Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-04-12

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12 April 2010

Sanger allegations
Larry Sanger accuses Wikimedia of hosting illegal images

News and notes
Studying German flagged revisions, French library agreement, German court case

In the news
SCOTUS hopeful edited bio, criticism from article subject

WikiProject report
WikiProject Motorcycling

Features and admins
Approved this week

Arbitration report
The Report on Lengthy Litigation

2010-04-12

Larry Sanger accuses Wikimedia of hosting illegal images

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By Tilman Bayer

On 7 April, Larry Sanger announced that he had reported the Wikimedia Foundation to the FBI for "knowingly distributing child pornography" (later also forwarding the message "to my senators and representatives"). In the message to the FBI as reproduced by Sanger, he introduced himself as follows:

"... My name is Dr. Larry Sanger and I am widely known as co-founder of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia project. I have long since departed the organization, over disagreements about editorial and management policy. I have also since founded a more responsible project, Citizendium.org [...]. Given my position of influence on matters related to Wikipedia, though I'm no longer associated with it, I feel I have a moral obligation to make the following report."

Images in question

Sanger stated that he had found material in the "Pedophilia" and "Lolicon" categories on Wikimedia Commons which he believed to be child pornography. At one point on 8 April, shortly after Sanger had posted his announcement, the "Pedophilia" category on Commons contained 27 images:

Five photos of anti-pedophile street graffiti or signs,
Two photos of child prostitutes (one anonymous from 1871, the other by the Berlin police), both scanned from the 1972 book "Victorian Children" by Graham Ovenden and Robert Melville,
Three logos consisting of abstracts graphics or typography,
A scan of a handwritten letter in German from 1908, which has since been removed from the category as not being related to child abuse or pedophilia,
Twelve illustrations by Martin van Maële (1863–1926), ten of them from "La Grande Danse macabre des vifs", a book published in limited edition around 1905,
A "depiction of a Russian boy, from a Chinese erotic album dated 1904" (in the uploader's description)
A low-resolution logo of a defunct Belgian pedophile activist group, containing an outline drawing of a nude boy,
A photo of Abastenia St. Leger Eberle's sculpture "The White Slave", which had caused a controversy in the U.S. in 1913,
A 1906 illustration by Hungarian painter Mihály Zichy.

Without specifying particular images, Sanger stated that the two categories contained material which in his "non-lawyer's opinion" violated Section 1466A of the U.S. Code, which was introduced in 2003 and concerns material that

"(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and

"(B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value;"[1]

Sanger acknowledged that "the Wikimedia Foundation may argue that the images have some artistic value. I guess that's for you [the FBI] and maybe the courts to decide."

Foundation legal counsel's response

Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, whose work on Internet-related free speech issues, including pornography, goes back to the early 1990s (cf. Cyber Rights), replied:

"As is commonly the case when non-lawyers attempt to invoke a statute without adequately researching the relevant law and legal categories, Sanger has confused and conflated a number of legal doctrines."

listing five such points:

Confusing Section 1466A, "which is not a child-pornography statute but an obscenity statute" with the Section 2252A, the actual child pornography statute. (Sanger later expressed regret to have used the term "child pornography" instead of "depictions of child sexual abuse" – language closer to that of the invoked statute – acknowledging that many people would restrict the former term to photographs of real children.)
Ignoring the Miller test for obscenity, which involves applying "contemporary community standards"
Ignoring Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which according to Godwin "expressly bars hosting providers for liability for such content" provided they, like the Wikimedia Foundation in this case, "did not originate or develop the content"
Returning to "community standards", Godwin stated: "There is no evidence in Sanger's message that the community has failed in its efforts to make sure that the content of Wikimedia Commons is legal, at least in the context of the law applicable to Wikimedia Foundation as a hosting provider".
Lastly, Godwin questioned the legality of Sanger's own posting regarding defamation. To convince the FBI of his assertion that the Foundation was "knowingly" distributing child pornography, Sanger had claimed that a Wikimedia staff member was "well known for his views in defense of pedophilia". Godwin wrote: "I think any jury might reasonably infer that Sanger's recklessness in posting his allegations, together with his clear intention to damage the reputation of an individual person, is the kind of thing that deserves compensation and ought to be deterred."

