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14 August 2013

 

2013-08-14

"Beautifully smooth" Wikimania with few hitches

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By The ed17
Attendees after the closing session of Wikimania 2013.

About a thousand Wikimedians journeyed to Hong Kong this week for the annual Wikimania conference, the annual gathering of the Wikimedia movement. Wikimania, which has been held since 2005, serves as the principal physical meetup for Wikimedians around the world. This year marked the first Wikimania in East Asia since 2007, when it was held in nearby Taiwan. Locations since then have been in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.

Wikimania 2013 was planned by Wikimedia Hong Kong and held in Hong Kong's Polytechnic University. While it was nominally only three days long, it was preceded by a two-day pre-conference where the Chapters Association imploded (and is now "on life support", according to one Wikimedian), the Education Program held a successful planning session, and developers met to discuss their projects and strenuously avoid using the term "hacking" (see Signpost coverage).

Opening speeches, Makoto Okamoto
Makoto Okamoto

Conference-goers attending the opening day were treated to a traditional Chinese dragon dance before being welcomed by Hong Kong's Chief Information Officer Daniel Lai in his opening keynote. A notable address was given by Makoto Okamoto, who explored an area many Wikimedians had never heard of, especially given the near-total lack of interaction from Japan with the wider movement. Okamoto was a key figure in founding saveMLAK, an ongoing effort to document damage to Japanese museums, libraries, archives, and Japan's great "kominkan" cultural centers. The saveMLAK site was formed in April 2011 from the merger of four websites, each of which had covered one of these four topics. Three languages are used: English, Japanese, and Chinese. Each page is supposed to include a fact sheet about the location, a list of damage, and its operational status, along with information for victims, supporters, institutions, and various ways of how outside individual can assist.

saveMLAK has 300,000 total edits, 30,000 pages, and 300 editors. Looking at these statistics, 80% of the articles were created by bots—more than the Swedish Wikipedia, which the Signpost reported on in June. Of the editors, 38 edited more than 100 times, and 90% had previous experience with MediaWiki-based sites.

Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales' traditional "State of the Wiki" address focused on journalism in the context of global relations and Edward Snowden's revelations (see this week's Signpost special report). Items relevant to the Wikimedia movement came at the beginning of his speech, where he highlighted the milestones reached in the past year; there are now 28 million articles and 286 language editions, of which 120 have more than ten thousand articles, 46 have more than a hundred thousand, and eight have more than a million. Those eight are a doubling of the four million-article club a year ago, with the addition of the Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish Wikipedias. Wales also covered the election of the new chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, Jan-Bart de Vreede.

Wales awarded his annual "Wikipedian of the Year" award to Rémi Mathis, the chair of Wikimedia France and, until April 2012, a volunteer administrator on the French Wikipedia. Mathis was called into the offices of France's interior intelligence service, DCRI, to delete an article that allegedly contained classified information (see Signpost coverage).

The topic in question is a military radio station in south-central France. It was and still is unclear just what parts of the original article were classified, given that it in large part followed a publicly available video (made with full cooperation of the French Air Force), and DCRI refused to give the Wikimedia Foundation any indication as to what was problematic. In any case, the article, after being restored by a Swiss administrator, became a textbook example of the Streisand effect, where attempting to censor an item leads to it getting far more publicity than it would have otherwise.

Just last week, the DCRI refused to answer a question about the Wikipedia debacle from a French Assembly member.

Charles Mok
Mok's keynote, titled "One Internet, Two Systems: Internet in China and Hong Kong", examined the differences between mainland China's censorship and Hong Kong's unfiltered web

Charles Mok, an Internet entrepreneur and holder of Hong Kong's Information Technology legislative seat, used his keynote speech on the second day to speak about China's relationship with the Internet. More Chinese people use the Internet than one might think; out of 2.7 billion Internet users in the world, just over 20% (or 591 million) of them are Chinese. That staggering number is at just 44.1% penetration, and is nearly double the United States' entire population. There are also 461 million mobile users.

These numbers come with a caveat, in that regular Chinese citizens outside of Hong Kong and Macau face Internet censorship. Mok examined how this censorship has changed in recent years, from heavyhanded blocking to subtle methods that can emulate a 404 error. The Chinese government is also less concerned about blocking every single offending website. Mok theorized that they realize that some information must get through to sate the public's demand for it, so they concentrate on stopping the largest problems before they go viral. Should this fail, they have a well-oiled system of message control and downplaying sensitive news to fall back upon.

Mok stated that new regulations are coming into effect that will make it more difficult for Chinese citizens to freely post their opinions. The Chinese government will begin implementing a real-name policy in June 2014, where contributors to online forums will be forced to register with their real names. There are also new Internet privacy regulations coming that were announced in April 2013, though the notion of such rules when the government is also pursuing content monitoring and mandatory reporting of state secrets is a rather unsettling prospect.

