Commons reached 4 million files on March 4, 2009, less than eight months after it reached 3 million. This makes Wikimedia Commons currently the fastest growing Wikimedia project.
The 4 millionth file is an image of mountains near Masca in the Canary Islands, and was uploaded by Kallerna. The photo is released into the public domain.
In December and January, Commons received a significant boost from the Bundesarchiv project, in which nearly 100,000 donated images were uploaded. Commons reached 2 million files on 8 October 2007 and 3 million on 16 July 2008.
A MediaWiki developer meetup is planned for April 3-5 in Berlin. According to the project page, the meetup is for anyone "who works on MediaWiki, writes extensions, builds bots, writes scripts for the toolserver, or is otherwise interested in the technical aspects of Wikimedia." The event will be run as a barcamp, with a loose schedule.
The meeting will be in parallel with a Wikimedia Foundation Board and Chapters meeting.
Attendees are asked to pre-register by March 20th; details are here.
The bidding cities for Wikimania 2010 have been announced; they are Amsterdam, Gdańsk and Oxford. The next stage is a month-long period where bids may be improved; this will be followed by a public meeting on March 30 and a two-week judging period by the Wikimania jury.
Naoko Komura, leader of the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, has announced that three new people have joined the usability team: Arash Boostani, Parul Vora and Trevor Parscal. Boostani is formerly of Genentech, and joined the project as Senior Software Developer. Vora was formerly a designer at Yahoo! and a researcher at Yahoo! Research Berkeley, and brings user interface design experience to the team. Parscal is a current member of the Wikimedia tech team, who is transferring to the usability team as software designer. The usability team is also currently interviewing for a second software designer position.
Usability testing as part of the Usability Initiative is also now underway. According to Komura, a CentralNotice (image) aimed at recruiting Wikipedia readers in San Francisco for the tests has been running this week, and in-person and remote testing will occur on March 24, 25 and 26. The target audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no experience in editing articles. The banner is displayed within the range of 1:400 to 1:100 page views, and is set to be disabled on March 12.
Although discussions about potential trials of the flagged revisions extension have essentially ground to a halt, Jimbo Wales has indicated on his talk page that he is "shopping a very premature proposal around", with "[n]ews to come soon." This follows Wales's request in January that flagged revisions be enabled based on a straw poll showing 60% support for a vaguely defined trial; developer Brion Vibber indicated that it would not be enabled "before working out some very specific parameters for the test first" (see earlier story). A number of potential trials were outlined following the events in January, but no single dominant proposal has emerged for evaluation.
Brian Wheeler of BBC News examines the relationships between British politicians and their Wikipedia articles in "UK politicians' Wikipedia worries". Wikipedia plays a similarly significant role in British politics as in American politics; the article notes that "In the 2008 US primaries, candidates' Wikipedia entries ranked higher on Google than their own websites for 25% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans, according to research by the Tech President website."
Wheeler reports that "In the UK, the main parties all monitor Wikipedia for errors and bias - but they are reluctant to criticise something which is generally seen as a force for good." However, many individual politicians found fault with their own entries, which are often subject not only to perennial vandalism, but also to more subtle issues of imbalance and misrepresentation. Still, according to a spokesman for the the Liberal Democrats, "Wikipedia is probably more prone to errors than other sources, but it is also much more prone to correcting errors."
Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily [http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114 reported] several instances of what he believed to be entirely unjustified instances of content being removed from Barack Obama. On multiple occasions, editors attempted to add sourced information related to Jeramiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and concerns over Obama's eligibility to serve as president of the United States. According to Klein's article, those edits were quickly reverted and, in some cases, resulted in the author being blocked. Klein described the Barack Obama article as being "heavily promotional toward the U.S. president." Long time editors of the Barack Obama article meanwhile have countered that this was a content decision made with the consensus of editors involved with the article.
Genevieve Bookwalter of the San Jose Mercury News reports that a "Battle for control of Santa Cruz councilman's Wikipedia page persists". Bookwalter writes that "what once seemed like hip political strategy has become a headache as [Ryan] Coonerty, 35, engages in an ongoing struggle to control his online image on Wikipedia".
