Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-01-10
Anniversary preparations, new Community fellow, brief news
Wikipedians worldwide prepare for decennial celebrations
The annual celebrations of Wikipedia Day on January 15 will be of unprecedented dimensions this year, as Wikipedia completes its first full decade. As reported earlier ("Preparations for Wikipedia's tenth anniversary gearing up"), the Wikimedia Foundation has set up a separate wiki to coordinate events – at the time of writing, it listed over 300 events in over 100 countries – and has been supporting these by offering anniversary-themed merchandise, such as buttons and T-shirts. The wiki is currently being advertised via banners on the English Wikipedia.
Considerable worldwide media coverage of the anniversary has already begun, see this week's "In the news".
Foundation announces fourth Community Fellow
The WMF's Chief Community Officer Zack Exley has announced that Swedish Wikipedian Lennart Guldbrandsson (User:SvHannibal) has become the fourth recipient of a Community fellowship. He has joined the Outreach team and during his fellowship will work on two of its projects: the Bookshelf Project (focusing on translation and dissemination of the project's instructional material about Wikipedia) and the Account Creation Improvement Project. Guldbrandsson/Hannibal is a longtime Wikipedian, founder and first chair of the Swedish Wikimedia chapter, and author of a book about Wikipedia.
In the community fellowship program, started in September, community members are employed full-time for a limited amount of time by the Foundation's Community Department to work on specific problems (Signpost coverage). The first fellow, Steven Walling (User:Steven (WMF)), is currently coordinating celebrations of Wikipedia's upcoming tenth anniversary (see above) and is also working on the Contribution Taxonomy research project (Signpost coverage). He was followed by Victoria Doronina (User:Mstislavl) and Maryana Pinchuk, who around the end of September started an eight-week research project to develop methods for writing histories of Wikimedia projects (Signpost coverage).
In brief
- Wiktionary's 10 million milestone: On January 10, Wiktionary reached 10 million entries across all languages (as observed by Yair rand based on the statistics at http://s23.org/wikistats/).
- "Four essays every Wikimedian should read!": On her personal blog, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner recommended Four essays every Wikimedian should read! from Less Wrong (a rationalist community blog co-founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, see also the entry LessWrong on RationalWiki). As described by Gardner, the four postings are about "collaboration, dissent, how groups can work together productively". In another posting, she described her recent travels in India.
- Fundraising results from chapters: After the Foundation, some Wikimedia chapters also reported results of the recently concluded annual fundraiser. Wikimedia Germany stated that during 55 days of the fundraiser, 68,700 donors had given more than €2 million to the chapter (around 50% of which goes to the Wikimedia Foundation). Wikimedia UK received £500,000 from 30,000 donations.
- Chapter reports: Several Wikimedia chapters recently caught up with their monthly reports for the Foundation: Wikimedia Estonia (July–December 2010, starting from the chapter's founding on July 25), Wikimedia Nederland (October 2010, November 2010), and Wikimedia UK (January 2011, 2010 "catchup").
- Wikimania registration opens: The registration and scholarship application process for Wikimania 2011, to be held from August 4th to 7th in Haifa, Israel, is open. Also, the Wikimania 2012 bidding has opened.
- Look back on foundation of the Esperanto Wikipedia: User:Chuck SMITH has blogged recollections on how he started the Esperanto Wikipedia in late 2001, aided by a donation of content from the existing Esperanto online encyclopedia Enciklopedio Kalblanda.
- Toulouse image donation uploaded: In September, the Archives of Toulouse (France), in a partnership with French chapter Wikimédia France, announced they would contribute digitised photographs by its former curator, French naturalist, mountaineer, geologist and photographer Eugène Trutat. This project was presented at the GlamWiki conference in December (see Signpost coverage). A pre-process had to be done to match the extensive metadata provided by the Archives into Commons auto-translated templates and infer precise categorisation. The 200 files finally hit Commons on December 29. Help is needed to check, categorise further, geolocate and spread the files on Wikimedia projects.
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Anniversary coverage begins; Wikipedia as new layer of information authority; inclusionist project
Wikipedia's tenth anniversary already being celebrated in the media
As Wikipedians prepare to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia on January 15 (see this week's News and notes), numerous media outlets worldwide have already started to cover it, many by publishing interviews and opinion articles about the project.