Currently, it is possible to skirt the edge of the firewall and get your messages across. Animated GIFs, which cannot be blocked by an automated text search, are commonly used alongside coining new, unique terms to describe a nominally filtered politician or incident.

This can be juxtaposed against the unfiltered Internet in Hong Kong, which is relatively legally free. There are freedom of communication and privacy laws, which are tempered by a broad provision that bans accessing a computer with a criminal or dishonest intent. This law has snared offenders ranging from hacking, cyber attacks, putting out fake government press releases, and under-the-skirt photographs of women. Also of interest are Hong Kong's Internet statistics, which show that there is 229% mobile penetration, also known as many people having second, third, and even fourth phones.

Mok believes that there are several positive directions in which Hong Kong's Internet law is evolving: there is a movement to protect the rights of parodies, satires, and derivative works, and the government is releasing a transparency report that reveals the extent of its user data and content removal requests. Mok stated that the "public has a right to know how government actions affect their privacy and free flow of information."

Sue Gardner
Sue Gardner at Wikimania 2013.

Sue Gardner's closing plenary focused on four major areas: editor engagement, grantmaking, VisualEditor, and mobiles.

Gardner envisions that Wikimedia sites will be more welcoming and friendly to new editors. To this end, the Foundation has redesigned the landing page on which new users land when they register. Such a simple move yielded 2% more editors, from 20 to 22%. While Gardner acknowledged that this was a small increase, she noted that it was an equally small change that, in hard numbers, has resulted in 2600 additional new editors per month on the English Wikipedia.

Gardner also briefly mentioned Flow in this category, which will revolutionize how talk pages work on Wikimedia projects. In the words of Brandon Harris, from an earlier presentation, Flow will be a modern discussion system that will be a "controlled, flexible workflow engine" allowing data to come to the user, rather than needing to find it. The current designs, according to him, are an "anti-pattern for the [Wikimedia] mission" with their colon indents, tilde signatures, and requirement to edit source code. Gardner remarked on much the same issues: "sometimes people don't even realize that someone is talking to them."

Next up was grantmaking. The Wikimedia Foundation's new grantmaking system, which was described by Gardner as a "massive leap forward", is composed in large part by the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC). This was formed by a Foundation board resolution at Wikimania 2012 and launched last August. In the 2012–13 fiscal year, the FDC gave recommendations as to how US$5.65 million should be distributed to applicants. 95% of the resulting awards went to the global north (a majority of that going to Wikimedias Germany, France, UK, and Switzerland). Now that the infrastructure has been formed and tested, Gardner is hopeful that they will be able to give a sharper focus on the effectiveness of the money. This will be important, given that the FDC will give recommendations on up to US$8 million in 2013–2014.

On the VisualEditor, which was certainly the most controversial topic in her speech among English-language Wikipedians, Gardner made the case for an improved version of it by saying that people are "deterred by wikisyntax." She backed this up with a 2009 video of "ideally we would have wanted as editors"—i.e. those with a college education or extensive life experience. These people were asked to click the edit button, and their responses were recorded (56:05 in the public video) The first reaction was "nahhhhh", while another remarked that she felt "kinda stupid!"

Gardner's last listed topic was mobile. The Foundation's plan, which focused on reading in 2011–12 and uploading in 2012–13, is now concentrating on editing in 2013–14. Mobile Wikimedia readers have increased faster than the global web's benchmark since they started focusing on them, and in the first week mobile editing was enabled, 3014 editors used it. Gardner held this, alongside its accompanying 1% higher revert rate, as a success, especially because more than half were made by new people.

Also of relevance to mobile is Wikipedia Zero, the Foundation's initiative to give free access to Wikipedia to people in developing countries through partnerships with local phone companies (see related Signpost coverage). Gardner said that "we don't want to be written by people in rich countries for people in poor countries."

Gardner closed her speech by looking back on her tenure at the Foundation, which will end at some point in this year. When she joined, the Foundation and its projects were "shaky" and "often the butt of jokes", particularly from academics (her words). She does not believe that is true anymore: the Global Education Program is engaging students and professors all around the world, and students in South Africa are begging their telecom companies to offer Wikipedia Zero. Gardner will be leaving at a point where she can look at the movement and say "you're safe". However, she does not feel she can do the same thing for the rest of the Internet, and she wants "to make sure that the Internet does not become a commercialized wasteland." She closed by declaring that she would "always be [the movement's] friend and supporter" before receiving a standing ovation.

Reception

Wikimedian attendees thought that the conference was a qualified success. Many praised the prime organization of the conference, and the over 300 volunteers who came to assist—a total far more than previous conferences—were icing on the proverbial cake. Board trustee Sj called it a "beautifully smooth Wikimania", while the Wikimania-l mailing list was quickly filled with comments like "a wonderful conference", "great", "special", and "wonderful."

