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18 December 2013

WikiProject report
Babel Series: Tunisia on the French Wikipedia
Traffic report
Hopper to the top
Discussion report
Usernames, template data and documentation, Main page, and more
News and notes
Nine new arbitrators announced
Featured content
Triangulum, the most boring constellation in the universe
Technology report
Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset
 

2013-12-18

Babel Series: Tunisia on the French Wikipedia

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By Mabeenot and Benzband

In the latest edition of the Babel Series (see sidebar at bottom right), the Signpost traveled to the French Wikipedia to interview members of Projet Tunisie (Tunisia WikiProject). Created in April 2006, the project has 24 featured articles in its scope. We interviewed Dyolf77, Moumou82, and Pradigue.

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Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Tunisia? Do you live in Tunisia? Have you contributed to the projects covering any other countries?
Dyolf77: I started to edit the article dedicated to my city in French Wikipedia, Sayada. A sysop, Moumou82, invited me to join the WikiProject Tunisia, I was very excited to begin an extraordinary adventure with Wikipedia. Now I am active in Wikimedia Commons and edit some articles in French and Arabic Wikipedia.
Moumou82: I was contributing on a few articles about Tunisia when Kassus created the WikiProject Tunisia in April 2006 and asked me to join and help organize it. I started to contribute more and more about this country, creating templates, listing articles to create and encouraging new users to contribute. I was born and live in Switzerland but my father's family is from Tunisia, this is why I have been interested to help build contents about this country. At the same time, I contribute regularly to articles about my native country when time allows.
Pradigue: I do not live in Tunisia, but I know a little bit about this country, having been there about fifteen times. I work mostly on contents related to archaeology and ancient history of this country, Punic and Roman periods. I also work on other countries but still in the same themes.
How did the Tunisian Revolution impact the project? Are there any articles or templates that still need to be updated to reflect the current situation in Tunisia?
Dyolf77: The Tunisian Revolution permitted to people to speak freely, then in Wikipedia, the fallout was an increase in vandalism in politicians articles which were not popular, even censored once!
Moumou82: As Dyolf77 mentioned, it definitively enabled contributors to access sources that were not much available previously due to censorship or because topics were poorly covered due to the previous regime's policies. Articles that still need to be updated are those related to the political system or elections in Tunisia. I think this is mainly due to the fact the country is still going through a transition process and the nature of the new regime is still not clear at this point. This being said, most articles about the main parties and politicians have been developed and regularly updated since the revolution took place.
The location of Tunisia, in north Africa
How difficult has it been to acquire images for articles about Tunisia? Did the project participate in Wiki Loves Monuments? Are there any subjects that could be easily photographed by a Wikipedia editor living or traveling in a particular part of the country?
Dyolf77: Taking photos is relatively easy now. We organized this year the Wiki Loves Monuments contest in Tunisia for the first time, we received 1555 pictures from 65 photographers. On November 23rd, we made an exhibition of about 50 photographs from the contest, the opening ceremony was a very nice opportunity to speak about Wikipedia and how to promote it in Tunisia.
Moumou82: It depends on the places in Tunisia, for example important cities like the capital Tunis or touristic sites like Jerba begin to be well covered while this is very different for regions like those of Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid or El Kef in western Tunisia, which are outside of main roads and rarely visited by tourists. Possible items to photograph are listed here and it is still possible for local or visiting Wikipedians to ask on the WikiProject talk page what could be photographed if they are going to specific places.
Have you contributed to the Tunisia Portal? What role do portals play on the French Wikipedia?
Moumou82: I created the portal in August 2006 and I am regularly updating it since then. Portals on the French Wikipedia are playing the role of a gate for readers to access the encyclopedia's contents about a specific topic, here a country. While providing an index of the main articles in each sub-theme, we present quality and good articles about Tunisia, beautiful pictures taken from Commons, news about the country, or some "Did you know" facts.
Pradigue: I would only add little to Moumou's statement above. The Tunisia Portal is very developed compared to others, this is significantly related to the involvement and rigor of Moumou82 who watches without hindering contributors. Maintaining quality requires this surveillance.
Do you read or edit articles in other languages? Has the French Wikipedia benefited from translating material from other languages of Wikipedia? Are there any important articles on the French Wikipedia that are currently neglected by the English Wikipedia?
Dyolf77: Yes of course I read and edit articles in other languages, especially in Arabic and English. The Arabic Wikipedia seems to be very poor in articles about Tunisia. I think that we have a lot of work to translate articles from French to Arabic and English.
Moumou82: From time to time, I check articles recently created about Tunisia in other languages I can understand (English, German, Italian, Spanish, etc.) and go through them to evaluate if these could be translated in French. While I rarely edit in other languages than French, I have translated several articles, like Kheireddine Pacha or Giuseppe Raffo, my main translation being an article about the archaeological site of Chemtou that was originally developed in German. From what I could see, articles about Tunisia are not so well covered in English compared to other Arabic countries like Irak for example but translation from French could help closing the gap.
Pradigue: Yes of course, I consult articles in other languages, but I do not contribute. According to me, the ancient history and archaeology articles about Carthage in particular are much more developed on the French Wikipedia and it would be interesting for English speakers to access the work here.


