Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-10-03
Italian Wikipedia shuts down over new privacy law; Wikimedia Sverige produce short Wikipedia films, Sue Gardner calls for empathy
Italian Wikipedia shuts down over new privacy law
Editors of the Italian Wikipedia have shut the site down in protest against a law currently going through the Italian parliament. User:Vituzzu, an editor on Italian Wikipedia, explained the reasons behind the debate:
Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built – neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents – are likely to be sunk permanently by paragraph 29 of an Italian Law also known as "DDL interception".
This legislative reform proposal, which the Italian Parliament is debating currently, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request without comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to their image. Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge: the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required in order to impose such correction to any website.
Conversely, anyone who feels offended by any contents published on a blog, an online newspaper and most likely, even on Wikipedia, can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the veracity of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.
Discussion in the "Bar" (equivalent to the English Wikipedia's Village Pump) resulted in broad support from editors for a "blackout", with all pages redirected to a page based on Vituzzu's words. This was done on October 4 and is still in force as of publishing time. The blackout has received some mainstream attention from various international news outlets; notable English-language reports include the BBC and the Washington Post. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) issued an official statement supporting the Italian Wikipedians. In notable individual reactions from the Foundation-l mailing list, Sue Gardner tentatively supported the move, and Mike Godwin, the former legal counsel for the WMF, applauded the news, saying "It's very hard to get a government to change its mind. You have to challenge government officials in a big, dramatic (and usually longer-lasting) way to get their attention and make them responsive." However, there were also dissenting views. Kat Walsh, a WMF board member, believed that a complete blackout may have been going too far:
I agree that for a protest to be effective, it must cause real disruption, enough to cause people to see the effect and get attention. I'm not even sure what I would suggest as an alternative--perhaps a shorter duration of complete blackout, and a gigantic sitenotice afterward (or beforehand)? Advertising the existence of mirrors? Allowing people to access articles in a tiny window below a gigantic notice? I'm not sure. I think the action that was done may be too much, that maybe something could have been done to generate as much attention without cutting off access as much.
Discussion among community members is continuing at Meta's Wikimedia Forum.
Three short films from Wikimedia Sverige
For the second largest book fair in Europe, Swedish chapter Wikimedia Sverige produced three short films about why different target groups should edit Wikipedia. These films covered librarians, teachers and senior citizens respectively. Wikimedia Sverige has offered to help out anyone who wants a version in their own language. More information and localization efforts here.
Brief notes
- Steward elections drawing to close: Voting in the second steward elections of the year is due to end on 6 October 2011.
- Gardner on the controversial image filter: Wikimedia Foundation chief executive Sue Gardner posted on her personal blog an entry entitled "Editorial judgement and empathy", where she describes what she feels is a lack of imagination from participants in the image filter discussion.
- Wikimedia UK outlines activity for 2012: Wikimedia's UK chapter has published a 2012 Activity Plan which outlines on what activities and programmes they intend to spend money on next year, although they stress that it is not a budget. In the next few weeks, the chapter has scheduled an extraordinary general meeting to amend the chapter's constitution as part of a longstanding effort to get formal charity status in the UK.
- New administrator: The Signpost welcomes Wikipedia's newest administrator, bot operator Anomie. A veteran with over six years of editing, Anomie runs three active bots. There are no current Requests for Adminship at the time of writing.
- Wikimedia Indonesia pilot project: On Friday October 7, the first session will take place in a new three month collaboration between Wikimedia Indonesia and the Lontar Foundation hoped to result in 300 new articles about Indonesian writers, their works, and related foundations and organizations.
- Milestones: The Macedonian, Kyrgyz, Zeelandic and Gagauz Wikipedias reached milestones this week, with 50,000, 2,000 and 1,000 and 1,000 articles respectively. The Simple English Wikipedia celebrated its 200,000 registered editor.
- Second time around for Wiki Loves Monuments: The Wiki Loves Monuments project enjoyed great success in its pan-European second annual contest, accounting for a haul of over 165,000 images added to Wikimedia Commons. Around 80% of the 5,000 participants are estimated to be new contributors to Wikimedia projects. In the coming months, judges will undertake the process of narrowing down the entries, culminating in an announcement of the winners in early December.
