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Retrospective

The Signpost in 2005

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By JPxG

Thoughts on 2005

In 2005, the Signpost was a new institution, as was the Wikipedia it documented. Initially, it was solely the work of Michael Snow; as it gained steam, it gained contributors, and as it gained contributors, it gained perspective. While Wikipedia was already a large community getting regular press coverage at the beginning of 2005 (or at least enough to fill out an "In the media" section every week), it remained a curiosity in the eyes of most. It was an also-ran to traditional encyclopedias like Britannica and online expert-written encyclopedias backed by large companies like Encarta; the days of Nupedia were over, but the long-term viability of the wiki model still remained unproven. This can be seen in early Signpost coverage -- Wikipedia's credibility was not a question in the eyes of most, it was a "no". While its existence was increasingly well-known, it was still worth noting each time a traditional publication mentioned it (or, better yet, cited it for a definition). The last part is notable as well: while newspapers and magazines constantly debated the question of Wikipedia's reliability, they often felt no compunction about using it to cite definitions and history in their articles (as well as trivia and factoids). Perhaps this was even more validating than a positive article about Wikipedia -- proof of its superiority, or at least proof of its greater breadth and accessibility, the few times a week it happened. At this point, one can imagine that all results in a news search for "Wikipedia" in any given week would fit into a small Signpost column; indeed, even trivial mentions in passing are recorded. In 2022, it goes without saying that this is absolutely not the case; typically, only major media coverage is even mentioned in Signpost issues.

Reporting on the proceedings of disciplinary procedures, primarily (and most visibly) the Arbitration Committee, became an integral part of Signpost reporting. The Committee, started as an ad-hoc tribunal of last resort, was at this time becoming steadily more integrated into the dispute resolution process. ArbCom cases in early 2005 are sparse, and their conclusions are mostly arbitrary; even within the space of one year, it is easy to see its current structure developing (with ubiquitous reference to previous findings of fact, principles and precedents).

The structure of arbitration proceedings (and indeed, of Wikipedia goings-on as a whole) in early 2005 can be seen as somewhat reminiscent to societies of antiquity, like the Greek polis: they were carried out primarily by (and to) small groups of people with recognizable names who showed up again and again. Personal relationships seem to have been quite relevant at this stage in Wikipedia's development; indeed, arbitrators were still being personally appointed by Jimbo. By the end of the year, a process of gradual accumulation enabled more regularity: precedents were established when arguments led to consensus on a variety of subjects that could be referenced afterwards as a source of common understanding.

However, the process of development was not linear -- Wikipedia's history is not a Whig history. A number of evolutionary dead ends are present during this time. One example of this is the strange occurrence of advocate groups, and counter-advocate groups, who brought (and defended) arbitration cases involving their own members. While the modern Arbitration Committee acts in a capacity largely equivalent to civil courts, its jurisprudence in 2005 was markedly different and resembled criminal proceedings in many ways. Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Regarding_The_Bogdanov_Affair is a typical ArbCom case of the period: note that people are listed as "defendants"! Also of note is that every single person listed (except the people who later changed their usernames) is now blocked -- most of them for totally unrelated reasons.

In the days of 2005, long-term patterns had yet to emerge, whether for better or for worse. Editors like JarlaxleArtemis, for example, are extended the good faith of clemency many times in a way that now seems alien. If a user in 2022 were to create dozens of sockpuppet accounts threatening an administrator, it seems patently absurd that this administrator would welcome them back to the project under mentorship: yet this was a regular occurrence in 2005. It was impossible, of course, for someone to have been a Wikipedia troll for more than four years at that point.

While Wikipedia's rise to prominence certainly did not start in 2005, and it didn't end there either, a number of pivotal events happened in that year. This is the year that its Alexa rank went from [whatever it was before] to [27 I think], as well as the year during which ratings of reference websites placed it above competitors like Britannica, Encarta, About.com, Answers.com and even Dictionary.com.

As for the Signpost itself -- a rising tide lifted all boats. There was not only an increase in editors, but an increase in highly involved editors (with up to seventeen sysops being promoted in a single week); this provided a massive boost for readership, but also for material to cover, as a "well-attended vote" went from the high thirties to the high hundreds and it became increasingly impractical for one person to keep track of even major discussions. It is fortunate, then, that as the amount of readers increased, so did the amount of potential writers and editors. A large portion of the Signpost's content in 2005 is routine descriptions of everyday events -- like requests for adminship, featured articles, summaries of media coverage and updates on WMF fundraisers -- that one can imagine automated by script. However, there are many pieces of original reporting on the proceedings of noticeboards, policy debates, and dispute resolution. Moreover, towards the end of 2005, we begin to see detailed investigations, like Flcelloguy's series on the Arbitration Committee; documentation of events that, were it not recorded here, would be nearly impossible to know about the existence of, let alone understand and interpret.

It is in 2005, then, that we see not only the origin of the Signpost, but the beginnings of an expansion from a simple newsletter into something that could be called a genuine news publication.

2005 part 1

  • The first post. It's called the SIGNPOST because you SIGN your POSTS, get it? "even a small community newspaper is a huge task", indeed.
  • Back when redirecting wikipedia.org to a landing page was big news. Has it even changed since then? I guess there was some obscure discussion about this on a mailing list, and then everyone had to deal with it. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
  • Maybe I should change my skin from Vector to Monobook to go through these, huh?
  • [[1]]: "The fallout from Larry Sanger's New Year's Eve Kuro5hin article criticizing Wikipedia for its 'anti-elitism' trickled into the media last week, which took up the ongoing debate over Wikipedia credibility": a sentence that only could have been written in 2005, not in the least because of Larry now holding diametrically opposed views.
  • A guy just said "a productioizzle" in the song I'm listening to. It really is 2005, isn't it. Maybe I should try and find a CRT to read these on.
  • No spoilers please -- I want to see if Wikipedia manages to unseat the vast unassailable titan of Encarta...

Okay, this is getting tedious, I think I will adopt a different format for these.

  • 2005-01-17/Arbitration report: "at one point the Arbitration Committee had to instruct the parties to organize and summarize the information they wanted to present in a manageable form" -- seeing a lot of beginnings here in the old days!
  • 2005-01-17/Celebrities: Lol, I guess there wasn't a rule against it, huh? And with Jimbo pronouncing the final decision as well. Party like it's 2005...
  • 2005-01-17/Features: Interesting to see how detailed the discussions were -- I guess because there were only a couple articles being promoted in a week, and there wasn't a very formulaic process for the promotions, so why not go into detail?
  • 2005-01-17/Fvw: "Thought he was already an admin" was a cliche in 2005? "Record numbers" meant 81 supports and 13 opposes then... and the Mediation Committee was understaffed(!)
  • 2005-01-17/In_the_media: Plans to develop a "finished" Wikipedia 1.0, huh?
  • 2005-01-17/SPV: Oh, I guess this is what the single-page editions were called back in the day, huh? I thought it was weird that there were none of those prior to 2010 when I searched for them -- this might make it a lot easier to do my reading. Or, wait -- I guess there were SPVs for January 2005, but not for the rest of 2005, and they started in earnest in 2006? Strange if true.