Bloomberg Businessweek has published a historical assessment of the first ten years, produced under a loose interpretation of Wikipedia's own collaborative principles. It was drafted by journalist Drake Bennett, after which it was rewritten, corrected, and commented upon by a team of guest editors – Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School; Robert Dale McHenry, editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica 1992–1997; Benjamin Mako Hill, MIT Researcher, Wikipedia editor and member of the Wikimedia Foundation advisory board and Mike Schroepfer, Developer of the Firefox open source browser and now Vice President of Engineering at Facebook.
On January 5, Jon Stewart started his interview with Jimmy Wales on The Daily Show by wishing him a happy anniversary. (video recording, alternative link – both may not work in all geographical areas) During the program, Stewart joked about vandalizing Britannica (by drawing penises on its margins), and questioned why Wikipedia had chosen the jurisdiction of Florida for its servers ("maybe our nation's silliest state").
On January 9, The Hindu wished "Happy birthday, Wikipedia!", noting that it is going to be celebrated in 35 cities in India.
Commenting for The Independent, British comedian and writer Natalie Haynes asserted that Wikipedia shows the internet at its best, defending it against critics ("Plenty of people dislike Wiki in principle.... In my experience, those people rarely visit the site, dismissing it entirely because they once found a ropey article") despite recalling some unencyclopedic content in early revisions of the article about herself some years ago. She also mentioned Wikipedia's upcoming 10th anniversary and the recent successful fundraiser (claiming it had become known as "Operation JimboStare").
The US National Public Radio (NPR) current-affairs program All Things Considered featured a brief interview with Jimmy Wales on January 10. For the frequently asked question whether the reliability of Wikipedia suffered from Wikipedians not revealing their real names, the host interestingly chose the recent false reports that US politician Gabrielle Giffords had been killed (instead of merely being injured) in the recent 2011 Tucson shooting – a misinformation that had originated on NPR itself and made its way in the Wikipedia article briefly ("as we were getting it wrong, you were getting it wrong").
Wired UK opened a Wikipedia week on January 10 ("a series of articles, interviews, retrospective musings and podcasts about the web's most frequented encyclopaedia"), starting with one article based on an interview with Sue Gardner and one about "The battle to make Wikipedia more welcoming".
The readers of the Nashua Telegraph, a daily newspaper in New Hampshire, US, have been asked to help extending a new article about Greeley Park, a local park, to celebrate Wikipedia's upcoming anniversary. The newspaper's staff writer David Brooks (also a Wikipedia admin as User:DavidWBrooks) started the page as a 32-character stub ("Greeley Park is in Nashua."), which was quickly expanded by various registered and anonymous editors. ("Greater Nashua residents asked to help edit Wikipedia’s ‘Greeley Park’ entry")
The BBC World Service has scheduled a feature programme titled "Wikipedia at 10" to be broadcast on air and online from Friday 14 January (times here).
Oxford University Press VP: Wikipedia "a necessary layer in the Internet knowledge system"
In an article for the The Chronicle of Higher Education, titled "Wikipedia comes of age", Casper Grathwohl, vice president and publisher of digital and reference content for Oxford University Press, offered an eloquent defense of Wikipedia's value on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, recalling how his own opinion of it "has radically evolved over time ... Not long ago, publishers like myself would groan when someone talked about how Wikipedia was effectively replacing reference publishing, especially for students". He presented a perspective of the Internet's knowledge system as being divided into "layers of information authority", and argued that Wikipedia is a "necessary layer" in this structure:
| “ | The bottom layers (the most ubiquitous, whose sources are the most ephemeral, and with the least amount of validation) lead to layers with greater dependability, all the way to the highest layers, made up mostly of academic resources maintained and validated by academic publishers that use multiple peer reviews, trained editors, and scholarly reviewers. When the system is effective, the layers serve to reinforce one another through clear pathways that allow queries to move from one layer to another with little resistance. ... Wikipedia ... is not the bottom layer of authority, nor the top, but in fact the highest layer without formal vetting. In this unique role, it therefore serves as an ideal bridge between the validated and unvalidated Web. | ” |
As an example, Grathwohl described how in 2006, "a tenfold increase in Wikipedia-referred traffic on [OUP's] music-research site Grove Music Online" had alerted him to a project that academic musicologists had started to improve Wikipedia's music coverage. "Research that began on Wikipedia led to (the more advanced and peer-validated) Grove Music, for researchers who were going on to do in-depth scholarly work."