Previous Reports
The Babel Series
What are the project's most urgent needs? Can contributors from the English Wikipedia help the French WikiProject Tunisia? How can French Wikipedians contribute to the English Wikipedia's articles about Tunisia?
Moumou82: As for most projects, I would say more contributors as we have topics like sports, economy or arts that are not necessarily as well covered as history or archaeology currently are, which depend on the interests of users. I also think that contributors from the English Wikipedia could help in developing articles based on sources available in English (covering for example topics like history or religion), which can then be translated in French, or share pictures if they have visited Tunisia in the past; contributors from the French Wikipedia could also help contributors from the English Wikipedia if they have questions during their translations.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Moumou82: Writing about Tunisia enabled me to discover more about this country than what I knew about it before contributing to Wikipedia. This is definitively one of the good sides of this collective work!
Pradigue: Writing about Tunisia strengthened my deep interest and affection for this country and its people, which cross an area of ​​turbulence I want the shortest possible.

Next week, we'll have a special report. Until then, explore our previous reports in the archive.

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2013-12-18

Hopper to the top

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By Serendipodous

As regular readers of this page may have gleaned by now, I'm something of a cynic; I have little to no faith in humanity, a position not helped by the topics making frequent visitations to this list. Wikipedia offers all the knowledge of humanity to the world (at varying levels of accuracy); despite this, most people seem to want to use it either to keep track of celebrity scandals, as a free TV listings guide or, rather oddly, a noticeboard for the deaths of famous people.

Last week saw the deaths of both Paul Walker, an action star who outside of his signature Fast and Furious franchise had not had a major hit, and Nelson Mandela, a global hero and inspiration to millions of people—one in a car crash, the other peacefully in his sleep. When Walker's death generated 7.4 million hits over Mandela's 4.2 million, I initially concluded that the public had been drawn to the ghoulish nature of Walker's demise over the far more historically significant, if uneventful, passing of Mandela. And yet ... Mandela's death was relatively late in the week; Walker's had occurred right at the start. Maybe the stats were lying; after all, day-to-day, Mandela's death was generating twice the hits of Walker's. So I waited a week, and, well, Walker's death still generated more hits in its first week than Mandela's did. In its first ten days. So, OK. Apparently people are far more attached to the Fast and Furious series than I ever knew.

In other news, an animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.

See WP:TOP25 for the full top-25 report.