The only major issues observed by the Signpost both occurred outside of the conference itself—at both the Sky100 welcome and Shek O Beach closing party, food and alcohol ran out. This cannot be fully attributed to poor planning; at the welcome party, far more people attended than indicated with RSVPs, and at the closing party, several regular beachgoers joined the Wikimanians. At the very least, the quality of the food at the welcome party was highly praised.

Aside from those minor hiccups, the conference was very well-done. Michael Jahn wrote:


The annual group photograph featured nearly all of the one thousand attendees.
With Wikimedia 2013 nearly over, the organizers of Wikimania 2014 (in London) showed attendees what to expect next year.

In brief

  • Featured article milestone: The English Wikipedia's number of featured articles has passed 4000, meaning that one in every 1,070 articles are featured.
  • Toronto edit-a-thon: The Royal Ontario Museum is hosting an edit-a-thon on 16 August.
  • OpenStreetMap birthday: OpenStreetMap, the site that community-maps the world, has turned nine years old.
  • Open licenses for Indian educational content: Shashi Tharoor has announced that the country's National Repository of Open Education Resources will be released under a commercially acceptable Creative Commons license. This will prevent the repository from being protected for 60 years under India's copyright law.
  • Participate in Wiki Loves Monuments: Volunteers are needed for the annual Wiki Loves Monuments project, which aims to upload images of historical places and buildings to the Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia Takes America, with much of the same goals, will coincide with this event. According to the instructions, interested readers in the US should look at your local area's NRHP listings and organize a photo hunt to take pictures of any missed places. Questions can be asked on organizer James Hare's talk page. Those outside the US can participate on Commons.

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2013-08-14

Chinese censorship

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By Emily Temple-Wood
The classical Chinese words of Wikipedia

Wikimania was heavily covered in the international press this week (see "In brief", below). One major story that came out of the conference was Jimmy Wales’ statements that he would prefer to have Wikipedia banned entirely in mainland China than censored as it is currently.

Wales was interviewed by the The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog (and later covered in the same paper's China Realtime Report blog) during Wikimania. The comments came about during a discussion on access to the secure version of Wikimedia projects—in China, the uncensored, encrypted version of Wikipedia is blocked completely by the Great Firewall, but the unencrypted version is available with keyword filtering.

The Chinese government's censorship and occasional banning of Wikipedia has meant that Wikipedia is not the dominant online encyclopedia on the mainland; rather, competitors like Baidu Baike and Hudong predominate. Though activists have asked Wikipedia to make the encrypted version the default version of the site, to force Beijing's hand, Wales and the Foundation say that this is not currently technically feasible. Also stating that he opposed any efforts by the Chinese government to force editors to register under real names, Wales concluded that "We don’t approve of filtering, but there is nothing we can do to stop it."

The interview was covered in Tech2 (Will not comply with China's censorship diktat, insists Jimmy Wales), BoingBoing (Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia won't surveil users for China), The Diplomat (Wikipedia Refuses to Comply with China's Censorship), Shanghaiist (Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales refuses to comply with Chinese censors), the International Business Times (Wikipedia Assures It Will Not Bow Down to ANY China Censorship Demands), Policymic (Wikipedia's Co-founder is Ready to Call China's Bluff), Firstpost (Would prefer no Wikipedia in China than follow censorship laws: Jimmy Wales), the Washington Post Worldview (Wikipedia largely alone in defying Chinese self censorship demands), and the China Digital Times (Wikipedia Co-Founder Refuses to Comply with Censorship).

In brief

2013-08-14

Wikipedia takes the cities

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By Pine and Hahc21
The City of Hyderabad, the subject of a new featured article, is the largest and capital city of Andhra Pradesh State, India.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from August 4, 2013 through August 10, 2013.

