New editor-in-chief
The Signpost has been an integral part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2005. Nearly a thousand editors on the English Wikipedia alone have subscribed to it, in addition to the many on other foundation sites who have subscribed to global delivery. Others subscribe via email, including outside individuals interested in the movement. The Signpost's rise has been aided by a series of extremely respected and capable people; those who have been around for years will easily recall names like Michael Snow (January – August 2005), Ral315 (August 2005 – December 2008), and Ragesoss (February 2009 – June 2010). Editors who joined more recently will recognize HaeB (June 2010 – July 2011) and the Signpost's interim editors-in-chief since: Jarry1250, SMasters and Skomorokh.
After the recent departure of Skomorokh and SMasters, I offered to complete the largely formal process of pushing buttons to publish each edition. While the issues have gone out with few problems, Signpost journalists felt that appointing a new editor-in-chief would serve as a point of contact and final arbiter over journalistic decisions that confront us each week, like what topics to cover and matters of weighting. My name was floated as a possibility, and many of the regular journalists supported the idea. So I accepted.
Being the eighth editor-in-chief of the Signpost is an intriguing challenge, as the newspaper is written in a unique genre from the rest of the project: we have deadlines, are not limited to an encyclopedic style, and disseminate Wikimedia-related news—and I am sure nearly all of you have heard "Wikipedia is not a newspaper", our little irony. I also feel that I have to live up to the esteemed former editors who have done so much for the Signpost, while simultaneously blazing my own trail, bringing the Signpost to new heights, new places, and new readers.
One of my goals in changing the Signpost is reviving its dormant opinion desk. My definition of an op-ed has traditionally been expansive, thanks to my time as an editor of the Military History Project's Bugle. In my view, op-eds can be anything from "how-to" articles (e.g. the oft-cited "Let's get serious about plagiarism", or the Bugle's "John Goodall's The English Castle and delving into castle editing"), in-depth observations into a Wikipedia process, calls for participation in an important new initiative, or position pieces on a divisive newsworthy development. I am keenly aware that no matter what topic is being discussed on-wiki, you will find strong support and determined opposition among our diverse contributors. While we cannot publish every submission that comes our way, as we are looking for high reader interest and engagement, your imagination is the outer limit.
Send us your preliminary thoughts for an op-ed at the opinion desk, on my talk page, or to my email—whichever you are most comfortable with.
Two new Wikimedia fellows to boost strategies for tackling major issues
The Wikimedia foundation has just announced new community fellowships aimed at tackling two very different challenges faced by the movement. Both fall within the 2011–12 priorities of increasing participation and editor retention across the projects.
Small-wiki editor engagement
"Small", though, only refers to the size of the site: ironically, by some counts Bengali ranks sixth among the world's languages in terms of the number of native speakers, with nearly 300 million. We asked Tanvir why more Bengali-speakers aren't editing the site. He said, "Most Bengali-speakers get the English Wikipedia when they Google. A lot of them don't know about the Bengali Wikipedia, and still fewer that they can actually contribute to the site."
"Part of the problem is that Bengali is written in a non-roman script, and to edit you need software that supports this script. Many people don't have it, even though there are now increasingly satisfactory open-source tools, such as Avro Keyboard to which we have a link on our main page."
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But there have been tensions, some of them even recent; for example, Tanvir told us that over the past few years, the Indian government has been blocking the transmission of Bangladeshi television into West Bengal, reportedly citing fears of "anti-Indian" propaganda and coded messages to separatists (the Signpost cannot reliably confirm the details or whether the blocking persists).
Despite these hiccups, Tanvir says, there are obviously strong links between the groups. We asked him whether the Bengali Wikipedia has the potential to bring the two groups together in terms of free information and intellectual pursuit. He says that both Wikimedia India and Wikimedia Bangladesh have been active in supporting the Bengali Wikipedia (Tanvir played a key role in establishing the Bangladesh chapter, which has already begun outreach in the country). He points out that although India has some 400 languages, Bengali is its second most spoken native language, after Hindi. Bengali matters to both countries, and articles on the Wikipedia concern the whole language region.