In a 2008 interview, Grathwohl had already argued that Wikipedia was "great", as a source of a "'good enough' answer", and challenged the "myth that before user-generated web content everyone slavishly referred to trusted reference authorities for their quick information" – instead, most people would just have asked a friend, which was "absolutely not" more reliable than Wikipedia today.
New inclusionist alternative project announced
A project to "create an avowedly inclusionist complement to Wikipedia, launching in 2011", codenamed Infinithree ("∞³"), was introduced at the beginning of January by Gordon Mohr (User:Gojomo, Chief Technologist at the Internet Archive's web archive projects). Mohr said that the endeavour was motivated by his belief that "deletionism erases true & useful reference knowledge, drives away contributors, and surrenders key topics to cynical spammy web content mills". He noted that "Infinithree is not a fork and won’t simply redeploy MediaWiki software with inclusionist groundrules. That’s been tried a few times, and has been moribund each time. Negative allelopathy from Wikipedia itself dooms any almost-but-not-quite-Wikipedia; a new effort must set down its roots farther afield." Mohr added that Infinitithree would differ from Deletionpedia and Everything2 by the aspiration "to be an expansive postencyclopedic reference work". Mike Linksvayer (User:Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons) wrote on his personal blog that he was "confident in Gordon’s ability to make [Infinithree] non-vapor and extremely interesting", having co-founded collaborative media cataloguing website Bitzi together with Mohr ten years ago. In the posting, Linksvayer also mused about inclusionism, deletionism and notability in general, on the occasion of an ongoing deletion request for the article about himself (which he "would strongly advocate deleting if I were a deletionist" – "I am either somewhat questionable as an English Wikipedia article subject [or] unquestionably non-notable").
Briefly
- Sue Gardner interview: Following the closing of the annual fundraiser, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner was interviewed by The Guardian (audio, starts 13:15). She commented on the brand confusion between Wikimedia, Mediawiki and Wikipedia, efforts to make MediaWiki more usable (the problem being that it is a free software project, which are typically bad at usability), "confidence" as a defining characteristic that differentiates the core editing community from mere readers, systemic bias on Wikipedia and in traditional media like Gardner's previous employer CBC, outreach efforts ("one of the things that surprised and really interested us was that more than half of the people that raised their hands on campuses to help [as Campus Ambassadors ] were women"), the fundraiser, chapters, Wikileaks, the global effect of Wikimedia on societies and power structures, and reuse of the project's contents.
- Xkcd dreams of mandatory Wikipedia reads: Web comic Xkcd wistfully imagined an alternative universe where "by law and custom", middle school students are required to read through the Wikipedia article List of common misconceptions once a year.
- AfDs visualized: On Notabilia.net, researchers Moritz Stefaner, Dario Taraborelli (also a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Research Committee) and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia present graphical representations of AfD (Articles for Deletion) discussions, representing votes for deletion or keeping by a line turning right or left. Two images combine the graphs for the 100 longest AfDs that, respectively, resulted in deleting or keeping the article. (A dataset with the 500 longest AfDs has been made freely available.) The researchers also provided statistical analyses based on a sample of 200,000 AfDs from between November 2002 and July 2010, e.g. suggesting "a typical discussion consists of only three or four recommendations", and about the distribution of duration (in seconds) and editor activity rates.
- How many articles did Nupedia have?: Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle asked "How many articles did Nupedia have?!?", fact-checking the often repeated claim that Wikipedia's predecessor reached 24 complete articles in its lifetime, and explaining why in his own book about Wikipedia ("Good Faith Collaboration"), he chose to cite the Wikipedia article Nupedia for this number, rather than the reference cited by that article itself (a 2004 Forbes piece).