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QRpedia launches to acclaim, Jimbo talks social media, Wikipedia attracts fungi, terriers and Greeks bearing gifts
QRpedia helps GLAM augment reality with Wikipedia
This week, the Wikimedia Foundation put a blog post about QRpedia on the Foundation blog (QR Codes + Wikipedia). QRpedia is being used by a number of GLAM institutions including Derby Museum, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the National Archives at Kew to link exhibited objects to the Wikipedia pages about them. Unlike simply placing a QR code link, QRpedia uses content negotiation to direct the user to the most appropriate language version of Wikipedia if there is a version of the article in the language of the user's phone. So, if you scan the code pointing to an English article but your phone is set on Hebrew, if there is a Hebrew article, you'll be directed to that in preference to the English version.
Media reaction to the formal launch has been positive: Gizmodo's headline reads "How Wikipedia Is Making QR Codes Useful Again". ReadWriteWeb's headline was equally as glowing: "Wikipedia Unveils Probably the Coolest QR Thingy Ever Made". JESS3, who previously created a video to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia, mentioned QRpedia in an article on the Forbes website about QR codes, which included some "QR Art" combining QR codes and Lego.
Terence Eden, the British mobile software developer who built QRpedia, presented the project last week at the Over the Air conference at Bletchley Park. User:Ironholds introduced a note of skepticism in a post entitled "Is QRpedia really that great?", a question promptly answered in the comments by Terence and by Lori Phillips (User:LoriLee).
Jimmy Wales on why Wikipedia won't "like" Facebook anytime soon
So it turns out that people are social. They’re basically friendly. They get into fights and arguments, and they make up. And there are ways to help communities manage those things. So that human insight and also seeing how Wikipedia was functioning meant it was easier to really give genuine community control—to say, "Look the communities don’t need to be managed in a top-down fashion. They need support—they need some tech support, they need some social support."
Jimmy Wales, in AdWeek, September 27, 2011.
The Huffington Post interviewed Jimmy Wales at the recent OMMA Global conference in New York City. In an article titled "Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales Describes The Site's Hold-Out On Social Media", Wales is quoted as stating that Wikipedia has no plans to increase any integration with social media firms: "We’ve never been particularly good at partnering with people. Our community strives for neutrality in all respects: this applies to what is contained in the encyclopedia, but our community is also passionate about being vendor neutral.” Wales was skeptical towards the notion that Wikipedia users would want to publicise their activities on the site to their peers, arguing that browsing the wiki is a personal activity that ought not be broadcast on sites like Facebook. Wales spoke on related topics to AdWeek, who published the interview as "Fast Chat: Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia founder on engagement and why the ‘like’ button isn't enough". It focused on engagement with social technology and hyperconnectivity as well as the core importance to wikis of harnessing contributors passionate about the topic – and to advertisers of reaching these same enthusiasts.
In brief
- Fungi conservationists learn to edit Wikipedia: In the first issue of Fungal Conservation (PDF, see page 54–60), David Minter has written an article titled "Raising the profile of fungi on the Internet: editing Wikipedia". It discusses how mycologists and others interested in fungus conservation can edit Wikipedia and asks members of the International Society for Fungal Conservation to improve articles and send examples of article improvement back to the Society ("Our aim should be to make it look strange on Wikipedia if biodiversity is being discussed without fungi being mentioned"). The article also gives some sound practical advice on editing including to avoid getting involved in edit wars, to not create sockpuppet accounts, to not edit pages "in pursuit of a personal agenda or vendetta", and, specifically, to contribute to increase coverage of fungi topics rather than to evangelise for fungi conservation (an echo of WP:NOBLECAUSE!).
- Australian MP becomes Jack Russell terrier: The Herald Sun reports that the Wikipedia article about Australian MP Bill Shorten was vandalised: his photo being replaced by that of a Jack Russell terrier.
- Britannica iPad app reviewed: The tech columnist Walt Mossberg has reviewed the forthcoming Britannica app for iPad. The one article he mentions being found in Britannica but not in Wikipedia has since been created (Suzanne Douvillier).