Seth Finkelstein, a long-time critic of Wikipedia and its connection to the for-profit company Wikia (founded by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board chair Angela Beesley) has a column in The Guardian, "Inclusion or deletion? In the end, it's actually about money". Finkelstein argues that deletion of detailed popular culture content pushes contributors from "the relative prestige of Wikipedia" to "being digital sharecroppers on an electronic plantation of user-generated advertising revenues" (i.e., Wikia wikis).
WikiRank is a new analysis tool for Wikipedia. The tool, similar to Google Analytics, offers detailed statistical analysis and information regarding Wikipedia article traffic. Unlike toolserver-based traffic counters, WikiRank will also provide "a list of the most dramatic traffic shift in popularity in the last 24 hours." WikiRank is expected to launch in late March 2009.
On February 27, Featured sounds reached 100 Featured sounds, through the promotion of six sounds. While no one sound was declared the 100th, the six sounds that were promoted were:
| Rigoletto: "Bella figlia dell'amore" |
| Il trovatore: "Stride la vampa" |
| 2002 State of the Union Address |
| Tear down this wall |
| Gerald Ford Vietnam clemency remarks |
| Carmen: Chanson du toréador |
A Featured sound is a sound file that is of such quality that it can represent some of Wikipedia's best work (see related story). In order to be featured, it must meet the criteria for Featured sounds. These criteria includes high encyclopedic value, combined with good quality for the time period in which the sound was recorded.
Two parts of the criteria are not as recognized, but are as important as quality and encyclopedic value.
While the Featured sounds process has received more attention in the past few months, it is still in need of both contributors and reviewers. In order for the process to grow, a larger community is required. Low numbers of reviewers have occasionally caused long delays—sometimes months old. Nominations are being made fairly steadily, but most of them are made by people who have been active in the process for a long time. In order for the process to flourish, new input is necessary. There are multiple ways you can contribute.
The Signpost recently interviewed Itaqallah of WikiProject Islam. This week, we continue our coverage of the major religions by interviewing WikiProject Christianity. WikiProject Christianity is one of Wikipedia's larger WikiProjects with more than 275 members and over 26000 articles under its scope. Here to tell us more about the project is Secisek.
The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.
Three editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Mufka (nom), Admiral Norton (nom) and Valley2city (nom).
Twelve bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Erik9bot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request), DustyBot (task request), SoxBot (task request), Polbot (task request), DumZiBoT (task request), Addbot (task request), AfDStatBot (task request), BHGbot (task request), SPCUClerkbot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request) and Erik9bot (task request).
Eleven articles were promoted to featured status this week: Bride of Frankenstein (nom), Kylfings (nom), Heinrich Bär (nom), SMS Moltke (1910) (nom), Tom Derrick (nom), History of the National Hockey League (1967–1992) (nom), Kirsten Dunst (nom), Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall (nom), Donald Bradman with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (nom), William Henry Harrison (nom) and Kinzua Bridge (nom).
Seventeen lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2002 (U.S.) (nom), List of Numb3rs episodes (nom), Yeah Yeah Yeahs discography (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Scissor Sisters (nom), System of a Down discography (nom), List of Pittsburgh Penguins head coaches (nom), List of United States Naval Academy alumni (Astronauts) (nom), List of Cincinnati Reds managers (nom), List of Los Angeles Kings head coaches (nom), Arnold Schwarzenegger filmography (nom), List of winners of the Chicago Marathon (nom), List of Philadelphia Phillies no-hitters (nom), List of Olympic medalists in speed skating (nom), List of United States Naval Academy alumni (Chiefs of Naval Operations) (nom), List of Vancouver Canucks captains (nom), Rufus Wainwright discography (nom) and Ashlee Simpson discography (nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status this week: Gaylactic Spectrum Awards (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: Vithoba, Hurricane Linda, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Saxbe fix, Luc Bourdon, Harriet Tubman and Greece Runestones.
One article was delisted this week: Plug-in hybrid (nom).
No lists or topics were delisted this week.
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Palais Garnier, Rhône Glacier, Panorama of Mikumi National Park, Duck and Cover, Woodblock print in the Ukiyo-e style, Solar eclipse of August 1, 2008 and Swamp milkweed.
No media files were featured this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Twenty-one pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that some changes described here have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.9 (52a3d57), 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.
((REVISIONUSER))
has been added, which can be used to show who last edited a page. (r48149, bug 10336)
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, and closed one, leaving six cases open.