For the week of December 8–14, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages* were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Grace Hopper C-class 9,412,775
Animated Google Doodles always bring in the numbers, but this record-breaking surge is not something you'd expect to see unless India's involved. Still, it's not hard to see what drew people to Grace Hopper; not only was she a woman in a still-male-dominated field, but a US Navy Rear Admiral to boot. She graduated first in her Naval class, despite being 15 pounds under stipulated minimum weight, and also popularized the word "debugging" to describe fixing computer glitches.
2 Nelson Mandela Good Article 2,549,220
The 95-year-old father of the new South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize winner and global inspiration finally succumbed to his long illness on December 5, triggering tributes from around the world.
3 Bonnie and Clyde C-class 1,338,252
The killing and robbing duo got a spike of interest this week when The History Channel launched a cross-channel event to promote a docudrama about them. Despite the venue, this film is not being hailed for historical accuracy; according to The Guardian's Erin McGann, "if you're a fan of the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, stay away. And if you have even a passing familiarity with the real-life story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker … stay far, far away."
4 Paul Walker C-class 526,200
The tragic death on the road of this Hollywood star remains a major talking point.
5 United States B-Class 484,089
The third most popular Wikipedia article between 2010 and 2012, and a perpetual bubble-under-er. Not really surprising that the country with by far the most English speakers would be the most popular on the English Wikipedia.
6 Facebook B-class 477,654
A perennially popular article
7 Apartheid in South Africa C-class 413,876
The death of Nelson Mandela led to renewed attention for the atrocious system he suffered to end.
8 Frozen (2013 film) C-class 390,297 Disney's de facto sequel to Tangled has already outperformed its predecessor in its first two weeks, having grossed over $264 million worldwide.
9 Deaths in 2013 List 388,959
The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
10 Bitcoin C-Class 354,188
The digital currency is back in the news this week. Bankers have suggested it may prove a legitimate competitor to real money, even though they are best described as a store of value rather than a functional currency. An attempt to declare "Bitcoin Black Friday" to try to get people to actually spend them instead of hoarding them (Except that, from one point of view, hoarding them is exactly the right thing to do if their value continues to skyrocket as it has done) led to the purchase of a great deal of gold, swapping one store of value another.


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2013-12-18

Usernames, template data and documentation, Main page, and more

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By Pine

This is mostly a list of non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 15 December 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, recent watchlist notices and SiteNotices. The latter two are in bold. Items that are new to this report are in italics even if they are not new discussions. If an item can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only in this report. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.


Recent images from the Wikimedia blog
  • "Participants at the Open Source Language Summit, Pune, India" by ESanders (WMF)
    "Participants at the Open Source Language Summit, Pune, India" by ESanders (WMF)
  • "Old city of Jaffa at night" by Pini Birman
    "Old city of Jaffa at night" by Pini Birman
  • "Students from University of Padua and IUAV Venice during the Europeana Fashion Editathon in Stra" by Niccolò Caranti.
    "Students from University of Padua and IUAV Venice during the Europeana Fashion Editathon in Stra" by Niccolò Caranti.


Style and naming

Policies and guidelines

Wikimedians introduce themselves by username.
A Wikipedian has proposed a guideline for graphs and charts on articles. This example was created by Wikipedia contributor Eustress.

WikiProjects and collaborations

  • No RfCs at this time.

Technical issues and templates

Proposals

English Wikipedia notable requests for permissions

(This section will include active RfAs, RfBs, CU/OS appointment requests, and Arbcom elections)

Meta

Upcoming online meetings

Wikimedia blog posts


The monthly Wikimedia Foundation Metrics and Activities meeting, 5 December 2013


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2013-12-18

Nine new arbitrators announced

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By Tony1 and The ed17
The percentage of all voters who supported each candidate: green (two-year terms), blue (one-year term), unfilled (unsuccessful). The outcomes are not linear on this chart because they are based on the S/(S+O) formula, not just the proportion of voters who supported each candidate.


A little more than six days after the close of voting, the results of the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced and certified by four non-English-Wikipedia stewards who kindly stepped in to assist in verification: Vituzzu, Mathonius, Tegel, and Matanya.

Of the 22 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes (the same as last year out of 21 candidates). The unusual ternary voting system requires voters to choose one of three options for each candidate: support, abstain, or oppose; the formula S/(S+O) (supports divided by supports-plus-opposes) determines the top eight who will take their place on 1 January for two-year terms, and the ninth-placed, who will serve a one-year term. The successful candidates, in order of these formulaic scores, are:

Participation in ArbCom elections, 2008–13. Voter numbers are blue (left y-axis); candidate numbers are red (right y-axis).

This year, 923 editors voted, up significantly from 824 last year; this continues a trend of increased participation after the record low two years ago (chart at the right). Only one of the 22 candidates, 28bytes, gained the support of more than half of the voters (chart at the top), compared with three candidates of 21 last year. For the first time ever, the S/(S+O) formula made a difference to the result that would have obtained through supports alone: LFaraone gained a seat at the expense of Guerillero, and a two- rather than one-year term at the expense of Beeblebrox, who was placed ninth under the formula (LFaraone was opposed by fewer voters than the other two).