Okay, here we go for the rest of 2005, I guess:

  • 2005-01-31/Arbitration_report: Interesting to note that there is this amount of depth being given to individual cases -- the CheeseDreams case is being reported on for multiple instance of this column -- but on the other hand, I guess there weren't a lot of cases, so it wasn't like there was anything else to talk about. That and a weekly publishing schedule means there was probably nothing else to talk about. Some guy was under intense scrutiny but promised to limit his use of rollback and join the... harmonious editing club?
  • I opened so many tabs (every article from 2005 through May) that my browser slowed down substantially when I went to edit this page. I guess maybe I should cut back on the userscripts, huh?
  • 2005-01-31/Block_wars: In response to the ban, Wik indicated that he was leaving Wikipedia permanently. Many users left goodbye messages on his talk page, ranging from sad to hostile and gloating. This, along with vandalism to Wik's user page and subpages, apparently prompted the appearance of a vandalbot, which retaliated with vandalism against some of Wik's tormentors. -- lmfao
  • 2005-01-31/Heavy_metal_umlaut: I guess we had to takesies what we could getsies in terms of media coverage back then.
  • 2005-01-31/New_features: More microscopic FPs. Pixels cost money!
  • 2005-01-31/Policy_proposals: The birth of WP:DICK! Now this is history.
  • 2005-01-31/Tangshan_earthquake: Collaboration of the week running strong.
  • 2005-01-31/Tim_Starling: Tim Starling quit the project and got banned by Jimbo to help him focus on his PhD program?! How did I never hear about this.
  • 2005-01-31/Webcred_conference: Man, remember the blogosphere? And WikiNews?
  • 2005-02-07/500_featured_articles: What a freakin' milestone. I guess we also have a concrete number: 11 FAs in a week was unusually successful at that point.
  • 2005-02-07/Advocacy_groups: You know you've made it when suddenly people start editing the encyclopedia to push a POV! Oh shit, now we have to make policies for this!
  • 2005-02-07/Arbitration_report: Gzornenplatz is Wik! Who would have thought. Vfp15 was banned for a month for disrupting the Charles Darwin article, based on failing to work with other editors and seek consensus about the inclusion of a trivia item (Darwin's shared birthdate with Abraham Lincoln). Arbitrator David Gerard commented, "Most ArbCom cases revolve around someone doing something stupid, but this one is a particularly stupid case." -- lmao
  • 2005-02-07/Encarta: Oh no!!! How can the scrappy band of misfits at Wikipedia ever hope to compete with such an encyclopedic titan!? Also, what the hell is Clusty? The article acts like I am supposed to know what Clusty is.
  • 2005-02-07/Main_page_protection: Wait a minute, anyone could just go edit the main page in 2005? the most dramatic vandalism happened on Thursday, when the template listing Wikipedia's sister projects was vandalized with the infamous goatse.cx image. The vandal used HTML to spread the image across the entire main page. The Recentchanges header was also vandalized in similar fashion -- LMAO
  • 2005-02-07/Proxies: Is this the first adminbot proposal? Kind of sounds like it.
  • 2005-02-07/Three-revert_rule: I take it this was before the "obvious vandalism" carveout.
  • 2005-02-14/Arbitration_report: CheeseDreams again? The case was further complicated by the use of a large number of sockpuppet accounts, and the difficulty of blocking CheeseDreams due to her use of a dialup with changing IP addresses -- lmao
  • 2005-02-14/Article_hoax: It's really amusing to me how this is both a novel concept and a prank played by experienced users which was seen by all as uproariously funny. It was a different time.
  • 2005-02-14/Budget_and_contract: Freaking BOMIS was still involved at this point? Wowie zowie! And I suppose this is the genesis of Wikia. the Wikimedia Foundation approved a $130,000 budget last week for the first quarter of 2005. The budget allocated at least $75,000 to servers and other hardware -- what a ratio! What a blast from the past.
  • 2005-02-14/Google_hosting: Jimbo just popped in to meet with Brin and Page, like it was no big thing? I guess it was 2005, huh. I remember everyone was still using Yahoo and I was a huge badass for knowing what Google was.
  • 2005-02-14/Misinformation_on_Wikipedia: Perish the thought!
  • 2005-02-14/Music_recordings: A noble effort, but hard to imagine this happening today without some big kerfluffle over OR.
  • 2005-02-14/Wikipedia_portal_redesign: problems cropped up with rendering the page properly in older versions of Konqueror -- lmao
  • 2005-02-14/Wikiportals: The first domino falls in the chain of events that will lead to the assassination of the Archduke and the outbreak of the portal wars... Despite the jump in portal creations, their exact goal and their difference from WikiProjects remains unclear -- in 2022 the difference between portals and WikiProjects is obvious, one of them is a ghost town and the other is a ghost town. Wait a minute...
  • 2005-02-21/Arbitration_report: although an argument was raised that they were two separate people using the same computer -- remember when people would say this online and everyone would take it seriously?
  • 2005-02-21/Feature_storm: It took this long for someone to upload Migrant Mother to Wikipedia?
  • 2005-02-21/Fundraising_drive: Nail-biter! I wonder if the fledgling Wikimedia Foundation will ever be able to raise enough money to keep the lights on at Wikipedia...
  • 2005-02-21/Gdansk_or_Danzig: Still going through firsts -- I guess at this point the prevailing practice was something like Talk:Gdansk/Vote.
  • 2005-02-21/Googlepedia_column: He speculated that Google might be "trying to corner the all the world's information" -- perish the thought!
  • 2005-02-21/Harvard_coverage: In case you ever wondered how down bad we were for material for an in the media column, here's one about mentions in a college newspaper, which we're lauding for remembering that the domain ends in .org.
  • 2005-02-21/NPR: Britannica starting to be BTFO?
  • 2005-02-21/Wired_feature: Man, remember when Wired was good?
  • 2005-02-28/Arbitration_report: An edit on his talk page also threatened to sue the "Nazis" who own Wikipedia -- I guess some things never change.
  • 2005-02-28/Criticism_and_reaction: More bloggers. I guess this is a combination of the relative lack of prominence for Wikipedia in 2005 and the blogosphere having genuinely been a major part of cultural discourse in 2005.
  • 2005-02-28/Power_outage: Imagine not being able to edit for a whole day from a single power outage... or to go on LiveJournal. Heck, imagine LiveJournal. It was a different time!
  • 2005-02-28/Vertical_search: Some reports saw this as the New York Times' strategy to get into the blogging world, characterizing About.com as analogous to a network of 500 bloggers -- lmao