Discussion and coverage elsewhere

Sanger's original announcement of his FBI report had been made on EDTECH, a mailing list frequented by some administrators of blocking lists used by internet filtering software in many U.S. school districts. It arose out of a discussion where Sanger had argued that Wikipedia should be blocked in schools by such software, as opposed to Citizendium, which has a "Family-Friendly Policy". Ironically, Sanger had earlier voiced concern on the same list that legitimate content was getting blocked, citing his other project WatchKnow as a "poster child" for such issues (WatchKnow is a website which provides educational videos to minors, but hosts some of its content on YouTube, which is blocked in many U.S. school districts).

British IT news site The Register, long known for its strongly critical coverage of Wikipedia and related projects, covered the story on 9 April (later "updated to show that Larry Sanger now says that the images in question do not depict real people and to include additional legal clarification"). It cited the opinion of an attorney, Justin Fitzsimmons, that Section 2252A did apply to the Wikimedia Foundation.

The affair was also covered on Slashdot, where many commenters accused Sanger of advocating censorship and of trying to use the issue to promote Citizendium. In a "Reply to Slashdot about My Report to the FBI", Sanger defended himself against these and other criticisms, insisting that his motives were sincere:

"When it comes to doing what is right, I often say 'Damn the consequences.' This is why I am not very popular, and never have been [...] I take my inspiration from Socrates."

and further refuted the allegations of a conflict of interest by describing what he expected to be the personal consequences he would have to bear as result of the affair:

"... with this move I have if anything completely burned the last of my bridges to working in the mainstream (deeply libertarian) world of Web 2.0. [...] After this, I am sure I have permanently ruined my chances of getting a job (if I had wanted one) or getting funding for a successful for-profit in Silicon Valley."

Sanger later suggested that Wikipedians should add mention of his report to the FBI to the Criticism of Wikipedia article.

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2010-04-12

Studying German flagged revisions, French library agreement, German court case

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By Tilman Bayer

Research group to evaluate impact of flagged revisions on German Wikipedia

French National Library to cooperate with Wikisource

Wikimedia France has signed an agreement with the Bibliothèque nationale de France which will provide the French Wikisource with 1400 public domain texts that had been prepared for the library's Gallica web resource. As explained in the 7 April announcement, the automatic OCR process used to digitize the material is prone to frequent errors in such old texts, and the quality of the transcriptions is expected to benefit from human proofreading by the Wikisource volunteers.

Wikimedia Deutschland wins court case

The German Wikimedia chapter has announced that on 26 March it had prevailed in a lawsuit before a Hamburg court.

According to an article by Heise News and a redacted copy of the court's decision published on the blog of Thorsten Feldmann, Wikimedia Deutschland's lawyer, the plaintiff was a member of the Hamburg state parliament until 2008, but objected to being described as a former politician in the article about him. He also complained about the article summarizing rumors that had appeared about him in the press, these remain deleted, although the article itself still exists in a short version.

Earlier plaintiffs from Germany (see Signpost coverage: 2008, 2006) had unsuccessfully used the chapter's ownership of the domain wikipedia.de to hold it accountable for content on de.wikipedia.org. In the recent case, the plaintiff also argued that Wikimedia Deutschland was influencing content by organizing "Wikipedia Academy" outreach seminars in cooperation with the Foundation (which he also tried to hold legally accountable), and by recruiting active users which prevented modification by external persons. All these arguments were rejected by the court.

