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15 February 2010

 

2010-02-15

New Georgia Encyclopedia, BLPs, Ombudsmen, and more

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By Phoebe, seresin, Tilman Bayer, and Smallbones

New Georgia Encyclopedia releases content

Eleven articles from The New Georgia Encyclopedia, a specialized web-based encyclopedia about the U.S. state of Georgia, have been licensed under CC-by-SA and have been imported into Wikipedia. The project page lists the eleven test articles that have been imported, which are currently being wikified and merged with existing content; further help is welcomed for this effort.

The project has been led by user:BD2412, who contacted the editors of The New Georgia Encyclopedia to see if they would be willing to release their articles under a free license. After negotiations, the editors agreed. According to BD2412, if the editors of the encyclopedia are satisfied that the eleven test articles have been integrated into Wikipedia in a professional manner, they will be willing to release their entire collection of over 2,200 articles to be moved or merged into Wikipedia.

New Georgia Encyclopedia articles are professionally reviewed, copy-edited and fact-checked, and are authored by a variety of experts. The project is supported by the Georgia Humanities Council, the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the Office of the Governor (Georgia). If the merge of content into Wikipedia goes well, it could serve as a model for similar publications to release their content under a free license.

BLP update

The first phase of an RfC on BLPs (Biographies of Living Persons) has been closed (see archived story). Risker provided a closing summary of the RfC, which received over one hundred proposals and expressed views. She found that there was a "surprisingly clear consensus that some form of BLP-PROD is the preferred method of addressing unsourced BLPs", and recommended a second phase of the RfC. Objectives she outlined for this phase were: to develop consensus on specific implementation of the BLP-PROD process; to craft a time frame of how the current unreferenced BLPs will be dealt with; and to determine standards for newly created BLPs. The full closure may be read here; a numerical evaluation of support levels of some of the views from Phase I may be found here.

Since the initiation of the first phase of the RfC, other pages dealing with unreferenced BLPs have been created. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content was called to seek to clarify consensus on the word contentious in the phrase "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced" from the BLP policy. Wikipedia:Mistagged BLP cleanup provides a list of BLPs tagged as unreferenced, with the aim of editors reviewing the appropriateness of the tag. Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons was created to organize efforts to source unreferenced BLPs.

In related news, the "On Wikipedia" blog reported that it had conducted a survey among the subjects of 26 randomly selected BLPs, 15 of whom responded to the questions (the article does not list them all, but mentions Piero Scaruffi and Daphne Clair). Among the results: 8 out of 15 were aware of the Wikipedia article about them. 5 of the 15 judged it to be mostly or entirely fair and accurate, 6 as somewhat fair and accurate, 4 as significantly inaccurate or unfair. Only one of the subjects regarded the biography as a violation of her privacy (a second one expressed limited privacy concerns). The two blog authors also report on several "Common Themes" among the replies they received, among them:

Almost all of the people we contacted were extremely happy to talk to us about their biographies. Most of them asked for our help in correcting problems with their biographies and several wanted to know about contributing to Wikipedia. In general, however, despite the high self-awarded marks for familiarity with Wikipedia, the subjects were clueless about how Wikipedia works, who to talk to about errors, etc.

Ombudsman commission members

Members of the new Ombudsman commission have been announced. They are Lar from the English Wikipedia and Commons (whose Checkuser and Steward rights are suspended while he serves as Ombudsman), Elian from the German Wikipedia (who had served there as Checkuser from 2005 until last year) and Palnatoke from the Danish Wikipedia (who had served there as Checkuser from 2006 until last year, and has also been active on the English Wikipedia since 2002). The previous commission, whose one-year term had run out, consisted of five members; two of these slots are remaining vacant for the time being. - The Ombudsman commission was set up in 2006 by the Wikimedia Foundation and is tasked with investigating complaints about violations of the privacy policy (in particular concerning the use of CheckUser tools) on any Wikimedia project in an official manner.

Kiswahili contest ends

Google has announced the winners of their "Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge" student contest (see previous Signpost coverage), led by the "Grand Prize Winners" Kandyzo, Coolsam, Abbasjnr and Maria alphonce. During the first month of the contest, the Swahili Wikipedia grew by 30%, and according to a New York Times article published shortly before the results announcement, at that point more than 800 contributors had added more than 900 articles, mainly translations from the English Wikipedia using the Google Translator Toolkit. Google remarked that "we're quite thrilled to hear that many participants would like to continue to contribute articles and content to benefit the online community". Two finalists who were interviewed by the New York Times also said that the contest had changed them from passive readers into active contributors, but still expressed skepticism about the use of material rewards for writing articles. One of them created one of his contest entries on the English Wikipedia first (Drug abuse in Mombasa) before translating it into Swahili; the New York Times observed that "English Wikipedia editors have asked for citations and threatened to remove it."

