall (Sept–Dec 2010) and 600 in the Spring (Jan–May 2011) terms, and the campus ambassadors were 46% female. Outcomes for the initiative included not only improving Wikipedia content, but also helped improve students' skills in collaboration and media literacy.
After Ferriero, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner gave a keynote speech on how the Public Policy Initiative fits within the Foundation's strategic priorities. She explained that the important goal for Wikimedia now and in the foreseeable future is increased participation, along with improved quality which in turn attracts more readers—a small portion of whom become editors who, in turn, help strengthen quality of the content and create a virtuous circle. In addition, increased diversity is a key goal of the Foundation, including closing the gender gap and better geographic representation. Already, the initiative has had much higher female participation rates than routine editing, and, by expanding the initiative to India, Brazil and elsewhere, the Foundation hopes to stimulate better geographic diversity.
Rosta Farzan, of Carnegie Mellon University, and the Foundation's Sage Ross demonstrated course tools that were developed in support of Wikipedia programs in universities, to help instructors assess students' work.
Breakout sessions in the afternoon included a panel with professors Jon Beasley-Murray, Brian Carver, Cindy Allen, and Chris Cooper, and sessions discussing the experiences of online and campus ambassadors, institutionalizing Wikipedia on campus, improving the ambassador program, and incorporating Wikipedia into the syllabus.
A key issue discussed was how to organize online ambassadors and match them with students. Should students continue to individually select online mentors? Discussions leaned towards the opinion that online ambassadors should be matched up with courses, as outlined in pod structure changes. This would allow online ambassadors to coordinate better with campus ambassadors and professors in a more consistent way, and hence could be a more scalable way of organizing the program.
Saturday
On Saturday, Frank Schulenburg and Barry Newstead presented on the Wikimedia Global University Program and future direction for campus programs. Schulenburg explained that participation and interest in the program has greatly exceeded expectations, and exponential growth is expected to continue, hitting 10,000 students by 2013. In the next year, the program is expanding to Canada, the UK, Germany, Brazil and India, as well as more universities in the United States.
P.J. Tabit, coordinator of the India Education pilot program in Pune, joined the summit via video conference. For the fall semester, 13 professors in Pune have been recruited, and out of 700 applicants to be campus ambassadors, 22 have been selected. As elsewhere, the India program is expanding beyond public policy courses, including engineering, economics, nutrition and textiles courses, and a women's college.
In an afternoon panel, students shared their experiences, and there were breakout sessions for each U.S. regional group to discuss plans for the upcoming year, as the campus programs expand away from solely Public Policy and into other topic areas.
More
- Photos on Wikimedia Commons
- Wikipedia Aims Higher – Inside Higher Ed
- Wikipedia in the Public Sphere – Blog post by Adam Hyland
- #wphied – Twitter coverage
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Wikipedians' surfing habits explored, Sloan Foundation renews $3M grant; brief news
Wikipedians' surfing habits explored
On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, results from the Editor Survey that ran in April 2011 were published this week. They show that Facebook is the most popular online activity of Wikimedians with the social networking sites beating other activities such as watching online videos, using instant messaging and tweeting. Indeed, 68% of Wikipedia editors use Facebook compared to only 30% who use Twitter, while only 18% of Wikipedia editors play online multi-player games including World of Warcraft and uptake of online games such as Farmville and Cityville is limited to the same percentage. 29% of editors blog, whilst only a slightly lower percentage (22%) say that they actively contribute to the development of open-source software (including, but not limited to, MediaWiki itself).
Sloan Foundation renews grant
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic funding institution, announced this week that it will award a grant of $3 million to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is the second grant of this amount awarded to the Wikimedia Foundation from the Sloan Foundation's Universal Access to Knowledge component of its Digital Information Technology program. The Sloan Foundation's first grant of $3 million, awarded in 2008 and with effect through to 2010, represents the largest single grant ever received by the Wikimedia Foundation. In announcing its renewal, the WMF described the previous grant as having enabled the Foundation to "grow its core operations to support and sustain Wikipedia as a high-quality free knowledge resource". The Wikimedia Foundation is "delighted to have received this vote of continued confidence in its work".