Featured articles

A starfish on a beach
Fans of Portugese association football club F.C. Porto

Seven featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Boeing C-17 Globemaster III in Australian service (nom) nominated by Nick-D. The Royal Australian Air Force operates six Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft. These military transport aircraft have served in Afghanistan, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere to support military and humanitarian operations.
  • Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (nom) nominated by Cliftonian. Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Cabinet of Rhodesia on 11 November 1965, announcing that the territory considered itself independent of Britain. After much controversy between Rhodesia and Britain and internal conflict in Rhodesia, Britain granted independence to Rhodesia in 1980.
  • Dresden Triptych (nom) nominated by Ceoil and Victoriaearle. The Dresden Triptych is a small hinged-triptych altarpiece dated 1437. The artist was Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. The donor who commissioned the work was likely a member of the Giustiniani family in Genoa, Italy.
  • Hyderabad, India (nom) nominated by Omer123hussain. This article achieved Featured status on its sixth nomination. The City of Hyderabad, India, had a population of 6.8 million in 2011. The city was established in 1591. In the past it was known for its role in the trade of pearl and diamond. Today it is a major economic center with a GDP of US$74 billion in 2011–12 and industries such as information technology, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and finance. However, it also has a large informal economy with about 30% of the labor force, and an estimated slum population of 1.7 million in 2012. Local landmarks include the Charminar mosque and the Golkonda hill, known for its gem mines.
  • Starfish (nom) nominated by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth. Starfish, or Asteroidea, are a class of animals that includes approximately 1,500 species around the world. Starfish inhabit every ocean, and may be found from the surface to a depth of 6,000 meters (20,000 feet). The fossil record for starfish dates back approximately 450 million years.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned (nom) nominated by Hahc21. Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned is a cancelled video game developed by Propaganda Games that was to be published by Disney Interactive Studios. The game was announced in 2009 and cancelled in 2010. The game was intended to be an action-adventure role-playing game with an open world environment.
  • F.C. Porto in international club football nom) nominated by Parutakupiu. F.C. Porto is Portugal's most successful team in international association football competitions. They have won seven titles and have qualified for UEFA competition every year since 1974.


The Dresden Triptych by Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, circa 1437. Today it is at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Gallery) in Dresden, Germany.

Featured lists

The City of Toronto is the largest and capital city of Ontario province, Canada. The list of municipalities in Ontario is now featured.
Proprietary House is the only mansion of a British colonial Proprietary Governor of the original Thirteen Colonies that is still standing. It is now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The list of colonial governors of New Jersey is now featured.

Four featured lists were promoted this week.

  • List of coastal defense ships of Germany (nom) by Parsecboy. Germany built a series of coastal defense ships during the 1880s to protect its coastline. Eight ships were made in total, and all of them were modernized between 1898 and 1904. By the 1920s, three were converted into merchant ships, while the rest were broken up for scrap.
  • The Lonely Island discography (nom) by Holiday56. American comedy music troupe The Lonely Island has released three studio albums and eighteen singles since their beginning in 2009. Created from sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, the band includes Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.
  • List of municipalities in Ontario (nom) by Mattximus. The Canadian province of Ontario has an area of almost a million square kilometers and a population in 2011 of 12,851,821, which was over a third of Canada's total population that year. The province has 444 municipalities, including the Canadian national capital of Ottawa and its largest city, Toronto.
  • List of colonial governors of New Jersey (nom) by ColonelHenry. New Jersey was originally a territory settled by Dutch and Swedish colonists in the 17th century. Before the United States declared independence in 1776, the area mostly belonged to the English, under which it was controlled by colonial governors.

Featured pictures

Demonstration of a neutral density filter
This chromolithograph shows the grounds of the U.S. State of Tennessee's Centennial and International Exposition, 1897.
Anatomical diagram of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
A World War I poster for British armed forces recruiting.

Twelve featured pictures were promoted this week.

The Siegestor (Victory Gate) in Munich, Germany, has an inscription which translates to "Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, reminding of peace".


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2013-08-14

Jimmy Wales: media favors entertainment over raising public awareness

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By The ed17
Jimmy Wales says the mass media is prioritizing simple, cheap, and popular human-interest stories over serious news topics.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and its public face to most of the media, has declared that media organizations are missing out on the "opportunity of the century" by not conducting true investigative reporting into American surveillance practices, a debate kindled by information leaked by Edward Snowden.

Wales has given a keynote at every Wikimania, an annual gathering of the Wikimedia movement held since 2005. These speeches have typically focused on topics directly related to the movement, such as 2011's editor retention and complexity in the English Wikipedia, and 2012's look at why Africa is one of the keys to the movement's future.

This year was different: Wales used the opportunity to speak on privacy in the digital age, a topic inspired by the recent Snowden-led and Guardian-published revelations about the extent of online spying conducted by the United States National Security Agency, and the news media's reporting of the event, which he believes lacks depth, detail, and scope. The media, Wales believes, is not explaining these technical challenges to readers as it should.

Technical literacy is a hurdle that many people have not been able to jump over. In one of the simplest areas, using a password to secure an Internet account, many users persist with simple passwords such as "password", "123456", "12345678", or "abc123", despite ample evidence that these strings are easily hacked. So it is unsurprising that knowledge of more complex tools—like encryption and virtual private networks—is even less commonplace.

Wales claims that when the media receives a juicy yet complex technical topic like the Snowden extravaganza, its treatment tends to gravitate towards the easier, less expensive, more understandable, and more popular human interest stories. In the Snowden case-study used by Wales, the obvious diversions were Snowden's girlfriend, who happens to be a presentable former ballet dancer and a current member of an acrobatic show team, and his attempts to gain asylum in Latin America and Russia. These tendencies may play a role in the near-historic lows in American public polling of attitudes towards the media: just last week, Pew Research rated journalism's accuracy (and its willingness to admit mistakes), independence, and neutrality at anemic levels. A majority of surveyed people said that journalism is more important than in the past because it "help[s] make sense of all of the info that is available", and an even larger group believe that the media "focus on unimportant stories."

