Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-04-01
Who reads which Wikipedia? The WMF's surprising stats
The Wikimedia Foundation has released its latest report card for the movement's hundreds of sites. The WMF has published statistics since 2009, but only recently have they been expanded in scope and depth to provide a rich source of data for investigating the movement and the world it serves. Erik Zachte, who is from the Netherlands, is the driver of the WMF's statistical output—assisted, he told the Signpost, by "a bunch of colleagues". He has been a Wikipedian since 2002 and the Foundation's data analyst since 2008. Erik writes in his understated way that the report card and accompanying traffic statistics comprise "enough tables, bar charts and plots to keep you busy for a while".
The news is good in terms of the Wikipedias' popularity: monthly page views for the 285 sites rose by a healthy 25% from March 2012 to March 2013, including a 74% rise in views from mobile devices. The Wikipedias are viewed nearly 22 billion times a month—more than 8000 hits a second—or an average of 36 hits a year for every single human, all the more extraordinary for the fact that only about one in four of us uses the internet.
This week, the Signpost gives a thumbnail sketch of some of the statistics concerning page views among the Wikipedias, with a focus on the relationship between the world's major languages—particularly the global role of the English Wikipedia. What we found raises far more questions than it answers, and indicates the extent of the opportunities for using the statistics to analyse both internal and external phenomena.
The English Wikipedia (en.WP) receives 47% of the page views (down from 53% in 2009), and remains dominant among WMF sites. The next most popular WPs are the Spanish and Japanese (at just over 7%), the Russian (nearly 6%), the German (5.4%), and the French (4.2%).
- English Wikipedia more popular among many non-native speakers
Surprisingly, the average rate at which internet users view en.WP pages is higher in many countries than in the six major countries with a native English-speaking majority (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand—all red in Fig. 1). Among those six, en.WP is by far the most popular in Canada, with 16 views per month, and would be higher still if adjusted for the fact that more than one in five Canadians is a native speaker of French. The UK and Ireland came in next, with 13 views per month, followed by the US, Australia, and NZ on 11 per month.
The average views of en.WP among internet users in the global north is also 11 per month (roughly three-quarters of all views); Europe, North America, generate the same average; Oceania (Australia, NZ, and surrounding Pacific nations) generated 10; the global south views en.WP six times a month (a quarter of all views).
- The Arab world
The tangled consequences of European colonisation are evident in profound differences in WP usage among the two dozen modern nation states that have significant ties to Arabic (Fig. 2). At 79%, the Arabic WP page-view rate is highest in the small state of Comoros off the Tanzanian coast, against 11% for en.WP and 2.4% for the French WP. This turns out to be on the extreme end of Arab usage, with a steady fall to less than a quarter in some countries, in favour of the colonial languages: overall, the Arabic WP is still the minority choice, against the English WP and, in places that were French colonies, the French WP.
These inconsistencies suggest that WP choice is complex and multifactorial: the Signpost has been told that nothing is certain, but factors could include a combination of (i) the proportion of internet users who read English (or French); (ii) the perceived quality and/or scope of the Arabic WP versus that of the English (or French) WPs; and (iii) political, educational, or social pressure to use or avoid a certain WP. Each of these factors, if they did play a part, would probably be the result of a number of component factors. While countries that share other languages—such as in the Spanish-speaking world—also show internal differences in their rate of en.WP views, they are not nearly as pronounced as in the Arab world.
- The dynamics over time—country by country since 2009
Aside from the six major English-speaking countries, the WP viewing patterns of almost every country focus almost entirely on two WPs (in a few cases three); English is usually the second most popular, with tiny percentages going to other WPs. Over the past four years, the Arab world has seen particularly sharp movements away from the colonial languages towards the Arabic WP. Egypt, for example, has reversed from a 62/30 English/Arabic split to 40/53; this has been repeated almost exactly in Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent in some other Arab nations. Where French is a major choice, it too has tended to recede along with en.WP. To what extent is this related to the Arab Spring, and a sense of increasing pride and independence in Arab culture and language? And to what extent is it a product of any greater scope and depth on the Arabic WP?
Since 2009, this significant move away from en.WP to the WPs of local languages has been repeated around the world, although not usually as dramatically as in Arabic-speaking countries. There are many distinctive and unexplained patterns. A common scenario is a vacillation between the English and local-language WPs, quarter by quarter, with an unexplained shift to and from English in 2010. Taiwan (Fig. 3) shows the swing from Chinese to English in 2010, and another such swing more recently, in a mirror image characteristic of many countries. (Figs. 3–5 have two y-axes, which are scaled differently, and not from zero, to illustrate this mirrored relationship and to save space.)
Brazil shows a similar relation between English and Portuguese, although there has been a slight move towards en.WP over the past six months. Every Portuguese-speaking country had a precipitous drop in the use of the Portuguese WP in 2010, including Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, East Timor, and Portugal itself. The Signpost has yet to ascertain whether this, and indeed the peak in en.WP traffic around the same time, were artefacts of the data-gathering system.
Against the grain, the three German-speaking countries—Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—have all seen a move away from German and towards English. It has been suggested that this may be connected with a resistance by editors to the coverage of popular culture on the German WP. In Switzerland (Fig. 5), where French is also a major language, the popularity of German is more recently eroding in favour of English, and to a lesser extent French. Luxembourg has seen German usage fall significantly in favour of French and English. However, in neighbouring Belgium, both official languages—Dutch and French—have been gaining the edge on English.