Speaking for the Sloan Foundation, Doron Weber said that "Wikipedia embodies the ideal values of the world wide web and we are proud to be part of this bold endeavor to use the wisdom and the altruism of the crowd to create the biggest, most up-to-date and most open global encyclopedia in human history", whilst the WMF are confident that the funds will help with "increasing Wikipedia's quality, increasing the number and demographic diversity of its editors, and reaching more readers, particularly in the global south".
Brief news
- Less vandalism and fewer vandal fighters: A Summer of Research investigation by EpochFail into "vandal fighting" on the English Wikipedia in the period 2007 to 2010 found that the amount of vandalism left for editors to cleanup has been reducing over the years and suggests that this could be the result of improvements in the quality of both edit filters (first introduced in March 2009) and anti-vandalism bots. The research also found that the proportion of editors involved in reverting vandalism has fallen over time, even as the community itself has contracted.
- Wiki Loves Monuments contest: The Wikimedia Foundation blog carried a post about the second annual "Wiki loves monuments" photo scavenger hunt, which is to be held in September in 16 countries across Europe. The contests are being organized by Wikimedia local chapters, and in some countries without chapters, local Wikimedians have organized the contests in their place. However, on the mailing list of the UK chapter, which is not taking part, volunteer Charles Matthews opined that the competition had lacked a "clear brief as to what that involved", a charge denied by project organisers.
- Language coverage investigated: Milos Rancic, an editor and board candidate in this year's elections, published his analysis of the state of language diversity within the Wikimedia movement this week on the foundation-l mailing list. He concluded that although 270 languages have had recognised projects, only 12 languages have projects in all 7 categories; his report prompted a debate about the optimal role of the WMF in supporting languages in decline, if any.
- Meetups: Community meet-ups took place last week in Bhagalpur (July 7); Pune (July 9); London (July 10) and Bangalore (July 10).
- Summer of Research underway at Foundation: The Foundation's Steven Walling posted images of the Summer of Research program. Details of the research being done can be seen on Meta.
- Article Feedback moves out of trial phase: Starting on 12 July, the ArticleFeedback extension will be rolled out across the English Wikipedia's 3.5 million articles. The deployment is expected to last some 10 days as new articles are added to the enabled list in batches, according to the Foundation's software deployments page. It is currently enabled for just 100,000.
- One new English Wikipedia administrator. Worm That Turned (nom) lives in England and works in the Information Technology (IT) field. He has been helping with OTRS tickets, and now will be able to handle things he previously had to skip over because he was not an administrator. (Information about new admins comes from their RfA or user pages, or from what they tell The Signpost directly.)
Milestones
- On July 6, the Czech-language Wikipedia reached 200,000 articles and remains the largest reference work ever written in Czech, according to a report on the Prague Daily Monitor website, and has 679 active editors. The 200,000th article was on the ice hockey goalkeeper Ron Hextall, added by User:Gothic2. The article creation rate for Czech Wikipedia has been around 100 a day for the past three months. There were also important milestones for a number of other projects:
- The Asturian Wikipedia reached 15,000 articles on July 5.
- The Georgian Wikipedia reached 50,000 articles on July 7.
- The Croatian Wikipedia reached 100,000 articles on July 7.
- The Ukrainian Wikipedia reached 300,000 articles on July 7.
- The Cheyenne Wikipedia reached 100 articles on July 7.
- The Tatar Wikipedia reached 10,000 articles on July 8.
- The Kazakh Wikipedia reached 50,000 articles on July 9.