In downplaying the technical dimensions of wide-ranging government surveillance programs in favor of human-interest stories, however trivial compared with the deeper significance of the Snowden case, Wales is charging the mass media with missing out on the "greatest journalistic opportunity of the century"—the chance to convey to a non-technical audience the important details they need if they are to understand how governments are using the Internet to pry into their lives.

News organizations, symbolized by the stack of newspapers here, are missing out on the "greatest journalistic opportunity of the century", according to Wales

According to Wales, we are living in "serious times" that require "serious journalism". What, then, are we to do about it?

Wales referred to Wikipedia as a strong area of the web, one that typically constrains itself to facts rather than "tabloid nonsense". His point is underpinned by one of the encyclopedia's core principles, verifiability, which prevents article writers from analyzing any topic without drawing on a reliable source. Limiting Wikipedia in this way may prove to be more beneficial than negative overall, but it means that if a topic is not covered in an academic work or by the mass media, it cannot be included in a Wikipedia article.

In addition, Wales sees the Wikipedia model, built on the backs of volunteer labor, as insufficient for a news organization. While it works well for article writers who have academic sources on their bookshelves, journalism on serious topics requires a great deal of funding for full-time employees, to enable them to devote as much time as possible to undertake investigative reports and travel, to name two. Volunteers, like those working on the nominally globally scoped Wikinews, are seldom able to accomplish or do either.

Wales called for ideas on a new news-oriented website, which would be built from the ground up as an alternative to traditional and web-based outlets. He imagined that it could feature a hybrid community–paid journalist model, where community members and journalists are either equal or the former as a whole is in charge of the latter. It seems doubtful that this would be a community of Wikimedians, given his call for a brand-new site.

Will anything come of Wales' hopes? The jury is still out. His pronouncement received little attention in his maligned mass media, although there was some coverage from CNN, the South China Morning Post, and the Wall Street Journal's Digits blog.

Such attention will be needed if Wales' proposed site is to attract contributors and readers. The Internet is full of failed news sites like the Rocky Mountain News, and he is entering a relatively crowded market with an idea that is not very different from what is already out there—the difference between community-written news, like CNN iReports, and the type of community–journalist partnership he proposes may not be large. The idea that journalists will be happy writing in this model is also debatable—NewsTilt failed because its journalists were quickly alienated. One wonders if history would repeat itself if paid professional journalists had to answer to a cantankerous, Wikipedia-like community.

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2013-08-14

Wikivoyage, reliable sources, music bands, account creators, and OTRS

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By Pine
Types of musical equipment used by The Beatles or the Beatles. An RfC has started on asking if "The" or "the" should be used at the beginning of names of musical ensembles.


This is mostly a list of Non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 14 August 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, recent watchlist notices and SiteNotices. The latter two are in bold. Items that are new to this report are in italics even if they are not new discussions. If an item can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only in this report. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.

Style and naming

Policies and guidelines

WikiProjects and collaborations

Technical issues and templates

Proposals

  • All proposal RfCs are listed in other sections of this report

English Wikipedia notable requests for permissions

(This section will include active RfAs, RfBs, CU/OS appointment requests, and Arbcom elections)

Meta

Upcoming online meetings

Wikimedia blog posts

2013-08-14

For the love of stamps

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By Mabeenot
Your source for
WikiProject News
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
The Penny Black, the world's first postage stamp. Issued in Great Britain in 1840.
Many people collect covers, like this 1959 First Day Cover from the Australian Antarctic Territory.
1895 postage stamp from the United States, featuring first postmaster general Benjamin Franklin
2005 postage stamp from Russia depicting Alexander II
An Australia war savings stamp card from World War II.
Chinese stamp from 1940 featuring Sun Yat-sen
Greek stamp depicting Hermes
An American revenue stamp for the tax on playing cards
Inverted Jenny, a rare misprinted 1918 airmail stamp from the United States