Furthermore, Tanvir says, West Bengalis are welcome to collaborate with the Bangladesh chapter—anything, he says, that will develop the editing community. "There are possibilities for joint ventures with Wikimedia India on workshops, and we would be glad to help, although so far this has not occurred." On the Bengali Wikipedia, there are "very few" editors from West Bengal, although "one of the four active administrators is from West Bengal".
The project will comprise a number of overlapping phases. Initially, information and feedback will be collected regarding editing patterns and the basic needs of the community, including technical and social issues that might have a bearing on editor engagement. These findings will be analysed and pilot projects designed on welcoming and training new editors, and on the creation of an outreach program. The pilot programs will then be run, and outcomes reviewed, measured, and reported, leading to implementation in the longer term.
Tanvir says the project will open opportunities for transferring to other small wikis what we learn about attracting and retaining editors on one. "Communities may live in very different sociocultural circumstances, but there are likely to be common factors in all small wikis that enable us to formulate more robust strategies."
Dispute resolution
Another dimension of the editor retention narrative is dispute resolution, highlighted by last week's release of data suggesting that a surprising proportion of Wikipedians find the social milieu problematic, with 23% of respondents rating their fellow editors "arrogant", 13% "unfriendly", 7% "rude", 5% "dumb", and fewer than half "collaborative", among their top two descriptors (question 17). Steven Zhang, according to Bouterse, has "a passion for resolving on-wiki disputes and helping others to do the same". In June last year he was instrumental in setting up the dispute resolution noticeboard (DRN) on the English Wikipedia, and his fellowship will use this as the starting point for developing new tools and strategies to improve mediation.
We asked Steven how he would score the noticeboard out of 10; he says 6–7 might be a fair assessment at the moment. Previously "there were many entry points for dispute resolution, as though they'd grown without any planning at all. Unless you were a seasoned editor, you wouldn't know which one to go to. My whole purpose was to draw the system into a 'single capsule' for low-end disputes, and if a particular dispute needs to go somewhere else, to direct it there subsequently."
What skills are necessary to work in dispute resolution, then? How do you get one religious or political group talking productively to their opposite number? "First, mediators need to know policy, because often disputants will quote policy, and you need to know your way around it yourself. But just as important, you have to look at a complex situation and clearly extract what the differences of approach are, separating the content issues from personal agendas. In the end, if they can't look at the situation objectively there may be nothing you can do, and it probably needs to go to another forum."
How much psychological insight is necessary? "You sometimes need to work out what the mind-sets of the parties are, and you can only do that by going into their edit histories. A lot of patience is required to succeed. Being aware of a number of typical scenarios might help both mediators and disputing parties to see their way through to resolution. For example, there's the ping-pong match, where participants don't listen to each other, the boomerang, where just bouncing back policy explanation does the trick, and the my source is better than yours dispute that can be solved by carefully working out how to present the different points of view in the article text. Then there's the compromise, where the final result is an amalgamation of opinions from parties, and the tough nut, disputes that would benefit from more formal mediation. You need to know when page protection may break the back of the dispute, and how to manage verbose editors, where tighter structure and intervention might work. Occasionally, a dispute has many issues and can be divided into components for better results.
Could admins play a greater role generally? "The problem for admins is that when a dispute is based on deep emotions—like some of the religious disputes I've mediated—they're reluctant to get involved. I think the admin and mediator hats are quite different. Being an enforcer and a mediator at the same time is a very hard thing to do. But having said that, experienced admins who have a detailed knowledge of policy and how to apply it can do a lot of good in resolving disputes."
"While on the issue of admins," says Steven, "I'll take this opportunity to say that I see a lot of RfAs where applicants are given a hard time for having less content creation experience than people think they should have; but my view is that dispute-resolution experience is a reasonable and valuable alternative to a lot of content editing."