Reader comments
Britannica and Wikipedia compared; Putin award criticized; possible journalistic sockpuppeting; brief news
MacUser reviews Britannica vs Wikipedia
Last week, MacUser, a biweekly Macintosh and Apple magazine in the UK, published a three-page review by Steve Caplin entitled "Encyclopedia Britannica vs Wikipedia", specifically pitting the free encyclopedia anyone can edit against the 2011 DVD edition of Britannica for the Macintosh (£39.99) along with the annual website subscription (£49.95). While the comparison was not systematic, it touched on a number of key areas. Firstly, it reported that the usability of Wikipedia trumps that of Britannica—Wikipedia's fast loading times were praised, as was its design, which was described as "clean, informative, and apart from the small logo, entirely devoid of visual clutter". By comparison, wrote Caplin, the process of searching Britannica "is a little slow" and there are technical issues with switching between the search field and the results.
To test how well Britannica keeps up with current affairs, Caplin tested the article on Nick Clegg. He noted that the 2011 DVD edition of Britannica fails to mention that Clegg became Deputy Prime Minister in May 2010, although the online version is slightly more up-to-date. The online version, though, lacks the detail of its 7,500-word counterpart article on Wikipedia and has only one image, compared to the seven on Wikipedia and the 30 more the review states are on Commons (in fact, Nick Clegg's category on Commons has 44 files at the time of writing, although a few are not of Clegg). On the other hand, Wikipedia is not reviewed quite so favourably for the article on radiocarbon dating, which the review says has "a severe case of information overload" compared with Britannica's 640-word article, which is "concise, comprehensible and memorable". Fascism, the article notes, is only 12,260 words on Wikipedia, while Britannica's is 16,500 words (although this may be because further details on Wikipedia are tucked away in subsidiary articles and hatnoted).
The issue of Wikipedia's focus on pop culture and its skew towards recentism and possible systemic bias are raised, noting that Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on the footballer Ryan Giggs (and the superinjunction controversies—as covered by The Signpost on March 23)—as well as coverage of pop culture topics like Dexter, Avatar and Chatroulette. Such topics have no articles in Britannica. Wikipedia's coverage of science fiction (and, indeed, a vast array of "arcane trivia") dwarfs Britannica: Doctor Who in Britannica returns 283 words to Wikipedia's 12,500.
The article concludes that Britannica does better in "conciseness and accuracy", but Wikipedia scores very well despite covering pop culture in too much detail.
Putin receives the same award as Wikipedia
News that Vladimir Putin is set to be awarded the German-based Quadriga Award, which is "dedicated to all of those whose courage tears down walls and whose commitment builds bridges" (source), featured prominently in the German media this week. This is the same award Wikipedia received in 2008. At the time, Wikipedia was represented by Jimmy Wales, although he has forwarded it to Wikimedia Germany.
The decision of the Quadriga committee to award the prize to the former Russian president has received criticism from both the German media and Wikipedians unhappy that Wikipedia's contribution to global liberty has been put on a par with Putin, who many in the west consider responsible for a number of human rights violations in Russia. For this reason, some of them have called for a return and rejection of the Quadriga Award that Wikimedia Germany received in 2008.
Jimmy Wales is listed as a Quadriga Board member, which led some media, including the Austrian Der Standard and German Berliner Morgenpost newspapers, and television station n-tv, to believe that he did not vote against Putin. In fact, Wales has since clarified that he had nothing to do with the award, was not consulted, and states that he would not have voted in favour of giving Putin any award. Meanwhile, discussions about returning the award continue.
Questions raised over Johann Hari edits
Johann Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British writer and columnist for The Independent. An editor operating from the username David r from meth productions has, for quite a few years, been editing Wikipedia articles on Hari and on topics related to Hari including other journalists like Cristina Odone, Francis Wheen, Andrew Roberts, Niall Ferguson and Spectator writer Nick Cohen. The effect of the edits were to make Hari "seem one of the essential writers of our times" according to Cohen, who goes further in his 'Diary' piece for The Spectator this week, alleging that Hari is involved in a case of either anonymous sock puppeting or meatpuppeting.