- A dissenting voice on gender and social media: Amy Senger of "Changing the Ratio" kicked off Part III of her series on "Wikipedia's Battle for Diversity" for 1x57.com by declaring her derision for half of Sue Gardner's "Nine Reasons Why Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia" post, scoffing at such notions as women being too busy or conflict-averse to contribute to the project on an equal footing with their male counterparts. Demonstrating her priorities as a hypothetical leader of efforts to close the gender gap, Senger proposed increasing awareness of just why a dearth of contributions from women was harmful to the project, the addition of social media links to publicise female contributors' efforts (contra Jimmy Wales, see lead story above), and educating women to become familiar and adept at the MediaWiki interface. Senger rounded the post off with a link to her very own Seven Essential Steps to getting started with Wikipedia.
- Tumblr not outranking Wikipedia after all?: Wikimedia Foundation staffer Mani Pande wrote a blog post criticising TechCrunch's recent claims that Tumblr was now getting more pageviews than the Wikimedia Foundation websites. TechCrunch based their story on ComScore ratings which claimed Wikimedia sites were only getting 5.6 billion page views per month, while page view statistics from actual use shows 14.6 billion page views per month of Wikimedia-hosted sites. TechCrunch have not yet updated their story...
- MENA marginalized?: The University of Oxford's Oxford Internet Institute has initiated an effort at mapping contributions to Wikipedia from the predominantly Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Characterising Wikipedia as the region's "most visible and most accessed source of content...widely considered the first point of contact for most general topics", the researchers hope to ascertain the region's role and importance in the production of the site's knowledge. Specifically, they are looking to test the hypotheses that there is an underrepresentation of the MENA region compared to the rest of the world, that editors from MENA are underrepresented among contributors to these articles, and that "the centralized political structure of Wikipedia undervalues new contributors from MENA". The initial results are to be released on the Zero Geography blog. Wikipedia's Global Reach, a new initiative by Datatelling visualising Wikipedia statistic, may help shed light on the matter.
- Push to improve Greek Wikipedia: EMG reports that a new initiative has started that hopes to reach out to libraries, schools and universities in Greece to improve the Greek edition of Wikipedia.
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Kia ora WikiProject New Zealand
- Wikipedia Loves Libraries micro-conferences inspired by the GLAM WikiProjects and the Great American Wiknic are being held in cities across North America this month. Find one near you!
- The October Wikify Drive is underway. Barnstars are waiting for anyone who helps cut down the wikification backlog.
- Join the 2012 Bacon Challenge, an effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of bacon in time for National Pig Day at the beginning of March 2012. The Bacon WikiCup is being held concurrently. Join in the deliciously fun competition and earn an award for your efforts.
This week, we take our first look at WikiProject New Zealand. Started in September 2004 by SimonLyall, the Project has 90 members and is home to 16 Featured articles, 4 Featured lists, 41 Good articles and a Featured portal, with a total of over 26,000 assessed articles. The Signpost spoke with Project members Stuartyeates, gadfium, Schwede and Avenue.
Stuartyeates is a kiwi Wikipedian who has been contributing since December 2004. He says that, "contributing to the Project was a no-brainer, since the subject matter was all around me". An administrator at the English Wikipedia, gadfium is also an administrator and bureaucrat on the Māori Wikipedia. A long-term resident of New Zealand, he has also lived in Ireland, Australia and the United States, "which allows me to make an informed choice that New Zealand is a very nice place to live. To contribute about one's local area or country is almost a default position, with good reference material available in public and university libraries, and access to local knowledge from social networks". Originally from Germany, Schwede66 now lives in New Zealand, and has been on Wikipedia since October 2009: "I have an interest in politics, history and the built environment. Given that I live in Christchurch, WikiProject New Zealand is the logical home for me." Avenue has been a Wikipedian since November 2004: "I live in NZ too, so it's a natural fit, and there's plenty of overlap with my interests in geography and history."
Your Project has over 26,200 articles associated with it. How does the Project keep all these up to standard, and what are its biggest challenges?
