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20 September 2010

 

2010-09-20

New ways to read and share the Signpost

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By Tilman Bayer

Apart from reporting on the English Wikipedia, The Signpost routinely covers stories from elsewhere in the Wikimedia world (for example, see this week's "News and notes" on activities of the French and Dutch chapters), and is read by many Wikimedians from other projects. Starting this week, we are offering a global subscription service that can deliver each new Signpost issue to user talk pages on any Wikimedia project (example). You can subscribe (and unsubscribe) on the Sign-up page on Meta.

This is an extension of the existing talk page delivery on the English Wikipedia, which has over 1,000 subscribers and is carried out by MZMcBride's bot EdwardsBot, which has reliably distributed more than 47,000 Signpost copies since October last year, in addition to other newsletters. The new global message delivery service is also based on EdwardsBot, and is open to others who need to establish subscriber networks across other Wikimedia projects.

Another new feature we are introducing with this issue is a "Share this" list of links on each page, enabling readers to easily share our articles via email, Twitter, Facebook and other social bookmarking sites. Although it is standard practice on many news sites to arrange them into a conspicuous icon bar, we tried to keep them unobtrusive – click "show" to expand the list in the top right corner. Suggestions and problems can be reported here.

In related news, The Signpost's Twitter feed (inaugurated 18 months ago and also available on Identi.ca) surpassed 1,000 followers last week. Apart from announcements of each new Signpost issue, it contains notice of Wikipedia- and Wikimedia-related news in advance of more detailed coverage in the next Signpost issue. And for a few weeks now, the official Wikipedia page on Facebook has been featuring highlights from new Signpost issues.

To serve this expanding readership, we still need more good writers, especially for the following two beats:

  • "News and notes": News and reports about the English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, the Foundation itself, and its chapters
  • "In the news": Reports coverage of Wikipedia and Wikimedia in the media, other publications, and online – for example, relevant blog posts and recently published academic research might be covered here too.

One possibility for helping out is to write up suggestions from our tip line – even if it just becomes a short note in the "Briefly" part of a section. Or you could scour the sources listed on our resources page, which has an overview of each section's scope. For more advice, participate in the Newsroom, ask regulars in our IRC channel #wikisignpost webchat, or contact wikipediasignpost@gmail.com.

We hope all readers are enjoying The Signpost, and we welcome feedback and questions.

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2010-09-20

Dutch National Archives donation, French photo raid, brief notes

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By Jean-Frédéric, Ludo29, Tilman Bayer, and Tony1

Dutch National Archives donate images

From the Dutch National Archives: LJ Brinkhorst talks to fellow politicians from an unusual position during the 1977 negotiations to form a new cabinet in The Hague
The National Archives of the Netherlands and the Spaarnestad Photographic Foundation have announced a major donation, being made available via Wikimedia Commons, of more than 1000 images depicting significant events and people in Dutch politics, mostly since World War II. The images were mainly taken from the collections of the former press agency ANEFO and the Spaarnestad Foundation. Almost half of them are already available on Commons.

Much of the Spaarnestad collection of some 2.5 million images dating back to the late 19th century narrowly escaped destruction in the mid-1980s, when the original publishing house experienced a financial and housing crisis. But prompt action by the newly formed non-profit Spaarnestad Foundation saved this priceless record of modern Dutch history. Private benefactors and the City of Haarlem provided funds for the interim location of the collection, which was transferred to the National Archives in 2008.

The donation is part of the Archive's Images for the Future project to preserve and digitise visual materials, and to make them publicly available, and was the result of a collaboration with Wikimedia Nederland. One of the most significant gifts of historical images ever made to the Wikimedia Foundation, it was marked at a public event in The Hague attended by several current and former politicians, who shared their personal memories surrounding specific images now freely available at Commons. A spokesperson for the Archives said, "Wikipedia is a good, reliable and social platform, and our goal is to disseminate our materials as widely as possible."

Lodewijk Gelauff, Vice Chair of Wikimedia Nederland, said "This generous release will provide photos for many related Wikipedia articles that until now had no image to accompany the article.... One of the best ways to get a good photo is through partnerships like this. [I hope] that soon more institutions will follow the example of the National Archive.... I invite everybody to incorporate the images on their language projects as they become available in the near future on Wikimedia Commons."

Paris to Cape North "raid": 300 nordic images for Commons

The raiders Wikimobile in the Geirangerfjord.

In July, French-speaking Wikimedians Ludo29 and Inisheer took part in the "Raid Paris – Cap Nord", a photographic challenge where competitors are ranked by a jury on the basis of the pictures they take during the trip. The journey starts in Paris, goes through Finland, Sweden and Norway, up to North Cape in Norway, the northernmost point of Europe, and ends back in Paris. Over the four weeks, the raiders drove 12,000 km in a car branded with the logos of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikimédia France. The French chapter provided financial support.