Yet more is inexplicable. There has been movement from English to French in Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Guadeloupe, and Haiti; but from French to English in Réunion, Madagascar, and Rwanda, with gyrations between French and English in Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, among other African countries. Panama is one of the few Spanish-speaking countries to be moving towards en.WP.
- Expatriate choices—just one fascinating area for investigation
Interestingly, some major expatriate groups do not appear to align strongly with the WP of their native tongue: only 0.6% of American page views went to the Spanish WP, yet more than 12% of the US population speaks Spanish at home. Similarly, only 2% of views from Finland are to the Swedish WP, although nearly 6% of Finns are native Swedish-speakers and the language has equal status with Finnish as an official language. The WP preferences of minority language groups appears to be a complex issue. By comparison, large native Russian-speaker groups in countries such as the Baltic states that were assimilated into the Soviet Union for most of the 20th century appear to be using both the Russian and the local-language WPs in greater proportions at the expense of English.
Further information: Wikipedia Report Card: summaries for 50 most visited languages.
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Special: FAQs
- WikiProject Christina Aguilera has been launched and they could use your help
- The broad scope of WikiProject Animals in Media requires the work of many editors like you
- WikiProject U2 needs you
Instead of interviewing a WikiProject, this week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs. Included in today's Report are questions and answers that may prove useful to Wikipedia's newest editors as well as seasoned veterans.
- What is a WikiProject?
- Per the official definition, a WikiProject is a group of editors that wish to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a topic area (like tropical cyclones) or a specific task (deletion sorting). The WikiProject Council maintains a guide for starting and maintaining a WikiProject as well as a directory of WikiProjects.
- What was the first WikiProject?
- WikiProject Sports was created by Manning Bartlett in September 2001 to illustrate his proposal for the new entity he called a "WikiProject." However, there are a few modern projects like WikiProject Tree of Life that existed as loose collaborations prior to the invention of the WikiProject concept that were later adapted to serve as WikiProjects.
- How many WikiProjects are there?
- It is difficult to get an accurate count of WikiProjects since anyone can create a project at any time and the process for merging and deleting obsolete projects varies. Our best estimate comes from the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment system, which currently tracks the banners of 2,117 projects. However, it should be noted that this number may be inflated by projects that have merged into other projects or were reduced to task force status without updating the project's old banner template. On the other hand, this number excludes many WikiProjects that perform important functions but do not tag and assess articles, such as the Guild of Copy Editors.
- What's the biggest WikiProject?
- The size of a WikiProject depends on how you measure it. Looking at the number of articles tagged with the project's banner, the largest WikiProject is clearly WikiProject Biography with over one million articles under its scope. However, if we want to know which project has the most participants, there isn't a clear answer. participant lists are not standardized and many projects rarely update their participants rolls. As a result, the identity of the WikiProject with the largest number of participants remains a mystery.
- What's the smallest WikiProject?
- There are dozens of WikiProjects that have not tagged a single article, despite someone at the project taking the time to set up a banner that tracks articles. There are also project participants pages where none of the listed editors remain active.
- Is there a standard definition of a "successful" WikiProject?
- A successful WikiProject contributes toward Wikipedia's mission of building an encyclopedia. However, each project achieves success in their own way. Some projects set goals for themselves and track their progress, like WikiProject Military History. Others deal with a continuously changing landscape, responding to the concerns of editors (Teahouse) or trying to keep the growth of backlogs to a minimum (WikiProject Wikify). By tracking changes in a project's relative WikiWork over time, the productivity of projects that assess articles can be measured. Many projects showcase their successful endeavors by using JL-Bot to maintain galleries of their Featured content and Did You Know submissions. Ultimately, the only unsuccessful WikiProjects are those that don't do anything.
- How do you know if a project is active?
- Determining which projects have been abandoned can be difficult if nobody was left to turn out the lights. A project's automated functions and archiving may still be running, even if nobody is watching. Some projects feature outdated participants lists comprising people who have left Wikipedia or otherwise disappeared without much fanfare. Activity on a project's talk page may be the clearest sign of life available, assuming this activity isn't simply unanswered questions from editors outside the project. Further complicating matters, the editors of some projects prefer to work independently or communicate through external methods like IRC, resulting in an active project with an inactive talk page. The writers of the WikiProject Report often struggle with deciding which projects to interview since many interesting projects may look active on the surface, hiding a more depressing reality.
- Who determines whether a WikiProject is marked as active, semi-active or inactive?
- The terse answer: The project does. The real answer: Having a project determine its activity is like asking a corpse to decide when the deceased became deceased. While a few editors are courteous enough to hang a notice on the project's page when they know they're the last one to leave, most projects tagged as inactive or semi-active were tagged when someone outside the project stepped in.
- Under what circumstances are WikiProjects deleted from Wikipedia rather than marked as defunct or historical?
- Typically, projects are only deleted when they are "false starts" (incomplete projects that never got off the ground), serve as a repository for material that infringes on copyright laws, exist solely as an attack page, or have no other redeeming value. It is more common for semi-active projects to be merged into their parent project, sometimes as a task force. Most inactive and defunct projects are simply left intact with the hope that the materials and discussions collected by the project may become useful at a later date.
- How do you revive an inactive WikiProject?