As part of his fellowship, Steven will analyse the results of a survey of approximately 1,100 Wikipedians to determine the relationship between demographics and experiences of dispute resolution, and will collate opinions on how the process can be improved and who might be interested in participating as mediators. As part of the Wikimedia Fellow panel at Wikimania, he will outline the history of dispute resolution on the English Wikipedia, the results of his survey, and how they might feed into new strategies. In a related workshop at the unconference, he'll present developed case studies (anonymised) to compare how the audience believes the case should be resolved and how the case actually played out. He'll go on to create an online version so these test cases can be used by editors across foundation projects to improve their dispute resolution processes.
Brief notes
- Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this week:
- The Korean Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
- The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
- The Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Mazandarani Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
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Trouble in a Galaxy Far, Far Away....
- The newly revamped Help Project is looking for new contributors interested in improving and maintaining Wikipedia's help system
- The May Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive is underway
- The Multilingual Challenge sponsored by the Teyler's Museum runs until the end of this month
This week, we located a ragtag band of rebels fighting for survival in Wikipedia's remote Outer Rim. Started in February 2006, WikiProject Star Wars has endeavored "to produce a succinct, comprehensive, general, and authoritative reference on Star Wars materials" while discouraging the inclusion of extreme detail (fancruft) and in-universe writing. The project got off to an energetic start with over 100 members managing to fill six archives worth of talk page discussions in the project's first year of existence. That enthusiasm dwindled each of the following years until the project's last roll call revealed that only six active members remained in January 2011. With the 35th anniversary of the first Star Wars film approaching on May 25, we decided to help the struggling project search for a new hope. We interviewed "Darth" Sjones23, Harry Blue5, and EEMIV.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Star Wars? Do you follow any other science fiction franchises?
- Sjones23: The interest in improving Star Wars articles to FA status. I follow a lot of science fiction franchises, such as Tron, Star Trek and Ghost in the Shell.
- Harry Blue5: Well, one of the most obvious reasons would be that I like Star Wars. A lot of the articles are also crufty and in-universe focused, so it's nice when you can try and help it reach a better standard.
- EEMIV: Stumbled into the articles soon after I started editing Wikipedia. The franchise was a childhood passion, and picking up popular steam in 2005 when I joined Wikipedia (same year that the final prequel came out).
How does the project determine notability for the characters, locales, and technologies in the Star Wars canon? Does the project frequently deal with cleaning out in-universe language or fancruft?
- Sjones23: We determine notability issues with the WP:GNG and WP:NOTABILITY. We frequently deal with cleaning out in-universe language and fancruft.
- Harry Blue5: I can't speak for the project as a whole, but generally I tend to treat it like I would anything else: are there any reliable secondary sources? A lot of the articles have an in-universe bent, so obviously that's going to have to be cleaned out eventually.
- EEMIV: WP:GNG is the starting point. I had Star Wars in mind when participating in discussions regarding WP:FICT as a special set of notability guidelines for fiction-related stuff. The supplement wasn't necessary; GNG is just fine.
What relationship does WikiProject Star Wars have with the Star Wars wiki Wookieepedia? How does Wikipedia's coverage of Star Wars differ from that of Wookieepedia?
- Harry Blue5: The goals of Wikipedia and Wookieepedia are very different. Wookieepedia is primarily in-universe as far as I know, with any real-world info going in a "Behind the scenes" section. So, if there was going to be an article on some planet, Wookieepedia would have dozens of pages' worth of contents describing how the planet's history goes and what sort of life lives/lived there. This is nice enough, but doesn't match Wikipedia's style as much, which tends to describe how the planet was designed (by George Lucas or anyone else) and what impact it's had.
- EEMIV: I don't do any editing at Wookieepedia, but I do sometimes turn to the wikia when looking for secondary sources: Wookieepedia in the last few years has started to expand its inclusion of the real-world, production-focused information that is also appropriate for Wikipedia.
WikiProject Star Wars is home to 6 Featured Articles and 16 Good Articles. Have you contributed to any of these? What are some challenges to improving Star Wars articles to FA or GA status?
- EEMIV: A few. It's sometimes difficult to find significant coverage of a subject, or to click through a bunch of online sources at Google Books that are 95% stories and in-universe and 5% actual useful sources. I think there are, in fact, a few articles that meet GA standards but haven't been nominated. I've been reluctant to put a few more up because I know I don't have a lot of time in doing my part in reviewing for GA. As someone commented below, the SW WikiProject is small in terms of participants.