The two Wikimedians took around 300 photographs of landscapes, buildings, fauna and flora of these nordic countries, many of which filled gaps in the Commons. The Wikimedians produced content for Wikinews, including an interview of Philippe Boucher (Google translation), creator and organiser of the raid; they also wrote a report about lifeboatmen in Norway (Google translation).

The Wikimedian team was ranked seventh out of 22 teams in the challenge. The Wikimedia logos on their car provided opportunities to talk with local people about the Foundation and its projects.

Briefly

  • New Pending Changes poll: Following his announcement about the Pending Changes feature (see last week's News and notes) and ensuing discussions, Jimbo Wales has started a "Straw poll on interim usage". The new poll will run until September 27 and is about deciding whether the current implementation of the feature should remain in place until the release (planned for November 9) of a new version that is to address some common concerns. See also a collection of earlier Signpost coverage of the Pending Changes trial since June.
  • Controversial content: Robert Harris and Dory Carr-Harris, commissioned by the Board to provide recommendations on how to handle material on Wikimedia projects that may be considered objectionable (Signpost coverage), have posted a draft of the first part of their "study of controversial content". It identifies "intellectual openness" and "service to the public" as two basic Wikimedia principles which may sometimes be in conflict, and posits that "Wikimedia projects serve the information needs of individuals, not groups", meaning that intellectual openness should not be restricted on the basis of demands from institutions. Comments and questions are welcome on the talk page.
  • Community Fellows: The Wikimedia Foundation's recently formed Community Department has announced a new "Community Fellowship program", following its earlier "Community hiring" call (see Signpost coverage), which according to Chief Community Officer Zack Exley has received almost 2000 submissions. Fellows are to "lead intensive, time-limited projects focused on key areas of risk and opportunity", with some of them possibly joining the permanent WMF staff later. The first Fellow is User:Steven Walling, a longtime Wikipedian and administrator on the English Wikipedia and Commons. As of September 15, the projects for his year-long fellowship hadn't been announced yet, but last month Walling already started to collaborate with the Foundation on the Contribution Taxonomy Project (see Signpost coverage).
  • Transparent language discussions: The Language Committee, which deals with requests to establish new language wikis, announced that its discussions will be publicly archived by default, starting from September 12. Previously, two of its members had objected to the publication of their comments, which had led to much criticism in a Foundation-l thread last month. On his blog, committee member GerardM said that "the reason for our confidentiality has been largely taken away".
  • Essay series on Wikimedia: Eugene Eric Kim (User:Eekim), the Program Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation's Strategic Planning Project, has published the first of a series of four blog posts about the Wikimedia movement and its challenges, on the website of his consultancy firm "Blue Oxen Associates": Wikimedia: What is it? Where is it headed? (See also Eekim's Signpost article "The challenges of strategic planning in a volunteer community")
  • IRC office hours: The log of Sue Gardner's public chat on September 16 has been posted.
    Erling Mandelmann

  • Portrait photos donated: Earlier this month, Danish photographer Erling Mandelmann donated almost 600 pictures in low-resolution versions from his four-decade career as a photojournalist and portrait photographer. They are expected to be useful as illustrations in many articles about notable people.

  • GLAM conference: Wikimedia UK has announced the "GLAM-WIKI conference" on collaboration between the cultural sector and Wikimedia, which will take place on November 26/27 at the British Museum, earlier this year the host of a "Wikipedian in Residence" (Signpost coverage: June 7, March 15). The keynote speakers will be author Cory Doctorow, Wikimedia's Sue Gardner, and Kenneth Crews, director of Columbia University's Copyright Advisory Office.
  • New chapter director: Wikimedia Hong Kong has announced that Tango Chan has become the chapter's new Director and Commissioner for Communications, after the previous Director, Morgan Chan, stepped down to concentrate on his academic planning.
  • Wikipedia Goes To Africa: A press release by Wikimedia Israel, titled Wikipedia Goes To Africa, describes how the chapter supported a group of Israeli students on a three-month humanitarian expedition to Benin and Cameroon, by providing them with computers containing a static version of the French language Wikipedia.
  • German Wikipedia manual: In a short blog-post, Ziko described how he wrote a manual on how to contribute to the German Wikipedia, which was released by a Munich-based publisher last month and is also available on Wikibooks. It is illustrated by photos of "Wikipedia youngsters" enacting Wikipedia concepts (example: vandal fighting).
  • Supporting free knowledge outside Wikimedia projects: Wikimedia Germany has started a "contest of ideas" to promote free knowledge, promising grants of €500–5000 for projects that generate, collect, or disseminate free content (announcement, in German: WissensWert, Google translation). The scope appears to be deliberately wide, naming OpenStreetMap or free software as examples, and the conditions explicitly exclude proposals whose sole purpose it is to generate content in Wikipedia or its sister projects.