If you were the "average" voter, you supported just over six candidates, abstained for almost ten, and opposed just over six (the percentages were 28.6%, 42.8%, and 28.6%, respectively). The chart at the bottom shows how the 42.8% average abstain vote has risen significantly. In other words, voting intensity (the proportion of non-abstaining votes) rose steadily between 2008 and 2011, from a low of 25% under the labour-intensive manual voting system in 2008, to 65% in 2011; it has dropped over the two elections since to the current level of 57%. Just why voting intensity should have consistently been the inverse shape of the relative numbers of voters year by year is difficult to explain.

Risker, along with three election commissioners (GiantSnowman, Happy-melon, and TParis), played an important role in the running of the event. She told the Signpost:

As a retiring arbitrator, Risker is working with the arbitrators-elect to help them move into their new roles. "Every one of them has already proven to be diligent, interested, and enthusiastic," she said.

Like last year, the results bear an uncanny resemblance to those predicted by averaging the recommendations of the 20 voter guides. Constructed by one of the election coordinators, Hahc21 (whose signature is ΛΧΣ), the table for 2013 guides got it wrong for only two candidates, both of them close to the success–failure boundary. The actual voter-guide recommendations are summarised here, and anyone who feels inclined can work out which voter guide came closest to the actual result.

We asked Hahc21 for his opinion of the success of the election, operational and otherwise. Specifically on the last phase of the election—the auditing and tallying—Hahc21 told us: "I'm quite sure that results were posted earlier thanks to Risker's and the stewards' hard work." He thinks that overall this year things ran considerably faster and more smoothly than last year, mostly because of the absence of "insane drama events", including the notorious 2012 email leakings scandal. He is pleased that 2013 is the second year in a row with an increase in the number of voters, but is concerned at the 43% of neutral votes: "This is a situation that is constantly increasing, and if we don't find a way to reduce the high proportion of neutral votes, we will have serious repercussions in the future. ... In my view, all elected users should range between 25% and 30% in abstain votes."

Hahc21 is a native speaker of Spanish, so the Signpost asked him whether he has experience of other Wikipedia ArbCom elections:

A number of issues have recently been raised on the election talk page, such as the low number of female candidates and arbitrators (including this insight: "How would injecting Alpha females at the Arbcom level lead to "better" decisions?"), the composition of the committee, the possibility of analysing the demographics of voters, and of course the voting system.

Editors are welcome to leave their feedback on the election at the dedicated page.


Average support, abstain, and oppose percentages, 2008–13. Since 2011, abstains have risen significantly, supports have dropped gradually, and opposes have dropped marginally. (*2008 was the last manual-voting election.)