How does WikiProject Star Wars compare to the projects of other major franchises like WikiProject Star Trek or WikiProject Doctor Who? Do the projects share members or resources? Has there ever been a collaboration between these projects?
- Harry Blue5: It's a shame to say, but we're probably a lot more inactive (at least compared to WP:WHO, I've never really kept up with Star Trek).
- EEMIV: There's some participant overlap with Star Trek. I don't know about the other sci-fi franchise projects because I don't participate in them. Not a whole lot of overlap in terms of resources/sourcing.
With the 35th Anniversary of the first Star Wars film on May 25, are there any plans to celebrate on Wikipedia? What articles could use some help in preparation for this milestone?
- Sjones23: I plan to get all of the Star Wars main articles to at least GA/FA status if possible. Articles that could use some help include Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
- Harry Blue5: I don't know if there's any celebration going, but the second question is easily answered. The books. Pretty much all the articles about Star Wars books. Personally, I'd like to see some work on Kyle Katarn, but that's probably just me.
Next week's project is a little more down to earth. Until then, dig into some other solid interviews in the archive.
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Lemurbaby moves it with Madagascar: Featured content for the week
After a hiatus of several months, the Signpost is again bringing its readers a series of interviews with editors who create featured content in under-represented areas. This week we interviewed Lemurbaby, who has written four featured articles and a featured list since she began editing in July 2007. Lemurbaby shared with us what it is like to create high-quality articles on African topics. One was promoted this week.
What motivated you to write about Africa?
- I decided to start writing articles on Wikipedia when I noticed how important topics were underdeveloped or non-existent, including those on Africa—in particular, Madagascar. The lack of a Music of Madagascar article spurred me to make the leap from reader to editor: Madagascar has one of the richest musical traditions in the world, and I realized that by contributing to Wikipedia I could help more people to discover the island and its cultural heritage. My work has allowed me to spend long periods overseas and I've come to appreciate that every country, every culture offers a wealth of knowledge, history and meaning. Immersing ourselves in a variety of cultures enriches us and our own world view enormously. Yet language and Euro-centrism, particularly in the way we hear about history and current events at school and in the media, has made it harder for the average anglophile to access this knowledge. Wikipedia is incredible because it allows anyone to bring what matters locally to the attention of the wider world.
What are the challenges in writing about these topics?
- Most (but certainly not all) African countries have a less developed publishing infrastructure and only rarely are locally published books made available internationally. Many universities in Africa have brilliant students, but less library or classroom access to the material it takes to sustain a thriving research culture on campus. As a result, African voices are under-represented in print and especially in published research, so the sources we have to work with (often written by non-locals) reflect their authors' selectivity in their focus and in their decision about what's important enough to put down in print. The challenge is compounded by the fact that many pre-colonial African communities traditionally had a strong oral culture instead of a written one. When history did begin to be written, Europeans were often the ones doing the writing – once again colouring the selection and interpretation of what was recorded for posterity. That's why it can be very helpful to draw on histories in other disciplines, where the historians are potentially less caught up in the same kind of politics that may influence a traditional historian. To really understand anything well requires objective comparisons between many sources, but this is even more true when sources are limited and of questionable objectivity or quality themselves.
Why such a broad spread of topics? For example, why not write about animals and plant species?
- I leave the wildlife articles to my fellow Mada-phile, Maky, who is the undisputed champion in that area. I think our work is complementary, and between us we've put a good dent in the work to be done on the most essential Madagascar topics. I try to balance articles on key political topics (figures like Ranavalona I, and important sites like the Queen's palace) with topics relevant to the average Malagasy person's life; these include those on music or food, because the latter are as relevant, if not more relevant, to the average person than the political topics. That's especially the case in a place like Madagascar, where political instability and abuses of power have been the source of so much disillusionment for the average person there.
Do you need to rely on French/Malagasy sources?