David Allen Green, the legal correspondent for the New Statesman, investigated further and published an entry on his personal blog, Jack of Kent, entitled Who is David Rose?. Green traces User:David r from meth productions from Wikipedia over to SourceWatch, a wiki maintained by the Center for Media and Democracy, where a user called 'DaveR' had made edits primarily to the article and talk page on Johann Hari. At one point the DaveR user fails to login and uses an IP address which is traced to The Independent—217.118.114.3. Green goes on to state that what we know of the 'Dave R' character from various blog comments and wiki edits is that he is called David Rose, who claims to have gone to university with Hari and who also has an email address which was apparently used to publish a pornographic story.
The story was also covered in the The Telegraph's Holy Smoke blog by Damian Thompson under the headline Johann Hari, Wikipedia and a porn site: an extraordinary new development. The Telegraph also had a post from Cristina Odone on the topic. On Wikipedia, the story was mentioned on ANI, the BLP noticeboard, the Administrator's Noticeboard and the Conflict of Interest noticeboard.
In brief
- Kul Wadhwa in Ireland: The Head of Business Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, Kul Wadhwa, was interviewed for the Irish Times this week. In the interview, which focused on the growth of social media, Wadhwa was positive about the prospects for sites which allow interaction, including Wikipedia. "I think you've kind of just scratched the surface on a lot of ways people are going to interact... people want to connect". Wadhwa was also quoted as being particularly excited about a new "collaborative education project".
- Konkani language "going places": DailyBhaskar.com, a news website serving India, covered the impact that Wikimedia's effort to open up the Konkani language to the web is having on the language, currently spoken by some 3.6 million people centred on the west of the country (based on an article by Daily News and Analysis). In particular, the article highlights the presence of discussions about the language, which is written in different scripts in different regions, on the agenda for this August's Wikimania. A Konkani Wikipedia is currently being incubated.
- More coverage of 'philosophy' trend: This week, The Guardian ran a short article covering a trick that has been floating around the Internet for a while: "Start at any Wikipedia page, then click the first link (ignoring any that are italicised or nestled in brackets), then repeat. For more than 93% of articles, you will end up at philosophy" ([1]). For more about 'getting to philosophy', see previous Signpost coverage.
- Greek "I participate in Wikipedia" campaign: The general coordinator of the government-supported Greek "I participate in Wikipedia" campaign was interviewed on the University of Amsterdam's "Masters of Media" group blog (by graduate student Ilektra Pavlaki who had blogged there earlier about her encounters with Greek Wikipedians, see Signpost coverage).
- "Bigipedia" spoof of Wikipedia resumes: A second series of Bigipedia, a BBC comedy radio show parodying Wikipedia, will start tomorrow. (See the Signpost review of the first season, which aired in 2009)
Reader comments
WikiProject Albums
- The July 2011 Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive is underway. Join in the fun, meet nice people, and earn a barnstar for your efforts.
- These projects could use new members to help improve articles and increase activity on the projects' talk pages: WikiProject Chinese History, WikiProject Firearms, WikiProject Norway, and WikiProject Schools
This week, we listened to the members of WikiProject Albums as they shared their experience improving articles about music albums. Started in October 2002, WikiProject Albums has grown to include nearly 130,000 pages, including 78 Featured Articles, 35 Featured Lists, and 385 Good Articles. Despite an active group of editors, the project's members have acknowledged that the project has some difficulty keeping up with assessments, evidenced by the 36,000 unassessed articles under the project's scope. The project is a child of WikiProject Music and overlaps with several projects, including WikiProject Songs, WikiProject Discographies, and WikiProject Record Charts. WikiProject Albums maintains a to-do list, follows a watchlist, and contributes to the Music Portal.