In brief

  • Farsi Wikipedia anniversary: The Farsi Wikipedia, also known as Persian and primarily spoken in territory formerly controlled by the ancient empire, has reached its tenth birthday. People within modern-day Iran are the primary users of this language, and the project has faced sharp pressure from the country's repressive government. One study, "Citation Filtered: Iran's Censorship of Wikipedia", has claimed that Iran "targets a wide breadth of political, social, religious and sexual themes [on Wikipedia]. Censorship is aimed at restricting access to information related to the Iranian government’s human rights record and individuals who have challenged authorities. Pages about disfavored beliefs, religions and sexuality are also prohibited. Importantly, nearly all of these censored Wikipedia pages contain speech that is protected by international law".
  • Toolserver/Labs petition: A petition is open on the German Wikipedia. It was kindled by the fate of the Toolserver, which is operated by the German Wikimedia chapter, and its replacement Wikimedia Labs, which is run by the Wikimedia Foundation in the US. The location change is a key critical theme, given the recent surveillance revelations leaked by Edward Snowden; the signatories are arguing for more restrictive Labs policies concerning the handling of user data, in line with the traditional German-run Toolserver approach that forced user:X!'s edit counter into opt-in mode earlier this year.
  • Open positions: The Wikimedia Foundation is advertising several job openings, including a legal internship (summer 2014), a graphic design internship (user experience), and a full 11 openings for software engineers/developers working on site infrastructure, AQ testing, mobile, internationalisation, and features (including one for VisualEditor). In addition, the Cochrane Collaboration is looking for a Wikipedian in residence, preferably with a scientific or medical background. The successful applicant will work for six months and will receive a US$6,500/£4,000 stipend.
  • In the media:
    • Fallen Astronaut: The famous sculpture on the Moon received attention from Slate this week, which revealed that the involved sculptor and astronaut believe they are "unfairly maligned" on Internet blogs and Wikipedia.
    • Wikipedia advent calendar: The Guardian has covered the Wikipedia advent calendar, counting down until Christmas.
    • British Library releases free images: The UK's premier library has released more than a million public-domain images from 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century books onto Flickr Commons. Says the library's Ben O'Steen: "The images themselves cover a startling mix of subjects: There are maps, geological diagrams, beautiful illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, colourful illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and so much more that even we are not aware of.". There is a guide to using them on Commons at Commons:British Library/Mechanical Curator collection
  • Arbitration report: A proposed decision has been posted in the "Ottoman Empire–Turkey naming dispute" case. There are two new open cases, Kafziel and Nightscream. The evidence phase for both will close on 29 December 2013.
  • Signpost changes: The "Featured content" section now has two new lead editors, Planet Herald and Brambleberry of RiverClan. "In the media" now has Mark Miller as a contributor.

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2013-12-18

Triangulum, the most boring constellation in the universe

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By Brambleberry of RiverClan, Dank, and Hahc21
What the New York skyline, including the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, used to look like.
This Signpost featured report covers material promoted from 8 December 2013 to 14 December 2013.

Featured articles

Triangulum

Seven featured articles were promoted last week.

  • Triangulum (nom) by Casliber. This small constellation in the northern sky forms a long and narrow triangle. Known to the ancient Babylonians and Greeks, Triangulum was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. The first quasar ever observed, 3C 48, lies within Triangulum's boundaries.
  • SMS Schleswig-Holstein (nom) by Parsecboy. The last of the five Deutschland-class battleships built by the Imperial German Navy was named for a German province. Three men were killed on board during shelling in the Battle of Jutland in World War I. The very first shots of World War II were fired by Schleswig-Holstein when she opened fire on the Polish fortress at Westerplatte from the port of Danzig early on 1 September 1939.
  • Sega Genesis (nom) by Red Phoenix, Indrian, and SexyKick. The Sega Genesis or Mega Drive is a video game console that was developed and sold by Sega Enterprises, Ltd. First released in 1988, it captured the majority of the 16-bit market share in several territories including the United States and the United Kingdom. By the end of 1994, when a new generation of 32-bit consoles rendered the system technologically obsolete, the Genesis had sold 29 million units worldwide.
  • U.S. Route 8 (nom) by Imzadi1979. Running primarily east–west for 280 miles (451 km), mostly within the state of Wisconsin, US 8 connects Interstate 35 in Forest Lake, Minnesota, to US 2 at Norway in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan near the border with Wisconsin. It is mostly undivided surface road.
  • Japanese battleship Asahi (nom) by Sturmvogel 66. This pre-dreadnought battleship was built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the United Kingdom in the late 1890s. She participated in every major naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, sustaining light damage during the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima. After a long career, she was sunk by an American submarine in 1942 during World War II, with little loss of life.
    Inseparables, c. 1900, by Florence Fuller
  • Florence Fuller (nom) by Hamiltonstone. Fuller (1867–1946) was a South African-born Australian artist. Highly regarded in her lifetime as a portrait and landscape painter, by 1914 Fuller was represented in four public galleries, a record for an Australian female painter at that time. She subsequently sank into obscurity and is frequently omitted from reference works on Australian artists. Her paintings are held in public art collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and Australia's National Portrait Gallery.
  • 2001–02 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season (nom) by Hurricanehink and Yellow Evan. This season had eleven tropical storms, including the earliest named storm since 1992. Many storms formed in the north-east portion of the south-west Indian basin, and several more originated around Australia.

Featured lists

Three featured lists were promoted last week.