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2010-09-20

Rush Limbaugh falls for Wikipedia hoax, Public Policy Initiative, Nature cites Wikipedia

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By Tilman Bayer

Talk show host fails to heed own warnings not to rely on Wikipedia

An article in The New York Times, "Limbaugh taken in: the judge was not loaded for bear", reports that conservative US talk show host Rush Limbaugh relied on erroneous information from the Wikipedia article about federal judge Roger Vinson when he told listeners that Vinson is an avid hunter and hobby taxidermist who, in 2003, hung the stuffed heads of three bears killed by himself over a courtroom door, to "instill the fear of God" into the accused. Limbaugh insinuated that this might improve the chances of the court case against President Obama's health-care act which Vinson is currently hearing.

The hoax information had been added by a new user on September 13 (UTC), who removed it the next day. Denying that the statement was based on Wikipedia, a spokesman said it came from an article on the website of the Pensacola News Journal – coincidentally the offline reference cited in the Wikipedia article (but with a non-existent date: "June 31, 2003"). However, its managing editor denied it had ever published such an article – a point also made in its own coverage of the affair (Rush Limbaugh falls for wacky hoax about Judge Roger Vinson).

Less than a year ago, Limbaugh criticized journalists who rely on Wikipedia without fact-checking as "literal professional scum", after false quotes attributed to him in Wikiquote made it into the media (see Signpost coverage). In 2005, he criticized Wikipedia as biased and announced he would insert the word "afristocracy" into Wikipedia to "spread" it (see Signpost coverage and deletion discussion).

Student newspapers cover Wikimedia's Public Policy Initiative

After extensive articles about the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative had appeared in Inside Higher Ed and USA Today (see last week's In the news), two student newspapers covered it from a local perspective:

An article in George Washington University's GW Hatchet (Wikipedia recruits GW students to edit website's content) quoted Dr Joseph Cordes, associate director of the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, who had supported the three-day workshop at the school to train Wikimedia's "Campus ambassadors" (Signpost coverage), and Dr Donna Infeld, whose graduate course on public policy earlier this year had been the first at the university to offer Wikipedia assignments. One of her students was quoted regarding his experiences contributing to the article Don't ask, don't tell as part of that course.

At Georgetown University, The Hoya interviewed Professor Rochelle Davis (Wikipedia: a class tool), whose "Introduction to the study of the Arab world" course participates in the Wikipedia initiative. Correcting earlier media reports that she had assigned students to read Wikipedia, she said "some of the interviews seemed to have missed that. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. I wouldn't assign my students to read it, just like I wouldn't assign them Britannica."

Also last week, Indiana University announced that a seminar at its School of Public and Environmental Affairs program would be producing public policy articles for Wikipedia, proudly describing the School as "one of five leading public-policy programs where the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia, is debuting its Public Policy Initiative".

See other Signpost coverage of the Public Policy Initiative: "Introducing the Public Policy Initiative", "Public policy initiative announces advisory board, starts training campus ambassadors", "Public policy initiative announces participating classes", and "Experiments with article assessment".

Briefly

2010-09-20

All Aboard WikiProject Trains

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By Mabeenot


WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
The old Penn Station in New York before it was demolished
The Eritrean Railway covering mountainous terrain between Arbaroba and Asmara
Steam locomotives of the Chicago and North Western Railway in the roundhouse at the Chicago, Illinois rail yards
Cross junction in Chicago.
File:Walschaerts motion.gif
Walschaerts valve gear in a steam locomotive
High speed train in Italy
A train on the London Underground in motion
A 2-10-10-2 locomotive
Lineup of Shinkansen trains in Japan
A caboose at the end of a Burlington Northern Railroad train in 1993

This week, we have a ticket to ride with WikiProject Trains. Started in March 2004, the project has grown to include over 58,000 pages, including 35 featured articles, 22 featured lists, 157 good articles, and an unassessed article backlog of 13,000. The project's total number of members is staggering. WikiProject Trains is aided by a network of related projects, including WikiProject Stations, WikiProject Streetcars, and several projects covering country-specific railways. The project maintains a featured portal, to-do list, manual of style, resources for new articles, and 12 task forces. We interviewed Mjroots, DavidCane, Slambo, Iridescent, Redrose64, Simply south, and Oakshade.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Trains? Do you consider yourself a railfan?

