Opinion split over Flagged Revisions

The Wikipedia community is divided over whether English Wikipedia should attempt a trial of the FlaggedRevisions MediaWiki extension. In a straw poll, active since January 2 and advertised through the watchlist sitenotice, nearly 500 editors have voiced their opinions, with about three-fifths in favor of a trial run. Many who oppose Flagged Revisions see it as a blow to Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" philosophy, while supporters see it as a path to improving the reliability of Wikipedia and discouraging vandalism. The highly configurable extension could also be used to incorporate detailed quality assessments, in addition to screening out unhelpful edits. A report from German Wikipedia, which has been using Flagged Revisions for several months, describes some of the positive and negative aspects of their implementation of Flagged Revisions.

Some user_talk links for the 2009-01-17 edition incorrectly point here instead of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-17/In the news.

Misinformation aplenty in Wikipedia, writes WEBCommentary author

In his most recent article, WEBCommentary contributor Nicholas Stix continued his series The Pretend Encyclopedia, a series which highlights the inaccuracies and flaws within Wikipedia's entries. In this article, Stix expressed his frustration regarding misinformation and poor writing in Monsters of the Midway, an article about the Chicago Bears. Using quotes from various versions of the article as examples, Stix accused Wikipedia and its editors of "having no rhyme or reason" and "making entries worse over time." He also claimed that "hundreds of thousands of [Wikipedia] entries" are not even "written in clean, proper English."

Rumors of Jimbo's resignation put to rest

Techtree.com reported that there had been claims of Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, resigning from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The rumors started with a post on Valleywag by editor Owen Thomas, who wrote: "Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's [...] cofounder, is no longer a board member of the site's nonprofit foundation." Sue Gardner, executive director of Wikimedia, responded to the news by confirming that Jimbo is indeed still a member of the board. Jay Walsh, Head of Communications, went on to say that Jimbo had been "'unanimously' confirmed for another term on the board."

The original post has since been amended to read "With the calendar running out on 2008, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's sleaze-drenched cofounder, nearly lost his seat on the board." Valleywag has a long tradition of adopting a scathing tone towards Wikimedia management, in particular last March's expose of Wales' relationship with Fox News reporter Rachel Marsden, as previously reported in the Signpost.

Philanthropy experts opine on Wikipedia fundraiser

The Give and Take blog of The Chronicle of Philanthropy covered Wikipedia's recently concluded fundraiser in a post titled "Wikipedia's Fund-Raising Success Questioned". It describes the complaint of non-profit consultant Mike Burns, and the more gentle poke from the Values Blog, which gives "Only Two Cheers for Wikipedia" for mis-defining philanthrocapitalism—the title and subject of the bloggers' book.

Study of the "epistemic consequences" of Wikipedia

In an article published in the August 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, University of Arizona philosopher Don Fallis explores the "epistemic consequences" of Wikipedia—in other words, whether Wikipedia is helping or hurting the spread of reliable knowledge. In moving "Toward an Epistemology of Wikipedia", Fallis concludes that "the reliability of Wikipedia compares even more favorably to the reliability of those information sources that people would be likely to use if Wikipedia did not exist" and that "Wikipedia has a number of other epistemic virtues (e.g., power, speed, and fecundity) that arguably outweigh any deficiency in terms of reliability".

"5 Celebrity Wikipedia Entries They Clearly Wrote Themselves"

Humor site Cracked.com published an article this week on "5 Celebrity Wikipedia Entries They Clearly Wrote Themselves", mocking the articles on Corey Feldman, Paul Stanley, William Shatner, Bruce Willis, and Hulk Hogan. According to Cracked author Neal Nicholson, these articles contain examples of unencyclopedic tone, unnecessary detail, and "supernaturally shameless plug[s]", concluding that these articles could have only been written by the subjects themselves. Specifically, Nicholson criticized the William Shatner article for its use of the term Shatnerites, as well as the entry on Hulk Hogan for describing him as a "consummate role model".

For December 2008, Wikipedians discussed a thematic Did You Know (DYK) section for the Main Page. On November 2, following up on the successful Halloween theme for October 31 (related story), How do you turn this on asked if regular contributors at DYK would like to see a Christmas theme for the DYK section. A discussion about Main page bias surrounding themes occurred, with Karanacs calling for "submissions [to] include articles related to Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and the Islamic New Year" and suggestions that the hooks cover a theme week.

Did You Know highlights Wikipedia's newest content (related story). To qualify for Did You Know, an article must be new or expanded more than fivefold, have at least 1500 characters of prose and should be created five days or fewer before it is nominated. The article should be well-written and cited to reliable sources. Hooks should be catchy and interesting – preferably something most readers wouldn't know before seeing the hook.

In addition to the 2008 Halloween theme and the December theme, Wikipedia has featured a thematic St. Patrick's Day mainpage in the past, and has a three-year tradition of a thematic Main page on April Fools' Day (related story).

In 2007, three DYK hooks with a Christmas theme were promoted, even though there was not a pre-planned theme.