- Article about service awards: A recent essay titled "Awarding the self in Wikipedia: Identity work and the disclosure of knowledge" in First Monday by David Ashton (a senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at Bath Spa University) argued that service awards (user boxes that Wikipedians can award themselves based on edit count and account age, e.g. "Journeyman Editor" or "Veteran Editor IV") "highlight that identity work is rooted in the structures and processes of the context" and that it is closely connected to "disclosure of knowledge".
- Pageview stats of shooting victim: On his blog, economist J. Bradford DeLong noted that the pageview numbers for the article about US politician Gabrielle Giffords showed a significant rise in the days before she became a victim of an apparent assassination attempt on January 7. DeLong asked his readers to "please give me an explanation of this so that I can stop being a nutbar conspiracy theorist...", which several of them tried to do.
- Wikipedia files: Chicago public radio station WBEZ continued their "Wikipedia files" series – video interviews in which celebrities comment on the Wikipedia article about them – with former basketball player Stacey King.
- Webcast of January 13 Jimbo Wales speech: A speech by Jimmy Wales at the University of Bristol on 13 January 2011, about Wikipedia’s development and future plans, will be webcast live.
- High school student defends Wikipedia: In The Charleston Gazette, a local newspaper in West Virginia, US, a student of St. Albans High School argued that Wikipedia "too often is demonized and used as a scapegoat for misinformation" ("In defense of Wikipedia").
- Wikipedia student assignments in history courses: In a recent article for the International Society for Technology in Education's "Learning and Leading" magazine (What? Wikipedia in history class?), Jeremy Boggs (User:JeremyBoggs) from George Mason University's Center for History and New Media reported that requiring his students to "research and write an article for Wikipedia to become more responsible digital citizens ... is consistently one of my most successful assignments" and described how to carry this out.
- "Wikipedia in the classroom" webinar: The recordings for a January 5 webinar titled "Wikipedia in the classroom: changing the way teachers and students use Wikipedia" have been published, featuring Annie Lin (User:Alin (Public Policy)) from the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative and Yonatan Moskowitz from Georgetown University.
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Her Majesty's Waterways
- Earn Wikifavors, barnstars, real-world goodies, and even money by completing requests posted at the Reward Board.
- Attention jazz enthusiasts: Check out the new Miles Davis portal!
- WikiProject Kayaking has been refreshed and could use some help with their Outline of canoeing and kayaking.
- The January 2011 Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive has knocked out over 200 articles in its first week. Join today to help cut down the backlog and earn barnstars along the way.
This week, we checked out WikiProject UK Waterways which focuses on the intricate system of navigable rivers, canals, and related structures that stretch across the United Kingdom. Started in April 2007, the project has grown to include 28 editors working on over 700 pages, including 3 pieces of featured material and 11 good articles. The project is a child of WikiProject UK Geography and WikiProject Transport while also collaborating with WikiProject Rivers. WikiProject UK Waterways maintains a list of open tasks and contributes to the United Kingdom Portal.
We interviewed six contributors to WikiProject UK Waterways. Ronhjones is an admin who lives less than two miles from the Lancaster Canal and owns a narrowboat on the Llangollen Canal at Whixall. Hymers2 lives near the Thames and shares ownership of a narrowboat mored at Napton. He has been cruising the canals since 1971. Jezhotwells lives in Bristol very close to the Floating Harbour. He worked for many years as a skipper/guide on trip boats in the harbour and thus has an interest in the city docks and the River Avon. EdJogg lives within reach of the Wey Navigation and the Wey and Arun Canal. He crosses the Basingstoke Canal on his daily commute. He is interested in industrial archaeology and canal restoration, although not actively participating in either, and wanted to improve related coverage at Wikipedia. Geni is an admin who aims to make sure there is an article for every canal listed in the List of canals of the United Kingdom. Rodw never added his name to the project's membership, but has interacted with the project as he became involved in canal and river articles in Somerset. He lives near the River Chew.
Why is WikiProject UK Waterways the only project on Wikipedia devoted to regional waterways? Are rivers, canals, locks, and other waterways utilized differently in the United Kingdom than in continental Europe, the United States, Australia, or elsewhere?
- geni: The UK's waterways with a few exceptions (the Manchester ship canal say) never expanded from the original small size they were built to (usually somewhere around 72ft*7ft although both bigger and smaller standards exist). Elsewhere canals tended to expand at least up to barge size but in the UK they were for the most part flat out replaced by rail. The UK's canal system is the only one I'm aware of where an entire network of canals ended up being used for leisure with no significant movement of goods.