Briefly

In his post Full history dump for English Wikipedia is back, the Foundation's data analyst Erik Zachte notes the availability of a new dump of the English Wikipedia, remarking: "This particular dump has had a long history of ill fortune: for 4.5 years no new full archive dump for the English Wikipedia has been consistently available " - a fact that has been lamented by Zachte and other Wikipedia researchers for a long time. Zachte looked back on the difficulties of preparing the dump due to its large size ("Memorably, when on one run the job signaled there was still a year to go before completion, it was manually aborted"), and announced the return of the full editing statistics of the English Wikipedia.
US company Common Craft has created an introductory Wikipedia video for the Wikimedia Foundation. It explains the Verifiability and Neutral point of view policies for the Wikimedia Foundation. (See also last week's Signpost coverage of other recently published introductory videos)
On the blog of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the two founders of the WikiProject Wikipedia Saves Public Art (RichardMcCoy and Jgmikulay) described how their Wikiproject had raised awareness of public art in that city, citing rising readership numbers on Wikipedia as evidence. The post was published in the run-up to a Wikimedia workshop at the "Museums and the Web 2010" conference, with several attendees nominated by the Wikimedia Foundation.
The total number of edits in all Wikimedia projects, as measured by the Wikimedia counter, reached 1 billion on 16 April. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Wikimedia counter.

This week in history

2009: Sanger speaks out
2008: Interview with the team behind one of the 2,000th featured articles
2005: Privacy policy officially adopted

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2010-04-12

SCOTUS hopeful edited bio, criticism from article subject

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By Chaser and Tilman Bayer

U.S. Supreme court hopeful suspected of COI editing

In a 12 April post titled (somewhat sarcastically) Obama Supreme Court Short-Lister Supports Right to Edit Her Own Wikipedia Page, U.S. media blog Gawker observed that the Wikipedia entry about US jurist Leah Ward Sears, who was recently reported to be on president Obama's short list of possible nominees for next Supreme Court justice, appears to have been edited by herself, using the account User:Lwsears1992. Gawker highlighted an edit from 6 March 2009 inserting a mention of "her highly regarded record" (which however had originally been written by another user).

On his "The Wikipedian" blog, William Beutler (User:WWB) examined the edits further, calling the conjecture plausible ("it usually turns out that this type of account is exactly that person"), but arguing that, all in all, the article had been improved slightly by her edits (for example, by providing a photo of her). "While some of her edits were self-serving, they were of a mild sort. At most this was a venal sin, not a cardinal one."

Beutler, an employee of the American PR and marketing firm New Media Strategies who works as a consultant "on matters of Wikipedia", also mentioned several recent publications on the general problem of conflict of interest editing, including:

An article by himself in this month's Politics Magazine ("It’s A Wiki World"), advising political campaign consultants how to edit or influence the Wikipedia article about their client to his or her benefit without risking negative publicity
A white paper titled Are You There Yet? UK Law Firms on Wikipedia, published last month
A March interview on PRWeek with Jay Walsh, (Head of Communications of the Wikimedia Foundation), in which he encouraged "PR pros" to "participate on Wikipedia in any way they like", as long as they respected Wikipedia's policies.

Victim of "IBM advocates" criticizes Wikipedia

In an article on web site The Cutting Edge News, entitled Wikipedia—The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge, U.S. author Edwin Black gave a lengthy overview of criticism of Wikipedia, including coverage of Larry Sanger reporting the Wikimedia Foundation to the FBI for allegedly distributing child pornography (see separate story). In the last part of the article Black describes his own unhappy experience with Wikipedia's coverage of himself and of the subject of a book of his. According to Black, "In recent days, IBM advocates on Wikipedia edited the “History of IBM” entry to gloss over, dilute, or outright delete the company's involvement. To accomplish this, coordinated revision on Holocaust history required deleting or vilifying my book, IBM and the Holocaust." One of his complaints about the article about himself appears to have been prompted by the simultaneous inclusion of the weasel words warning template and the Category:American Jews, which Black related as "such tags as 'weasel American Jew' being branded on my bio page", "which danced perilously close to hate speech". Black then mentions his efforts to uncover the real life identity of several Wikipedians, since he refused to deal with "an anonymous committee".