We interviewed three of the project's members. Zidane tribal joined after creating an article for one of his favorite bands and "receiving very nice feedback from a member." His favorite albums are Legend and the Hola/Chau twin concerts. Backtable is a musician and music collector. He joined WikiProject Albums a while ago but only recently became active in the project. Among his favorite albums are Wish You Were Here, In the Court of the Crimson King, Red, Close to the Edge, Blackwater Park, Frances the Mute, Sub Templum, and Heligoland. Freekee joined both Wikipedia and WikiProject Albums "partly because one of my favorite albums had an article that really needed improvement. I won't tell you what album it was because in the five and a half years since then, I never fixed it." He describes himself as a wikignome who fixes categorization, grammar, and wording. He adds that he would just like "to make sure that there is a good source for information on the music that I love so much."
What motivated you to join WikiProject Albums? Do you have experience in the music industry? What is your favorite album?
- Zidane tribal: Most of the albums of my favorite band lacked articles and after creating one and receiving very nice feedback from a member I decided to join the project. I do not have experience in the music industry. My favorite album is either Legend or the Hola/Chau twin concerts.
- Backtable: I joined WikiProject Albums because I have a very active interest in music, and am a physical music collector, especially when it comes to CDs. I joined a while back, but I didn't become an active member until recently. As for music industry experience, I am working on a career as a musician, and I have a few musical projects going on. I'm working on music that I want to release sometime. I am not signed to any labels, nor do I play live, although I want to do the latter sometime soon with some of my friends. Some of my favorite albums include Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, In the Court of the Crimson King and Red both by King Crimson, Close to the Edge by Yes, Blackwater Park by Opeth, Frances the Mute by The Mars Volta, Sub Templum by Moss, and Heligoland by Massive Attack.
- Freekee: I joined Wikipedia and the project partly because one of my favorite albums had an article that really needed improvement. I won't tell you what album it was because in the five and a half years since then, I never fixed it. I'm not in the industry, and have no vested interest in any of this music - I just want to make sure that there is a good source for information on the music that I love so much.
The project is home to over 100 pieces of featured content and nearly 400 Good Articles. Have you worked on any of these articles? What are some common elements found in most FAs and GAs about albums?
- Zidane tribal: I haven't participated significantly in any FA or GA.
- Most GA and FA have extensive references on account of the large reception and production sections.
- Backtable: I don't specialize in GA and FA articles, but I edit them once in a while. Some common elements of such articles is that they're longer and more detailed and thorough than lesser-ranked articles.
- Freekee: I haven't participated significantly in any FA or GA. I'm not great on references and citations, and I'm not that great a writer either, so I tend to Wikignome tasks, like categorization and fixing grammar and wording.
How does the project handle notability of albums and promotional material added to articles about albums? How frequently does the project deal with editors who have a conflict of interest?
- Zidane tribal: I myself had a couple of articles proposed for speedy deletion. I took the time window to make my case in favor of keeping the articles and it was also a lot of help that a highly respected member of the project gave arguments in support of my case. Also it is worth mentioning that there are a lot of articles with very obscure backgrounds that don't even get the necessary attention to get deleted.
- Just recently a discussion [took place] over how to implement the guideline over the proper place for the reviews; in a reception section or the infobox. In my time in the project, the discussion has reached if not good results, at least they have never ended in a heated exchange of insults.
- Backtable: Well, I personally usually remove promotional material from articles, and anything else that violates POV customs. And this project deals with conflicts of interest occasionally, but not horribly often. There may be review sites in question for use on album pages, for instance. Also, there are a handful of people who don't like the direction the review layout is going, but I'll go into more detail about that later.
Are some music genres underrepresented by Wikipedia's coverage of albums? What can be done to improve coverage of these neglected genres?
- Zidane tribal: I am of the opinion that there are FAR too many music genres so I'm okay if Techno retro punk salsa isn't well represented.
- Backtable: By default, I wouldn't quite say so. This WikiProject doesn't seem too partial or too overlooking of any particular genre.
- Freekee: I see articles and I edit them. I never notice a lack, unless it's of a particular album that I own.
Does WikiProject Albums collaborate with any other projects?