- We've written extensively on the subject. Keep in mind that some projects have run their course while others have a scope that is too narrow or too broad to attract a sizable community of editors. If you still want to revive the project, a good way to start is by updating the participants list, inviting new participants, reaching out to active projects for help, and fixing any broken templates and automation. Start discussions on the project's talk page about how to improve the project's organization, goals, and collaborations. Reviving a WikiProject often feels like an uphill battle. Just don't get discouraged.
- Who can add articles to a WikiProject?
- Anyone can add articles to a project by attaching the project's banner to an article's talk page. Likewise, anyone can remove banners, so don't be surprised if the participants in a project determine that the article you tagged is not within their scope. Further discussion may be necessary at the project's talk page.
- Who can assess articles?
- Anyone can assess articles, although it is wise to read and follow any assessment guidelines unique to a particular project before deciding what "class" and "importance" should be assigned to an article. For instance, WikiProject Biographies has a unique importance structure with 200 "core" articles. Good Articles, Featured Articles, and Featured Lists are determined through processes independent of the WikiProject, so using those assessments inappropriately may have negative repercussions.
- Is there a limit to the number of projects that can add their banner to an article?
- No. Each project determines its own scope and can include whatever articles they like. For instance, Elizabeth II is under the scope of 18 projects and task forces while Barack Obama is handled by 22 projects and task forces.
- Some WikiProjects provide a WikiProject Watchlist and some do not. Why?
- As with all tools available to WikiProjects, not every project has set up a watchlist and some projects may not desire to have one. There are multiple types of watchlists a project can use, from Tim1357's watchlists to new article notifications to article alerts to hot articles. A project can choose whatever watchlists they want to use or even devise their own unique tools.
- What's the difference between a sister WikiProject and a related WikiProject?
- People tend to use them interchangeably, but the term "related WikiProjects" is broader than "sister WikiProjects." The terms "parent," "sister," and "child" provide a way of categorizing projects. An example of sister projects would be WikiProject Pittsburgh and WikiProject Philadelphia, while related projects would also include their parent projects (WikiProject Cities and WikiProject Pennsylvania in this case), and any child projects or task forces (WikiProject Pittsburgh Steelers and WikiProject University of Pittsburgh come to mind). However, one confusing bit about the term "sister projects" is that it has also been used to compare different wikis or languages of Wikipedia (i.e. Wikisource, Wikinews, Chinese Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, etc.) which is evidenced by the Signpost's defunct sister projects column.
- How do I participate in a WikiProject?
- Participating in a WikiProject is easy. Most projects have a participants list to which you can add your name. Next, you'll want to add the project's talk page to your personal watchlist so that you can keep up to date on the latest discussions and help editors in need. Check out the project's Featured and Good Articles for ideas about how to improve articles under the project's scope. Take a look at the project's goals or browse the project's stubs and start-class articles to find areas where you can help today. Projects may offer a userbox you can add to your user page as a sign of pride that also doubles as a way to add yourself to categories listing all users who are interested in a particular topic.
- What can I do to improve Wikipedia's community of WikiProjects?
- The WikiProject Council is welcome to anyone with ideas for building stronger collaborative links between WikiProjects. Feel free to suggest ideas for interviews, special reports, news, and announcements about WikiProjects for the weekly WikiProject Report in the Signpost. Participate in discussions at a variety of projects and try to answer the questions of newcomers. If multiple projects are working on the same article, try to recruit participants from these projects to collaborate. Host meetups for the participants in projects in a particular geographic area. Create contests and backlog drives that anyone can enter. We've interviewed projects that have used social media to recruit participants, partnered with educational institutions, and even manufactured their own games. Be creative and share your experiences with us.
Next week's interview will be earth-shattering. Until then, shake it up in the archive.
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What the ?
Crisco 1492 on ? and Indonesian cinema
The Signpost interviewed prolific featured content creator and former Signpost "featured content" report writer Crisco 1492 about ? and Indonesian Cinema. ? was the "Today's featured article" for 1 April 2013. 1 April is popularly known as April Fools' Day in many countries.
What inspired you to start the article ? and turn it into a featured article?
I first heard about ? from one of my students, who had had to watch it for her religion course at university. It sounded (and, ultimately, was) interesting, so I hunted down as much information as I could and turned it into a good article before it had been out for a year. When the DVD was (finally) released in early 2012, I decided to expand the article as best I could with the new sources; I also went into a more detailed search for reviews and other published reports. Ultimately the FAC passed in August after some helpful reviews.
The title was a bonus; it lent itself to a variety of possible April Fools jokes for 2012's DYK section (nomination), such as "Did you know ... that 150,000 people in ten days saw ??" When Prioryman suggested using the article for April Fools, I agreed wholeheartedly. I still call it the shortest DYK hook ever, and I guess we can add shortest TFA as well.
Is there anything that you find especially interesting about Indonesian films in general? Well, my major is in Indonesian literature, but I like to think of that field as part of Indonesian popular culture as a whole. As such, I've done some writing (both on and off Wikipedia) on films and music as well. I envision them as being in a sort of dialectical relationship, where earlier works inspire later works (in the same or different media), while witnessing these later works may also change how we see earlier works. Marah Roesli's Sitti Nurbaya, for instance, inspired a film, several stage plays, two TV series, and at least one song; seeing the characters and their actions visualised will naturally affect how we read and interpret the book.