2007: Did you know...

• ... that Philippine Christmas lanterns, called Parols (pictured), are also used in Christmas celebrations in Austria, Canada and California?

• ... that according to the Christmas Price Index it will cost your true love US$78,100 to buy you all those gifts this year?

• ... that U.S. Salvation Army Christmas kettles have collected not only American Gold Eagles, but also gold teeth?

For 2008, a task force page of articles that were good targets for expansion was established; about 22 articles were expanded and featured as DYK hooks on December 25, alternating with other hooks. Samples included:

2008: Did you know...

• ... that the 1965 broadcast of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is credited with ending the era of the aluminum Christmas tree (pictured, left)?

• ... that Robert Wells and Mel Tormé wrote "The Christmas Song" in the sweltering July heat as a means of keeping themselves cool?

• ... that Bóg się rodzi, a Polish Christmas carol, has been called "one of the most beloved Polish Christmas carols"?

• ... that the Berner Haselnusslebkuchen, a traditional Christmas cookie from Switzerland, is a lebkuchen made from ground hazelnuts?

• ... that the 2002 album Happy Clucking Holidays consists of Christmas songs performed by Dirk Keysser clucking like a chicken?

• ... that Paul Lynde, who played the lead role in the 1977 U.S. television special 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, was responsible for casting fellow actor Martha Raye as his character's mother-in-law?

• ... that the Star of Bethlehem by Edward Burne-Jones, the largest watercolour painting of the 19th century, is based on his 1887 tapestry design depicting the Adoration of the Magi?

• ... that American Civil War soldiers celebrated Christmas by using salt pork and hardtack as ornaments on Christmas trees?

• ... that the village of Christmas Common was the home of philologist and lexicographer William Craigie?

• ... that Christmas Island National Park hosts the world's largest population of the world's largest land invertebrate, the Coconut crab?
  
  

The Picture of the Day, which highlights featured pictures, extended the Christmas theme. It featured a photochrom of a Russian reindeer sled (pictured below). The public domain image was selected from the U.S. Library of Congress archives and featured in August 2008.

Administrators

No editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week.

Bots

Eleven bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: AnomieBOT (task request), Analphabot (task request), Bot0612 (task request), MBisanzBot (task request), SoxBot (task request), Pattonbot (task request), WikiStatsBOT (task request), BlackpoolFCBot (task request), DeadLinkBOT (task request), Lucasbfrbot and AnomieBOT (task request).

Featured pages

Twelve articles were promoted to featured status this week: The Simpsons Game (nom), Lockdown (2008) (nom), Tetrarch (tank) (nom), Benjamin Harrison (nom), USS Iowa turret explosion (nom), Stanley Goble (nom), Coenred of Mercia (nom), The Simpsons Hit & Run (nom), Toa Payoh ritual murders (nom), New South Greenland (nom), 2003 Insight Bowl (nom) and New York State Route 311 (nom).

Twenty-seven lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Boston Latin School alumni (nom), List of Prime Ministers of Canada by time in office (nom), List of districts of West Bengal (nom), List of number-one Billboard Top Latin Albums of 2008 (nom), NBA All-Star Weekend Three-Point Shootout (nom), List of Governors of Indiana (nom), List of No Country for Old Men awards and nominations (nom), List of Montreal Canadiens head coaches (nom), Ballon d'Or (nom), List of monarchs of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty (nom), List of NBA All-Stars (nom), List of Houston Astros managers (nom), Timeline of the 1994 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), List of Houston Astros Opening Day starting pitchers (nom), List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama (nom), The Kills discography (nom), Avatar: The Last Airbender (season 3) (nom), List of Texas Rangers managers (nom), List of Bleach episodes (season 9) (nom), List of Texas Aggie terms (nom), Highlander: The Series (season 2) (nom), List of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates (nom), List of first overall Major League Baseball draft picks (nom), Eminem discography (nom), List of Pittsburgh Pirates managers and owners (nom), Darwin Medal (nom) and List of awards and nominations received by Alanis Morissette (nom).

Two topics were promoted to featured status this week: Constitution of the Roman Republic (nom) and X-Men films (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Battle of Red Cliffs, Hanford Site, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Go Man Go, Alfred Russel Wallace, Nimrod Expedition, Woody Guthrie, Marble Madness and King Arthur.

Former featured pages

Three articles were delisted this week: Growth of the Old Swiss Confederacy (nom), Warren County Canal (nom) and First Crusade (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

Two lists were delisted this week: List of Sweden international footballers (nom) and Flag flying days in Mexico (nom).

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Ocean currents, Willie Wagtail, Oviposition, Guttation, Chamaeleo jacksonii, Titan, Lobby card and Operation Strangle.

Eleven media files were featured this week:

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Twenty-five pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.