  • 2005-03-07/Arbitration_report: CheeseDreams again!? I guess the weekly schedule means that this whole series of arbitration reports is only a few months -- but still. And I wonder if we'll ever hear from this JarlaxleArtemis character again.
  • 2005-03-07/Block_war_and_desysoping: "Unblocking yourself is verboten", huh?
  • 2005-03-07/FOSDEM: It's very important that Wikipedia doesn't become the next Usenet -- imagine mentioning Usenet and having people remember what was going on there.
  • 2005-03-07/Fundraiser_ended: Wow, they got some cash!
  • 2005-03-07/Gdansk_or_Danzig: 100 users as a high turnout in the most contentious article naming dispute in Wikipedia's history. It was a different time...
  • 2005-03-07/NY_Times_archive: Imagine a blogger getting an interview with the director of product management at the NYT and then writing about it on their own website, not associated with any kind of social media, and then everybody hearing about this and doing their own journalism about it. IWADT...
  • 2005-03-07/Peer_review_and_FAC: I guess peer review was a much larger component of the FA process back then.
  • 2005-03-07/Wikipedia_citations: And they still called it "the Wikipedia" -- it was a different time -- but Larry hated it -- the more things change the more they stay the same...
  • 2005-03-07/Yahoo_anniversary: Remember Yahoo?
  • 2005-03-14/Arbitration_report: the touchy issue of whether private emails could be considered as evidence in arbitration -- TMTCTMTSTS...
  • 2005-03-14/Dispute_resolution_changes: Wales indicated that the threshold set of 100 support votes had been "overly ambitious" considering that 500 edits were required in order to be eligible to vote -- IWADT, although I suppose nowadays this is inching back towards being a reasonable objection.
  • 2005-03-14/Guanaco_adminship: a misguided debacle masquerading as a referendum - TMTCTMTSTS...
  • 2005-03-14/In_the_news: Hearing a lot from Clay Shirky... wonder if we'll ever hear about him again? Him and "Snoop Doggy Dogg" -- lmao
  • 2005-03-14/Page_moves: Remember Willy on Wheels being relevant?
  • 2005-03-14/Power_outage_redux: I guess this time it only took out the whole site for a couple of hours.
  • 2005-03-14/Recycling_Troll: It's a testament to the optimism of the 00s that someone with a name like this was given a fair shake at all, and even more of a testament that they continued to be given one despite acting the part. IWADT...
  • 2005-03-21/Arbitration_report: Following his offer to serve as a sort of self-appointed prosecutor of arbitration cases (see archived story), Snowspinner last week kept up his pace of bringing new requests -- now that's something you don't see happening anymore.
  • 2005-03-21/Best_or_worst: Tim Berners-Lee says we're the most advanced development in the area of collaborative editing, and Jimbo is interviewed by Nature -- does that mean we made it?
  • 2005-03-21/CC-Wiki_license: It's strange to look back and see that Creative Commons was right there with Wikipedia in the realm of goofy idealistic things that were made up one day and had no guarantee of success!
  • 2005-03-21/Conference_and_expo: Clay Shirky again! How's it been?
  • 2005-03-21/Database_disk_space: A real duality of man situation -- the "we're all gonna make it" milestone of 500,000 articles happening at literally the same time as the "not gonna make it" milestone of the servers shitting the bed and making Wikipedia read-only for 15 hours straight.
  • 2005-03-21/Half-million_articles: Alterego indicated that an article needed to contain a comma and a link in order to be recognized by the article counting feature -- I'm inclined to simply "lmao" but I have debugged Oracle bugs where it was crapping out because of even dumber stuff than this. So I will instead lmao with compassion.
  • 2005-03-21/Quarto: This sounds pretty impressive, but the link to the Quarto is currently a 404, so I guess it must not have amounted to much. Oh, I see -- it is here. Looks fairly moribund, though... will the Signpost be able to survive past 2006? We can only find out by reading on!
  • 2005-03-21/Top_admin_leaves: I wonder if we'll ever hear from Ta bu shi da yu again.
  • 2005-03-28/Arbitration_report: requested arbitration last Friday [...] in a dispute over definitions of capitalism -- TMTCTMTSTS...
  • 2005-03-28/London_meetup: More beginnings -- here they talk about potentially forming a UK chapter of the WMF. I wonder if anything will ever come of that?
  • 2005-03-28/MediaWiki_progress: A new database schema, that will hopefully fail in less spectacularly embarrassing ways!
  • 2005-03-28/Prosecution_and_de-adminship: It may in fact be a good idea to create an official prosecutor office to counter the AMA -- I guess this is another one of those things that just never really panned out. Imagine what the place would look like if we still had an Association of Member Investigations and an Association of Members' Advocates! And another proposal for RfDA...
  • 2005-03-28/Return_of_stats: Imagine keeping detailed statistics about stuff that happens on Wikipedia -- utter nerd stuff.
  • 2005-03-28/Wikiwax_index: In 2005, every time a news site quoted Wikipedia it rose to notability. Ah, those were the days -- Wired magazine, Britannica, the blogosphere, everyone listening to Cory Doctorow, Slashdot, kuro5hin, and Britney Spears - Toxic.mp3 downloaded from LimeWire and plugged into one of those IRC now-playing scripts that blasted it out to everyone else in the channel with obnoxious text formatting...
  • 2005-04-04/April_Fool's_Day: People arguing about pranks on Wikipedia -- ah, some things never change.
  • 2005-04-04/Arbitration_policy_revote: Tim Starling and a few others opposed the concept of having community votes to amend the arbitration policy at all. As Starling put it, "Just edit the policy page." Of all the crap from 2005 that wouldn't fly now, I think this may be by far the least aerodynamic.
  • 2005-04-04/Arbitration_report: Perhaps the first instance I can find of clamor over AfD making its way to arbitration. A sign of things to come...
  • 2005-04-04/In_the_news: Deaditors gonna deadit.
  • 2005-04-04/Plagiarism_and_comedy: Ah, to live in a time when things "swept through the blogosphere". What a strange incident -- rather tenuously related to Wikipedia, but indeed, we had to takesies what we could getsies.
  • 2005-04-04/Proxy_list: Imagine Wikipedia if you could edit logged-in on a proxy -- ruined forever by a bot engaging in page move vandalism on the Albanian Wikipedia in 2005! This is what they took from us......
  • 2005-04-04/Syntax_standardization: Yeah, we're still working on that.
  • 2005-04-11/Arbitration_report: Another deletion drama at ArbCom -- although, of course, back then it was VfD.
  • 2005-04-11/DVD_releases: Have we ever followed up on this? And, by the way -- remember h2g2?
  • 2005-04-11/Dot-org_boom: Another one of those catchphrases that never really caught on.