Indonesian popular culture, including films, are quite different than the American popular culture I grew up with back in Windsor, so I guess I was first interested in it because it's exotic. Many of them are based on Indonesian folk tales, legends, and novels, or feature Indonesian culture and history which has generally not reached Hollywood. The General Assault of 1 March (note that it's a redlink, as of the time of writing) inspired three films in Indonesia, but has received no attention in foreign cinema. Even the Jakarta-based films, which tend to have greater Western influence, still show an Indonesian character which reflects the socio-political concerns of society. Some themes which we can see include unchecked development, human trafficking, the shadow of communism, and the relationship between Islam and society.
If someone who had never seen an Indonesian film wanted to watch a small number of them to get a feeling for Indonesian cinema, which films would you recommend?
If someone were to look for an introduction to Indonesian cinema, the experience would depend heavily on their personal tastes. If one loves physical comedy, the works by Warkop are a good place to start, but if one prefers low-brow comedy I'd recommend Quickie Express. Some films which should be fairly readily available can be found here. For action films, the easiest to find is certainly The Raid: Redemption, which has already had a US release. There are also biopics like Soegija and Habibie & Ainun, as well as horror films like Mystics in Bali to choose from. My personal favourite so far is Ibunda.
A few which I think are fairly important, which any student of Indonesian film should watch:
- Darah dan Doa, formally known as the first truly Indonesian film
- Krisis, the first blockbuster after the release of Darah dan Doa (Terang Boelan was the first in the area, but it's lost)
- Karmila, which began a trend of adapting novels to film
- Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI, one of the most successful propaganda vehicles of the New Order
- Petualangan Sherina and Ada Apa dengan Cinta?, two films which began a revival of the Indonesian film industry
Featured content
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers content promoted between 24 March and 30 March 2013.
Featured articles
- Fusō-class battleship (nom) by Dank and Sturmvogel 66. pair of dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I. They briefly patrolled off the coast of China before being placed in reserve at the war's end. These were the only two Japanese battleships at the Battle of Surigao Strait, and both were lost on 25 October 1944 to torpedoes and naval gunfire.
- Bob Feller (nom) by Zepppep and Wizardman. Feller (1918–2010) was an American Major League Baseball pitcher from 1936 to 1956. Feller pitched 3,827 innings and posted a win–loss record of 266–162, with 279 complete games, 44 shutouts, and a 3.25 earned run average. Feller first played for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 17, and became the first pitcher to win 24 games in a season before the age of 21.
- Persoonia linearis (nom) by Casliber. Commonly known as narrow-leaved geebung, the P. linearis is a shrub native to New South Wales and Victoria in eastern Australia. A member of the Lanceolata group, the narrow-leaved geebung can be found in dry sclerophyll forest on sandstone-based nutrient-deficient soils. It is rare in cultivation as it is very hard to propagate. Although, it adapts readily to cultivation.
- Cry Me a River (Justin Timberlake song) (nom) by Tomica. "Cry Me a River" is a funk and R&B song written by Justin Timberlake, Scott Storch and producer Timbaland, inspired by Timberlake's former relationship with pop singer Britney Spears. Recorded for his 2002 debut studio album Justified, the song received generally positive reviews from critics, and won a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. It peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100.
- Madonna in the Church (nom) by Ceoil and Truthkeeper88 and Johnbod. Also named The Virgin in the Church, the small oil panel by the early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, and likely executed between c. 1438–40, shows the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in a Gothic cathedral. First documented in 1851, its dating and attribution have been widely debated amongst scholars.
- Hurricane Carol (nom) by Hurricanehink and 12george1. Carol was among the worst tropical cyclones on record to affect the New England region of the United States. Developed from a tropical wave near the Bahamas, Carol made landfall on Long Island and Connecticut on August 31, 1954. The cyclone damaged about 1,000 houses, left 275,000 people without electricity, downed many trees, and resulted in heavy crop losses.
- Mascarene Martin (nom) by Jimfbleak. Also known as Mascarene Swallow, the Phedina borbonica is a passerine bird in the swallow family that breeds in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands. The species has grey-brown underparts becoming white on the throat and lower abdomen, dark grey-brown upperparts and a slightly forked tail. The Mascarene Martin feeds on insects in flight, often hunting low over the ground or vegetation.
- Ranavalona I (nom) by Lemurbaby. Ranavalona, also known as Ranavalo-Manjaka I, was the sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar from 1828 to 1861, following the death of her young husband, Radama I. Governing under a policy of isolationism and self-sufficiency, she reduced economic and political ties with European powers and took vigorous measures to eradicate the Malagasy Christian movement initiated by members of the London Missionary Society.
- Ramaria botrytis (nom) by Sasata. Commonly known as the cauliflower or clustered coral, the R. botrytis is an edible species of coral fungus in the family Gomphaceae. First described scientifically in 1797 by mycologist Christiaan Hendrik Persoon, it is a widely distributed species found in North America, North Africa, central and eastern Europe, Australia, and Asia. The fungus contains several bioactive compounds.
- Juwan Howard (nom) by TonyTheTiger. Howard (born 1973) is an American professional basketball player who plays for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association. A one-time All-Star and one-time All-NBA power forward, he began his NBA career as the fifth overall pick in the 1994 NBA Draft by the Washington Bullets. He became the first NBA player to sign a $100 million contract.
Featured lists
- National Hero of Indonesia (nom) by Crisco 1492. The National Hero of Indonesia is the highest-level title awarded in Indonesia, and posthumously given by the Government of Indonesia. A total of 144 men and 12 women from all parts of the Indonesian archipelago, and representing numerous ethnicities, have been deemed national heroes.
