Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2007-10-22
Fundraiser opens, budget released
This Monday, the Wikimedia Foundation's fall fundraiser opened. The fundraiser is set to last two months; no goal for the fundraiser was set publicly. Further, instead of assessing the success of the fundraiser through amount of money, it is decided that the success be assessed by the number of people who donated.
So far, the fundraiser has raised an estimated US$26,600 in just over 14 hours. As of press time, 910 individual donations have been received so far; the largest single donations so far were two separate, anonymous $500 donations made on Tuesday.
The fundraising notice, linked from all pages on the English Wikipedia, caused some controversy at the beginning of the fundraiser, because it contained a scrolling marquee element that some users found distracting. The marquee was removed and replaced with a single quote that changes upon page reload; trustee Erik Moeller commented, "Surely I agree with you that running a marquee wasn't a particularly good idea. :-) I think in a few weeks/months we'll all laugh about it. ... Getting attention is always going to be a balancing act between success & irritation."
In related news, a preliminary budget distribution has been released. This distribution for FY2007-2008 estimates spending for the year at $4,611,000, in the following areas:
- Technology (bandwidth, hardware, salaries): $2,573,000
- Finance and Administration: $699,000
- Office of the Executive Director (director, assistant, relocation and consulting fees): $509,000
- Program Services: $185,000
- Legal: $182,000
- Board of Trustees: $201,000
- Wikimania Conference: $150,000
- Communications: $113,000
The fiscal year runs from 1 July, 2007 through 30 June, 2008. Advisor Sue Gardner commented on various aspects of the budget. On the topic of commission work, which is not reflected directly in the budget, Gardner said, "We are setting aside a small amount of money to commission work that can't be done by the staff, for either capacity or expertise reasons. For example, we've occasionally been hiring project managers, developers, legal firms, and analysts/advisors/consultants of various kinds."
On the topic of "Program Services", meanwhile, Gardner explained:
In the non-profit world, "program services" generally refers to initiatives designed to deliver core-mission services. So for the Foundation, for example, it would include partnering with NGOs to get Wikipedia materials into schools in the developing world, or staging Wikipedia Academies to strengthen the smaller-language projects. In this budget, the "program services" allocation will fund, for example, positions dedicated to partnerships development, volunteer coordination and public outreach. Typically in non-profits, the higher the percentage of the overall budget dedicated to program services, the better. That's because most charities want to reduce administrative overhead and reserve as much of their resources as possible for mission-related service delivery. In our case however, we would likely consider that the "Technology" portion of the budget part of core services delivery as well, since that money pays for bandwidth, servers, and so on. So, the fact that only 4% of our budget goes to program services doesn't really suggest that WMF underallocates towards core service delivery.
Biographies of living people grow into status symbol
An analysis of Category:Living people indicates that biographies occupy an increasing proportion of the total article count as Wikipedia grows. With the coverage expanding to explore how far the much-debated concept of notability reaches, for some lesser figures there also comes the sense that having a Wikipedia article is a mark of achievement.
The latter phenomenon has now been treated in a Reuters article headlined, "Wikipedia page the latest status symbol". As it describes, for entertainment and media personalities who are not particularly famous but have some sort of following, the presence of a Wikipedia article validates the significance of their achievements. In contrast with the problem of self-promoters trying to boost visibility by creating articles directly, the story focused on people who generally respect the conflict of interest guidelines. It also highlighted the disconcerting effect on the subject when an article's deletion is mooted (although critics who object to Wikipedia's impact might wish the opposite for themselves).
Writing such biographies seems to be a powerful incentive for Wikipedia contributors, as suggested by data compiled by Greg Maxwell and reported on the English Wikipedia mailing list Tuesday, 16 October. His report indicated that about 11% of the articles in the encyclopedia are about living people (and therefore governed by the special policies related to such subjects). Or to be more precise, as Maxwell put it, "11% of non-redirect articles pages are tagged with Category:Living people."
Not only is the proportion that high, it has apparently been growing steadily for several years. As the chart above shows, articles whose subjects are presently alive remained fairly steady around 4% for about two years. A sharp drop in late 2002 is associated with the use of Derek Ramsey's Rambot to create articles for US localities in bulk based on census data. (The initial spike, Maxwell guessed, is not reliable data and may be based on the conversion script used to transition to MediaWiki.) Since then, these articles have multiplied markedly faster than the rest of the Wikipedia corpus, leading Maxwell to wonder why Rambot might have set off such a reaction.
Despite arguments that editing activity on Wikipedia has slowed down overall, the downward slope at the end of the graph is not necessarily significant. When an article is started, it commonly does not have categories, which are more likely to be added by subsequent editors as time passes. Data pulled in this fashion from newer articles is thus less likely to be stable or complete.