- Zidane tribal: Well, mostly songs, jazz, hip-hop and to a lesser degree country specific projects.
- Freekee: I wouldn't say we collaborate, so much as overlap. We copy some of the work done by the Songs Project, and they us. And there are many artist projects and task forces.
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new editor help today?
- Zidane tribal: There are 127,236 articles, of those 83,448 are either unassessed or Stubs and the amount of new articles by far is bigger that the amount of newly assessed or upgraded stubs. In my time, I have assessed well over 8K articles and they just keep coming.
- Backtable: As Zidane Tribal stated, there are the stubbish articles and the unassessed articles. And here's another one: moving infobox reviews into article space. Reviews have been determined not to belong in the infobox anymore, and they are now to be placed in their own table, preferrably in the respective article's reception section. There are upwards of 45,000 left as of my postings here, and that drive could always use a little more help from willing inidividuals. Another thing I'd like to point out doesn't apply only to album pages, but music pages in general. There are those foolish genre warriors. Their presence is loathsome.
Anything else you'd like to add?
- Zidane tribal: I love Wikipedia.
- Backtable: Wikipedia is awesome. I hope that visits to Wikipedia are generally informative and productive to people. Stay thirsty for knowledge, my friends!
Next week, we'll try not to infringe on Hormel's trademark as we investigate some mystery meat that has been clogging up the internet's arteries. Until then, clean out your junk mail folder and visit the WikiProject Report Archives.
Reader comments
The best of the week
Featured articles
- Deusdedit of Canterbury (nom), a rather obscure early Anglo-Saxon archbishop of Canterbury, and the first native holder of the office. (Nominated by Ealdgyth)
- Californium (nom), a radioactive metallic element first produced in 1950 at the University of California, Berkeley. (Mav)
- Dengue fever (nom), a viral tropical disease that is not as well-known as malaria (the WHO considers it a "neglected tropical disease"), but which affects 50–100 million people per year, and has been linked to thousands of deaths (often in young children). (Jfdwolff, Jmh649)
- 1952 Winter Olympics (nom), held in Oslo, Norway, that attracted 694 athletes representing 30 countries, who participated in six sports and 22 events. (H1nkles)
- John McCauley (nom) (1899–1989), a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, who became a leading figure in the Royal Australian Air Force. (Ian Rose)
- Vidkun Quisling (nom), the Nazi collaborationist leader of Norway, who seized power in 1940 in a Nazi-backed coup that garnered him international infamy. His government participated in Germany's Final Solution. He was executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress, Oslo, on 24 October 1945. During World War II, quisling became a synonym for traitor. (Jarry1250)
- Kenneth Walker (nom), a US Army aviator and a US Army Air Forces general who had a significant influence on the development of air-power doctrine and posthumously received the Medal of Honor in World War II. (Hawkeye7)
- Into Temptation (film) (nom), a 2009 film about a prostitute and a Catholic priest. (Hunter Kahn)
Featured topic
- Thatgamecompany (nom), with seven articles, is an American independent video game developer. The studio is currently a second-party developer for Sony Computer Entertainment, and is under contract to create three downloadable games for the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network service. The company focuses on creating video games that provoke emotional responses from players. When designing a game, Thatgamecompany employees start by mapping out what they want the player to feel rather than by establishing game mechanics. Readers will find links to many technical and field-specific terms in the seven articles that make up the topic. (nominator PresN) (pictures at right)
Featured lists
Four lists were promoted:
- List of colonial governors of Massachusetts (nom) (Nominated by Magicpiano.)
- List of awards and nominations received by Madonna (nom) (Legolas2186.)
- List of France national football team captains (nom) (Joao10Siamun.)
- Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (L) (nom) (Killervogel5.)
Featured pictures
Two images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
- Five and one-hundred dollar Confederate notes (nom; related article), part of the fascinating subject of Confederate war finance). The image shows the front sides of Confederate States of America banknotes, printed December 1862 (the back sides were unprinted). (Creator: unknown (Confederate government), scanned by User:Michael Holley).