- List of American football teams in the United Kingdom (nom) by Bald Zebra. American football was introduced to the United Kingdom during the early part of the 20th century, and the first match took place on 1910 by teams from the crews of the USS Idaho and USS Vermont. The first teams open to British players were established in 1983, and hundreds of clubs have since been formed.
- List of Star Trek: The Next Generation cast members (nom) by Miyagawa. Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series that debuted in 1987 and lasted until 1994. A follow-up to the original Star Trek series, The Next Generation was developed by creator Gene Roddenberry.
- Sarah Connor discography (nom) by Till. German singer Sarah Connor has released seven studio albums, one compilation album, one holiday album, two video albums, twenty-one singles and twenty-one music videos throughout her twelve-year carrer. Her debut, Green Eyed Soul, was released in 2001 and became a commercial success in Germany.
- List of Presidents of Pakistan (nom) by Sahara4u. Pakistan has had eleven presidents as well as two acting presidents since the office was established when Pakistan was declared as a republic with the adoption of the 1956 constitution. Iskander Mirza became the first to hold the office; four presidents were military officers and three of them gained power through successful military coups.
- Timeline of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season (nom) by TropicalAnalystwx13. The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons since records began in 1851 in which nineteen named storms formed. Beginning on June 1, it produced twenty-one tropical cyclones, of which nineteen strengthened into tropical storms; twelve became hurricanes, and two further intensified into major hurricanes.
Featured pictures
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- German Hannover CL III (nom) created by Pvt. J. E. Gibbon of the U.S. Army, restored and nominated by Keraunoscopia. The Hannover CL.III was a World War I aircraft of Germany.
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- Haddon Hall (nom) created by M. Browne and Herbert Railton, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden. Haddon Hall is a light opera. The music was written by Arthur Sullivan, and the libretto by Sydney Grundy.
- Percival Lowell observing Venus (nom), created by an unknown photographer in 1914, restored and nominated by Nagualdesign. The Lowell Observatory is in Flagstaff, Arizona and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Percival Lowell (March 13, 1855 – November 12, 1916) was an American astronomer.
- The Scout in Winter, 1908 (nom) created by Edward S. Curtis, scanned by the U.S. Library of Congress, restored and nominated by Keraunoscopia. The photo shows a Crow scout mounted on his horse in the mountains, in what is now the United States state of Montana.
- Cheetahs on the Edge (Director's Cut) (nom) created by Gregory Wilson and nominated by Russavia. Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus)) inhabit much of Africa and parts of the Middle East. This video shows a cheetah's run in slow motion. Cheetahs can run faster than any other land animal, at up to 112 - 120 km/h (70 - 75 mph).
- The Situation Room (photograph) (nom) created by Pete Souza and nominated by Crisco 1492. The Situation Room is a photograph taken by White House photographer Pete Souza which shows U.S. President Barack Obama and members of his national security team as they received updates about Operation Neptune Spear. Osama bin Laden was killed during the operation. The photo has been the subject of much commentary in the media, especially about the role of women and the style of Obama's leadership suggested by the photo.
- Martha Washington (1891 $1 Silver Certificate) (nom) created by U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, scanned and nominated by Godot13 at the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. Martha Washington is the only woman to have appeared on a U.S. banknote. Her likeness appears here on a $1 silver certificate from 1891.
- U.S. Banknotes (Hawaii overprint series) $1 Silver Certificate (1935-A), depicting George Washington (nom) created by U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, scanned and nominated by Godot13 at the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. Hawaii overprint notes were issued after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii during World War II. The notes were created and substituted for regular U.S. notes in Hawaii so that if the Japanese captured Hawaii, any currency captured by the Japanese would likely have the "Hawaii" overprint and could be recognized and declared worthless by the U.S. government. This image is part of a set of Hawaii overprint notes.
- U.S. Banknotes (Hawaii overprint series) $5 Federal Reserve Note (1934-A), depicting Abraham Lincoln (nom) created by U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, scanned and nominated by Godot13 at the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. This image part of a set of Hawaii overprint notes.
- U.S. Banknotes (Hawaii overprint series) $10 Federal Reserve Note (1934-A), depicting Alexander Hamilton (nom), scanned and nominated by Godot13 at the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. This image part of a set of Hawaii overprint notes.
- U.S. Banknotes (Hawaii overprint series) $20 Federal reserve Note (1934-A), depicting Andrew Jackson (nom), scanned and nominated by Godot13 at the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. This image part of a set of Hawaii overprint notes.
- 1924 United States Naval Academy map (nom) created by C.E. Miller, edited and nominated by Awardgive. The United States Naval Academy, sometimes called Annapolis, is a four-year co-educational military academy that was established in 1845. It educates officer candidates for commissioning into the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. There have been several changes to the Academy grounds since the creation of this map in 1924.
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Funding for the Wikipedia Library and six other projects; April Fool's Day ructions
IEGs awarded
The first round of individual engagement grants (IEGs) have been awarded to seven applicants.
The IEG program was introduced in January 2013 to empower individual or small teams of volunteers to tackle long-term on-wiki problems; it covers tasks largely outside the scope of other WMF programs like entity-focused FDC or GAC procedures. The Foundation reaches its final funding decisions based on community input and a volunteer committee's recommendations. The first round of proposals were reviewed in a community consultation period and assessed by the volunteer committee.