Black ends by posing the following question to his readers:

"As society careens into the unchartered roadways of the next rev of the Internet Age—called Web 2.0 by some—will mankind's itinerary be determined by the open vanguard of our best thinkers and writers democratized to include all who identify themselves or by the shouts and jeers of an anonymous, masked crowd operating in the shadows?"

Briefly

News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments – The New York Times reports that news organizations are considering eliminating or relegating anonymous comments to sideline abusive and rude commenters. The piece also mentions Wikipedia's use of pseudonymity and user access levels to promote more productive comments.

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2010-04-12

WikiProject Motorcycling

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By Mabeenot

News in brief

A task force focusing on the CHERUB and Henderson's Boys novels is seeking new members and help with improving stubs to start-class
WikiProject Lakes has 3 FAs and 10 GAs, but they could double those achievements with a little help from new contributors
The new 39 Clues Task Force needs help recruiting new members, creating articles, and improving articles about the 39 Clues series
The Geocaching WikiProject is looking for new members and help with getting the Geocaching article up to GA status
DASHBot/Wikiprojects is available to generate lists of unreferenced biographies of living persons relevant to a specific project

Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

This week we focused on WikiProject Motorcycling. Started in October 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles and 88 members, although only a fraction of the members are active. The project maintains a lengthy to-do list and provides helpful resources for anyone researching or sourcing articles about motorcycles. The project's tongue-in-cheek "Collaboration of the Century" is the motorcycle article. We interviewed project members Tedder, Dbratland, and Brianhe to learn more.

What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Motorcycling? What kind of motorcycle-related articles do you like to work on?

Tedder: I'm a motorcyclist. I've travelled via bike from North America to South America, minus the impassable Darien Gap, where we hired a drunk boat captain to sail us from Portobelo to Cartagena. I also teach motorcycle safety to new motorcyclists. So I'm very interested in most aspects of motorcycles and motorcycling.

While I don't have a library of motorcycling books like others such as Dbratland has, I contribute when I see interesting magazine articles explaining an interesting motorcycle topic. Occasionally I'll collaborate with others, like the cluster of articles related to the BMW F650 single- which as an amusing study in WP:NCCN, since the F650 was replaced with an entirely different motorcycle, also called the F650, and the first F650 became the G650. User:TimTay and User:Biker Biker were the others involved significantly on this project.

Another area that takes time and involves headache are the various outlaw motorcycle clubs, such as the Hells Angels. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about them before he went to the great cannon in the sky, and the motorcycle gang articles end up attracting a weird crowd.

Dbratland: I have a Ducati 125 Bronco that I wanted to restore, but I found out you can't really work in your garage while trying to watch a toddler. So instead I worked on Wikipedia articles while watching the baby (I'm a stay at home dad). At first I only wanted to expand coverage of Ducati's pushrod singles, within only the scope of the Italian motorcycles group. I realized that you couldn't really explain that history without explaining who the Berliner Motor Corporation was. Somehow from there I got drawn into wider motorcycling subjects. Now my goals have changed, and I'm more focused on the most popular motorcycling articles and the Top and High importance articles — at least the ones that are actually about motorcycles and not so much celebrity gossip or crime.

Brianhe: I'm a Ducati rider and had a Honda ST1100 before that; initially my interest was mostly in these brands and comparing specs between similar models. Lately I've become more interested in a variety of international models, especially the domestic motorcycles of India. This fascinates me in the way that the industry is experiencing its own unique evolution of bike models, making research for the articles a learning experience in itself.

The project maintains four "Special Interest Groups" for British, Italian, and Japanese motorcycles as well as motorcycle sports in general. How successful have these groups been? Would you suggest this country-based approach to other projects?

Dbratland: I suppose with less than a dozen highly active participants in motorcycling, there isn't a pressing need to split off into special interest groups. If more editors join the motorcycling project, and then perhaps the groups will become more important.

Brianhe: Agree with Dbratland that national SIGs haven't really seemed to pay off for us (yet). The project's editors seem to have pretty wide ranging interests and so we really haven't formed enclaves around particular topics.