  • 2005-04-11/Encarta_editing: I think this is what it looks like when we start making it...
  • 2005-04-11/From_the_editor: If several people would each commit to writing just one article a week for The Signpost, we could easily cover as much news as I manage to do on my own. Please contact me if you are interested in helping -- TMTCTMTSTS.....
  • 2005-04-11/Privacy_policy: The historian is forced to wonder if the adoption of a privacy policy in 2005 (by which point Wikipedia already had some hundred thousand articles) was spurred by the rapid growth of the project, the rapid growth of the necessary organizational and financial structures to support such development, or perhaps an Internet-wide trend of adopting such policies around that time. Well, the historian isn't forced to wonder, he can go find out -- the guy writing this is forced to wonder.
  • 2005-04-11/Speed_feature: Remember good-natured rivalry?
  • 2005-04-11/Yahoo_support: Yahoo provided free hosting for Wikimedia projects? Now there's some stuff that never comes up in conversation!
  • 2005-04-18/Andrea_Dworkin_death: A major Wikipedia news scoop, in publishing that Andrea Dworkin had died before any other source knew about it, echoed around the internet last week as many bloggers picked up on the slow-breaking news of her death. Nota bene: by the tone of the Signpost article, this is supposed to be a good thing (presumably WP:BLP had not been invented yet). Mardle predicted, "For now Wikipedia people still defer to the corporate media for confirmation but as citizen journalism gains confidence and resources, that will fade." Damn, that sure did the exact opposite of happen.
  • 2005-04-18/Arbitration_report: More about the Association of Member Investigations. Nobody ever talks about this stuff anymore -- I guess it just stopped mattering so hard it popped out of existence.
  • 2005-04-18/Encarta_elaborates: "Encarta is not just a pell-mell conglomeration of information and random bits of trivia" -- lmao
  • 2005-04-18/Features_and_admins: Seems like a strange grouping (featured articles, featured pictures and RfAs?) but I suppose it may have made sense at the time.
  • 2005-04-18/From_the_editor: Ah -- the birth of the Signpost newsroom and the suggestions page. And a guest editor, from the Wikimedia Quarto!
  • 2005-04-18/In_the_news: While citing sources is now a basic requirement for featured articles -- wait a minute, is now? What the hell?! Also, remember h2g2?
  • 2005-04-18/Lucene_search: Remember how every web search in 2005 kind of sucked? You had to spell everything right and even then it wouldn't really work the way it does now.
  • 2005-04-18/Spoken_Wikipedia: It seems that exploding whale was a bit of an epic meme back in the day, wasn't it? Except in early 2005 I don't think people had started saying "epic" yet -- it would have been "for great justice", if memory serves.
  • 2005-04-18/Tax_exempt_status: I didn't know they did it retroactively.
  • 2005-04-18/Template_standardisation: Fairly impressive that an editing dispute was able to culminate in a design contest -- I guess this is just the kind of thing we don't have the space for anymore.
  • 2005-04-25/Arbitration_report: No link to the actual arbitration proceedings so I can't see if the phrase "anti-Wikipedian behavior" was actually used or if this is a tongue-in-cheek embellishment. Again with the "representation of Snowspinner" thing: I wonder what event precipitated the apparent total disappearance of this representational model from the project.
  • 2005-04-25/Features_and_admins: Back in these days, leaderboards seem to have been kept quite openly -- much to think about.
  • 2005-04-25/From_the_editor: Guest editor for this one is Samuel Klein (User:Sj).
  • 2005-04-25/In_the_news: Rupert Murdoch as wiki advocate? IWADT... although interesting to see that someone even in 2005 is saying "making the Internet exciting again, like the early days". Of course now we think that 2005 was the early days, but the good old days never feel like the good old days, do they?
  • 2005-04-25/Papal_scoop: Wikipedia experiencing server difficulties due to a hot news item -- IWADT
  • 2005-04-25/The_Sanger_memoirs: Again with the "early days" -- I guess there was always a time to look back on. Perhaps in this mailing list the first "official" debate of Sanger's status as a cofounder? Good link to meta:WQ/Retro -- this one on the topic of reminiscence. Much good stuff in that link.
  • 2005-04-25/Writing_contest: Very funny to see a writing contest where articles like Diamond were sub-2000-character stubs -- a lot of good places to blast your creative energy in those days.
  • 2005-05-02/Arbitration_report: Is there ever going to be one of these without Snowspinner in it?
  • 2005-05-02/Commons_donation: Ah, back when Creative Commons was the new kid on the block. Also, I didn't know that de.wiki had actually released a DVD.
  • 2005-05-02/Features_and_admins: A FA "self-nomination" is mentioned in passing, presumably because this was unusual at the time? Also: At press time, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship is unusually busy, with twelve ongoing nominations, including those of many well-known and long-standing users.
  • 2005-05-02/From_the_editor: Sj again -- looks like more collaboration is happening by this point, with several people writing different articles in each issue.
  • 2005-05-02/In_the_news: Interesting to see that Reuters was just repeating stuff from Wikipedia (albeit with attribution), even this early into its existence.
  • 2005-05-02/Wikimedia_elections: Moreover a separate #wikimedia-conclave channel was created on freenode.net to focus discussions about election preparations -- wow! It seems that at this point there are two user representatives on the board, although it's not clear what the overall size of the board is. Jimbo is appointing trustees directly, as well (as of 2022 the bylaws say that there are "at least nine (9) and, at most, sixteen (16)")
  • 2005-05-02/Wikipedia_in_print: It seems many people thought of Wikipedia as a project which eventually culminated in printed volumes -- I suppose that's what an encyclopedia was prior to the 21st century, so it makes sense that this would be a credible threshold of having "made it", although it seems a bit insignificant in retrospect.
  • 2005-05-09/Brockhaus_plagiarism_suspected: "mistakes had probably been made" indeed. OTRS and the legal mailing list both exist at this point for copyright takedowns.
  • 2005-05-09/Features_and_admins: What kind of a username is "Wikipedia is Communism"? Anyway, this is what a 2005 RfA looked like: 2400 edits was a solid selling point, and 44 supports a landslide. One can see here the beginnings of the current state of affairs -- the "support" section is a straightforward bulletpoint list, while the "oppose" section is heavy with multiple trees of indented debate.