- EdJogg: A widespread network of canals developed in the UK as there were no other practical means of bulk transport at the time. I suspect that other countries (following on from the British invention of the steam engine) moved straight to the faster transport provided by railways and then roads, except where navigable rivers of suitable size already existed. There is also a great sense of history in the UK, and a love of all things old – hence the desire to resurrect as much as possible of the original canal network for modern leisure and ecological use.
- Hymers2: Agreed with the above, with the addition of the Irish waterways. The UK and Irish systems are unique in the world in being used almost exclusively for leisure and in being largely unchanged from when they were built. Where leisure use has developed elsewhere (eg Canal du Midi) it has usually been by companies of British origin, at least initially.
What are some of the benefits and challenges of maintaining a regionally-focused WikiProject?
- EdJogg: I cannot speak for others, but my knowledge is limited to UK waterways, so a region-specific project helps maintain focus. On the other hand, there are likely fewer editors available to contribute.
- Geni: It lines up with the meatspace waterway groups. Well more correctly it combines the mostly English and Welsh coverage of groups like the Inland Waterways Association and Waterway Recovery Group with the Scottish and Northern Irish groups.
The project has three pieces of featured material and 11 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? Are you currently working on bringing an article up to FA or GA status?
- Rodw: I found the guidelines How to write about UK Waterways helpful with some of the articles relating to waterways in the south west of England which I have been involved with including: River Parrett (FA), List of locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal (FL), Bridgwater and Taunton Canal (GA), Bristol Harbour (GA), Grand Western Canal (GA) & Kennet and Avon Canal (GA).
- Jezhotwells: Agreed the guidelines are good and clear. I have contributed to River Avon, Bristol Harbour and also other features of the docks and tributary rivers and streams.
- Hymers2: I have contributed expansions and revisions to several articles.
Some of the project's articles include route maps. How do these compare to the route maps for train and roadway articles? What sources of information are used to create route maps for waterways?
- Ronhjones: I have made some of these, using the standard set of icons as used for the railways, plus the necessary water only related ones. I use a combination of published guides (e.g. Nickolsons), Streetmap (OS map), Google earth, and own knowledge.
- Rodw: I've never made any of these but I'm very grateful to User:Bob1960evens and others who have made loads of them.
- Hymers2: The route maps compare well to those used for railway articles and are very useful as a means of explaining the routes.
- Jezhotwells: I have found these icons useful; and used them to make a map for New Cut (Bristol).
- EdJogg: The icons and maps were based on those created for railways, and expanded to provide the unique features. The maps are essential for describing the (arrangement of) features of a canal in a succinct manner and useful to show the alternative routes proposed or built for restored canals.
How are abandoned waterways and structures handled by the project? Do these tend to be more interesting than the waterways currently in use?
- Rodw: Lots of the old canals, including the Somerset Coal Canal near me are no longer in water, but the feature which seems to have generated most discussion is the amazing (but unsuccessful) piece of engineering – the Caisson lock.
- geni: About the only additional challenge that abandoned stuff presents is deciding what is actually abandoned. There are a lot of canals around that have bits in water and active restoration projects which can be tricky to classify (the Croydon Canal is clearly abandoned the Thames and Severn Canal is less clear).
- Jezhotwells: I agree with geni; often hard to decide what is actually abandoned. Many ambitious projects are in existence to restore waterways such as the Wilts & Berks Canal.
- EdJogg: The 'abandoned' canals are often more interesting (to me) since many are in an active state of restoration, so the articles are expanding to reflect progress. Those that aren't being restored may be less well known. Established waterways are perhaps less interesting as their current state is 'in use', although the history should be as interesting.
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Wilts & Berks Canal -
What appears to be an abandoned portion -
New construction on the Wilts & Berks Canal
Does the project have any difficulties acquiring pictures of waterways? Does the project's regional focus make requested photography easier to take?
- Rodw: I help by taking pictures of waterways near me – but I also find Geograph Britain and Ireland a really great source & they all have suitable licences.