Tedder: The number of active editors is too small for SIGs. They are a good idea, as they represent the major categories of motorcycles to the US/UK viewpoint, but they aren't global and aren't active.

After some reassessments, WikiProject Motorcycling only has one good article (bicycle and motorcycle dynamics). What has been the greatest challenge to getting motorcycle articles up to GA status and maintaining that status?

Dbratland: It was before my time, but I think bicycle and motorcycle dynamics was mostly the work of the Bicycling and Physics WikiProjects. The biggest challenge now for WikiProject Motorcycling is gaining experience with getting one article all the way to GA or FA status. Once we've learned how to do that we can probably do more; I'm imagining it isn't really as difficult as it appears to the novice. The articles Motorcycle and Motorcycling are probably too large in scope to be good candidates, and the motorcycle gang articles, while prominent, are too controversial. There are a number of articles on models of British bikes and BMWs that might be good candidates, and I'm hoping that Suzuki Hayabusa, Kawasaki Ninja 250R or The Art of the Motorcycle could get within reach of GA before too long. My biggest challenge personally is that I get distracted by other things and don't stay focused.

Tedder: We definitely don't "deserve" claiming that as a GA. Thankfully, the two-wheeled worlds are very similar, so we benefit from the shared enthusiasm that is seen in the dynamics article. That same sort of crossover is hinted at in the Stoppie article too. I think we have a productive handful of editors who are more concerned with improving the long tail more than anything: so many of our articles are unsourced, so the occasional collaboration that occurs is delightful and something we can be proud of.

A great example of our collaboration is Harry Hurt. In 2007 Brianhe created an article on his groundbreaking study of motorcycle crash factors, but we didn't create Hurt's biography until a few days after he died. That article was a collaboration between 5 of us over a few days, as well as some great outside help.

The project's page includes lists of frequently used books and magazines formatted for use in citations. How do the sources used in motorcycle articles compare to those of other kinds of articles? Do you feel it is easier or harder to find reliable sources and historical information on motorcycles than other subjects?

Dbratland: I just had this text file with {{Citation}} filled in with a number of books and magazines I was citing over and over in different articles, and I decided that I might as well share it on the project page in case anyone else could use it.

I think the main problem with motorcycling sources is that they focus heavily on the post-WWII industrialized west, and ignore the developing world, especially Africa, China and India, and they ignore the US and Europe prior to the 1950s (other than an obsessive dissection of the history of Harley-Davidson and Indian). In other words, there is lots of source material about the places and the period where motorcycles were a leisure time toy for the middle class, or a symbol of freedom and rebellion for a subculture that developed after WWII. There needs to be a lot more said about motorcycles as a practical means of transportation for people who aren't in love with speed or expressing their individuality, or any nonsense like that — they just need to get somewhere and can only afford two wheels. But until more source material is published, there's not much Wikipedia can do about it.

The Chinese motorcycling industry makes more motorcycles than any other country, but it is organized much differently than the discrete manufacturers and brands we are familiar with in the West, and solid source material on Chinese motorcycles is hard to come by. The book Wikinomics argues that Chinese products are made in a manner comparable to Wikipedia articles! I'm hoping a Chinese speaker will take a strong interest in the motorcycling project, because it's a country that is becoming extremely important to motorcycling and will probably be dominant in the future. You could say the same for India.

There is little written about the culture of the packs of young men who zip around on sport bikes, speeding and doing stunts, with most of the attention given to the older outlaw biker culture. Most of what has been written about the custom scene focuses on Harley-Davidson style choppers, or on British Cafe racers. There is a huge scene around custom Japanese motorcycles, associated with the African American community, and other minorities. But I've found it hard to find extensive source material, though that is improving.

But if you want to write about motorcycles and motorcycling in the mainstream culture of the developed world during the last 30 or 40 years, there is lots of source material, and a good deal of it is online.