- These days plenty of books have been written in English about most broad topics. One challenge is that English-language books on topics related to developing countries often tend to focus very heavily on the political elements, and frequently cover daily life topics in a cursory and exoticized way. That happens when not enough time is spent putting things into context to help the reader relate to and get beneath what seems "different" on the surface – to enable them to understand how things came to be and identify the meaning behind the superficial observations. Books are a good starting point, but usually journal articles will provide much more detail than books when the topic is narrow and detail is what you're after. Being able to research developing-country topics in the language of the former colonial power or the national/official language(s) really does open up options, though, and especially improves the opportunity to draw from resources written by nationals of that particular country (rather than relying on the interpretations of outsiders)."
How do you think Wikipedia can improve its coverage of Madagascar in particular, and Africa as a whole? What kinds of outreach are necessary?
- I've considered writing about a country or a culture I don't know intimately, but came to the conclusion that for me, at least, it's really difficult. There's just too much information to sift through and it's hard to know how to prioritize it, synthesize it and bring out what matters in a coherent way without having a basic first-hand knowledge of the place and people. I'd feel like I was running the risk of not doing the topic justice and only perpetuating a superficial outsider's perspective rather than contributing anything really meaningful. But these topics urgently need to be covered, and there are many people with that basic knowledge who may be interested in sharing information about and promoting a country, but don't realize how easy it is to edit a Wikipedia article. The US Fulbright program, for instance, is known for sending US students overseas; it also brings students from developing countries to the US to complete graduate degrees. Reaching out to people like these through universities could be a good way to start. Similarly, development organizations (NGOs etc) have staff composed of locals and expats who are all typically multilingual, know the country very well, and tend to have a humanitarian spirit that lends itself to unpaid work like this! It's important to draw on those of us already committed to writing on Wikipedia by making sure all users are aware of the no-cost resources out there to support their research. Together we can make sure the developing countries of Africa and the world can get the coverage they've always deserved – and we'll all be the richer for it.
Featured articles
Seven featured articles were promoted this week:
- Steve Lukather (nom), by Laser brain. Steven Lee "Luke" Lukather (born 1957) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and record producer best known for his work with the rock band Toto. A prolific session musician, Lukather has recorded guitar tracks for more than 1,500 albums representing a broad array of artists and genres. He has also contributed to albums and hit singles as a songwriter, arranger, and producer. Lukather has released six solo studio albums and is working on his seventh. Influenced by such blues-rock guitarists as Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, and such jazz fusion players as Al Di Meola and Frank Gambale, Lukather is known for a "melodic and intense" playing style.
- Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (nom), by Silver seren and WWB Too. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. is an American chain of combined restaurant and gift stores with a Southern country theme, founded in 1969. As of 2011, it operates at 608 locations in 42 states. A casual dining family restaurant, Cracker Barrel is designed to resemble an old-fashioned general store, and its menu is based on traditional Southern cuisine. In the 1990s, the company was criticized for its policy against gay and lesbian employees, and for discrimination against African American and female employees and minority customers. These were resolved through an agreement with the US Department of Justice and an official change in company policy in 2002.
- Herne Hill railway station (nom), by Tommy20000. Herne Hill railway station is a passenger railway station in Herne Hill in the London Borough of Lambeth, South London, England, on the boundary between London fare zones 2 and 3. The station building on Railton Road was opened in 1862 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Initially passengers could travel only to Victoria, but by 1869 direct services were available to the City of London, King's Cross, Kingston (via Wimbledon) and Kent, including express trains to Dover Harbour for boat trains to continental Europe. The arrival of the railways transformed Herne Hill from a wealthy suburb with large residential estates into a densely populated urban area.
- Santa Maria de Ovila (nom), by Binksternet. Santa María de Óvila is a former Cistercian monastery built in Spain in the 13th century on the Tagus River near Trillo, Guadalajara, northeast of Madrid. Over the next four centuries, construction projects expanded and improved the small monastery. Its fortunes declined in the 1700s, and in 1835 it was confiscated by the Spanish government and sold to private owners who used it to shelter farm animals. The new government of the Second Republic declared the monastery a National Monument in June 1931, but not in time to prevent the mass removal of stones. American publisher William Randolph Hearst bought parts of the monastery. Today, the remnant buildings and walls stand on private farmland.