Briefly

This week in history

2010-02-15

Labor squeeze revisited, journalist consultations, philosophy bungles, and more

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By Draeco and Tilman Bayer

Labor squeeze revisited

Law professor Eric Goldman's essay "Wikipedia's Labor Squeeze and its Consequences" has now been published, with minor revisions since the Signpost's previous report. The paper posits that Wikipedia must eventually restrict editing as volunteerism wanes in the face of continuing vandalism. This thesis remains unchanged, but the article incorporates information on flagged revisions and other interim developments that have supported Goldman's theory since August 2009. A supplementary blog post "Catching Up With Wikipedia" summarizes the new information.

Most U.S. journalists consult Wikipedia

Sixty-one percent of U.S. journalists use Wikipedia for story research, according to a survey by Cision and George Washington University. Journalists reported using many other forms of social media, but remained skeptical about their reliability. The full survey results are available upon request.

Philosophy bungle

The New York Times revealed that French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy's latest book relies upon the work of one "Jean-Baptiste Botul" -- an entirely fake philosopher concocted by satirist Frédéric Pagès. Levy's one-line defense: "My source of information is books, not Wikipedia." Had he consulted the French Wikipedia's fr:Jean-Baptiste Botul article, he would have seen the ruse noted since 2005.

Environmentalist cabal claims continue

Lawrence Solomon complains in his 13 February National Post article that Wikipedia should describe him as an environmentalist. His Wikipedia article had in fact been naming him as an environmentalist since 9 February [1], four days before the publication of the article in question, which has since been added as a reference. Solomon claims that the omission is part of a systemic bias against global warming skeptics that is perpetuated by User:William M. Connolley and others. Solomon has written numerous other National Post articles on the subject (see also the previous Signpost story) and returned to criticising Wikipedia's climate change coverage on 16 February: In an article claiming to present evidence that Google was censoring information about the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident from its search results (supposedly because of its financial interest in green energy and political ties with Al Gore and Barack Obama), Solomon complained that Google ranked Wikipedia's article on the subject highest in its search results for the topic and that Wikipedia's "censors won't let the public see" damning information about climate scientists.

Briefly

2010-02-15

Singapore Math: Report on WikiProject Singapore

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By RegentsPark

Singaporeans are known for taking on major tasks with great efficiency, from building the world's largest ferris wheel, to converting a tiny island into an economic powerhouse and creating a new mathematics rage in the United States. Displaying that same can can spirit, Wikipedians on our Singapore WikiProject have made Singapore one of the most comprehensive topics on Wikipedia.

This week the Signpost interviewed two Wikipedians from Singapore, Jacklee and Hildanknight, about our Singapore coverage and the efforts of WikiProject Singapore. These two SGpedians tell us what brought them to Wikipedia, how they ended up focusing on Singapore (serendipity, as always, plays an important role), and give us some insights into the project itself. With several thousand articles on Singapore, it is hard to imagine what more could be said about the city state but, as Jacklee and Hildanknight point out, there is more work to do and some important gaps in coverage (Singapore–Malaysia relations being a prime example).

Could you share some of your history as a Wikipedian with Signpost readers? Your first edits. Your passions. Why you are willing to spend hours on an unpaid and largely unrecognized endeavor like this one. That sort of thing!

  • Jacklee: I started editing Wikipedia on 15 September 2006. I don't remember exactly why, but suspect it was because I was looking for some information, saw something erroneous, and decided to correct it. My first article was "Declaration of Religious Harmony", and I have to say it hasn't really changed much since I created it. I've stuck around because I find the process of researching and writing articles very fulfilling. It probably appeals to some innate need of mine to create some order out of chaos, and I suspect I am unconsciously using it as a form of displacement activity to avoid getting "real" work done! I also feel that since so many people use Wikipedia as their first port of call for information, there should be accurate facts available on topics that I'm interested in. I used to challenge myself by writing articles that I know nothing about, and am proud to have taken "Edward Wright (mathematician)", "Emery Molyneux", "Richard Hakluyt" and "Robert Hues" to FA status. But these days I tend to stick to articles that relate to Singapore law (one of my longest was "Pedra Branca dispute") and Singapore personalities (particularly artists and writers, for some reason – recent examples include "Han Sai Por" and "Rex Shelley").
  • Hildanknight: My first edit, on 11 February 2006, was creating the article GTalkr. At first, I mostly edited articles about websites, but I struggled to understand the policies and was frustrated by excessive anonymous vandalism. Then I started working on two articles about Singaporean movies and chanced upon the Countering Systemic Bias WikiProject, which inspired me to focus on Singapore-related articles to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the Lion City. On 15 July 2007, I Not Stupid became my first GA. Since then, Homerun (film), Denise Phua, Yip Pin Xiu and I Not Stupid Too have attained GA status, taking my GA tally to 5, with Murder of Huang Na awaiting review. I hope my GAs are read by thousands of people, unlike my blog posts (which only a few friends read) and essay assignments (which only my teacher reads). Yes, I have a strong passion for writing and aspire to be a professional writer. I also enjoy doing research and finding out more about things that interest me. There is also that tinge of altruism – that feeling that I am doing something good for the subjects I write about, for my country, for Wikipedia and for the world.