This round's grants covered a wide range of topics, including building awareness in China, art schools' contributions to Wikimedia sites, Wikisource–Wikimedia integration, developing a way to browse Wikipedia's structured data, a visual diff system an educational game (the Wikipedia Adventure), and a system that allows editors to browse multiple research archives at once (The Wikipedia Library). The largest amount disbursed was US$15k (€11.6k) for the structured data viewing, followed closely by $13k (€10k) for the Wikisource project; in total, roughly $55.6k (€43k) was awarded.
The Signpost asked Ocaasi, the editor behind the Wikipedia Adventure and Wikipedia Library proposals, about his thoughts on the IEG process and his idea to open paywalled online research archives for Wikipedians.
On the subject of the IEG project itself, Ocaasi called attention to the interface and the design of the page (created by WMF staffer Heather Walls), both of which are highly user-friendly. In his estimation, "the pages don't feel like they're made with markup."
In addition, the individuals involved in the grant selection process itself, including Siko Bouterse—the Foundation's head of IEG grants—and the volunteer committee—which Ocaasi joined but recused from, due to his proposal—were able to help him craft, shape, and refine his proposal. In particular, these individuals were the key to ensuring that his proposal could be run completely independent of the Foundation; this is one of the major differences between IEG and the discontinued Wikimedia Fellowship program.
Ocaasi told the Signpost that after the committee recommended funding his proposal, he was faced with a period of intricate questioning that challenged and/or focused on the weakest parts of his proposal. This "frank" discussion was something that he credited with keeping his expectations pragmatic and his budget conservative. On his project to open paywalled archives to Wikipedians, named the Wikipedia Library, Ocaasi said that the idea came from the news archives of HighBeam Research:
| “ | My spark of inspiration came while researching an article on an alternative medicine figure. In a compulsive quest to exhaust the resources [available on them], I realized that I didn't have access to some news archives that HighBeam Reference did have. So I signed up for a free trial and added around 15 new references. I realized I'd regret not having the same ability in the future, so I had a wild idea to call up HighBeam and ask them for a free account as a Wikipedia editor. And, then the wheels started churning, and I thought, If I'm going to get one for me, why not ask for some more? HighBeam's response blew me away: "How about 1000?" That right there got me hooked—the ability of Wikipedia to open doors with other organizations in a way that can come around to benefit Wikipedians en masse. | ” |
These accounts are typically extremely expensive for the partner institutions; giving them away, especially with a medium-term goal of 2,000 accounts and a long-term goal of 10,000, is likely to represent a significant loss in revenue. What do they gain or ask from these agreements? Ocassi illuminated the reasoning behind such moves, saying that it has been "both altruistic and mutually beneficial". The altruism aspect is clear, as giving away free accounts to the dominate internet reference site furthers the information available to the world.
The mutually beneficial aspect is not so obvious. The site allows Wikipedians to discover and add information they may not have otherwise found. The donating institutions, on the other hand, "gain increased visibility of their site in our community through the account sign-up process, some positive publicity in blog mentions and the social media, and their site may be linked in article references." However, Ocassi told us that in the latter case, full bibliographic information needs to be used so that editors and readers are given a chance to find a free copy, should they not have access to the archive.
Where do the GLAM-Wiki movement and regular Wikipedians fit in with the "Wikipedia Library" plan? While Ocaasi told us he believes the Library and GLAM-Wiki are "natural partners", he said it is very different from a GLAM project in the traditional sense, since it is not about "having institutions freely license content or learn how to edit articles about their collections ... we're looking for material donations to proprietary databases and resources." As for Wikipedians, they could play a central role in forming the planned central website for Wikipedians to log in and access multiple archives at once: "In a later phase of the project it would likely be necessary to have a staff person with library information management expertise and/or an expert in security authorization (OpenID, SAML) to contribute. A drastically effective shortcut would be piggy-backing on an existing University Library's system so that we could gain access through that portal and not have to individually configure every donor ourselves." He asks that people contact him if they have a connection to someone like this at a university, research institution, or major public library.
Beyond that, he says what Wikipedians can do most to help is simple: sign up and use these resources. This will show potential partner institutions that that there is demand for such a project, a project whose final goal is far-reaching: "I want the most active Wikipedia editors to have free and full access to as many or even more resources than the finest research libraries and universities in the world."
April Fool's Day controversy
The English Wikipedia's April Fool's Day main page was the subject of controversy this week, as editors opposed the addition of non-serious content.
As Wikipedia:April Fools notes, "every year [on 1 April], some editors decide to pull a few pranks on Wikipedia. It is traditional to have a mischievous Main Page on this day." "Mischievous" has ranged from blatant hoaxes (like the infamous announcement that the Encyclopædia Britannica was going to take over the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects), to the layouts seen today (typically strangely worded yet true statements), and the bizarre (like the gigantic question mark for the day's featured article).
Most of the main page's sections participate, but "In the news" (ITN) has been alone in rejecting it, only carrying one item in 2011 and none in 2012 or 2013. Opposition to including foolish-day-centric content at ITN included the time sensitivity of the regular, serious news. Opposition to having a foolish main page, however, coalesces around the usual serious nature of the Wikipedia site as a whole, as contrasted what was seen as the immaturity of April Fool's Day jokes. HiLo48 took a rather combative tone, decrying the changed nature of Wikipedia on the day: "The point is that we are not at all important. That's why everything here is sourced to someone or something else. Everything, that is, except the April Fool's garbage created by self-appointed fiction writers (otherwise known as editors). By creating April Fool's jokes you are declaring yourself to be important, and you're not." Those against such jokes made statements such as calling on Wikipedians to "not damage the WMF trademark, remembering that many native English-speakers could give a dump about April Fool's Day, and most non-natives don't know about it."