Brianhe: The number of truly independent written sources for new model information (reliable power and top speed figures in particular) is fairly limited; we seem to cite 4 or 5 industry magazines very heavily. There are a few web sites that I consider reliable but many are either highly opinionated blogs, or simply republish manufacturers' press releases. I've tried to include citations from my fairly limited personal library. Unless it's a sensational crash, wider-interest publications such as mainstream newspapers don't frequently cover motorcycle related topics, with a few exceptions such as the recent obituaries for Harry Hurt, which makes us probably over-dependent on trade publications.

Tedder: To add to the above, certain historic motorcycles have a disproportionate amount of coverage, but it's amazing how difficult it is to find the basics on other models, even popular ones. It's really difficult to determine what material has been published from a neutral point of view, rather than simply republishing a press release. Most of the magazines suffer from this. I think we have learned to be skeptical of quoted numbers (weight and horsepower, for instance). Some of it comes back to the sixth sense, especially if it's a matter of sorting through differing numbers. A good example of the variation and distrust of numbers can be seen at Talk:Suzuki Hayabusa.

Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

Dbratland: WikiProject Automobiles is larger and better developed than motorcycling, and it provides us with a lot of policy guidance, for example on popular culture sections, or image standards.

Also, I think we'd be lost without all the work done creating and maintaining {{Convert}}.

WikiProject Crime intersects quite a bit with the outlaw motorcycle club articles. I often wish we could hand over all of these articles to them, or to anyone, since working on them can be so thankless! You can't really say much about motorcycle gangs without offending somebody and starting a debate, and motorcycle clubs don't really have much to do with actual motorcycles or with riding motorcycles.

Tedder: I agree, there is some overlap between the Crime, Automobiles, and especially Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycle racing. The latter group allows for a fantastic division of articles: we don't have to worry about keeping abreast of rule changes and standings in 2010 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season, and they don't have to worry about the BMW R69S.

What are WikiProject Motorcycling's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?

User:Dbratland: I would be thrilled if an experienced editor who had worked on GAs and FAs would take pity on us and help us choose a candidate article and see it through to at least GA status. One of these days I'll probably come knocking on the FA Team's door.

Motorcycle testing and measurement is a rather sorry article that I hope will some day serve as a reference for the many articles about motorcycle models, because I think readers are currently given a bunch of statistics about horsepower, torque and so on from diverse, conflicting sources, with little explanation for where this data comes from or how to evaluate the merits of the data. It needs an expert in mechanical or automotive engineering with access to good source material on testing methodology. Similarly, I hope someday List of motorcycle milestones will become a tool that helps maintain other articles.

The articles on Motorcycle safety, Motorcycle training and Motorcycle helmet mostly reflect the point of view of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, government policy, and the editorial bent of mainstream motorcycle magazines. It's a point of view I happen to share. Those who oppose wearing helmets or requiring rider training are poorly represented on Wikipedia, which is kind of odd given the libertarian bent of so many Wikipedians, Jimmy Wales not least among them. Since I have so much trouble understanding their beliefs, it's hard for me to do them justice in an article. Bernard Rollin has an essay against helmet laws in the book Harley-Davidson and Philosophy, but the logic of his argument is lost on me. As with the outlaw motorcycle clubs, the people best able to speak for this point of view seem to have a hard time understanding and conforming to Wikipedia's rules, and they often get blocked from editing before they can learn how to contribute constructively.

Brianhe: Maybe this is too specific, but cleanup on Infobox motorcycle would be appreciated, especially in the formatting of the optional dry weight parameter. In broader terms I'd like to see our coverage a little less USA and Europe focused, one thing we could use is expanded coverage of Chinese motorcycles and scooters; laws, training and customs (Freeway motorcycling restrictions in Asia, Motorcycle training, Lane splitting) and the like.