Mjroots: I've always been interested in railways. I was a trainspotter in my youth, but stopped when British Rail was split up.
DavidCane: A specific London Underground-focused enthusiast, but definitely not a trainspotter; I'm interested mostly in the infrastructure and the engineers behind it rather than the trains. My interest stems from growing up in Morden at the southern end of the London Underground's Northern line; a childhood trip into central London usually involved an exciting journey on the tube - alternately rushing through dark tunnels and stopping at a brightly lit stations. I can remember writing a school essay when I was about ten on the building of Morden tube station and discovering photos of the suburb where I lived in the 1920s when its was still just fields.
Slambo: I am very much a railfan. In fact, the lead image of the railfan article, File:Railfans at prairie du chien.jpg is a photo that I took showing my wife and a friend of ours when we went on one of our railfanning trips to Prairie du Chien. I've been interested in trains and model railroading as far as I can remember, which dates back to about the early 1970s. When I started editing here in September 2004, I looked at the amount of railroad-related articles and thought I could help out with them. The first edits I made were to correct and add links to railroad historical society websites. It was Morven who introduced me to WikiProject Trains, and it seemed like an excellent way to focus my editing on the subjects that I was most interested in.
Iridescent: I'd worked on a lot of train related articles so thought I ought to put my name on the list. And no, definitely not; I've come from the social history side, not the engineering side.
Redrose64: A school trip on Wednesday 21 March 1979 (yes, it's etched in my memory) to the National Railway Museum changed my life permanently. That was the day I first collected engine numbers; the following weekend I rifled my father's bookshelves in search of anything railway related. I stopped collecting numbers when it became clear that locomotives on passenger trains were doomed to disappear. I signed up to WikiProject Trains just over a year after getting a Wikipedia account, although I had already joined WikiProject UK Railways, after less than 150 edits across the whole of Wikipedia. I would say that the vast majority of my 17000+ edits are rail-related.
Simply south: There are many different terms for the same thing and i would call myself a rail enthusiast. I have always been interested in rail transport since i was younger and only recently became interested elsewhere. However i am not a trainspotter.

The project covers a wide range of articles related to modern and historical trains throughout the world. What are some of your favorite articles?

Mjroots: Some of the articles on lines outside the UK, such as the North Friesland Railway in the Netherlands, the Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme and Réseau Breton in France, all of which I've had a hand in.
DavidCane: Historical articles, ones that feature interesting engineering and articles on things that are no more or that were planned but did not happen. These tend to be in fairly obscure areas, so article development on these is sometimes minimal. Tunnel Railway is a good example of something gone and mostly forgotten. The Victorians and Edwardians were hugely keen on the idea of building underground railways in London but very few schemes were able to raise money. City and Brixton Railway is an interesting short article on one such failure.
Oakshade: I very much enjoyed reading Berlin Friedrichstraße station. It was a fascinating station as it was located directly on the border between East and West Berlin, therefore separated countries within the working station. I never knew any of this and the article explains this history in great detail. Another article I enjoyed is Rack railway. This is an excellent detailed description of this unique type of rail infrastructure and its examples around the world.
Slambo: I wish I could be a little less selfish about this question, but right now I have two favorites: Pioneer Zephyr and John Bull (locomotive). I started both of these articles and researched and edited them both up to Featured Article status. For a while I was researching the history of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway with an eye toward getting that article up to featured status as well; I got a little distracted with some of the associated articles, starting articles for the railroad's presidents and a few of the subsidiary companies, such as California Southern Railroad, and significant events, like the operation of the Scott Special (both of these ancillary articles are now listed as Good Articles).
Iridescent: By their nature, most of them are boring to non-specialists, just because it's often necessarily a technical and inherently boring topic. DavidCane's biographical articles such as Edgar Speyer are probably the most interesting to non-specialists.
Simply south: It is hard to pick out which are my favourite articles. It has been interesting learning about systems around the world, for example the Vancouver SkyTrain or the Wuppertal Schwebebahn. There are also odd articles, an example which is the British Rail flying saucer.

The project has 34 featured articles, 22 featured lists, and 156 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? Are there any other articles you are currently working on bringing to FA or GA status?