- Stuartyeates: Largely by farming the work off to other teams. Most of the articles are associated with other teams and those other teams do a lot of good work that reflect well on us. In particular, I'm thinking of the folks at BLP and the various sporting WikiProjects. Internally, we have a number of task forces, which are very useful for supporting topical events (such as the current Rugby World Cup and the up-coming election).
- gadfium: I have a watchlist of over 11,000 items, and also rely heavily on shared watchlists such as WP:WNZV and the Wikiproject watchlist service.
- Schwede66: Initially, I was concentrating on WikiProject New Zealand/politics and in the last year, we've managed to create at least a stub for the remaining of the 300 or so parliamentary electorates and for the almost 1,400 Members of Parliament. So, that's great. But since the Christchurch earthquakes, and especially the February event, I've concentrated on heritage buildings, as they get pulled down faster than you can take photos of them. So, I'm involved in creating articles and improve those that are important to me.
- Avenue: The main challenge is that there is much more that could be done than hands to do it. Luckily, there is no deadline (except perhaps for a few current topics like those mentioned above). We do informally coordinate work at the New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board.
WikiProject New Zealand has 16 Featured articles, 4 Featured lists, 41 Good articles and a Featured portal. How did your Project achieve this and how can other Projects work toward this?
- Stuartyeates: Personally, I don't do much of the polishing of articles, I don't really have the attention to detail and fine-reading skills that are needed. What I do, whenever I see an article up for review or a help request, is to look at some of the local sources that Google doesn't cover so well, for appropriate references.
- gadfium: These figures are misleading, because some of the Featured/Good content has only a peripheral relationship to New Zealand. We have perhaps been too bold by tagging the talk pages of such articles as Queen Victoria and Antarctica as being of interest to our Project. In general, we have not had a focus on getting content to Featured/Good status, and left this to individuals or ad-hoc collaborations of editors.
- Schwede66: I've hardly ever worked on achieving GA; I personally focus on creating new articles, or improving stubs to C or B class.
- Avenue: I think the achievements are mostly due to individual enthusiasm, although having a small team involved can certainly make it easier. We also have at least a few Featured pictures and a couple of Featured sounds, plus a lot of recognised content on Commons.
Does WP:NZ collaborate with any other WikiProjects?
- Stuartyeates: We have a lot of overlap with the various sporting WikiProjects, a great deal in common culturally with WikiProject Polynesia and a friendly rivalry with WikiProject Australia (see Trans-Tasman rivalry).
- gadfium: While trans-Tasman rivalry certainly exists between our countries, and it is sometimes reflected in articles such as pavlova (food), I think the working relationship with WikiProject Australia has been collegial. Australian administrators have assisted us at times, for example, with the setting up of Portal:New Zealand, Wikimedia Australia has invited me to a conference and sent a rep to one of our meetups, and we had a joint collaboration some years ago on six o'clock swill.
- Avenue: There's overlap in all sorts of areas, but not much organised collaboration that I'm aware of. It seems to evolve with people's interests and events. We've had more help from WikiProject Earthquakes members over the last year, for instance, and not just confined to the recent quakes.
Do your members face any problems when it comes to translating sources or materials from the Māori language?
- Stuartyeates: Names is the single largest issue. Almost no inhabited places have legal names in New Zealand, and there is currently a movement to restore phonetic spellings to place-names. Thus, we have Ōtaki (NZ electorate) spelt with a macron, but Otaki, New Zealand and Otaki River (after which the electorate is named) without a macron. Even worse, sometimes official names go against entrenched English-language use, as in the case of Whanganui.
- gadfium: Unfortunately, we have few people with significant understanding of Māori, and only one editor (Kahuroa) with the ability to write it fluently. This means that although many members of this WikiProject have an interest in the Māori Wikipedia, it receives little attention. There is no real issue of translating from Māori as there is very little written in that language which is both suitable as sources and not already available in translation.
- Schwede66: I helped set up the Māori task force and it's great to have that group now, as there's always somebody there who can answer any Māori-related questions one might have.