There was also a proposal to abandon any April Fool's jokes for 2014, with a chance to assess whether that practice should be continued after 1 April, but it was quickly opposed. Given a chance to expound on his views, the proposer declined to comment, saying that he had gone through enough vitriol in the aftermath of his proposal.
The Signpost talked with two editors who participated in April Fool's Day discussions. Crisco 1492, the author of the day's featured article (and the subject of a related interview in this week's "featured content") told us:
| “ | From a purely practical standpoint, Wikipedia's editors are capital for the project. Like any business or organisation, without capital Wikipedia cannot grow and propagate. ... without capital (writers), the project will die. ... we should recognise that most people edit Wikipedia as a hobby, a way to pass the time, while still having a life outside of the encyclopedia. Like any hobby, the ultimately goal is to find a sense of pleasure, to find some fulfillment. ... Having an April Fool's page gives writers (and readers) something to look forward to, and lets them let steam free without resulting to personal attacks or vandalism. I read a comment by someone which really resonated with me: it's better to have a day of foolishness for fun than the three or four months of foolishness veiled as serious work. | ” |
He went on to express support for the "misleading, yet accurate" stories Wikipedia has run since 2007, and gave a four-point summary of his personal opinion:
- Keep it factual
- Keep it out of article space (the Main Page excluded)
- If reverted, do not edit war
- Keep an open mind.
On the issue of what makes Wikipedia different from other major online presences, like Google, who conduct elaborate April Fool's Day jokes, Allen3 told us:
| “ | Wikipedia is a loose collection of volunteers while the other organizations generally have strict corporate control structures. At a newspaper, an editor can direct a team of individuals to work on a single coordinated effort. The newspaper's management can at the same time ensure that no other part of the organization disrupts this effort or attempts to engage in alternative April Fool's efforts. This level of cooperation and coordination is not possible on Wikipedia. If one person does not agree with a course of action there is little stopping them for branching out and starting a competing effort. | ” |
How much of the traditional humor, which is based around perceived dirty words (like this year's "Did you know... that Polish girls are getting wet and spanked today, but will have their revenge tomorrow?", could be improved to satisfy the complaints of some editors? Allen3's answer was complex: to get 'good' humor, one must provide incentives for it, like "preferential times and placements". Such humor, though, can be difficult to find; often "creating a quick article with a dirty word in the title" is far easier than crafting a "truth is stranger than fiction" article.
The Signpost invites readers' views on the talk page.
In brief
- English Wikipedia
- Birth date format: There is an open request for comment (RfC) on the proper date format when disambiguating articles.
- Quarterly update: The first of four short updates on all of the changes made in Wikipedia content policies in the first quarter of 2013 is available for reading.
- Paid editing: A BP employee's participation in rewriting the company's Wikipedia article—and the accompanying debate—has received press attention in two articles from Violet Blue on cnet and sdnet. The information is now included in the company's article, although some editors disagree on its notability.
- New administrator and bureaucrat: The English Wikipedia has a new administrator, Nthep, who passed with only one oppose. The beginning of 2013 has been the most successful three-month-period for the requests for adminship process since early 2010. Also, in a rare sight, Wizardman has become a bureaucrat with 175 in support to five opposed. He is the first to pass a request for bureaucratship since August 2012.
- XKCD supports WMF: The popular webcomic XKCD has generated more than US$45k for the Wikimedia Foundation through a link embedded at the bottom of its 1 April comic.
- Political party affiliations on Wikipedia: The Los Angeles Times has reported on a study suggesting that politically active people can and do overcome their normal partisan affiliations if they are collaborating and communicating in a common cause with others from the political spectrum.
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences: A new "Wikipedian in Academy" position has been created to foster a collaboration between the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wikipedia. The Wikipedian in Academy, Arild Vågen, wrote for the Wikimedia blog that "Swedish universities have three statutory responsibilities—research, education, and science outreach ... Contributing to Wikipedia is of course the single most effective way to achieve science outreach (fulfill the third task) in higher education; there is simply no other platform which allows you to reach so many readers."
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Three open cases
Open cases
This case, brought by Lecen, involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877). An editor is accused of systematically skewing the articles, as well as Spanish language sources, in order to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentinian "nationalists" or "revisionists".
The arbitration committee, not being expert in Argentine history or fluent in the Spanish language, asks for any "uninvolved editors with subject-matter expertise" to participate in the evidence and workshop phases of the case, to help determine "whether the allegations of use of highly disreputable and unreliable sources, quotation of Spanish-language sources incompletely or out of context, and the like appear to have merit."
The evidence stage is scheduled to close 12 April 2013, and a proposed decision is scheduled for 26 April 2013, though these dates may be extended by the recent floods in Buenos Aires, which have adversely affected an editor involved in the case.
This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute about transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.
This case was brought to the Committee by KillerChihuahua, who alleges the discussion over this American political group has degenerated into incivility. Evidence for the case was due by March 20, 2013, and a proposed decision scheduled for April 3, 2013.
Other requests and committee action
- Request for clarification: Transcendental meditation movement A request for clarification was made by Keithbob regarding the transcendental meditation movement, which is under discretionary sanctions. Clarification is requested of whether sanctions apply to all articles in the topic area or only articles that have a tag, and a related question of whether a tag is necessary on the talk page of an article where no problem has arisen. Also under discussion is who may impose sanctions and who may place tags.