  • 2005-05-09/From_the_editor: Still an Sj production: the title of the column is "Wikipedia is communism!" as a joke. One imagines that the current WP:DENY treatment had not yet been developed.
  • 2005-05-09/In_the_news: Rush Limbaugh decided that some articles should be created, but they got deleted (with their AfD arguments all making copious reference to Google hits!)
  • 2005-05-09/Meetings_and_events: Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society recently made Wales their latest non-resident Fellow, one of a score of academics and luminaries across the country who are affiliated with the Center. I suppose this may be the background on them having an article.
  • 2005-05-16/Board_meeting: Am I reading this right? Four candidates?
  • 2005-05-16/Features_and_admins: First mention of FAR that I see anywhere.
  • 2005-05-16/From_the_editor: The return of the snows of yesteryear.
  • 2005-05-16/Image_uploading: Drag-and-drop uploading for Commons? What the fuck!!! I am still doing it with the file select window in 2022! Anyway, this is also the birth of the Flickr scraper, it seems.
  • 2005-05-16/In_the_news: Encarta, About.com, and Answers.com officially BTFO (at least according to Hitwise). Note that nobody cares about any of these four companies anymore: the only reference site ahead of Wikipedia is Dictionary.com, which I guess still "exists" in some sense. a former Britannica editor, who accuses the project of cherishing an "irrelevant principle - openness" -- lmao.
  • 2005-05-16/MediaWiki_1.5: Is it possible that we wouldn't have had a move log if not for Willy on Wheels and Wikipedia is Communism?
  • 2005-05-16/Other_news_sources: Third edition of the Quarto is almost ready to release -- in six to ten languages, wow!
  • 2005-05-16/Skanwiki_proposal: Because Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are all mutually comprehensible, articles written in one language can easily be understood by speakers of another. The Skanwiki initiative has led to the sharing of featured articles between the neighbouring Wikipedias, among other developments -- interesting.
  • 2005-05-23/Arbitration_report: Again with 172? I suppose it hasn't been that long -- I am used to Signpost issues coming monthly, so it feels like I have been reading through two years but it's only been from January to May.
  • 2005-05-23/Dating_system: Oh, the classic BC/BCE thing. Back in those days, people cared a lot about religion online, huh? My own memories are unclear but it feels to me like 2005 was well in the swell of, and little bit before the zenith of, strident online atheism being the most important issue to many posters. Remember when creationists were all over the place?
  • 2005-05-23/From_the_editor: While the focus here is still on the English Wikipedia, I hope this can stimulate efforts to get similar news sources going elsewhere...
  • 2005-05-23/German_scandal: Maybe one of the first instances of a big politician controversy involving Wikipedia that I can find record of -- this one in North Rhine-Westphalia.
  • 2005-05-23/In_the_news: Interesting insight: "the professor said that Wikipedia's scientific articles showed the "discussion-bolstered character of science", while traditional science reporting tended to show science as a "uniform system generating truth"".
  • 2005-05-23/Librarians_project: Observing that people will undoubtedly continue using Wikipedia, sometimes naively unaware of issues about its accuracy, he concluded that librarians have a "professional responsibility to make Wikipedia a reliable information source." We made it?
  • 2005-05-23/Noncommercial_images: Did the restriction of non-free media only happen in mid-2005? I guess so. Also, an example of consensus from Commons being taken into account for Wikipedia proceedings.
  • 2005-05-23/Proceedings_of_Wikitech-l: An interesting feature which shows up for the first time, a recap of the mailing list (by Ben Brockert, who apparently is a rocket scientist). Meta-templates a major item of contention -- some even saying they shouldn't be used at all. And they are still using CVS for source control -- IWADT. Looks like they are also proposing the pipe trick?
  • 2005-05-23/Radio_show: Before it was called a "podcast".
  • 2005-05-23/Traffic_growth: 7,626,000 unique visitors in April 2005. And that was 4.65% of everyone in the US who was using the Internet at that time. And in the top 100 according to Alexa -- wowzies!
  • 2005-05-23/Wikijunior_needs_you!: A Wikimedia project stagnating, something which I suppose is a new phenomenon at this point. But there is still quite a bit of optimism: "we need some dedicated editors to spend some time over on Wikibooks, helping get Wikijunior on its feet". I think that even Wikispecies is still going strong by this point, so this optimism seems quite justified.
  • 2005-05-30/Arbitration_report: No Snowspinner or 172 this week -- as well as what looks like the first rumblings of WP:CIR in a proposed statement of principles. Still no links to case pages, so hard to follow along, but a quite detailed summary nonetheless.
  • 2005-05-30/Features_and_admins: The first appearance of featured lists is here. Furthermore, citation guidelines for FAs are discussed -- some people even arguing that inline citations make articles too difficult to read. Wow!!! Also, five RfAs succeed in two weeks, which is normal, because IWADT.
  • 2005-05-30/Foundation_official_positions: This seems to mark the beginning of the WMF as an organization with permanent, full-time employees (apart from officers like CFOs and etc) unless I am missing something, which I probably am.
  • 2005-05-30/Free_software_trophy: Imagine being given a prize by a PHP foundation...
  • 2005-05-30/In_the_news: Remember when Time Magazine was more prestigious than Wikipedia?
  • 2005-05-30/Laotian_Rock_Rat: Would this count as OR in 2022, or not? The article was written after the publication of the journal, so likely not -- quite interesting that something like this may still be possible. Also interesting to see that New Scientist and the Natural History Museum simply pointed to Wikipedia: not very often do we get credit for breaking anything.
  • 2005-05-30/Substubs_and_templates: A stele! A stele! I love steles! And I found one! Check it out!!! As an interesting historical note, after the category was cleaned out and the template was ceremoniously deleted, it was briefly recreated... by User:AaronSw. Yes, that AaronSw. Furthermore, the deletion log for the template points to Wikipedia:Historical_archive/Template:Substub. Historical_archive? Huh?? How many have there been before me?
  • 2005-05-30/Vandal_fighter: Very fascinating here: it looks like this may be the first automated anti-vandal tool (CDVF, by CryptoDerk).
  • 2005-05-30/Wikimedia_Board_election: Here I believe we are seeing the last embers of the distinction between volunteer members and contributing members, which is at this point I believe entirely historical.