- geni: Used to be but most are covered these days. Biggest problem is probably the british weather.
- Jezhotwells: Geograph is a good source. I have contributed some images to Commons.
- EdJogg: There are many hundreds of canal pictures that have been auto-uploaded from Geograph to Commons. The main problem is categorising them. Since the editors and the subject matter are in the same country, taking additional photographs presents less of a transport problem!
Anything else you'd like to add?
- Jezhotwells: Any new members will be welcomed, there is much that has still to be covered.
- EdJogg: The British canal system is a fascinating topic to study, and any editors interested in industrial archaeology or old technology will find much of interest here.
Next week, we'll watch the world's second most popular sport. Until then, stump the batsman with your superior knowledge of WikiProjects by reading through the archive.
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Featured topic of the year
2010 in featured topics
"In the past year, the featured topics process has evolved significantly. The raw numbers are as follows for 2010: 21 featured topics were promoted, 65 good topics were promoted (including 18 in October, a record), 16 topics were demoted, and there were 16 supplementary additions.
The numbers have shifted from 2009, during which there were 32 promoted FTs, 50 promoted GTs, 13 demotions, and 15 supplemental additions. However, this reduction in numbers is despite a major change in the process: as of September 1, a new requirement has been that at least half of the articles in a featured topic must themselves be featured (up from a third); if this is not the case, the topic is eligible instead for good topic status. As a result, 23 topics went from featured to good, bringing the total number of featured topics to below the 100-mark (currently there are 94 FTs and 141 GTs). Beyond that, a shift in running the process was made, as I have mostly taken over from User:Rst20xx, who became inactive about halfway through 2010.
As for specifics on what areas have been strongly represented in promotions, most have come from the MILHIST project—particularly as a result of Operation Majestic Titan—and many promotions have been of music albums and discographies. In many areas, topics remain non-existent; examples are economics, math, business, and engineering, to name a few.
Of the topics promoted in 2010, what was the featured topic of the year? That was one of the first topics of 2010, the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, which currently contains 42 articles, 24 featured and 18 good. It's one of the largest topics we have, and even for someone who could care less about cricket, I found it to be a great read, and enjoyed watching the progress the topic made.
As featured topics are not an oft-traveled area of wikipedia, I wanted to note about the value of the process. Namely, creating a topic allows a group of similar articles to become examples of our best work, since people interested in one article may be interested in another article in that topic. Those wishing to read about 30 Rock (season 1) and modify it, for example, would be the same people wanting to modify and read 30 Rock (season 2). Since many articles in a topic might use the same sources, it also makes it easier on one's time or on one's wallet if they already have the sources to work on a cluster of articles. Having an article featured is great; having a group of articles featured can provide a much greater benefit, especially if it's on an important topic. (If U.S. presidents or UK prime ministers were ever featured topics, that would be amazing)
If you want to contribute a topic but need ideas on one, I can always provide some help. You can find topics in anything if you look hard enough, which is one of the joys of working on them."
Featured articles
- Peveril Castle (nom), a small castle standing over the Hope Valley in England (Nev1; picture above)
- Suillus spraguei (nom), an attractive, edible mushroom of eastern North America and eastern Asia (nominator Sasata).
- Southpark (season 13) (nom), from the American animated television comedy series, originally aired in the US on Comedy Central in 2009 (Hunter Kahn and Nergaal).
- Round Church, Preslav (nom), an early 10th-century Bulgarian church building, known only from studying its ruins. The only written reference to its existence in medieval sources does not amount to certain identification (TodorBozhinov).
- Sigi Schmid (nom) (born 1953), a German-American soccer coach who became one of the most successful collegiate coaches of all time in the US (Cptnono).
- Governor of Kentucky (nom), the office of the chief executive of the US state of Kentucky, and the centrepiece of a new featured topic (Acdixon).
- New York's 20th congressional district special election, 2009 (nom), a battle between Democrat Scott Murphy, a private businessman, and Republican Jim Tedisco, the minority leader of the New York State Assembly (Gyrobo).
- Thyrotoxic periodic paralysis (nom), a condition featuring attacks of muscle weakness in the presence of an overactive thyroid gland (Jfdwolff).