- Amendment request: Rich Farmbrough: An amendment request was made by Rich Farmbrough to amend a motion in an arbitration case involving automated edits. While the request was still in progress, the requester was blocked for one year after an arbitration enforcement request, which also involved automated edits. After Farmbrough was blocked, an error was discovered in the links he had posted as evidence; he had posted the same link three times. The corrected links have now been posted. Farmbrough’s block limits him to his user pages and does not allow him to comment further on arbitration pages, but some discussion was carried to Farmbrough’s talk page, as well as the talk page of the blocking administrator.
- Request for amendment: GoodDay: An amendment request was made by GoodDay to lift an editing restriction related to diacritics.
- The arbitration committee had previously issued a call for applications for three vacancies for non-arbitrator members to the subcommittee, to be submitted before April 1, 2013. However, during a discussion on the noticeboard talk page, a statement from the foundation's legal team indicated that "...we require an RFA or RFA-identical process for access to deleted revisions." The committee has now clarified that applicants for the vacancies must be administrators.
- Procedural issues at WP:Arbitration Enforcement: A request for clarification has been brought by Gatoclass regarding whether an administrator can "act in a request" involving 1RR restrictions, whether an administrator can act when an editor has not received a formal warning, whether an administrator can adjudicate in an appeal if they adjudicated in the decision that lead to the appeal, and whether an administrator can issue a warning before consensus on a request has been reached.
- Monty Hall problem: An amendment request has been made to the committee by Martin Hogbin for amendment of the remedies, including removal of discretionary sanctions.
- Clarification request: Climate change: A clarification request of the climate change case was filed by NewsAndEventsGuy, who requests clarification of who can post arbitration enforcement notices to talk pages and add to the notifications, blocks, bans, and sanctions log.
- Clarification request: Discretionary sanctions appeals procedure: A request to clarify the appeal process for discretionary sanctions warnings was filed by Sandstein
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Wikidata phase 2 deployment timetable in doubt
English Wikipedia and other Wikidata deployments likely to be delayed
As previewed in last week's "Technology Report", users of ten Wikipedias including Italian and Russian – in total accounting for some 10% of all visits to Wikimedia sites – this week got access to phase 2 of Wikidata following its first rollout to production wikis (Wikimedia Deutschland blog).
The primary focus of this second phase is the introduction of a new {{#property}} parser function. The function retrieves a named property of a given Wikidata item (at time of writing, that item must be the one linked to the current page). Thus, using {{#property:p169}} will retrieve the "CEO" property attached to the current page, if any. The team behind Wikidata reports that they are close to deploying the code necessary to allow editors to use the alternative syntax {{#property:chief executive officer}}, as well as allowing them to retrieve properties of arbitrary items (the population of Paris on the article for the Eiffel Tower, for example).
Although the 27 March rollout initially appeared to be wholly a success, WMF Site Architect Asher Feldman quickly raised serious concerns about its impact on site performance. In particular, in a post to the WMF Operations mailing list, he judged two serious "jobqueue related" site outages on 28 March to be the fault, in part, of the ramping up of Wikidata. In both cases, Wikidata's change propagation mechanism had added large numbers of jobs to the jobqueue, a part of Wikipedia site maintenance widely acknowledged to be creaking around the edges. Under the strain, the under-performing job queue caused all WMF slave databases to lag, Feldman noted, ultimately causing the downtime for editors.
"The good thing is," Feldman added "the jobqueue was identified as a scaling bottleneck a while ago, and will be [upgraded] very soon." In the meantime, the Wikidata team report they are also working to limit the pressure Wikidata places on the jobqueue. They hope to avoid performance questions delaying the further rollout of Wikidata phase 2 to other client wikis (including the English Wikipedia) over the next month.
In related news, WMF Editor Engagement specialist Steven Walling gave his concerns about the Wikidata implementation currently being rolled out and, in particular, the difficulty new users will have in working out where property values can be changed (answer: the item page on wikidata.org). The problem might be solved in the short term with the addition of overt "[edit]" links and in the longer term via integration with the VisualEditor, it was suggested.
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 several weeks.
- Make wikitech.wikimedia.org "developer hub", says co-ordinator: WMF Technical Contributor Coordinator Quim Gil has suggested a radical shaking up of the series of wikis devoted to developer support, most notably centralising information into two wikis. The first, MediaWiki.org, would be trimmed down to content aimed at MediaWiki reusers, including installation instructions. The second, wikitech.wikimedia.org, would be beefed up from its current form by receiving documentation relating to developer support. In this way, it would become a "developer hub", Gil wrote, covering "API, reference docs, howtos, tutorials... including bots, gadgets and templates", making it easier for new or more casual contributors to get involved. A related proposal would leverage Semantic MediaWiki and its extensions to provide "nodes" (mockup pictured right) on wikitech.wikimedia.org. In an admission that the Groups framework he founded earlier late last year (see previous Signpost coverage) had not proved successful, these nodes would help create informal groupings around common interests, Gil argued. Criticism of the proposals has so far centred on the extent to which a division between "user" and "developer" is possible when so many users are developers and so many features needed by both (e.g. API documentation).
- The "Special:ActiveUsers" page was removed due to performance concerns, and a thread was started on mediawiki-l about it.
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