- William Jennings Bryan presidential campaign, 1896 (nom), by Wehwalt. William Jennings Bryan ran unsuccessfully for president in 1896. A former Democratic congressman from Nebraska, he gained his party's presidential nomination in July of that year after electrifying the Democratic National Convention with his Cross of Gold speech. Abandoned by many gold-supporting party leaders and newspapers after the Chicago convention, Bryan toured by rail to bring his campaign to the people. He was defeated in the general election by the Republican candidate, former Ohio governor William McKinley. This race is generally seen as a realigning election; the coalition of wealthy, middle-class, and urban voters that defeated Bryan kept the Republicans in power most of the time until the 1930s.
- Ranavalona III (nom), by Lemurbaby. Ranavalona III (1861–1917) was the last sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar, ruling from 1883 to 1897. Her reign was marked by ongoing and ultimately futile efforts to resist the colonial designs of France by strengthening trade and diplomatic relations with the United States and Great Britain. French attacks on coastal port towns and an assault on the capital city of Antananarivo led to the capture of the royal palace in 1896, ending the sovereignty and political autonomy of the century-old kingdom. Although Ranavalona and her court were initially permitted to remain as symbolic figureheads, discovery of anti-French political intrigues led the French to exile the queen to the island of Réunion in 1897.
- Hurricane Lenny (nom), by Hurricanehink. Hurricane Lenny was the second-strongest November Atlantic hurricane on record. It was the twelfth tropical storm, eighth hurricane, and record-breaking fifth Category 4 hurricane in the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season. It formed in the western Caribbean Sea, attained hurricane status south of Jamaica and rapidly intensified over the northeastern Caribbean on November 17, attaining peak winds of 155 mph (250 km/h) about 21 mi (34 km) south of Saint Croix in the United States Virgin Islands. It gradually weakened while moving through the Leeward Islands, eventually dissipating on November 23 over the open Atlantic Ocean. Significant storm damage occurred as far south as Grenada, where high surf isolated towns from the capital city.
Delisted featured articles
Two featured articles were delisted:
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (review); delisted on the basis of the remaining major cleanup tags, unsourced sections and cruftiness.
- Madonna (entertainer) (review); delisted due to major problems, including "text not meshing with sources".
Featured lists
Three featured lists were promoted this week:
- List of Somerset CCC Twenty20 players (nom), by Harrias. Somerset County Cricket Club, formed in 1875, became a first-class county club in 1882. The club played their first Twenty20 match in the 2003 Twenty20 Cup against Warwickshire. They reached the domestic Twenty20 competition final four times: they won the 2005 Twenty20 Cup and were runners-up in 2009, 2010 and 2011. They qualified for the 2009 and 2011 Champions League Twenty20 and are invited to the 2010–11 Caribbean Twenty20. In total, 54 players have appeared in Twenty20 cricket for Somerset. James Hildreth has played the most matches: 100 since his debut in 2004.
- List of Major League Baseball player–managers (nom), by Muboshgu. Major League Baseball is the highest level of play in North American professional baseball. Founded in 1869, it is presently composed of 30 teams. Each team has a manager, who is responsible for team strategy and leadership on and off the field. The dual role of player–manager was formerly a common practice, dating back to John Clapp, who performed the task for the Middletown Mansfields in 1872. Today, player–managers are rare in baseball. Pete Rose is the most recent player–manager, serving from 1984 through 1986 with the Cincinnati Reds.
- List of Georgia Bulldogs head football coaches (nom), by Patriarca12. The Georgia Bulldogs college football team represents the University of Georgia in the East Division of the Southeastern Conference. The Bulldogs compete as part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. The school has had 25 head coaches since it began play in the 1892 season. Five coaches have led the Bulldogs to postseason bowl games: Wally Butts, Vince Dooley, Ray Goff, Jim Donnan and Richt. Since December 2000, Mark Richt has served as Georgia's head coach.