Mjroots: I've been responsible for two GAs - Charles Fryatt and the Hawkhurst Branch Line. I'm not currently working on any GAs or FAs.
DavidCane: I've written and taken through the approval process seven of the featured articles, three of the featured lists and nine of the good articles. I am currently working on improving to GA standard the article on architect Charles Holden, who designed many of the tube's best stations. After that I will be developing Metropolitan District Railway to FA to complete a Featured Topic on the Underground Electric Railways Company of London.
Oakshade: I'm quite proud of creating Santa Fe Depot (San Bernardino) and providing much of the content seen today. It has been suggested it can be Good Article status. Perhaps more detail is needed. But that's what's great about this project. There's an endless supply of editors that can be motivated to improve upon existing articles.
Slambo: I took four articles from creation to Featured Article status: Pioneer Zephyr, John Bull (locomotive), Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works and an older version of the Franklin B. Gowen article. The article on the Pioneer Zephyr was created from nothing and promoted to Featured status in just five days (February 24 to March 1), which at the time was the fastest for any article from creation to Featured status. The article on Franklin Gowen has since been updated by another editor with quite a bit more information and also retains Featured status. I have taken many articles to Good Article status, including Scott Special, California Southern Railroad, Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and Cyrus K. Holliday. Many more articles I created are former Good Articles; they were removed from the list after the inline citation and length standards improved. These include: Weyauwega, Wisconsin derailment, Timken 1111, El Gobernador, C. P. Huntington, stock car (rail), dome car, autorack (in collaboration with another editor), EMD BL2 and others.
Iridescent: Eight of the FAs and two of the GAs, plus minor edits and encouraging noises on a number of the others. Until an article's near complete it's impossible to say whether it's GA/FA material so it's pointless making predictions, although I do want to get Quainton Road railway station up to scratch to complete the Brill Tramway set.
Redrose64: I have made various edits, small and large, to articles which later reached GA/FA; of these, the most important were probably helping get Hawkhurst Branch Line to GA, and SECR K and SR K1 classes to FA. Although I did create Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station, which is now FA, most of the FA work was carried out by iridescent (above); I don't consider my own somewhat factual style would satisfy WP:FAC should I write the whole article and submit it. Consider Reading Southern railway station: that's mostly mine, but will need the attention of others if it's to rise above C-Class (it doesn't satisfy B-class article criterion 2, and possibly not 5 and 6).
Simply south: I have made small edits to a few GAs such as Railway stations in Cromer.


The project is home to 12 task forces with focuses ranging from drawing maps and adding images to reducing the assessment backlog and maintaining the project's portal. Tell us a little about how these task forces contribute to the project's overall goals.

DavidCane: I'm not involved with any of these. I think people are most likely to edit what they are most interested in so formalised administrative structures are probably not of interest to most editors. Having a series of niche activities like these also has the potential to discourage users from doing these things because they think that it's someone else's problem.
Slambo: I was involved in founding many of the task forces. I was hoping more editors would step up and take to the tasks that are listed in each. Each task force was designed with the idea of giving newer editors an area of the WikiProject on which to focus. Most of my own focus recently has been on the assessment backlog and maintaining the portal.
Iridescent: I'm not involved with any. "Reducing the backlog" is a will-o-the-wisp which doesn't mesh with how Wikipedia operates in reality; things are improved by people who are interested in improving them, and no project that aims to dictate what people ought to be doing has any chance of working. In my experience, "improvement drives" generally have a counterproductive effect, in steering people who don't really understand a subject towards material they're not competent to work on. I think task forces are great in theory, but generally they just don't work.
Redrose64: It's not altogether clear what the scope of the various task forces is. When I add {{WikiProject Trains}} to a talk page, I usually omit all the task force parameters; the only ones I ever set are |locos=yes and/or |models=yes, since it's a pretty clear decision whether the article falls within those or not. As for participation in task forces, I don't.

Are there any other projects that collaborate and share resources with WikiProject Trains?

DavidCane: There are a number of projects that have overlapping fields of interest and common members, but I am not aware of any specific collaborative efforts or resource sharing.
Slambo: There have been some efforts in the past to collaborate with other WikiProjects. Most of the collaborations that I watched didn't get as far as we wanted them to, but they all led to some improvements in article quality here and there. A few WikiProjects use the {{TrainsWikiProject}} talk page banner that I originally created (Streetcars, Rapid transit, Metros of the former Soviet Union, Trains in Japan, New Zealand Railways and UK Railways).
Redrose64: There's a significant overlap with WikiProject London Transport, which has many areas (such as buses) entirely outside the WikiProject Trains remit. The Route Diagram Template (RDT) is definitely a resource shared between WikiProject Trains, WikiProject London Transport and others (WikiProject UK Waterways is one that I know of, but it's outside my interests).
Simply south: RDT is a resource that was originally set up for rail transport articles and the like and was copied from the German Wikipedia but has been used by a lot of projects such as WikiProject UK Waterways and WikiProject Hiking Trails.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Slambo: I created Portal:Trains in May 2005 based on a quick suggestion on the project talk page. I volunteered that I would be willing to maintain it for the future as well, and have been making updates to the portal (mostly in the Did You Know section) on a daily basis. My efforts got the portal promoted to be a Featured portal in January 2006, and it has retained Featured status since then. Some of the templates that I created for portal maintenance are now also being used by other portals.

Next week we'll admire a buttress. Until then, you can build up your knowledge of WikiProjects in the archive.

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2010-09-20

The best of the week

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
From a new featured article, Ambondro, this jaw in lingual view is from a mammal from the middle Jurassic period. The fossil was found in Madagascar.