- Hurricane Rick (nom; related article), near peak intensity, with a clear view of the eye (created by NASA; MODIS]).
Reader comments
Tree shaping case comes to a close - what does the decision tell us?
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases. Two cases are currently open.
Open cases
MickMacNee (Week 4)
(See earlier Signpost coverage for background about this case.) An additional kilobyte was submitted in on-wiki evidence.
Tree shaping (Week 11)
The case was opened after allegations of long-term COI editing on the Tree shaping article, and problematic usage of the article's talk page. 9 editors submitted evidence on-wiki, and several proposals were submitted in the workshop, including proposed principles and findings of fact by drafter Elen of the Roads. Drafter Elen of the Roads amended the proposals before submitting them in the proposed decision for arbitrators to vote on, and remedy proposals were considered over the last week. 13 active arbitrators voted on the final decision before the case came to a close today.
- What is the effect of the decision and what does it tell us?
- The subject/topic involved in this case is a relatively new art form in which three-dimensional works of art are created by modifying the growth of living trees. The dispute focuses on what title to give the article on the subject. Practitioners have developed their own names for their particular techniques and forms of the art, some of which have commercial status as brand names. There are also a variety of terms from arboriculture and elsewhere that are used to describe both the techniques used and the final results. As editors of the article have not reached a consensus as to a consistent preference within reliable sources on the use of any one term, the title of the article (currently Tree shaping) has continued to be disputed.
- Some of those editing the article are themselves practitioners of the art, or have a professional or commercial interest in the art. These editors potentially have a conflict of interest, as it may be in their interests to have the title of the article reflect the description used for their own artworks, and this may conflict with Wikipedia's policies. Although expert editors (including those with a professional or commercial interest in the subject of the articles they edit) are welcome on Wikipedia, the guidelines concerning conflicts of interest must be observed where applicable, and expert editors must at all times avoid editing (or appearing to edit) the encyclopaedia in order to promote their own professional or commercial interest. Any editor who focuses primarily or exclusively on a narrow subject—sometimes referred to as SPAs— should avoid creating the impression that their focus is on advocacy rather than neutrally presenting information. Contributors who engage in tendentious or disruptive editing, such as by engaging in sustained aggressive point-of-view editing, may be subjected to editing restrictions or bans.
- Discretionary sanctions have been enabled for the topic covered by the article, broadly interpreted.
- Sydney Bluegum (talk · contribs) is banned from the topic of tree shaping/arborsculpture/pooktre (widely construed), anywhere on Wikipedia until July 2012.
- Blackash (talk · contribs) & Slowart (talk · contribs) are each banned from all discussion on the correct name for the tree shaping/arborsculpture/pooktre topic until July 2012. These bans apply anywhere on Wikipedia, but only cover discussion of what name should be given to the practice and what title should be used for any articles on the subject. These restrictions will supersede the existing community-placed restrictions.
- Due to their experience and familiarity with the area, Sydney Bluegum (talk · contribs), Blackash (talk · contribs), and Slowart (talk · contribs) will be given limited exceptions from their topic bans to outlay proposals and background rationale at the commencement of a particular RfC on the article. That particular RfC should determine the consensus name and scope for the subject matter, and whether it should stand alone or whether it is best upmerged to a parent article.
- Article titles should be based on the name by which reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering recognisability, naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency. In determining which of several alternative names is most frequently used, it is useful to observe the usage of major bodies and English-language media outlets, as well as quality encyclopedias and journals. In a few cases, there will be notable topics which are well-documented in reliable sources, but for which no accepted short-hand term exists. Although it can be tempting to employ a neologism in such a case, it is preferable to use a title that is a descriptive phrase in plain English if possible, even if this makes for a somewhat long or awkward title.