- Henry J. Wood (nom), a major figure in British musical life in the first half of the 20th century; his influence continues in London's annual series of The Proms, which he conducted for nearly 50 years (Tim riley; picture at the right)
- Bernard Bosanquet (cricketer) (nom) (1877–1936), a cricketer who was transformed from a very average batsman into an international, match-winning all-rounder through his invention of the googly, a completely revolutionary style of bowling, in which the ball is spun in the opposite direction to normal without the appearance of anything abnormal (Sarastro1).
- Salanoia durrelli (nom), a mongoose-like member of a family of carnivoran mammals unique to Madagascar (Ucucha; picture at the right).
The Signpost asked FA regular DrKiernan to select the Choice of the week:
- "Once again, all the articles are of the highest quality. I have chosen Henry Wood as my favorite this week because of the number, density and quality of references to off-line print sources. Who can fail to agree with Wood's wise words: "I do not like ladies playing the trombone or double bass, but they can play the violin!" However, I do find myself sympathising with the critic who described a third of Wood's audience at a performance of Schoenberg as hissing, another third "not hissing because it was laughing, and the remaining third ... too puzzled either to laugh or to hiss." "
Three featured articles were delisted:
- Halloween (1978 film) (nom): referencing and prose
- Herbig–Haro object (nom): referencing and prose
- History of the Philippines (nom): referencing and MoS compliance.
Featured pictures
- Golden toad (nom; related article), a male of this strikingly coloured species, which has been considered extinct since around 1989, part of a world-wide decline in amphibian populations (created by Charles H Smith).
- Hoary-headed Grebe (nom; related article). Said one reviewer: "The background looks really funky. Have you cloned something out? Also is that fuzz in its mouth, or something optical?" Creator's response: "No and fuzz." (created by Noodle snacks)
- Red-necked Stint (nom; related article), shot on Christmas Day at Ralph's Bay, Tasmania (created by Noodle snacks).
- Orange-lined triggerfish (nom; related article), promoted after considerable debate about sharpness, piscine mucus, and the blurring effects of water (Hans Hillewaert (photography), Papa Lima Whiskey (editing to sharpen the image); picture at the bottom)
- Maasai woman (nom; related article). An interesting debate ensued on whether the subject had consented to appearing on the main page. Reviewer Chick Bowen said, "Such consent is not necessary, either legally or ethically, as long as the photograph is taken in a public place and is not demeaning or intrusive, which this image is not. See Commons:Photographs of identifiable people." (created by William Warby; picture at the right)
- Großbottwar town hall (nom; related article), a 16th-century building noted for its half-timber construction and decoratively carved façade, in a town of some 8000 people in south-western Germany (created by Felix König, shadows brightened by GreatOrangePumpkin).
Featured sounds
Three sound files were promoted:
- The US Navy Band plays Inno e Marcia Pontificale (nom), composed in 1869 by Charles Gounod (nominated by Fridae'sDoom).
- Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (nom), an 1899 recording of the Welsh national anthem, composed in 1856 by James James and here sung by Madge Breese for the Gramophone Company in London. It is the first known recording in the Welsh language (nominated by Bencherlite).
- Ave Maria (nom), composed in 1859 by Charles Gounod on the harmonic structure and texture of a solo keyboard prelude by JS Bach. This performance on cello is by John Michel, who is on the music faculty at Central Washington University. The pianist is not named. (nominated by Sven Manguard)
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World War II case comes to a close; ban appeal, motions, and more
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, but closed one today, leaving one case open.
Open case
Longevity (Week 7)
The deadline which has been set for evidence submissions in this case is 15 January 2011. The original deadline, 3 December 2010, was extended after parties made requests to have more time to present their evidence. At the time of writing, except for this, no further evidence or workshop proposals have been submitted on-wiki during the week.
Closed cases
World War II (Week 6)
This case concerns allegations about misrepresentation of sources, disruptive editing, and WikiProject Military history (the Mil-Hist WikiProject). The filer and main party of the case, Communicat (talk · contribs), made a series of accusations about the behavior of editors of the Mil-hist WikiProject. He also alleged that World War II articles rely on orthodox Western sources to the exclusion of non-Western or significant-minority Western positions. Other editors, including editors from the WikiProject, made accusations about Communicat's editing and behavior. Evidence and workshop proposals were submitted (see earlier Signpost coverage), and the drafter of the case, arbitrator Newyorkbrad, posted a proposed decision for voting on 6 January 2011 which attracted votes from 13 arbitrators. The case came to a close today.