With a 151 registered SGPedians and thousands of articles on Singapore related topics, one would expect to see a very active Singapore Wikiproject. Yet, the project seems curiously moribund. The collaboration department, for example, seems to have been inactive since sometime in 2007. Is that because it is hard to write something 'new' about Singapore or are there other reasons?

  • Jacklee: Yes, I agree that the project seemed more active when I started editing Wikipedia in 2006. Nowadays, I don't see editors communicating with each other through the talk page of the SGpedians' notice board much, though from time to time I have received responses to messages that I've left, usually after a while. I don't really know the reason for this. Perhaps members of the project just beaver away at articles that they are interested in on their own without feeling the need to get in touch with other members. That's what I do mostly, anyway.
  • Hildanknight: Per the 90-9-1 rule, most SGpedians edit infrequently. Some of our best contributors, such as the legendary Aldwinteo, have left, possibly because they became disillusioned with Wikipedia or busy with real life. Then there are editors like Chensiyuan, who are prolific GA writers but prefer not to work on Singapore-related articles. Our Little Red Dot is short of talent. Like our gahmen says, perhaps we need foreign talent, such as Zscout370!

Singapore is a small city state and I expect most SGPedians live somewhere between the Bukit Timah Expressway and the East Coast Parkway and run into each other often at Dempsey or Boat Quay! Have there been any off-wiki meetups or attempts for off-wiki collaboration that you've participated in or know of?

  • Jacklee: I know that some meetups were held in the past, but at the time I was studying abroad and couldn't attend. No meetups have been arranged since I returned to Singapore. InfernoXV left a message about meeting up on the project's talk page a while back and I responded with a request for more information about what happens at these meetups, but he hasn't replied.
  • Hildanknight: I attended a meetup several years back. That was when Terence Ong, Tdxiang, Mailer diablo, Huaiwei and other SGpedian pioneers were still active. Unfortunately, I do not remember much about the meetup, except that we walked around the central area of Singapore and chatted about Wikipedia. I am not aware of any off-wiki collaborations. I certainly hope we can organise some, but we would need more participants!

WikiProjects are all about coordination and collaboration. Can you share some of the success stories, articles where the project has come together to push an article into GA or FA status or helped resolve a difficult and contentious issue.?

  • Jacklee: As I mentioned, I tend to work alone on articles, but did expand "Flag of Singapore". Subsequently, Zscout370, who has a special interest in vexillology, took it to FA. Hildanknight, also known as J.L.W.S. The Special One, has been active in trying to get SGpedians to collaborate on projects. He started the project's GA drive, nominating articles that he regards as having potential and encouraging editors to adopt the articles and take them to GA status. I'm not sure the drive has been a roaring success, but I've tried to do my part by creating or improving articles that I'm interested in and nominating them for DYK or GA status. An interesting project that J.L.W.S. is keen on pursuing is to have a special Wikipedia presence for Singapore on its National Day (9 August) in 2010. This will involve getting a Singapore-related article to GA, having Singapore mentioned in OTD and nominating a few articles to appear on DYK on that day. I'm pretty busy at the moment and expect to be this year, but will do what I can to help.
  • Hildanknight: With our shortage of regular contributors, collaborations are difficult. In addition, most SGpedians prefer to work alone, which explains the limited success of the GA drive. But the FA Flag of Singapore – a collaboration between Jacklee and Zscout370, with some help from me – shows what SGpedians are capable of when they work together. Another example of a successful SGpedian collaboration would be our very first FA, Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore), which was co-written by two pioneer SGpedians: Mailer diablo and Huaiwei. I believe that Jacklee and I can make the National Day collaboration a great success.