- Avenue: Place-names are the main Māori language area I've dealt with. There have been some heated discussions over this in the past, but I think we've developed some good guidelines to deal with the controversial cases evenhandedly.
What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject New Zealand? How can a new contributor help today?
- Stuartyeates: From my point of view, the most pressing need is the plethora of sports-people stubs that we have. Particularly problematic is the period between the introduction of cheap air travel in the 1970s (which made travel to international events financially feasible) and the introduction of Internet-published newspapers (which make it easy to find good quality in-depth sources on those people who traveled).
- gadfium: There are still substantial gaps in our coverage of geographical locations, biographies of notable people, and coverage of historical events. For example, we have pretty decent coverage of Northland Region, but much less detailed coverage of Waikato Region. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography contains many biographies of people who do not yet have Wikipedia articles. We have a mid-sized article on the Musket Wars, but no articles on any of the more than 500 battles that conflict included; we have a decent article on the Pike River Mine disaster, but one sentence on the comparable Strongman Mine explosion.
- Schwede66: From my perspective, it is to document Christchurch's built heritage, as there won't be much left of it in another year's time. This deeply concerns me (outside of Wikipedia), as it's one of the reasons that tourists came to Christchurch, and I'm not sure what is going to happen to this most important industry. So at the very least, we should document what it is that we used to have.
- Avenue: Find an area you have a passion for, and get stuck in! For me, there are glaring gaps in our coverage of New Zealand's many volcanoes, but I'm sure you'll find big opportunities to contribute almost anywhere you look.
Anything else to add?
- gadfium: There was talk some years ago about starting a national chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, but that fizzled out. We had some encouragement from Wikimedia Australia this year and there's likely to be more discussion about it at the end of this year. I think we could benefit from having more organisation in New Zealand.
Next week, you'll learn to respect your elders. Until then, read about the good old days in the archive.
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Reviewers praise new featured topic: National treasures of Japan
Featured topic
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* National treasures of Japan (nom) was promoted, with 13 featured lists and one good article. Reviewers were extravagant in their praise of the candidate. National treasures are the most precious of Japan's tangible cultural properties, as determined and designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. A tangible cultural property is considered to be of historic or artistic value, classified either as "buildings and structures", or as "fine arts and crafts". Each national treasure must show outstanding workmanship, a high value for world cultural history, or exceptional value for scholarship.
The topic comprises articles on the following topics: castles, residences, shrines, temples, ancient documents, archaeological materials, crafts, paintings, sculptures, Chinese books, Japanese books (nominators Bamse and Truthkeeper88). pictures at the top and the right
Featured articles
Ten articles were promoted to featured status:
* Manchester Ship Canal (nom), a major feat of Victorian engineering and still one of the largest ship canals in the world, just a little shorter than the Panama Canal, which was completed 20 years later. (Malleus Fatuorum and Parrot of Doom) picture at right
* Turban Head eagle (nom), an early US coin, struck from 1794 to 1804. The nominator, Wehwalt, says the story "captures the primitive conditions of the US Mint in the early days; George Washington plays a far from insignificant role in the story." picture at right
* Astraeus hygrometricus (nom), is a star-shaped mushroom also known as the the barometer earthstar. The nominator, Sasata, says, "in a recent mushroom-collecting foray a few weeks ago I was fortunate to find dozens of these earthstars growing on a sandy bank outside a mixed forest in the Saskatchewan north. Naturally, I had no choice but to buff up the article." picture at right
* Dermotherium (nom), an extinct genus believed to belong in the family of colugos, a small group of gliding mammals from the forests of Southeast Asia closely related to the primates, containing two living species. Unfortunately, colugos have one of the poorest fossil records of all mammalian orders. The subject of this article are the fossil colugos discovered, including the only unambiguous fossil colugo ever to have been described. It is known from a handful of teeth and pieces of jaw from 25–35 million year old fossil sites in southern Asia. (Ucucha) picture at right
* George II of Great Britain (nom) (1683–1760), a native German-speaker and the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. (DrKiernan)
* 1991 Perfect Storm (nom), a nor'easter that absorbed Hurricane Grace and ultimately evolved into a small hurricane late in its life cycle, but which reached its peak intensity as a large and powerful cyclone that lashed the east coast of the US; it killed 13 people and caused many hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to property and infrastructure. (Juliancolton)
* Happy Chandler (nom) (1898–1991), a man who went from state senator to lieutenant governor to governor to U.S. Senator to Commissioner of Baseball and back to governor. "Chandler was a seriously busy nonagenarian who influenced Kentucky politics for the better part of six decades, says the nominator, Acdixon.