Administrators

The Signpost congratulates two editors on their promotion to adminship.

Featured articles

diamond shaped crest surrounded by laurels and topped with a crown and a bat
The first crest worn by the Barcelona Football Club, derived from the St George's Cross, the Catalan flag, and the colours of Barcelona. FC Barcelona is the FA Choice of the week.
A miniature of the 6th-century Germanic king Alboin in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, from the new featured article
Fifteen articles were promoted:
  • Ambondro mahabo (nom), a broken piece of jaw 170 million years old; its discovery in 1999 set the stage for one of the major controversies of mammalian paleontology (nominated by Ucucha). (picture above)
  • Aquaria (video game) (nom), a single-player action-adventure product released in 2007 (PresN).
  • Battle of Quebec (1775) (nom), the first big American defeat of the American Revolutionary War, in 1775 (Magicpiano)
  • Princess Charlotte of Wales (nom) (1796–1817), one of the tragic episodes of the British royal family (Wehwalt).
  • Flame Robin (nom), a small bird native to Australia; the males have a brilliant orange-red chest and throat (Casliber).
  • FC Barcelona (nom), founded in 1899 by a group of Swiss, English, and Spanish football players that has become a symbol of Catalan culture (Sandman888). (picture at right)
  • Eshmun Temple (nom), occupied in the 7th and 8th centuries and associated with the nearby Lebanese city of Sidon; now a World Heritage Site (Elie plus).
  • Paul E. Patton (nom), a governor of Kentucky (1995–2003), whose second term finished with sex-for-favours and campaign-finance scandals (Acdixon).
  • Alboin (nom), a 6th-century Germanic king who played an important role in Italian history; the article is based on English- and Italian-language sources (Aldux). (picture at right)
  • Huia (nom), a New Zealand bird (Kotare)
  • Wintjiya Napaltjarri (nom), which nominator hamiltonstone says are "the people who have contributed to the last great art movement of the 20th century, and Australia's only domestic art movement of international significance: contemporary Indigenous Australian art".
  • William Calcraft (nom), one of the most prolific and incompetent British hangmen ever. Nominator Malleus Fatuorum says "he liked to make a show out of his public executions [to] crowds of up to 30,000, so he didn't want his victims to die too quickly."
  • Madeira Firecrest (nom), an avian beauty from Madeira, an Atlantic island off Africa (Jimfbleak).
  • Oryzomys antillarum (nom), an extinct Jamaican rat (Ucucha).
  • Japanese battleship Haruna (nom), one of the workhorses of the Japanese fleet during World War II (Cam).

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Aaroncrick to select the best of the week:


Four featured articles were delisted:

Featured lists

Philip Bliss, a Registrar of the University of Oxford (this week's Choice of the week)

Eleven lists were promoted:

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Wizardman for his choice of the best:


Featured topics

One topic was promoted: Supernatural (season 1) (nom), concerning an American television series broadcast 2005–06, with 22 episodes. There are two featured articles and one good article (nominator Ophois).

Featured pictures

Featured picture Choice of the week: an impala photographed in the Serengeti

Seven images were promoted:

Choice of the week. Dschwen, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost:



New featured picture: Westward view of Chicago. The image was recomposited from the original six photos to correct a slight tilt.


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2010-09-20

Tools, part 2: Internal links and page histories

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By Resident Mario, Dispenser and Tilman Bayer

This article is a continuation of Tools, part 1, in a series meant to introduce readers to useful tools for editing. This time, we will be treating tools related to internal links (wikilinks), and the version histories of wiki pages.

Many tools consist of user scripts, JavaScript code running in your browser, that can be imported by adding importScript("User:Example/awesome script.js") to your skin.js page. Compatibility varies with skin and browser, with Internet Explorer being the most problematic. A more extensive script list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts.

Various other tools are hosted on the Wikimedia Toolserver (currently provided by the German Wikimedia chapter) and can be accessed via a web interface. Some are also hosted on non-Wikimedia websites.

Dabfinder

Dabfinder adds a "Find disambiguations" link to your sidebar, outlines disambiguation links in green and allowing you to fix them on the fly without having to go to a separate page. Unlike Begriffsklärungs-Check ("disambiguation check") from the German Wikipedia, it works on all languages.

Author : Splarka
Placement : Adds a "Find disambiguations" link to the Toolbox sidebar.
Demo : Paste javascript:importScript('User:Splarka/dabfinder.js');findDABsButton() into your browser's address bar while viewing or previewing the article of interest.
Installation : Add {{subst:js|User:Splarka/dabfinder.js}} to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page.

Dablinks and Dab solver

Dablinks is a Toolserver tool which checks for disambiguation links. It can check individual pages or up to 500 pages from a category, list, or a user's recent contributions. A companion tool, accessible via "(fix links)", Dab solver provides an easy to use menu driven interface for resolving all links. The tools also collects statistics to assist WikiProject Disambiguation.