Speaking of contentious issues, are there any major unresolved issues regarding Singapore related articles? I recall, for example, the Singapore Airlines and Singapore Airlines fleet battles, but they seem to have died down. Are there other similar issues?

  • Jacklee: I started editing Wikipedia after these big debates, so I wasn't involved in them. There was a heated debate a while back about whether articles relating to Singapore's underground system should be called "Mass Rapid Transit" or "Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore)", but I don't think there have been any other contentious issues since then (thank goodness).
  • Hildanknight: Occasionally, articles on notable Singaporean topics were nominated for deletion (or even speedy deleted). Such deletions exacerbate systemic bias and have caused conflict between SGpedians and non-SGpedians. This could be avoided if nominators would first do a quick search for sources.

Just looking at the huge numbers of articles on Singapore, it seems to me that Singapore is probably one of the best covered areas on wikipedia. Could you point to some glaring gaps in our Singapore coverage? Topics you think are not covered or are undercovered?

  • Hildanknight: Is Singapore "one of the best covered areas of Wikipedia"? I doubt so. The two most glaring omissions I can think of are Singapore–Malaysia relations and Racial harmony, but there are others. Besides addressing the most obvious cases, we have to improve the depth of coverage. For example, most articles on Singaporean Members of Parliament are stubs or non-existent. But it is up to us to address these gaps through article writing, instead of complaining about said gaps.

Every project has its own special set of problems. Could you outline some of the unique issues and challenges that editors of Singapore-related articles face and give us some idea of how you go about addressing them?

  • Jacklee: Like it or not, many Wikipedia editors rely on free sources of information on the Internet to reference the articles they work on. This may not be too much of an issue in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States where there are currently a lot of reliable free websites such as those run by newspapers. However, in Singapore the website of the main English-language newspaper, The Straits Times, is largely subscription-only, and even the limited free content expires after a while. The latter is true of the websites of the free tabloid daily Today and the TV news channel Channel NewsAsia. Therefore, to write quality Singapore articles, one has to have access to subscription databases such as Factiva and be willing to research print sources. Fortunately, the National Library of Singapore has just launched NewspapersSG, an online resource of over 200 historic and current Singapore and Malaya newspapers digitized from its microfilm collection. Although the most recent articles are not available – the coverage is currently from 1831 up to 2006 – I hope we will see better Singapore articles resulting from more use of the database.
Another problem is that a lot of stubs are created but never developed into fuller, useful articles. C'mon guys, we've had enough "hit and runs" – stick around and improve those articles!
  • Hildanknight: Major challenges the SGpedian community faces include:
  • With our population of only 4.5 million (few of which are native speakers of English), there is a shortage of regular contributors. Thankfully our regular editors, past and present, include some very prolific article writers, such as (only Singapore-related articles are included in the following tallies) Sengkang (63 DYKs), Aldwinteo (15 GAs) and Jacklee (1 FA and 18 GAs, with more to come). With 5 GAs to my name, I still have a long way to go!
  • Due to our small size and the nature of our media, good sources are scarce. Some sources are in Singlish, Chinese or Malay. Remember, Singapore is a multiracial, multilingual, multicultural and multireligious society. The solution? Print sources and Factiva.
  • Most Singaporeans are not native speakers of English. In addition, the Wikipedia commuity and culture are far more liberal than most Singaporeans, so cultural differences can cause problems. For instance, Singaporeans may prefer to defer to authority instead of being bold and may follow the letter, rather than the spirit, of policies. But, being Singaporeans, we will rise to the challenge and learn what we need to learn!
  • Some policies are unintentionally biased. For example, our restrictive image policies fail to consider that in Singapore, photography is banned in many places and people taking photos in public sometimes receive unwanted attention from security personnel. As mentioned above, articles on notable Singaporean topics are sometimes nominated for deletion (or even speedy deletion) by editors who fail to search for sources.

Signpost readers are always ready to chip in and help out. Any message for them on how they can get involved in the project or ways that they can advance the project?

Quality photographs relating to Singapore are always welcome. I can often be found at the Wikimedia Commons keeping "Category:Singapore" in order. Editors can help transfer freely licensed images here at the English Wikipedia over to the Commons, and upload suitable images from external sites such as Flickr. If they are not sure how to categorize such images, they can place them in the main category and someone (probably me) will come along to do so.
  • Hildanknight: SignPost readers and all Wikipedians, your contributions are most appreciated! Of course, the best contributions would be GAs about Singaporean topics, but you could also help out by:
  • Expanding a Singapore-related stub (such as Medisave or Sikhism in Singapore) stub into a decent article.
  • Adding references to an unsourced Singapore-related article (such as Xinyao).
  • Copyediting and reviewing Singapore-related articles, especially those which SGpedians are trying to push to GA status.
  • Fighting vandalism to Singapore-related articles.
Note that these suggestions are not exhaustive; feel free to contribute to Singapore-related articles in other ways that benefit the encyclopedia.