Part 2

For this, I think I will try a new approach and transclude these to a single-page view in the test zone; the approach of opening each page individually takes an extremely long amount of time. I had figured that, since it was only for 2005, I wouldn't need to worry about it, but even the first half of 2005 has taken a solid several hours to go through.

Anyway: it is June 2005. George W. Bush has just started his second term, everyone is malding about Terri Schiavo, New Orleans is still above water, the Pope is lying in state, people are camping out for the release of the new Star Wars movie (the sixth and the last one that is planned), Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani is on the radio, some nerd has uploaded a video called "Meet me at the zoo" to some random website called "You Tube", Greece just won Eurovision, and the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit is buckling in for another year of exponential growth.

  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-06-06: A now-typical case of WP:PRECOCIOUS as evidence for a sock block; discussions about broadening the remit of ArbCom to content disputes via a "Content Committee" (or reviving the already-moribund Mediation Committee); whether some content is "inherently unfeaturable"; Ta bu shi da yu returns; downtime for the entire site scheduled for June 7 2005 (this keeps happening! but IWADT). Wordpress founder endorses use of wikis for collaboration among bloggers. Wikipedia named "one of 2005's best products" by the more-prestigious PC World; Slashdot talks about list of pwned accounts; password salts finally implemented. Jimbo meets cute with German encyc honcho, Wikipedians prank by guerilla-writing an entry on themselves in fancy German encyc. They get mad.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-06-13: Steve Apple includes Wikipedia as widget in new computer dashboard gizmo. "Do you really think someone would do that -- go on Wikipedia and write an article about a product to spam?" AD/CE meatbotter hauled before Arbs, Delirium realizes there's no actual procedure for Arbs to resign, WP reps meat with European Space Agency for open content access, potential changes to GFDL mulled, new procedure for reviewing FAs proposed, 10 new admins in one week(!).
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-06-13 The LA Times this week announced that its online editorials will shortly be editable by readers via wiki software. Bloggers anticipate that newspapers will start allowing normal people to edit their articles. Britannica predicts it will be triumphant. Medical editors fear a coronavirus pandemic where respiratory illness sweeps the globe. What a bunch of nutcases! A bunch of proposed changes to wikitext markup that apparently were never implemented. More downtime.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-06-20 100 Wikipedias with 100 articles. Everyking petitions for tban removal, agrees to mentorship deal, Internodeuser case closed, new license policy starts to affect FPs, 4 new admins. RSS feed for the Signpost introduced (now through qwikly.com). More reporting on the user-generated revolution (it isn't called "Web 2.0" yet), WikiNews going strong, many citations of Wikipedia in the news (now including government sites in the UK). Notable also is an instance in which some bloggers argue about an edit war and it gets outside Wikipedia. Board of Trustees election looming, new software being written for it, LA Times culls wikitorial effort (after being Slashdotted no less).
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-06-27 Attempt to make software that animates the history of an article -- hell, that still seems like a good idea -- Antarctic climate modeling professional sanctioned by ArbCom over climate change argument, single-page blocks proposed, RickK leaves, trustee election starts. WMF CFO thinks dimly of donators earmarking funds: he said that feedback from donors should be collected, but it "should not tie the hands of the board". New FP rules, eight successful RfAs. Wikipedia integration into KDE desktop? An API planned -- hey, remember Mandriva? New database schema unveiled, and moves now logged. Remember when iPods couldn't play .oggs? Spoken articles being recorded now. Wikipedia featured as the answer to a trivia question on the BBC, WSJ points out an inaccuracy in war figures, AD/CE case and wikistalking case closed at ArbCom, and JarlaxleArtemis case opened.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-07-04 At this point Wikipedia itself is being used to beta-test MediaWiki upgrades, and watchlists briefly break as a result. Cricket WikiProject creates a bunch of featured content -- not the first mention of a WikiProject in Signpost archives, but I believe the first of a content-based one. So far, 2005 has seen 1 new FA per day (accounting for removals). Big hoo-ha about people... playing chess using Wikipedia? I'm not sure which is goofier: doing it, or getting mad about it. I guess it was a different time. The Department of Fun under fire. BJAODN tolerated. Tim Starling offers to set up a separate dicking-around wiki on WMF servers for funtime. Professors surveyed by newspaper say Wikipedia is mostly accurate, although bio prof says an article is trash, and polisci prof says Alexis de Tocqueville is strangely short at 1,000 words (n.b. in 2022 it is about 5,000). Drama over LA Times wikitorial debacle continues. Mailing list hubbub on wikiEN-l "to deal with an atmosphere that some felt was dragging the English Wikipedia's mailing list down to the level of Usenet". New Quarto out, first LA meetup scheduled. Several Arbs resign (?) and no new cases processed. London's been bombed. Linux Journal gives us an award. FP listing page becomes long enough for 56k no-go; galleries in articles discussed. More coverage on Wikipedia's lightning coverage, this time for the London bombings: In the next 24 hours after Morwen created the Wikipedia article, over 800 editors contributed 2,857 edits, which as best as can be determined is a Wikipedia record. No downtime from the traffic this time. A photo from Flickr with a CC license used to illustrate the article nearly in real time. It is amazing how quickly a page detailing every aspect of the attack forms together on Wikipedia - they have more information than any of the major news providers. Bloggers are still the kings of posting, so this was said by a blogger, of course -- IWADT -- NYT references Wikipedia article.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-07-11 More discussion in the blogosphere. ZDnet ponders whether Wikipedia could be used for PR. Potential main page redesign, to add PotD (perhaps as a replacement to DYK, which wasn't very good at the time). Blocked users now able to edit own talk pages "as a temporary workaround while Starling works on a feature for per-article blocking" (and to cut down on posts to wikiEN-l). Crats to be able to change names; doppelganger policy in the works. CSD reform proposed (including new criteria). NSCHOOL under debate. Rather short issue.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-07-18 Snowspinner back in the arb report, this time because of having "proposed a system he called Wikimediation". MedCom alive and kicking. PotD on weekends and DYK on weekdays? Wowzies. Three new admins. "Folksonomy" and GNAA up for VfD. The GNAA, however, has been restrained in its editing of Wikipedia, generally staying within the guidelines of Wikipedia policy. Various GNAA members have made many useful edits, although some have also been accused of being disruptive -- lmao. New redirect created at Wikipedia:Kick the ass of anyone who renominates GNAA for deletion before 2007. de.wp introduces article bounty scheme. Heavy metal umlaut and inherently funny word still considered the best articles (by Jimbo) in an interview for the Star-Telegram... people are still calling it "the Wikipedia" too. WikiNews did a bang-up job with the London bombings, according to many. Page rank drops slightly due to Google machinations. Double-redirects to be tackled by new project. Angela and Florence (the two community reps on the Board) re-elected.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-07-25: Jimbo appoints more arbs (while arb elections occurred at this point, there was a big understaffing issue after previous resignations, so this was an emergency action). Britannica forms an advisory board (Wikipedia has articles on all the board members, while Britannica does not). About.com still a major competitor. Troll edit to article of SCOTUS nominee (John Roberts) sparks blogosphere speculation -- hey, remember Wonkette? LinuxFund names WMF as beneficiary of some of its funds ($6k over the course of a year), putting us in such illustrious company as Debian andd freenode. Officially we have made it: Hitwise puts us at top market share for reference websites. Dictionary.com BTFO. Of our traffic, 66% comes from "search engines" (that's what people used to call Googles); 50% from Big Goog, but 43% from Yahoo and 3% from MSN. Seven new admins, five FAs, 3 FLs, and 6 FPs. One of the admins is some fellow named "Essjay", I wonder if we'll hear about him again. CSD are expanded (largely to reduce overloading VfD with obvious "delete" noms). Serious academic treatment of Wikipedia as an economically modelable system by a guest blogger (law professor Cass Sunstein) at Laurence Lessig's blog. Wikipedia compared to Mumbai in "the avatar versus the journalist".