WikiWorld comic: "George Stroumboulopoulos"
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "George Stroumboulopoulos" and "The Hour". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
Wikipedian Robert Braunwart dies
Robert Braunwart (Rbraunwa) died on Oct. 14 of melanoma, based on a comment on Rbraunwa's user page. Robert was born in Richland, Washington in 1948 and grew up in Moses Lake, Washington. He lived for many years in Oaxaca, México and Los Angeles, California. He attended Reed College as a National Merit Scholar before transferring to the University of Washington. Robert contributed almost 12,000 edits and hundreds of articles to Wikipedia, primarily on the viceroys of New Spain. Of these new articles, at least 15 were honored as Did you know selections.
Lawsuit filed to determine which state official edited Wikipedia
Two Associated Press journalists sued officials of the U.S. state of Arkansas, in response to the denial of a Freedom of Information Act request to determine which state computers had been used in various Wikipedia edits. According to the article, one edit removed controversial information about former Governor and current Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, while another reverted vandalism in current governor Mike Beebe's article.
New image tool to supplant current tools
The Free Image Search Tool (FIST) is the successor to both WatchFlickr and MissingImages. The new tool will look for free images for articles (manual list, categories) or to replace non-free/placeholder images. It currently uses
- Flickr (what WatchFlickr did)
- For a given article, it follows language links to find images (what MissingImages did)
- Direct Wikimedia Commons search
- The GIMP-SAVVY archive (PD images from USGov)
- EveryStockPhoto.com (Creative Commons BY and BY-SA images)
More image sources will be added in time. There is also a JavaScript tool that adds FIST links to the toolbox for articles (find images for this article), images (replace this image with a free one), and categories (find images for the articles in this category).
WatchFlickr and MissingImages have been turned off and redirected to FIST.
Private Eye gets regular Wikipedia column
Private Eye magazine has spun off its one-time article "Wikipedia Whispers" into a regular column. The column generally covers violations of the autobiography guidelines by politicians (this week it mentions Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley claiming falsely that the Guardian had libeled him on Wikipedia), corporations and journalists, although other Wikipedia-related news is also covered sometimes (such as inaccuracies in obituaries of Ronnie Hazlehurst sourced from a vandalised Wikipedia article).
Small analysis shows new users unlikely to have edited
A very small statistical analysis performed by checkuser Raul654 showed that very few new users had previously edited an article from the same IP address. In response to a question on Slashdot, Raul654 sampled ten recent users from the new user log. Of these ten, only one had edited prior to registering. No data was released on whether the users made any edits after registering. The study draws from a small sample, making its margin of error relatively high.
Briefly
- Discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2007 regarding the upcoming Arbitration Committee Elections. Current plans are for the elections to start on Monday, December 3, with candidates being accepted starting on November 1.
- John Broughton is writing a book called Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly), due out in Dec '07. John said, "The book is based on the index I've been working on for a while."
- A collaboration called "Gnome Week" is ongoing through Sunday; this collaboration aims to clear various backlogs, and clean up articles in need of help.
- The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
- The Polish Wikinews has reached 6,000 articles.
- The Luxembourgish Wikipedia has reached 18,000 articles.
- The Tagalog Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
- The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 500,000 edits.
WikiProject Report: League of Copyeditors
WikiProject League of Copyeditors is a WikiProject that is dedicated to copy-editing articles on Wikipedia, or correcting grammatical, spelling, or stylistic errors within them. It was started on 22 November 2006 by Trusilver (talk · contribs), and originally had ten members. Currently, it has grown in popularity, and, having 228 active members and 71 inactive members, it is one of Wikipedia's largest maintenance projects.
Copy-editing progress
Wikipedia articles needing copy edit
2,818 |
The WikiProject has made a very good deal of progress in copy-editing, as evidenced by the time line on its main page, completing hundreds of articles, but as over 2,000 still remain, they will require a good deal of help to completely clear out the backlog.
Requests for copy-editing
- For articles that are featured article candidates or under featured article review where the only remaining reason for opposing is a need for copy-editing, requests can be added and handled at Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors/proofreading#Requests for FAC and FAR articles.
- If an article is a good article candidate or under good article review, requests where the only remaining issue for which editors oppose is a need for copy-editing, requests are added and handled at Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors/proofreading#Requests for GAC and GAR articles.
- For articles that do not meet the above criteria, requests can be added and handled at Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors/proofreading#Requests for other articles.
Award
If an editor consistently impresses with excellent copy-editing, the project has its own barnstar that you can award that user. Its syntax is {{subst:The Copyeditor's Barnstar|message ~~~~}}.
How to help
To help the project, you can add your name to its members list and join. Also, articles that need work can be found at Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, and Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors/proofreading.
Features and admins
Administrators
Five users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Jéské Couriano (nom), Kizor (nom), Hiberniantears (nom), Hut 8.5 (nom), and Tikiwont (nom).