This week, we collected the thoughts of WikiProject Philately, the project dedicated to postage stamps, revenue stamps and postal history around the world. WikiProject Philately began in November 2003 and grew to include nearly three thousand articles, lists, and categories with a daunting relative WikiWork score of 5.29. The project's single Featured Article and four Good Articles focus on elements of the postal services in Britain, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. The project's small but dedicated team works on a variety of different types of articles, including "country studies" for postage issuers past and present. We interviewed Rahman.safwan, Philafrenzy, ww2censor, BlackJack, and Ecphora.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Philately? Do you collect stamps? If so, how large is your collection?
Rahman.safwan: Yes. I collect stamps. As I am a philatelist, I came to wikipedia to inrich the article of wikipedia about philately. My collection is not large. I am a beginner collector.
Philafrenzy: The project is an obvious place for like-minded editors to collaborate and ask questions. Yes, I collect and have done since I was a child. My collection is larger than most but smaller than many, that is all I am prepared to say!
ww2censor: When I first discovered wikipedia, back in late 2005, I considered it a place to provide philatelic information not easily available elsewhere to the general stamp collector or philatelist. No, I don't consider myself a stamp collector because I only actively collect every a few and select issues of stamps of Ireland but I suppose I am a philatelist because I do study the postal rates and routes but my primary interest is in postal history; the why and the wherefore. Most of my collecting is covers that tell a story. Stamp collectors should remember that removing a common stamp from an envelope may mean throwing away considerable value.
BlackJack: I was involved in the philately project in its early days but I had greater interests elsewhere and sort of drifted away, though I have been trying to get involved again in recent weeks. I certainly do collect stamps and one of my aims has been to build an "all-world" collection. I've succeeded in this re current postal authorities and so my collection occupies a significant length of shelf space but there are a lot of gaps re former authorities. The great thing about philately (or about stamp collecting which is not actually the same thing) is that it is one of those hobbies that can never reach a termination point as there is always another field to be explored. As I said, all-world is one of my aims but my main interest in stamps is historical and so I pursue a number of specific subjects either by region or period or authority. An example is British postal agencies in Eastern Arabia and I recently introduced the article on that subject.
Do you focus on articles about stamps issued by a particular country? Are some countries better covered than others by Wikipedia?
Rahman.safwan: No. I don't focus on articles about any particular countries. But I am focusing to the rear countries whose information is hard to get in internet.
Philafrenzy: No. It is a general interest. Some do specialise, there are experts on Malta and Uruguay here, but I am happy to edit on any country. Some countries are better covered than others, compare Postage stamps and postal history of Nicaragua with Postage stamps and postal history of Uruguay for instance. This simply reflects whether an enthusiastic specialist has come along and taken the time to expand a country article. One success story is Postage stamps and postal history of South Sudan where the modern postal history of that country is being covered as it happens, including the help the Chinese have given to the South Sudan government by printing their first stamps for free. (Unfortunately, they also got it wrong and used the wrong coat of arms on one stamp.) There are also dimensions of philately that do not relate just to one country, for instance collecting by topic such as ships on stamps, or postal history or airmail collecting.
ww2censor: Indeed some countries have far better articles than others. I have the honour of bringing Postage stamps of Ireland to featured status; unfortunately it remains the project's only featured article. I would love to see more but they take a lot of work. Ireland, like some other countries have a few individual stamp articles but some countries only have a very short stub which ideally can be expanded significantly. The list of postage stamps has several individual stamp articles and could do with the redlinks bring written. Unfortunately there are too few knowledgeable philatelists who are prepared to get involved in wikipedia though the German and French wikis do seem to have decent activity. I edit articles on any country especially where I can add citations for questioned information because some articles are very sparse on sources. We could do much better but need access to good literature and even though I have a decent library I never have enough and the specialist books are quite expensive. On the other hand, I have started articles about some more general topics, such as Airmail stamp, Letter sheet and Official mail, some specialised subjects like, Pre-adhesive mail and Uniform Fourpenny Post, and related people articles like, David Feldman, Dorothy Wilding, Henry Bishop and William Russell Lane-Joynt.
Ecphora: Coverage is very spotty. For example, Postage stamps and postal history of France, astoundingly, is a mere stub. More editors knowledgeable about philately are needed.
BlackJack: You will find some surprising omissions in the WP coverage if you look through the list of countries and you will equally be surprised by the work that has gone into some entries you might expect to be obscure. As others have said, there have been a limited number of contributors and it depends on the specific interests of those involved. Personally, my main contribution was the global compendium series so I suppose I have worked on "all countries". However, I have worked on the Persian Gulf states articles too.
How is the notability of a stamp or series of stamps determined? Have there been difficulties finding sourcing for articles about new or historical stamps?
Rahman.safwan: I don't have much idea about it. I am concern in writing about postal authorities.