  • List of Cricket World Cup centuries (nom) by Vensatry. The Cricket World Cup is organised by the International Cricket Council and is held every four years. As of 2011, a total of 127 centuries have been scored by players from 12 different teams. The first century in the championship was scored by Dennis Amiss of England in the 1975 World Cup. Six centuries have been scored in the finals, of which five resulted in victories.
  • List of DS:Style products (nom) by PresN. DS:Style, a series of educational software products for the Nintendo DS, was created and published in Japan exclusively by Square Enix. A total of 22 products, including travel and study guides, have been released from 2007 until 2011.
  • List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (C) (nom) by MisterBee1966. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its variants were the highest awards in the military of the Third Reich during World War II. A total of 7,322 awards were made between its first presentation on 30 September 1939 and its last bestowal on 17 June 1945.

Featured pictures

Eight featured pictures were promoted last week.

  • World Trade Center (nom, related article) by Carol M. Highsmith and nominated by Soerfm. This complex series of buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States featured landmark twin towers that were destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001.
  • Kalasan (nom, related article) by Crisco 1492. Also known as Candy Kalibening, Kalasan is an 8th-century Buddhist temple in Indonesia. Administratively, it is located in Kalasan Subdistrict, Sleman Regency, hence its name.
  • Irises (nom, related article) by Vincent van Gogh and nominated by Planet Herald. One of many paintings and prints of irises by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, this was painted while van Gogh was living at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Province, France, in the last year before his death in 1890.
  • Magnavox Odyssey (nom, related article) by Evan-Amos and nominated by Crisco 1492. The world's first commercial home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey was first demonstrated in April 1972 and released in August of that year, predating the Atari Pong home consoles by three years.
  • Longleat (nom, related article) by Saffron Blaze and nominated by Tomer T. This English stately home is currently the state of the Marquesses of Bath, adjacent to the village of Horningsham and near the towns of Warminster in Wiltshire and Frome in Somerset. It is noted for its Elizabethan country house, maze, landscaped parkland and safari park.
  • Arundhati Roy (nom, related article) by Bellus Delphina. This Indian author and political activist is best known for the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes.
  • Bastei (nom, related article) by Der Wolf im Wald and nominated by Tomer T. This rock formation towering 194 metres (636 ft) above the Elbe River in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains of Germany reaches a height of 305 metres (1,001 ft) above sea level and was formed by water erosion over one million years ago.
  • The Railway (nom, related article) by Édouard Manet and nominated by Armbrust. This 1873 painting by Édouard Manet is widely known as Gare Saint-Lazare. It is the last painting by Manet of his favourite model, the fellow painter Victorine Meurent, who was also the model for his earlier works Olympia and The Luncheon on the Grass.
The Railway, an 1873 painting by Édouard Manet, can be seen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C..
Disclaimer: Summaries on this page borrow shamelessly from the articles cited; see the article histories for attribution.


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2013-12-18

Introducing the GLAMWikiToolset

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By Legoktm
Interface to map metadata

This week, the GLAMWikiToolset, or GWToolset, is being deployed to the Wikimedia Commons. It allows for GLAM organizations to batch upload content based on various metadata stored in an XML schema. In the past this has been done by various bots, but now it will be easier for GLAMs to do it directly. Users will need to be added to the 'gwtoolset' user group by an administrator before they can use the extension. For testing purposes, it is recommended that you use the Labs instance. Currently each domain must be whitelisted by a sysadmin before uploading can begin, to prevent any accidental denial-of-service attacks.

The project is being led by David Haskiya; Dan Entous and Maarten Zeinstra are the senior developers, and Kippelboy is the GLAMwiki facilitator. The entire extension has been documented on mediawiki.org, including the technical design, the implementation, and the architecture.

More information about future plans can be found on the project page.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.

  • Flow is live: Users may test the new talk-page system (named Flow) on Mediawiki.
  • Draft namespace live: Following the closure of the RfC, a new Draft namespace has been added.
  • PHP upgrade: Wikimedia sites will soon be running a newer version of PHP; users should not experience any changes. The upgrade is intended to help with an issue where temporary files on the WMF servers are not being deleted (bug 55541).
  • New user accounts will now watch their user and talk pages by default (bug 49719).

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