On behalf of all our Signpost readers, thank you Jacklee and Hildanknight for the time and thought put into answering these questions. Readers, our interviewees have shown that even a well covered topic has important gaps and that there is a perennial need for copy editors and Wikignomes of all types. If you have the interest and expertise in any of these activities, or have access to references on Singapore related topics, do try to stop by and help increase our coverage on Singapore. Photographs, copy editing, reviewing, and referencing are some of the many ways that all Wikipedians of whatever stripe can chip in and show the Singaporean "can can" spirit!

Next week, we'll take a look at a project that has a mighty roar (or a number of other sounds). Until then, feel free to sit back, relax, and catch up on the previous editions of WikiProject Report in the archive.

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2010-02-15

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Five editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: J04n (nom), Phantomsteve (nom), Father Goose (nom), Mike Cline (nom) and Kingpin13 (nom).

Featured pages

Nine articles were promoted to featured status this week: Waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park (nom), Golden White-eye (nom), A Momentary Lapse of Reason (nom), 2007–2008 Nazko earthquakes (nom), Battle of Winterthur (1799) (nom), HMS Calliope (1884) (nom), Irish Thoroughbred (nom), Sam Loxton (nom) and Flower (video game) (nom).

Eight lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of best-selling singles of the 2000s (UK) (nom), List of Major League Baseball players with a career .400 on-base percentage (nom), List of Baccano! episodes (nom), Bayreuth canon (nom), Shortlist Music Prize (nom), Aurealis Award for best horror novel (nom), Austin Aztex all-time roster (nom) and 3,000 strikeout club (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: Cloud Gate, HMAS Melbourne, Overman Committee, Ice hockey at the Olympic Games, Carabane, Miranda Otto and Flocke.

Former featured pages

Two articles were delisted this week: Franklin D. Roosevelt (nom) and Captain Marvel (DC Comics) (nom).

No lists were delisted this week.

One topic was delisted this week: World Series of Poker Europe (nom).

No portals were delisted this week.

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Myrmecia forficata, Kishū Kumano iwatake tori, a Japanese woodblock print in the ukiyo-e style, Thomas Edison, Gypsum, Scarlet Robin, Illustration of the poem "The Queen of Hearts" and Las Meninas.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Eight pictures were promoted to featured status this week.



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2010-02-15

Arbitration Report

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By Jéské Couriano & Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week and closed two, leaving no cases presently open.

Recently closed

  • Chabad movement: A case opened to examine accusations of biased editing and combat on articles related to Judaism's Chabad movement. All parties involved in the case were reminded to use the talk page of all affected articles and to edit in a manner consistent with Wikipedia policy. They also remanded the issue to the involved editors, with a note to refile the case should the situation worsen. (Announcement)
  • MZMcBride II: A case opened to look into allegations of misconduct by MZMcBride with regards to BLPs and Thekohser. MZMcBride was admonished twice (for abetting a banned user and for causing needless drama) and is obligated to regain the adminship he relinquished during the case via RfA or request to the Committee; he cannot regain the bit via a request to a bureaucrat. (Announcement)

Motions

  • EEML: A motion passed which expanded Radeksz's ability to edit unreferenced Polish BLPs and permitted Martintg to edit specific unreferenced Estonian BLPs in much the same manner.

Miscellaneous

2010-02-15

Technology Report

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By TheDJ

Usability beta supplemental release

The previously announced enhancements to the Usability beta were deployed last week by the Usability Team. The new iframe editor caused considerably more problems than anticipated and had many editors confused. Users were advised through a watchlist notice to disable the Beta if they were experiencing problems. The developers are keeping score on the progress they are making in solving the problems of this latest release in a blogpost.

Software changes

  • A bug that caused 1.3 million revisions from 2005 to appear as blank pages has been fixed. (Bug 20757)
  • The API has been fixed (r62511) so as not to reveal the blocked IP range for autoblocks in a list=blocks query, and not to reveal autoblocks among a certain user's or IP's blocks. This mirrors the behaviour of Special:BlockList.

Bots approved

The following bots and tasks have been approved in the past two weeks:

If articles have been updated, you may need to refresh the single-page edition.
The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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