* Fairfax Harrison (nom) (1869–1938). The nominator, Ealdgyth says, for once from her, "something other than a bishop or a horse. So ... I present to you, an American lawyer, railroad executive, and historical writer. (See if you can figure out WHY I wrote about him?)"
* George Hirst (nom) (1871–1954), who the nominator Sarastro1, says "was a Yorkshire cricketer who played before the First World War, setting some pretty unrepeatable records and impressing everyone with what a nice chap he was. He was a very good all-rounder who was one of the first cricketers to deliberately make a cricket ball swing when it was bowled; this is currently the number-one weapon in top-level cricket. He later became a very respected coach who worked successfully with both Eton schoolboys and very rough-and-ready Yorkshire cricketers."
* Chester A. Arthur (nom) (1829–86), the 21st President of the United States, succeeding Garfield after the assassination. Arthur struggled to overcome suspicions of his beginnings as a politician from the New York City Republican machine, succeeding at that task by embracing the cause of civil service reform. (Coemgenus)
Two featured articles were delisted:
* Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 (nom: prose, comprehensiveness, referencing, neutrality and MOS compliance)
* Tuberculosis (nom: referencing)
Featured pictures
Six images were promoted. Please click on "nom" to view medium-sized images:
* Brazilian rice rat (nom; related article), rare and recently discovered. Reviewer Casliber said, "nice use of fill-in flash for an elusive little critter that I am sure was hard to photograph". (created by Luís Funez).
* Indian Palm Squirrel (nom; related article), which can be easily domesticated and kept as a pet (any takers?). It is found naturally in India (south of the Vindhyas) and Sri Lanka. In the late 19th century, the species was accidentally introduced into Western Australia, where it has since become a minor pest that is actively eradicated. "Fantastic resolution, cute critter", said reviewer Crisco. (created by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim).
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Four images were featured from a set of five scrolls designated as a National Treasure of Japan in the paintings category. This means that all five images from the original set of five 12th-century hanging scrolls, Extermination of Evil, are now featured. They appear in the related article, Extermination of Evil. Created by an unknown artist, they are just a small part of the rich array of treasures included in the new featured topic above.
* Vaisravana (nom; related article)
* Shinchu (nom; related article) picture at the top
* Shoki (nom; related article)
* Sendan Kendatsuba (nom)
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Last call for comments on CheckUser and Oversight teams
Two cases remain open, Abortion and Senkaku Islands; the second is very close to finished.
Last call for comments on candidates for appointment to the CheckUser and Oversight teams
The Arbitration Committee is still seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates presented for appointment to the CheckUser and Oversight teams (see previous Signpost coverage). Comments concerning the suitability or unsuitability of the individual candidates may be made publicly or submitted privately via email to the committee until 23:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC). It is expected that by October 10 appointments will be announced from the list of approved candidates:
CheckUser: 28bytes • AGK • Courcelles • Elockid • HelloAnnyong • Keegan • Kww • Mentifisto • WilliamH
Oversight: Courcelles • Fluffernutter • WilliamH
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
September Engineering Report published
The Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering Report for September was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. Many of the projects mentioned have been covered in The Signpost, including the switchover to protocol-relative URLs, the release of the new mobile site, and the ongoing deployment of 1.18 to Wikimedia wikis. The report's writers also chose to highlight a new roadmap of what the development team will be working on over the coming months (although the map appears considerably incomplete at time of writing).