Author : Dispenser

Linkclassifier

Linkclassifier assigns over a dozen possible attributes to links. Users can opt to use either the default style sheet or create their own with the looks and color they want for each attribute. The default highlights disambiguation and self-redirects links and outlines non-free images. What sets this tool apart from others is the ability to identify Set index articles. While there is no firm standard, they are typically hybrids between a list article and a disambiguation page. Writers may intentionally link to these if they wish to have a description or history of a Ship's name, for example.

Author : Anomie
Placement : Highlights are inline, configurable to page load (default) or button click.
Demo : Paste javascript:void(importScript('User:Anomie/linkclassifier-demo.js')) into your browser's address bar while viewing or previewing the article of interest.
Installation : Add both {{subst:js|User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js}} and importStylesheet('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css'); to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page.

Contributors

The Contributors tool lists users who have edited a page, based on the number of their contributions. This is a good way to identify the major contributors to an article. The tool can also display the page history in other formats. (Documentation)

Author : Duesentrieb

Article revision statistics

Article revision statistics by X! also shows users who have edited a particular page, sorted by number of edits; but it provides many other statistics about the page's history, such as the number of edits per month, or the percentage of anonymous edits.

Author: X!

WikiDashboard

WikiDashboard displays an article together with a timeline showing editing activity, and also lists the contributors with the most edits to the article. Editing while using the dashboard is not possible. It was the subject of an article in Technology Review last year; see also the Signpost coverage of its release in 2007.

Author : Palo Alto Research Center

Revisionjumper

Navigating a page history with Revisionjumper

Revisionjumper allows easier navigation of a page's history, generating diffs between arbitrary revisions or time periods with just a few clicks. It was developed on the German Wikipedia and is used by around 1500 users.

Author: DerHexer
Demo : Try it in the Wikipedia:Sandbox
Placement : Adds drop-downs between the revision info and the revision diff
Installation: Add {{subst:js|MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js}} to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page, or go to Special:Preferences, check its box under "Gadgets", and click "Save".

WikiBlame

WikiBlame (documentation) searches revisions of a page for a text string in either the HTML or wikitext. It then displays the revision dates where the string exists or does not by a green circle and red X. This is useful if one needs to ask the author of a particular statement for a clarification or a reference, and is certainly faster than doing it by hand. Article Blamer by X! promises similar functionality in a streamlined interface. WikiTrust (see below) is another alternative.

Author: Flominator
Placement: The tool is linked as "Revision history search" from the History pages on the English Wikipedia.

WikiTrust

WikiTrust analyzes an article's history and the contributions of its authors to calculate a trust score for each part of the text, which is displayed as a color (white=trustworthy, yellow or orange = unstable). It is also possible to check directly who contributed that part: A CTRL-ALT-click on a word will take you to the diff where it was added.

WikiTrust is currently available as a browser add-on for Firefox. The Wikimedia Foundation has indicated that it may eventually be integrated into Wikipedia itself (see Signpost coverage).

Author: Online Collaboration Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Placement: Adds a "WikiTrust" tab on top of the page

Page view statistics

Page view statistics graphs the number of views per day for a Wikipedia page. The tool aggregates a list of the "most viewed pages", although this is often several months behind. The data is also used in a new, still experimental tool by Emw that graphs over larger periods.

Note: Due to past problems with the underlying data (squid logs), page views may be under-reported from November 2009 to July 2010.

Author: Henrik
Placement: The tool is linked as "Page view statistics" from the History pages on the English Wikipedia.

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2010-09-20

Discretionary sanctions clarification and more

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases, leaving one open.

Open case

Climate change (Week 15)

This case resulted from the merging of several Arbitration requests on the same topic into a single case, and the failure of a related request for comment to make headway. Innovations have been introduced for this case, including special rules of conduct that were put in place at the start. However, the handling of the case has been criticized by some participants; for example, although the evidence and workshop pages were closed for an extended period, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing their case on the case pages (see earlier Signpost coverage).

The proposed decision, drafted by Newyorkbrad, Risker, and Rlevse, sparked a large quantity of unstructured discussion, much of it comprising concerns about the proposed decision (see earlier Signpost coverage). A number of users, including participants and arbitrator Carcharoth, made the discussion more structured, but the quantity of discussion has continued to increase significantly. Rlevse had said that arbitrators were trying to complete the proposed decision before September 6, but it was later made clear that he will no longer be voting on this decision. This week, arbitrators made further additions to the proposed decision and further attempts to manage the quantity of discussion.

Closed cases

Transcendental Meditation movement (Week 2)

Before discretionary sanctions can be imposed on an editor, the editor is required to be "given a warning advising of the problems with his or her editing". Additionally, where appropriate, the editor should be "counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve" his or her editing. The exception to this requirement is where there is "gross misconduct".