Featured pictures
Six featured pictures were promoted this week:
- Delias eucharis (nom; related article), created and nominated by Jkadavoor. Editors generally commented on the quality of this image, though a slight blue tone was detected and the image was adjusted to reduce it. The Delias eucharis is a medium sized Pieridae butterfly found in many areas of South and Southeast Asia, especially in the non-arid regions of India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.
- Flèche in fencing (nom; related article), created by Jastrow and nominated by Crisco 1492. Editors commented on the excellence of the image and its high encyclopedic value. It is a photo from the final of the Challenge Réseau Ferré de France–Trophée Monal 2012, épée world cup tournament in Paris. In it, Fabian Kauter (right) performs a Flèche on Diego Confalonieri.
- Alena Zavarzina (nom; related article), creator is uncredited, nominated by Tomer T. Editors noted the excellent detail and liked the subject's expression and posture. One commented that her "expression is priceless". Alena Zavarzina is a snowboarder from Russia. She competed for Russia at the 2010 Winter Olympics in parallel giant slalom.
- Elizabeth Farren (nom; related article), a portrait by Thomas Lawrence, nominated by Crisco 1492. This painting of Elizabeth Farren, an English actress of the late 18th century, was a unanimous choice based on its fine quality, excellent detail and good encyclopedic value.
- Persimmon (nom; related article), created by Jovianeye and nominated by Papa Lima Whiskey. Editors had a long discussion over the white balance, some disliking an all white background, before this version was passed.
- Shifen waterfall (nom; related article), created by Weihao.chiu and nominated by Pine. It was chosen for its good encyclopedic value, since no other pictures are in the article, and the lack of major technical flaws.
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No open arbitration cases pending
For the first time in nearly two years, the Arbitration Committee has no cases pending before it.
No pending cases
The closure of Rich Farmbrough last week marked the closure of the last open case before the Arbitration Committee. This has happened on only two occasions in the recent history of the committee—besides the instance in 2010, there was at least one period in early 2009 when there were no open cases.
However, full cases are not the entirety of the committee's workload. A total of six requests for amendments and two requests for clarification are still actively being discussed by arbitrators; and ban appeals, among other issues, are handled on their off-wiki mailing list.
One request for arbitration—a request for a full case—was filed a day after the last open case was closed. However, that request was unanimously rejected by arbitrators due to the lack of prior attempts at dispute resolution.
Automation restriction debate
A request to amend the just-completed Rich Farmbrough case was filed 19 May by editor Nobody Ent, seeking a modification of the restriction on the use of automation in Rich's edits. "The restriction as currently written is overly broad and vague," Nobody Ent wrote, "even a template is a type of automation and is therefore included in the scope of the remedy as currently written." Arbitrator Jclemens stated the request is a strawman. "We can deal with specific requests for clarification that pose real problems."
Arbitrator AGK concurred with Jclemens' position, to the dismay of commenting editor Hammersoft: "The restriction isn't so clear as Jclemens seems to think it is ... there's apparently still uncertainty as to whether Twinkle or Huggle qualify as 'automation'".
Jclemens answered that criticism in his opening remarks by arguing that "in the context of the case, automation is clearly intended to be that allowing an editor to modify multiple articles or other pages in rapid succession."
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On the indestructibility of Wikimedia content
WMF wiki content now almost indestructible
| “ | Good work. We are approaching finally to an indestructible corpus of knowledge. | ” |
The content of Wikimedia wikis has recently moved significantly closer towards indestructibility, it was announced this week by WMF developer and data dumps specialist Ariel Glenn.
Specifically, data from all Wikimedia wikis is now being successfully replicated to three non-WMF sites around the globe: C3L in Brazil, Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and the servers of Your.org in the United States. Each site holds ("mirrors") at least five monthly snapshots ("dumps") of the publicly available wikitext-based content of all of the many hundreds of Wikimedia wikis. Your.org also hosts a copy of all previous dumps and will hold a single snapshot of all publicly viewable media. Moreover, Glenn reports, "getting the bugs out of the mirroring setup [has made it] easier to add new locations" as well as providing the latest snapshots to already established mirrors. As reported then, the first dump mirror came online in October last year, but this is the first time so many have been available concurrently.