- What is the effect of the decision and what does it tell us?
- Communicat is indefinitely topic banned from articles about World War II or the Aftermath of World War II.
- Communicat may appeal the topic ban after 6 months. Should he appeal the topic ban, the Committee would consider whether he will edit collaboratively and in accordance with Wikipedia policies and guidelines in other topic-areas.
- Communicat is subject to a civility restriction for 1 year.
- Users who engage in tendentious or disruptive editing may be subject to bans.
- Articles need to comply with core policies concerning verifiability, reliable sources, neutral point of view and original research; editors should avoid misusing sources.
Eastern European mailing list
On 5 January 2011, Piotrus (talk · contribs) requested the Committee to lift his modified topic ban which bans him from "articles about national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about these topics". The ban is set to expire on 2 March 2011. On 6 January 2011, Newyorkbrad indicated that arbitrators are waiting for others to comment, including on whether the topic-ban should be lifted altogether or whether the wording of the topic ban should be clarified. The question about the wording being clarified arose after this arbitration enforcement appeal. Although an editor has supported Piotrus' request, two administrators have repeated their requests for the restriction to be amended - to better-communicate ArbCom's intent in a clearly worded editing restriction.
Motions
West Bank – Judea and Samaria
On 14 December 2010, Jayjg (talk · contribs) requested the Committee to lift the topic ban that was imposed on him at the conclusion of the case. The Committee accepted his request and a motion was passed; Jayjg is no longer banned from Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles.
Koavf
On 30 November 2010, Koavf (talk · contribs) requested for his Community sanctions to be lifted. Arbitrator Newyorkbrad formally proposed a motion on 3 January 2011 to terminate the restrictions that were placed upon Koavf in the Koavf arbitration. 12 arbitrators supported the motion and it was adopted on 6 January 2011. On 9 January 2011, clerk NuclearWarfare pointed out that the motion does not address the community sanctions. Newyorkbrad apologized for the delay and proposed to copyedit the motion. He said that unless an arbitrator objects to the change he made to the motion ([1]), it will be considered adopted as if the Community sanctions have also been removed. As no objections were made, the motion was passed today.
Other
- The Committee decided to overturn the block of Turbotad (talk · contribs) after receiving "credible new evidence by email".
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Progress on 1.17
Foundation developer Rob Lanphier gave an update this week on the next milestone release of the MediaWiki software, version 1.17 (wikitech-l mailing list):
| “ | The code review group continues to make headway on the backlog of outstanding checkins in "new" status. We peaked at 1400 unreviewed check-ins [updates to the software] back in September, last month we were at 800, and now we're now under 300.
We *hope* this means we can push a 1.17 version of MediaWiki to production sometime this month, with a tarball [i.e. a release to non-WMF sites] available some time after that. That still looks like a bit of a stretch goal, but more plausible now than the last time this came up. |
” |
Due to the way Wikimedia wikis are run, they already benefit from some, but not all, of the updates present in 1.17. Most external sites have not yet been able to take advantage of these changes.
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.
- Signpost regulars will note the lack of an Engineering Update in this issue. The report due (January 2011) is still in draft form and should be published shortly. The Signpost will of course report on its contents when this occurs.
- Thumbnails and the upload preview will now be auto-rotated if a rotation is built into the metadata associated with an image e.g. by a digital camera (bug #6672).
- Users installing MediaWiki on their own servers will now have the option of easily subscribing to the announcements mailing list (bug #26550).
- svn.mediawiki.org is now an alias (alternative name) for svn.wikimedia.org when trying to access the MediaWiki Subversion repository (bug #26474).
- A range of new parameters have been added to the MediaWiki API, allowing users to get information about a page (interwiki links, external links, etc.) without parsing the page's wikitext directly (bugs #26480, #26483, #26484 and #26485).
- After a successful conversion on January 3, both Toolserver login servers, nightshade and willow, now run the Solaris operating system (toolserver-l mailing list and elsewhere).
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