Also announced were the successful replication of article text data from the WMF's main bank of servers, in Tampa, Florida, to the new data centre in Ashburn, Virginia; the first trials of basic Wikimedia Labs functionality; that the WMF was looking into ways of accepting text-based reviews of articles in addition to the current system of star rankings; and a recent overhaul to the system of gadgets (which will, it is hoped, allow for a WMF shared gadget repository). A test wiki that ran the very latest MediaWiki revisions (to emulate a process known as continuous integration, which Wikimedia hopes to adopt as a standard in the near future) is expected in early October, with full https support later in the month.
It was not all positive news, however. Also mentioned in the report, under the heading "lowlights", was the results of an investigation into three short outages that occurred on 26 September. The investigation concluded that the first was caused by an important cable being "accidentally knocked loose" during separate maintenance work (proposed solution: add more redundancy to the older server racks), that the second was caused by the 1.18 upgrade affecting the database cluster responsible for the CentralAuth login functionality (solution: potentially give it its own cluster), and that the third was caused by a combination of the 1.18 upgrade and a series of particularly expensive database queries being run at the time (solution: kill queries more effectively in future).
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.
- New edit visualisation tool: WikiTrip, the latest in a long line of article history visualisation tools and already described in an earlier Signpost issue, has now been released, according to a blog post on the GNUband blog. An example query results in an interface that attempts to show where edits originate, what gender editors describe themselves, the anonymous/registered editor balance, and, above all, how these changed over time for any given article.
- Alternative use for WebFonts?: Gerard Meijssen, a Wikimedian who was recently appointed to a new WMF internationalisation team, has blogged about a new use that has been found for the WebFonts extension. According to Meijssen, the extension, which had been designed with Indic scripts in mind, is now being used by a non-Wikimedia wiki to support Fraktur (a type of blackletter script most commonly associated with Germanic writing).
- Semantic MediaWiki celebrates sixth birthday: Semantic MediaWiki, a MediaWiki extension designed with adherence to the principles of the semantic web in mind, celebrated its sixth anniversary this week. The anniversary was accompanied by the news that the Free Software Directory (a project of the Free Software Foundation) has chosen to use Semantic MediaWiki to power its site.
- Renewed focus on new parser and Visual Editor: Lead Software Architect at the WMF Brion Vibber blogged about his progress with the new VisualEditor (a project deeply entwined with rewriting the MediaWiki parser to be altogether more predictable). In particular, Vibber noted that his efforts could be used to improve the existing parser, by allowing it to work asynchronously.
- To save or not to save: A discussion on the foundation-l mailing list this week focussed around the imminent collapse of the German open source hosting provider berliOS, due to financial difficulties. There were suggestions that a bailout package should be organised in order to save the expertise and networks of the site, which promotes free software development (it claims to host over 4700 open source projects). BerliOS had played an important role as a downtime backup in the early years of Wikipedia, David Gerard recalled.
- Wikibooks and Wikisource bug triage: The latest MediaWiki bug triage focussed around the Wikisource and Wikibooks projects, looking at what bugs of those projects most needed resolving and what could be done about them (wikitech-l mailing list). Among the most promising news from the triage was that LilyPond, an extension for displaying musical notation that is yet to be enabled on Wikimedia wikis due to security code, began to receive a large amount of code review after it was added to MediaWiki's central repository. A number of other bugs looked at, relating to performing the same action on a number of pages at the same time (watch, delete), also seem applicable for all Wikimedia wikis.
- Bugs:
- Interwiki bots and MW1.18 may be incompatible: There is some concern among users of the pywikipedia bot framework that their interwiki.py script - the basis for virtually all interwiki bots - is incompatible with the latest release of MediaWiki, causing all content except interwiki links to be removed from pages unexpectedly. Investigations are ongoing (wikitech-l mailing list).
- License information available via the API: after bug #17224 was fixed, any wiki's license information can now be found by simply utilising the
siteparamsoption of its API.
- RFC on the best place for new features: A renewed debate over the best place for features has broken out. Since MediaWiki can now ship with certain extensions by default, Oliver Beaton suggested in an RFC that the "core" MediaWiki installation should actually only include very basic functions relating to page editing, with everything else being modularised into extensions, some of which would be installed by default (wikitech-l mailing list).
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