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-08-01: Irate and Plautus satire freed from 2004 bans and brought again to ArbCom after continuing in their contention. Another arb request from Snowspinner: this one about Everyking. Non-Wikipedia sources are talking about FA process now: grad students publish a paper about "information quality discussions". Five new admins, 11 FAs, 2 FLs, 5 FPs. Short issue: Unfortunately, the budget for The Signpost does not cover flying its reporters around the world, since said budget is zero (TMTSCTMTSTS). Coverage for "List of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck"" -- Pakistan newspaper writes about how Wikipedia affects news coverage. Some bloggers write about VfD as well; NYT covers AfD for dog poop girl. After the recent GNAA fiasco (see archived story), the deletion policy has been updated to mention that "repeated attempts to have an article deleted may even be considered disruptive."
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-08-08: Everyking and Snowspinner still at it. VfD is deleted briefly, causing some consternation. Mailing list arguments include this from David Gerard: MOTION: That while VFD nominally performs a useful function in clearing crap out of Wikipedia, its current operation and subcommunity is so pathological and damaging to the Wikipedia community that it should be removed entirely. Remove it completely. Then talk and think how to come up with something that works without becoming an engine for rancor. It's eventually deleted by Ed Poor. Discussion follows at Wikipedia:Deletion reform. GNAA nominated for FA -- "intense debate", indeed. Slate writes an article about an internet hoax perpetrated by... goons. Remember goons? Wikipedians VfD'd the article about the hoax, and then the article about the Slate writer. Snowspinner chimes in on this as well. Some offhand Jimbo comments at Wikimania are turned into big potatoes (rumors of permanent page lockings, etc). Article rating feature is put on hold. Bryan Derksen achieves fame for Wikipedia exploits. Jimbo fills in for Laurence Lessig on his blog. Finally: Michael Snow kills the Signpost, at least for now: The work needed to produce it remains a daunting task for me in particular, and my schedule for the next month would make it difficult to satisfy the standards I have for this project. And even if I had more time, I don't think I could maintain my present level of effort indefinitely. In addition, we would in any case shortly be losing Spangineer, who has regularly been covering featured articles but needs to prepare to resume his studies. The hiatus is expected to be temporary, insofar as people step up to continue it. Damn!!! Will the Signpost die?!
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-08-15 Perhaps worthy of note that four of the six arbitrators are facepoasters (Fred Bauder, Daniel Mayer, David Gerard, James Forrester; the only two pseudonymous members now are Fennec and JayJG, both of whom are emergency appointments). Arbitration case is closed over foreign relations of the United States. I haven't caught any reference to precedents yet: it seems likely to me that we just didn't have any yet. Twelve new admins this week -- jeez o'pete. The Asheville Citizen-Times is starting a wiki-themed newspaper (although it doesn't seem that they are actually using a wiki -- they're just publishing things that readers send in). Some new ideas for featured content as well. Slate is causing more controversy about VfD. Also, this is the first Ral315 issue.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-08-22: Deletion reform proposals are still being fleshed out -- "experimental deletion" process started. Another really big VfD drama: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians for Decency, which I guess was about porno. Also this Jimbo action from February. Wow, I guess Slate was "slate.msn.com" at that point. The more you know! Also, more stuff about Wikipedia astroturfing, a few boring arb cases. There is also this interesting thing: On August 16, G4 aired an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales. They created a user page for the show, where viewers could edit as they pleased. Vandalism ensued, and just a day after the episode aired, and over 1200 edits after the page was created, the page was protected. As of press time, the page is still protected to deal with vandalism. Tony Sidaway protected the page immediately after it was created, but Jimbo unprotected it and instructed administrators to leave it open, because he had already talked with G4, and authorized the move.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-08-29: Arbitration against an IP -- you don't see much of that anymore. Media citations seem to be getting numerous enough that there's just a list of them now. In this issue we also see the Portal namespace created (evidently started by Portal:Cricket). Also, the first great debate on changing VfD, to either PfD (pages) or AfD (articles). The refdesk is split into four, and the collaboration of the week is reduced to one. Willy on Wheels is back, it looks like, who somehow managed to dick up the portal at wikipedia.org (!). Very short issue. Imagine that -- a new EiC putting out short issues. Perish the thought.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-09-05: Arb request for Ed Poor, list of media citations, WMF breaks past its goal (which is now $200,000). Hurricane Katrina is happening now. Statistics are out as well, and Wikipedia "moves closer to" being a top-50 website.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-09-12 Curps writes a bot to pwn Willy on Wheels-style vandals, a user creation log is established (how the hell did we not have that before?) and navigational popups start existing. Ed Poor is at ArbCom (now I see that it's for his out-of-process deletion of VfD) -- two new crats and nine new admins. GNAA FA nom faces trouble; image uploads given license selection dropdown; blog mentions show up again after having been absent for some issues. Edit war among admins about whether the sitenotice should link to the Red Cross Katrina fundraiser (!?) and Jimbo settled it by demanding they stay out. Wikipedia now in the top 50 per Alexa.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-09-19 Simply because I am anal-retentive, I will note here that the Signpost calls itself the Signpost and not The Signpost in this issue. Here we see the introduction of an ambitious new series (by Flcelloguy) to cover the ArbCom elections, with a long timeline of important dates provided. This series seems like it will be quite important (and contain some useful historical information). Note that the template is messed up in this article (it mentions the January 2006 elections and not the 2005 ones that the article is talking about). Probably, someone just used the same template page for the new ones. Tsk tsk. Anyway, Ed Poor resigns as bureaucrat (but retains adminship), and arb case against him closes -- JarlaxleArtemis page closes after CU reveals he's been making bogus accounts to fuck with LinuxBeak, image CSD for unknown copyright/source is added... and Esperanza is born. 12 sysops, 5 FAs, 2 FLs, 6 FPs. Reference.com adds Wikipedia search access.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-09-26: History of ArbCom. This is some good reading (Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-09-26/ArbCom_election specifically). JarlaxleArtemis banned. Esquire asks Wikipedia users to write and edit an article for them. 6 sysops, and debate on RfA reform involving the use of editcounts. Ral315 announces a main page redesign for the Signpost is underway. Newspapers inaccurately report on a piece of vandalism (wonder if they'll ever do that again?) and Jimbo does an hour-long Q&A on C-SPAN. Wikinews goes with CC-BY 2.5, Wikiversity about to finish debating on moving to its own wikiversity.org domain. WMF hires its second full-time employee (I guess all those people from before weren't full-time) and Mac OS X 10.4 gets a Wikipedia dashboard widget.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-03: Wikimania (the second one ever) is being planned, and a city is being decided on. Another in-depth exploration of the arbitration process (at least as it existed in 2005). Speaking of ArbCom, Daniel Mayer (aka Maveric149) just resigned from it. Some cases are opened and closed. A glitch prevents new admins from being promoted for a few days (in 2005 this was a substantial disruption). MedCom undergoes reforms after "falling behind on their caseload": two new mediators and new temporary committee chair appointed, backlog cleared, new cases actively assigned. The mediation cabal had been taking up slack in the meantime, and some cases are shunted back to MedCom. More new CSDs added: one for blatant copyvio (how the hell did we not have that yet) and one for unused fair use images.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-10: In the ArbCom series, we now get to one about criticism of the Committee. Juicy stuff! Mostly people think that it takes an insanely long time and the proceedings are too complicated (TMTCTMTSTS). People also say that it's a cabal (TMTCTMTSTS). And still more people think they should take a direct role in content disputes (need I repeat myself?). More arb cases are opened and closed. A journalist, on his blog, says that a couple of our articles suck. There is less talk of blogs in the Signpost at this point, but still telling that even a journalist who writes for a news outlet is also putting stuff on his blog (and it's getting reactions). Two new arbs are appointed by Jimbo (mindspillage and karynn); candidate statement pages are made for thirteen candidates. FA production drops for the first time in a while (although 13 new admins are appointed in a week anyway). Jimbo joins the Socialtext board of directors, Sergey Brin mentions Wikipedia in a lecture, an obituary appers in the Signpost for the first time, and Esperanza sees its first controversy (but initiates elections for an Advisory Committee nonetheless). Additionally, an article rescue contest is started (modeled after Danny's contest, which seems like the first such activity on Wikipedia).