• 
  American Empire
• 
  Scandinavia
• 
  Blue Mountains (Australia)
• 
  Gothic plate armour
• 
  Amsterdam
• 
  Mazda 6
• 
  Snell's law
• 
  Caledonia
• 
  Social dance
• 
  Pamukkale
• 
  Impact sprinkler
• 
  The Dakota
• 
  Shea Smith
• 
  Camera obscura
• 
  White-faced Heron
• 
  World War I trenches at Dead Sea
• 
  Blow-fly
• 
  Damselfly
• 
  Bethlehem Steel
• 
  Sprekelia
• 
  Alstroemeria
• 
  Housefly
• 
  The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel
• 
  Sleigh Ride
• 
  White House

This is a summary of recent (as in, since the last technology report was written) technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.2 (ce9d259), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Fixed bugs

• Searches for words with less than four characters are now possible. (r43920, bug 7726)
• MediaWiki now returns a 404 HTTP status code when a non-existent page is requested, enabling external bots and spiders to detect broken links to non-existent or deleted pages. This change should be transparent to end-users. (r44919, bug 2585)
• Terminology on article history pages has changed, from saying "(cur)(last)" to "(cur)(prev)". (r45311, bug 6749)

New features

• Users can now specify a timezone in user preferences, which will automatically fill in the time correction to UTC and adjust according to daylight saving time changes. (r44915, bug 505)
• An option has been added to Special:Preferences to reset preferences to the site defaults. (r45563, bug 2164)
• Parser function added to provide protection status of a page. ((PROTECTIONLEVEL:edit)) will return the protection level for page edits. (r45587, bug 9947)
• The upload limit has been increased from 20 to 100 megabytes, though some uploads on the high end of that range might hit post-size limits and not succeed. The upload limit increase provides added ability to upload videos to Wikimedia Commons, and djvu files to Wikisource. (bug 12595)
• The Collection extension [1] developed by PediaPress has gone live on Wikibooks, and may be enabled on other Wikimedia projects in the future. This extension allows exporting pages as Adobe PDF documents. The extension also provides a Special:Collection page, with additional options for printing, as well as ordering printed book versions through PediaPress. A portion of the PediaPress sales will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. (bug 474)

Interface changes

• The "Image" namespace has been renamed to "File", since sound and other media files are also uploaded to that namespace. "Image" is now listed as an alias for the "File" namespace, for backward compatibility purposes. Thus, "Image" still works where it is used on Wikipedia. (r43639, bug 44)

Other news

• The Wikimedia Foundation is now hiring for three positions (based in San Francisco) for the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, supported by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation. The three open positions are Interaction Designer, Software Developer, and Sr. Software Developer. See the Wikimedia Foundation site for details.
• The toolserver was down for a couple days around New Year's, due to the servers being moved from the Amsterdam facility to another data center. After the move, there were problems with one of the database servers (yarrow), which took a few days to fix. While awaiting the fix, a log file was deleted and replication on one of the clusters is now not working. This means that database copies on the toolserver for some Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are not up-to-date. However, the replication problem is only affecting some of the smaller projects and not English Wikipedia. Some interwiki tools such as CheckUsage (for images) are not fully functional at this time, producing outdated results.

Ongoing news

• Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.

The Arbitration Committee closed one case this week and opened none, leaving four cases open.

Evidence phase

• G.-M. Cupertino: A case regarding the behavior of G.-M. Cupertino, accepted without significant prior dispute resolution as several arbitrators believed lower levels of dispute resolution would be fruitless.

• Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.

• PHG: A case brought by PHG, in a follow up to a prior case against PHG, Franco-Mongol alliance. This case will review PHG's editing since the prior case, and may impose new sanctions, or repeal current sanctions, as necessary.

Voting

• Fringe science: A case initially filed about the behavior of ScienceApologist, but opened to look at editing in the entire area of fringe science, and the behavior of editors who are involved in the area of dispute. In a proposed decision now being voted on by arbitrators, Coren has proposed the creation of a new type of arbitration remedy, "supervised editing", which an editor may be placed under when he does not "engage other editors or the editorial process appropriately". A designated supervisor would be permitted to revert or refactor the edits of the other editor at his or her discretion, ban the editor from articles, or require that the editor propose any substantial content edits to the supervisor, who will make the edits on his behalf. After the period of supervision terminates, the supervisor will submit a report to the committee who will revise the remedy that placed the editor under supervision. Other remedies include placing ScienceApologist under said supervision, restricting Martinphi from editing policy and guideline pages, admonishing Pcarbonn, and issuing general warnings to behave and seek mediation. Only Coren has voted on any measure.

Closed

• Ireland article names: A case to deal with the disputes about the naming of Ireland-related articles. The committee passed a resolution calling for the community to develop a mechanism to find consensus on naming of Ireland-related articles. A further remedy will create a three-member panel of uninvolved administrators to develop and supervise such a mechanism, if a suitable one is not created within fourteen days of the closure of the case. Until such a consensus is found, the articles in question are to remain at their current titles, and after a consensus is found, no further discussions about moving the pages may take place for two years.