Bots
Five bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: EagleAstroidBot (task request), PxBot (task request), Giggabot (task request), Rschen7754bot (task request), and DeliveryBot (task request).
Featured content
No articles were promoted to featured status last week.
Eight lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Florida hurricanes (nom), List of Claymore episodes (nom), The Simpsons (season 6) (nom), The Simpsons (season 8) (nom), Red Hot Chili Peppers discography (nom), List of U2 awards (nom), Uncle Tupelo discography (nom), and List of WCW World Heavyweight Champions (nom).
One portal was promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Heavy metal (nom).
No topics or sounds were featured last week.
One article was de-featured last week: History of post-Soviet Russia (nom).
Two pictures were de-featured last week: Image:Buddhabrot-deep.jpg (nom), and Image:St Helens from Monitor Ridge feather.jpg (nom)
No lists, portals, topics, or sounds were de-featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: John Mayer, Truthiness, Barnard's Star, Larrys Creek, England national rugby union team, George I of Greece, and Enzyme kinetics.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: The Rhodes Colossus, German forces sweep into Czechoslovakia, Hadrosauroidea superfamily, Milky Way, Child Soldier, Azulejo, and Kiwifruit.
Nine pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent 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.3 (b671e57), 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
- Undeletion of pages now fails more gracefully during a database lock. (r26768, bug 11343)
- When an anonymous or non-autoconfirmed user views a move action in a log, they no longer get the (revert) link that allows the move to be quickly undone (it previously appeared, but was nonfunctional). (r26804, bug 11690)
New features
- An API 'allpages' query now allows sorting in reverse alphabetical order, and allows more than one page protection condition to be given at once. (r26725, bug 11634)
- The administrator-only page Special:DeletedContributions now displays (diff) links. (r26711, bug 11606)
- Special:Whatlinkshere now prompts for a page to check links to rather than showing an error if no page is given. Consequently, it now appears on Special:Specialpages. (r26820, bug 11649)
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 Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee accepted two new cases this week, and closed six cases.
Closed cases
- Bharatveer: A case involving alleged edit-warring, incivility and personal attacks by Bharatveer on India-related articles. As a result of the case, Bharatveer's editing was restricted for one year.
- Digwuren: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility by Digwuren and alleged sockpuppets. As a result of the case, Digwuren and Petri Krohn were banned for one year, and a general restriction imposed on editors working on Eastern European topics.
- Liancourt Rocks: A case involving alleged WP:NPOV violations on the Liancourt Rocks article. As a result of the case, Wikimachine was banned for one year.
- Giovanni33-John Smith's: A case regarding actions taken with respect to a block of Giovanni33 in a dispute between him and John Smith's. As a result of the case, both parties' editing was restricted for one year.
New cases
- Alkivar: A case involving alleged misuse of administrative tools by Alkivar, including protection of a page in a dispute in which he was allegedly involved, an indefinite block of Equazcion, and a banner on his userpage stating that "comments left by anonymous editors may be removed without warning".
- Ferrylodge: A case involving a community ban of Ferrylodge on the now-defunct Community sanction noticeboard, but which User:B has, in accordance with Wikipedia:Community ban, stated that he is willing to overturn.
Evidence phase
- Martinphi-ScienceApologist: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility on pseudoscience-related articles.
Voting phase
- Commodore Sloat-Biophys: A case wherein Biophys alleges that Commodore Sloat has been incivil and has edit-warred, while Sloat denies the allegations and alleges that Biophys has not been co-operative in the dispute. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy instructing the parties to refrain from interacting with or commenting about each other in any way.
Motion to close
- The Troubles: A case involving a large number of editors on articles related to The Troubles. Some editors attempted to withdraw from the case when its scope was widened at the request of an arbitrator to cover the entire area rather than only the behaviour of Vintagekits, but in accordance with arbitration policy, these attempts, along with other changes to statements after the case opened, were reverted by the clerk. If closed, any editors joining in the edit-warring on the articles in question would be liable to be placed on probation, and the indefinite ban of Vintagekits would be lifted.
- THF-DavidShankBone: A case involving alleged POV editing by THF relating to Michael Moore, and alleged harassment by DavidShankBone. Voting on remedies is split, but a motion dismissing the case because one of the parties has left Wikipedia stands at 4-1.
- Allegations of apartheid: This case concerns the conduct of various editors in connection with a group of articles whose titles include the words "Allegations of apartheid". It has been alleged that these articles were created in violation of Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, after several deletion debates concerning Allegations of Israeli apartheid resulted in that article being kept. Issues have also been raised concerning comments made in deletion discussions and reviews. Several users who have created and edited the "Allegations of apartheid" articles have strongly denied any inappropriate conduct. Voting on most proposals is split, but an amnesty for past actions currently has a majority, and a motion to dismiss the case has the support of five arbitrators.