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-17: Interviews with arbs. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first interview that's featured in the Signpost. Six more arb candidates join the election. More arb cases with unfamiliar names. IP editor (warring over airline legislation) is traced to airline company's headquarters. A mind-boggling 20 new administrators are appointed in one week; 11 new FAs, Wikipedia makes a Time cover story, Ward Cunningham drops some wiki takes, Nielsen reveals we're number one baby. In September 2004, Wikipedia had 3.3 million unique visitors, which grew to 12.8 million for September 2005, a difference of 9.5 million in the US. Overall, the number of unique visitors for the educational reference category increased by only 8.5 million in the same period.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-24: Partnership with Answers.com extended; some express concern about potential ads on WP. Retrospective piece by Flcelloguy on ArbCom is good reading: this one covers the 2004 election. Jimbo overhauls ArbCom election process; arbitration report goes in depth on four newly closed cases and mentions others that are opened and moving through phases. The arb report seems to be in basically its modern form now. Some hubbub over a proposal to let people request Checkuser like they do for adminship: given what RfAs looked like back then, the panic is understandable. China blocks Wikipedia ("again"?) and Esperanza closes its first Advisory Committee election. 12 new admins, 9 FAs, 4 FLs, and 12 FPs. More newspaper citations. Procedure for redirecting very old wikipedia.org links to en.wp debated (i.e. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl which at the time redirected to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl ). Find-a-Grave project starts (of course, we think much more dimly of such sources now, but IWADT) and the Register talks smack. Wikimania 2006 to be in Boston. ArbCom series continues with a review of the recent calls for reform. More arb cases: Everyking back again.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-31: Wikipedia still blocked in China: an "apparent fork attempt" is made to circumvent the filter. WMF devs look for workarounds. 12 more sysops! The Guardian has experts review some articles; some pass and some fail. Project Galatea launches, image storage fixes planned for devs, and Wikipedia finally gets an article in Encarta (written with outrageous cope/seethe/mald vibes). Halloween is Tim Starling Day. Another piece on ArbCom from Flcelloguy: duties and requirements. Sannse resigns from ArbCom... more cases... 10 sysops and 10 FAs. There are now 800 FAs.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-11-07: There is a newsroom reorganization for the Signpost, and a gmail tipline now exists. Some coverage of press coverage (and some news citations). Merriam-Webster starts an "Open Dictionary". Meanwhile, Wikipedia breaks Alexa's top 40, has 800k GET, scoops legacy media on the death of a New Zealand politician (OR?!), and Wikiversity approves the move to the wikiversity.org domain.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-11-14: More in the ArbCom series (this one on voting methods); some detailed reports on cases as well (Pigsonthewing, Lightbringer, and people editing on the Bogdanoff affair, among other stuff). Based on the Guardian article evaluating WP articles, some other sites follow suit, as well as people on Wikipedia itself. Five Arbs are given CU rights, 13 new sysops, and 8 new FAs. Wiktionary to 100K GET; search feature improved; JarlaxleArtemis and MARMOT unbanned and given mentors "in an unusual move". Daniel Brandt comes on the scene. Something tells me this guy will be around for a while. Tax contracting group brags about COI editing in the news. On the Signpost front, this is the beginning of the central page for all articles to be transcluded. Also new is the storybox (for transcluding on user pages or user talk pages) and attempts to get a RSS feed back up.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-11-21: Little update on ArbCom elections, and little update on the cases in progress. Wikipedia is still using the GFDL, but Creative Commons is drafting a license that is more compatible with it. A new weekly Signpost series is added: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News (B.R.I.O.N.) -- 6 sysops, 10 FAs, 3 FLs, 4 FPs. We made page C4 of the New York Times, baby. Vandalism makes front page news, Wikimania dates narrowed down, username changes re-enabled (which had been disabled since September 26), new statistics system set up.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-11-28: Call for ArbCom candidates about to be over. Community input given on Jimbo's election procedure changes (note -- he is now referred to as Jimbo in the Signpost -- previous to this he was always Jimmy). Many complain about him not telling everyone what the deal is with the elections. Lightbringer is banned from freemasonry; neurolinguistic programming brought to Arbs; another WMF fundraiser scheduled for December; 12 sysops, 8 FAs, 3 FPs. Print article in Esquire, coverage in a Russian newspaper, more citations, and proposed committee for experts to screen requests for new language Wikipedias (languages or dialects?) -- "article validation" expected to go live soon as well. Special:Cite is created as well.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-12-05: Jimbo creates a straw poll about the ArbCom elections to clear up misunderstandings and quell concerns. Yet more people join the race (there are now 32); big-shot podcaster revealed to have been editing the article on podcasting (which was a bit more of a niche concern back then, I believe -- every online radio show hadn't yet been folded into the umbrella). Lots of copyvio found on de.wp, 20 (!!) sysops. "One article was featured this week" -- one new FA? Much less than before. A list of TFAs is given as well, which is new in the Signpost. Siegenthaler shitstorm unfolds in this issue: a survey of news coverage is mostly about it, and Jimbo takes actions to restrict editing. The first WikiWand-type thing: "Gollum" -- is introduced (which strips out menus and tabs on the interface). WMF fundraiser postponed, Russians elect their own ArbCom... IPs no longer allowed to create mainspace articles, per edict of Jimbo implemented by Brion and reacted to by editors. Another Siegenthaler piece: this one a summary of what happened, a blow-by-blow of the edit history and subsequent actions on Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-12-12: Alexa rank goes from 37 to 27. Some stories last week, like one in The Times of London, drew heavily on the rewritten Seigenthaler article in providing biographical information about him -- lmao. We also see that Daniel Brandt was the one who revealed the initial hoaxer as Brian Chase. No new candidates for ArbCom race (and no withdrawals). Jimbo's straw poll getting lots of votes. Pigsonthewing banned... for one day. Another case against Ed Poor brought to Arbs. 15 sysops. RSS feed has been added as of this issue at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~ral315/signpost.rss now (which is hosted on the old Toolserver).
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-12-19: Yet more ArbCom candidates. Jimbo closes the straw poll, a majority favor "a hybrid approach that requires a Requests for Adminship-like vote by the community". Some more bickering (which deserves to be read in greater detail than this brief summary). More Arb cases; a whopping 17 sysops. 14 FAs, 1 FL, 5 FPs. More reporting on how Wikipedia is based, more (dubious) claims of rampant vandalism picked up by press; new press kit at Wikipedia:Press Kit. Nature publishes a story "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head"; this is, I believe, one of the famous WP-Britannica studies that are so endlessly cited by future generations. Britannica "wins" according to this one, but not by much. New WMF fundraiser begins. Semi-protection proposed and approved; steward elections planned. This is the first I have seen of "stewards" in the Signpost.
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-12-26: Yet another person joins the ArbCom race. Six cases closed; Chip Berlet admonished for edits on his own article. Notable in that he is a BBS guy from the 80s (and involved in the development of posting). LaRouche drama; cases "against voters on webcomics AFDs"; 16 sysops; first Featured Portal (Cricket); news articles about Jimbo editing his own page; more Seigenthaler stuff. Larry Sanger announces "Digital Universe", a Wikipedia "with expert review", gets 10m in angel funding (another Citizendium?). Semi-protection enabled on enwp; more steward elections; deleted edit summaries made invisible to non-admins; AutoWikiBrowser created; CatScan created.
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The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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