Philafrenzy: The notable items in a country are usually well known, like the Ferrer block or Penny Black. They are not always old, for instance the Chinese Golden Monkey stamp of 1980. Long running series are also often notable simply because they have been studied in great detail and a lot has been written about them. The British Machin stamps, which are the everyday stamps of the UK, have been basically unchanged since 1967, leading to 1000's of variations and endless hours of fun for collectors! It is a matter of using judgement and philatelic knowledge to decide what is notable and then finding the sources. There have been several recent deletion debates about modern U.S. stamps where the stamps received a lot of publicity because they featured subjects with strong popular appeal like sports or entertainment figures. The question then arises of whether the widespread reprinting or paraphrasing of a USPS press release in the media is enough to make the stamps notable. That is the exception, however, and notability is not usually in question. Experienced philatelists rarely have difficult finding sources as they tend to accumulate a shelf of reference works in their areas of interest, and most read one or more stamp magazines. There are also a large number of web sites about philately of varying quality. I was lucky enough to receive a small grant from Wikimedia UK to buy a DVD archive of the journal Gibbons Stamp Monthly which has been useful in finding sources for older material.
ww2censor: As Philafrenzy says notability is a matter of judgement. How has a stamp become well know, is it scarcity, or popularity, or has there been in-depth specialisation, with publications, over a long period of time? The US 1993 Elvis stamp was certainly popular with the public, 517 million were sold, but how notable is it in philatelic terms will take some time to determine. It is certainly not worth much because so many were bought by people as keepsakes. Other stamps, printed in small quantities, and possibly used for a short period of time, may be so scarce that is what makes them notable, such as the Treskilling Yellow or the Dag Hammarskjöld invert which was an error deliberately mass-produced in an attempt to avoid creating a rarity.
Ecphora: There exist a vast quantity of books and articles (in philatelic journals) on all aspects of stamps. For example, the American Philatelic Research Library in Bellefonte, PA, has a huge collection. Lack of reliable sources is not an issue.
BlackJack: This is a very good question and I suppose the project should try to baseline an agreed policy on philatelic notability but it will be difficult given the sheer volume of world stamps. In general terms, any stamp (or series) issued by a recognised postal issuing authority is notable providing it has been used for official postal services (i.e., sold to the public as confirmation of payment for the delivery of a letter or parcel). The proviso is to exclude stamps which are bogus in postal terms. In theory, therefore, any officially issued stamp whether it is the Penny Black or the most recent commemorative issue, could be the subject of a WP article. Unlike many other subjects which have WP projects, philately lacks a wide range of written sources and the major sources are the numerous stamp catalogues issued by the likes of Gibbons (UK) and Scott (USA). So, yes, there can be a difficulty in finding non-catalogue sources that provide detailed information about specific issues.
Have you contributed to the Philately Portal? What value do portals add to Wikipedia? How can they be better integrated into the browsing experience?
Rahman.safwan: No.I yet not contributed to portal. Don't have much idea about portal.
Philafrenzy: I am unclear how the portal is supposed to function. I don't use it but do use the project.
ww2censor: The portal could be a good jumping off point for readers but I have the impression the portal is not where wikipedia readers actually start looking up philatelic topics. Reviewing the portal traffic for the last 90 days: of the 1759 visits, the most on any day was 35 with a low of 0, though the average seems to be about 20. This is not good, considering that Stamp collecting had over 44,000 and the Penny Black more that 21,000 in the last 90 days, though for some reason 1726 visited it on May 16, 2013. Technically I look after the portal and when interesting articles are made known to me I try to add them to the rotation of articles in three areas; Selected biography, Selected picture and Selected article. I must admit to rather neglecting the portal due to other real life interruptions. We could do better and have more input but remember we are all volunteers here.
BlackJack: I think portals are a waste of space, quite frankly. I don't think I had anything to do with the philately one (may have done years ago) but I did try to develop the cricket one and decided that it is a poor substitute for both the project page and the main article. I'd scrap them.
With online forms of communication causing a decrease in traditional mail volume, do you worry about the future of philately? Have you already seen some effects of cost-cutting measures by postal services across the globe? What will future generations be missing?
Rahman.safwan: Future genarations will miss the enjoyment of philately. Now a days, its like business more than hobby. Stamp issuing authorities issuing high face valued stamps for their business though the postal rate is not high. Also market is full of illegal issues.
Philafrenzy: The demise of the postage stamp has been predicted for decades but people are always likely to need to send some communications by mail as they may need a document with a signature or because something has an inherent value that cannot be communicated electronically, so there will probably always be mails of some kind and therefore philately. Philately also encompasses the pre-stamp (pre 1840) era as a subject of historical enquiry, postal history, and revenue philately relating to the taxation of documents and the like, so we have plenty to be going on with.