Littleolive oil filed a clarification request regarding this requirement and asked that the revert restriction that was imposed on her by Future Perfect at Sunrise be overturned by the Committee. A few users characterised the request as “forum shopping” and arbitrator Coren alleged that it was “not a request for clarification...but an appeal/protest.” However, the filer stated that the clarification fundamentally affects the restriction and that the Committee should stand by its statements - that discretionary sanctions may be appealed to the Committee.

Arbitrators Newyorkbrad and Roger Davies clarified that the warnings should come from "a neutral third-party" rather than "an opponent in a content dispute". In response, an administrator suggested that the discretionary sanctions from this case be replaced with what some arbitrators refer to as “standard discretionary sanctions”. However, practical issues with the latter approach were pointed out in the Climate change case:

The "standard" sanctions have changed to some extent every time that the Committee has used them, so they're hardly standard. As the wording on that page changes, editors in affected areas will have no way of knowing that the "rules" have changed. This will also lead to disputes about whether the current wording of the so-called standard discretionary sanctions, or the one in effect at the time of the decision, will hold sway. [Even with announcements of changes]...sanctions cover hundreds of pages and potentially apply to thousands of editors. Most of them don't watch WP:AN or the village pumps, and even fewer of them watch arbitration pages.

— Arbitrator Risker, Sentences taken from comments made at 04:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC) and 17:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC) in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Proposed decision.

In light of the clarification, the filer suggested the Committee keep the existing discretionary sanctions wording for this case because it “clearly defines the criteria” making it “easier to determine if the criteria has been met or not”. Recently, she also asked the Committee whether she will need to file another case to deal with the "allegations of wrongdoing" and editors that were "improperly sanctioned".

Eastern European mailing list (Week 2)

At the time of writing, arbitrators have not yet responded to the request to reimpose an Eastern European topic ban on Radeksz. It has been over a week since the request was filed.

Race and intelligence (Week 2)

Arbitrators have responded to the request to impose a topic ban on Ferahgo the Assassin from race and intelligence related articles that has been filed. It has been over a week since the request was filed. Kirill Lokshin stated that he did not see any reason to presume wrong-doing, but Shell Kinney advised Ferahgo the Assassin to avoid editing the topic, particularly in light of policy and the facts of this case. Roger Davies also stated that he would support a topic ban.

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2010-09-20

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

Washington DC "Hack-a-Ton" announced

On the Wikimedia Techblog, contractor Chad Horohoe announced the first Wikimedia "hack-a-ton", an event when developers, amateur and professional, get together with the explicit aim of bug-fixing and generally getting "down and dirty with the code". Designed to act as a counterpoint to the "MediaWiki Developers' Meetup" in Berlin, which is focused on demonstrations, workshops and small group discussions, the event is scheduled for October 22–24 in Washington DC. Bugs for the weekend are going to be tracked using a new keyword in Bugzilla, "bugsmash". MediaWiki has around 4900 bugs and feature requests outstanding from a total pool of around 25000, though not all relate to the core MediaWiki software.

Google Summer of Code: Samuel Lampa

We continue a series of articles about this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with Samuel Lampa, a biotechnology student at Uppsala University, who describes his project to develop a system for the general import and export of RDF metadata from the Semantic MediaWiki software.

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 many weeks.

  • Nightshade, a login server for the Toolserver, is to be converted from the Linux operating system to Solaris at "some point in the future" (Toolserver-Announce mailing list). The Toolserver's other login server, Willow, has been running Solaris for some time without issue, though there are differences between the two setups for which some tool owners will need to compensate.
  • Users can now embed TIFF files into documents and have them thumbnailed. For multi-page files, the "page" parameter can be used to select a page for rendering.
  • Diffs with "intermediate revisions" will now say how many different users contributed to those revisions (bug #24007).
  • Gadget and script developers can now assume the availability of the jQuery library, after it was added to all skins, says User:DieBuche.
  • There was a temporary problem affecting servers handling the API on Friday, soon fixed, and another with European servers on Wednesday (identi.ca).
  • After the announcement in last week's Signpost that the Article Feedback extension will go live on the English Wikipedia on September 22, in a trial that is part of the Public Policy Initiative, a post on the Techblog and a FAQ provided further technical explanations.
  • As announced last week, longtime Wikimedia tech staff member Mark Bergsma has been promoted to Engineering Program Manager for Operations. EPMs are a position that was recently introduced at the WMF, as explained by Erik Möller some weeks ago.
  • Wikimedia Chief Technical Officer Danese Cooper will hold an IRC office hour (a public chat event on IRC) on Wednesday, 22 September at 23:00UTC.

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