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WMF works on its release strategy; secure server problems; brief news
Debate over WMF release strategy continues
Wrangling over the optimal release strategy for the MediaWiki software that powers both Wikimedia wikis and other websites continued this week on the wikitech-l mailing list. It follows the publication of a Foundation-led "post-mortem" of the 1.17 release, which discussed what was done well and what could use improvement at a time when 1.18 is looming. The team were generally happy with the finished product, but identified weaknesses in the early-stage release process (particularly under-documentation) that made it difficult to distribute among multiple staff members.
The main point of contention, however, is the desirable number of releases per year: the report noted that "The range of opinion seems to be anywhere from 'multiple times a day' to 'every six months'", whilst a follow-up post by volunteer MZMcBride concluded that there was a fundamental difference between the view of the release manager (Tim Starling), who argues for slower release, and "Brion, Neil, Chad, Roan, and in some ways Erik, among others" who want quicker releases. As a consequence, he argued, Tim achieved his own goals but not necessarily those of the broader community. More broadly, the accompanying thread saw the first significant discussion about actively trying to break the current system of similar WMF and non-WMF ("tarball") release schedules. Developer Roan Kattouw summarised his own view, namely that "3 [tarball] releases per year is fine. However, I think we should deploy to WMF sites much more often than that". This got agreement from Bryan Tong Minh and implicit support from MZMcBride.
As a result of the process issues identified, the WMF tech team held meetings on 7 and 8 July to discuss "the code review, deployment and release management process" – including the timing issues above – and to answer questions such as"how do we dissipate key skills more widely among both staff and volunteers" and "how/when can we split "big hairy projects" with integration issues into more manageable chunks" (also wikitech-l). The draft results of the meeting, published on mediawiki.org, suggest that a move to more rapid deployment is likely to carry the day, as are an effort to reduce the stigma attached to being reverted and further pushes towards a "continuous integration" model.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
To comment on bugs, you need to be registered at Bugzilla. This is a great first step for users anxious to help direct software developments (Note that Bugzilla exposes your email address to other users.)
- Bugmeister Mark Hershberger called for a triage of bugs attached to old versions. Given that the task only required attempting to reproduce the bugs, he argued that it was ideal of non-coders anxious to help (wikitech-l mailing list). A second triage aimed to identify "easy" bugs perfect for 'wannabe' developers (also wikitech-l).
- Users reported problems with using the secure server. Although almost certainly related to changes made to the configuration of the secure (HTTPS) servers, the problem is yet to be authoritatively declared fixed at time of writing.
- An error that impaired the display of those interface messages shown by JavaScript in some web browsers was fixed (bug #29726).
- The JSMin+ library will now be included with MediaWiki. Its JavaScript parser, the only part to be utilised initially, will mean that bad JavaScript will now give the correct line numbers for errors for the first time since the ResourceLoader was deployed in February.
- The Romanian Wikipedia has become the latest to take up for-profit company Linterweb's offer to archive its links (Linterweb blog). Other Wikipedias, such as the English Wikipedia, have traditionally sought to avoid reliance on advertising-supported Linterweb, instead favouring sites such as WebCite with mixed success.
- In light of recent improvements to the parallel system of 'unit tests' (see previous Signpost coverage), there were discussions on the wikitech-l mailing list this week about whether support for the more heavy duty Selenium test suite needed to be retained ("Do we need Selenium for anything anymore?", spun-off from "Selenium IDE test for regressing bug"). In separate news, Foundation contractor Sumana Harihareswara opened an RfC on the future of unit tests.
- More than two years after Revision Deletion was enabled, the ability to apply traditional oversight measures to malicious edits was withdrawn from oversighters on the English Wikipedia (bug #18511).
- On the English Wikipedia, this week saw the approval of a new ClerkBot to help with Arbitration Committee administration and a bot to remove stale {{In use}} templates (JL-Bot 6). Meanwhile, BRFAs are currently open for a number of tasks, including a replacement for WebCiteBOT.
- With the resolution of bug #22689, registered users of Wikimedia Commons will be able to see hidden categories by default.
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