Tedder: We're certainly short on template help, but.. pick a task! Whatever interests you. We have topics ranging from motorcycles ranging from the Vespa to the high-speed Concours 14 to TV/film articles such as Long Way Round to technical/historic articles like Motorcycle fork to military history articles like the SdKfz 2. The popular pages can be used to spark the imagination, as well as our list of unreferenced BLPs. I wish our coverage of Chinese and Indian makes was better, especially the Bajaj and related bikes. They are massively popular everywhere except North America and Europe. Finally, we're short on good copyeditors and wordsmiths, which doesn't require specific knowledge.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Dbratland: There is lots of virgin territory in the motorcycling space. I'm often amazed at those who talk about Wikipedia as if it were "done" and merely in maintenance mode. There are so many unwritten articles about Ducati singles of the 50s and 60s, or the full history of Honda motorcycles, or the the very first motorcycles, like the Daimler Reitwagen or the Roper steam velocipede, and Glenn Curtiss's G. H. Curtiss Mfg. Co. List of motorcycles in The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition is filled with redirects and redlinks. It goes on and on and on. There's lots to do for anyone who wants to help.

In the next WikiProject Report, we'll step away from the computer screen and go outside (but not for too long lest Wikipedia succumbs to vandals and trolls). Until then, explore other projects in the WikiProject Report archive.

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2010-04-12

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Elockid (nom) and Polargeo (nom).

Featured pages

Nine articles were promoted to featured status this week: Marsh rice rat (nom), Herschel Greer Stadium (nom), Parks and Recreation (season 1) (nom), Cerro Azul (Chile volcano) (nom), Red-capped Robin (nom), Battle of Taejon (nom), Zapata Rail (nom), Elizabeth Canning (nom) and Ganoga Lake (nom).

Eight lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of number-one Billboard Top Latin Songs from the 1980s (nom), List of Washington & Jefferson College alumni (nom), List of Dragonair destinations (nom), List of Philadelphia Flyers players (nom), List of Olympic women's ice hockey players for the United States (nom), List of National Basketball Association season rebounding leaders (nom), List of accolades received by Avatar (nom) and List of Moonlighting episodes (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

One portal was promoted to featured status this week: Portal:Sharks (nom).

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: The Great American Bash (2005), SMS Moltke, Temple Sinai, Carrington Moss, Bill Ponsford, John Douglas and The Avery Coonley School.

Former featured pages

Three articles were delisted this week: Biman Bangladesh Airlines (nom), Anschluss (nom) and Bath School disaster (nom).

One list was delisted this week: Carrie Underwood discography (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

One portal was delisted this week: Portal:Disasters (nom).

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: 1884 poster from American production of The Tragedy of Macbeth, Leaving the opera in the year 2000, a ca. 1882 lithograph by Albert Robidal, United States President Jimmy Carter greeting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Plolistes sp, Frances Densmore and Blackfoot chief Mountain Chief during a recording session for the Bureau of American Ethnology, Engraving of Marguerite de Navarre and Scarlet Robin.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Five pictures were promoted to featured status this week.

Panorama captured by the Paranal Observatory
Avocado
Three-dimensional Non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) surface
Gunnar Sønsteby
Panorama of Glenridding

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2010-04-12

Arbitration Report

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By Jéské Couriano

The Arbitration Committee closed one case this week and opened none, leaving three open.

Open cases

Gibraltar (Week 5): The case was opened to address issues of ownership and nationalist warfare on articles related to Gibraltar. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.
Russavia-Biophys (Week 2): The case was accepted to expedite a complicated Arbitration enforcement issue concerning Russavia and Biophys. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.
Transcendental Meditation movement (Week 8): The case was opened to deal with circumstances surrounding articles related to the eponymous movement, similar to the circumstances at issue in Scientology pages a year ago. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.

Closed cases

Asgardian: The case was opened to assess the behavior of Asgardian, including accusations of gaming the system to avoid community-based remedies and attempts at ownership of articles. As a result, Asgardian has been banned from Wikipedia for a year. (Announcement)

Other

The Committee announced that two trainee clerks, Amorymeltzer and AlexandrDmitri, have been promoted to full clerk status.

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