Increasing the number of mirrors—made possible by the free licensing of Wikimedia wikis—helps to ensure that content is sufficiently accessible and geographically diverse to survive natural and artificial disasters; while multiple websites do host live copies of the English and other major Wikipedias, dump mirroring is particularly useful for protecting the content of smaller wikis, which do not enjoy such protection; the same used to be the case of the English Wikipedia, whose 2001 articles were long thought to be lost until old backups were uncovered in December 2010. Theoretically, dump mirrors could also offer better download speeds at times of peak usage, but that is unlikely to be a primary use case for Wikimedia wikis.
Of course, not everyone is so concerned at the possibility that Wikimedia's content might be destroyed in the immediate future, dump mirrors or no dump mirrors. As WMF Lead Platform Architect Tim Starling commented in a 2011 discussion of forking Wikipedia, "the chance of [WMF financial collapse] appears to be vanishingly small, and shrinking as the Foundation gets larger. If there was some financial problem, then we would have plenty of warning and plenty of time to plan an exit strategy. The technical risks (meteorite strike etc.) are also receding as we grow larger". That discussion focussed rather less on the technical aspects of making Wikimedia content indestructible, and more on allowing separate communities to emerge if Wikimedia communities broke up.
In brief
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Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
- 1.20wmf3 starts being deployed: The third "mini-deployment" of the MediaWiki 1.20 series has now been launched on a host of wikis including Wikimedia Commons. The relatively low-profile deployment, equivalent to two weeks' worth of development, brings with it a combined total of nearly 150 bug fixes and new features, including the option for duplicating metadata such as author and source across a batch upload undertaken via Commons' UploadWizard, and an "associated namespace" checkbox to make filtering a watchlist easier. The "title" of a diff page (the text that displays as a tab name in most modern browsers) will now include the word "diff" to make identification easier. Most deployments went smoothly, although the Wikibooks sites had to be temporarily reverted due to a single major bug with PDF generation. As of time of writing, 1.20wmf3 has just been deployed to the English Wikipedia; the discovery of major bugs notwithstanding, it will be deployed to all remaining wikis (non-English Wikipedias) later in the week.
- Wikipedia ads?!?: An uptick in the prevalence of malware injecting adverts into Wikipedia was noted this week on the Wikimedia blog. One example, called "I want this" poses as a legitimate browser addon, before proceeding to embed genuine adverts into the surrounds of a Wikipedia article, so as to make it appear as though Wikipedia itself was promoting the product or service described. Similar behaviour has been noted by internet service providers in countries such as China, where intercepting web-page requests is legal. "Rest assured", wrote Philippe Beaudette, WMF Director of Community Advocacy, and Erik Moeller, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development, the authors of the blog post, "You won’t be seeing legitimate advertisements on Wikipedia. We're here to distribute the sum of human knowledge to everyone on the planet—ad-free, forever."
- WMF announces new hires: The past fortnight has included a number of new WMF engineering-related hires. Subramanya Sastry, a developer and dedicated nonprofit and volunteer worker in his spare time, joins as a senior features software engineer, to work initially on the Visual Editor project. British Wikimedian, long-time editor and indeed founder member of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee James Forrester joins the same team as a technical product analyst; Vibha Bamba joins the Editor Engagement Experiments (E3) team as an interaction designer, having held a similar role at Yahoo; and the E3 team will be benefiting from the work of self-taught programmer Ori Livneh for the foreseeable future.
- Universal Language Selector featured on Wikimedia blog: As mentioned in the Signpost a fortnight ago, developers from the Localisation Team have now begun work on a Universal Language Selector, which featured on the Wikimedia blog this week. Ideas for the tool, which enables easier switching between different interface languages, first came to prominence back in October 2010. However, the news was not so good for progress on the NewPagesFeed extension, which had to be temporarily turned off this week after a bug caused it to show content not intended for display to random users browsing with Internet Explorer (bug #36968).
- One bot approved: 1 BRFA was recently approved for use on the English Wikipedia:
- JYBot, modifying, adding and removing interwiki links. At the time of writing, 16 BRFAs are active. As usual, community input is encouraged.
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