ww2censor: Virtually instant online communications are cutting into postal services worldwide with prices increasing more than inflation while service are being cut. Many post offices are being closed and many no longer carry a selection of postage stamps several of which are self-adhesive (how I hate that term; who wants something that sticks to itself?) and are not even able to be removed without damage from their envelopes. Decreased mail volumes and the use of postal meters and nasty machine printed labels will mean the future collector will have a challenging time finding nice modern stamps, especially used copies. However, since the internet has become mainstream, I think there are actually more collectors though they may well be closet collectors buying online and don't participate in mainstream philately, such as stamp clubs (general or specialised), stamp show or philatelic exhibitions, etc. Postage authorities have been trying to milk the golden cow for many years by producing stamps for collectors that have little postal purpose but I don't see that changing significantly any time soon, so modern mint stamps will be available but for those who prefer a nice used stamp life will be harder, so much so that they may well start to collect older stamps as they realise the new stuff is not very interesting in my opinion. Stamps have been and remain a great tool for learning about geography, history, biology and many other topics both from your own country and other nations but kids nowadays have other interests. In future, the stimulation of having collected stamps as teenagers years ago, giving it up and returning to it years later may not be in the mind of those youngsters who never collected stamps. Just recently some of the philatelic societies I belong to have instigated online memberships, some reducing their annual subscription by doing away with mailing printed newsletters or bulletins.
Ecphora: Philately was extremely popular, world wide, from the late 19th century to the decade after World War II. Then, it began a serious decline. I believe that collectors today are more specialized than in the past, focusing on things like postal history, specific stamp issues of a country, plate varieties, etc. Many -- perhaps most -- of those interested in stamps today seem to be returning to a childhood interest. Its future is doubtful.
BlackJack: Stamps and postal services have immense social and historical value and, although a time may well come when stamps are no longer issued, there will always be people studying postal history. I can see it will evolve into a nostalgia interest one day among weary e-mail users who yearn for something different, just as now there are people who study steam-powered rail travel and others who enjoy big band swing music.
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Rahman.safwan: The project needs some good contributor. Now a days,here is lack of active and good contributor. The contribution of past contributor is still now. Lack of good contributor who can update the information. Everyone is busy in opening new article and show it at their user page. New contributor needs help. Experienced contributor must support him to write a good article. Everyone should work as a team.
Philafrenzy: The most pressing need is to improve the country articles to a reasonable standard, many of which have been little more than stubs for years. Anyone with access to a relevant stamp catalogue or website can help by starting to sketch in the history of philately in a country. We usually follow a simple system of pre-stamp postal history, then the first stamps, followed by sections on each later era or reign.
ww2censor: More knowledgeable project members are needed to improve all the country articles. It is a shame that in the last year only 23 editors have worked on project articles. Real progress would be a few more featured articles, expansion the many stubs and improvement of citations; some article have been tagged with problems for years without any attention.
BlackJack: As the others say, more contributors but the subject requires attention to detail so not just any old contributors but people with a genuine interest and knowledge. How to attract them? Letters to stamp magazines, perhaps, and maybe Signpost will raise our profile a bit. The project needs an article of reasonable standard (i.e., good quality class=start; not stubs) about all recognised stamp-issuing authorities. These are bound to primarily historical and geopolitical but they must include information about some of the stamps issued, especially the earliest ones, and what eventually became of that authority. There are so many that it's a huge ask.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Rahman.safwan: I would like to say at last that, all the member of a project need to be work as a team. Not only for showing own contribution. Discuss with each other for coming to a decision. Not take decisions alone.
Philafrenzy: I would like more of the millions of enthusiastic collectors out there to contribute here. If anyone has any ideas about that, please contact the philately project.
ww2censor: Get your philatelic literature off the shelf and get writing. When you do work on philatelic articles remember images add value for readers but many country's stamps are still in copyright so make sure to check the copyright status here and here before uploading as getting your images deleted can be a disappointment, or just ask us.
Ecphora: One possible way to recruit editors is through the many philatelic organizations that still exist and publish their journals, usually,in hardcopy. It's a lot easier and quicker to get something on Wikipedia than to write and publish an article in a journal.
BlackJack: There are so few people involved and they all have their particular interests within a vast field of study so the reality is that it will continue to be a project sparsely populated by keen individuals whose paths rarely cross. I have seen and been involved in real teamwork among contributors at the cricket project and I know it works well in the football one too, but philately is a different ball game. The subject is too big and the participation too small. Sorry to sound negative but that's the way it is. I would simply encourage each individual to take a break from their speciality once a week and try to fill a gap somewhere by introducing a stub and then adopting it to get it up to start class. It will take years but we should aim to eventually have one article per stamp issuing authority.

Next week, we'll improve an article every day. Until then, check out other nifty initiatives in the archive.

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2013-08-14

Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case closes; invitation to comment on applicants for checkuser and oversight ends 16 August

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By Neotarf

The Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds case has closed, with a unanimous decision to desysop a Wikimedia Foundation employee and indefinitely ban another editor. The Tea Party movement case has stalled yet again, in the wake of a controversial proposal to ban 14 editors. A proposed decision in the Infoboxes case was scheduled to be posted on 14 August.

Closed cases

Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds

In a unanimous decision, the committee voted to indefinitely ban Kiefer Wolfowitz and desysop Ironholds, the original account of Wikimedia Foundation employee Oliver Keyes. The case involved a dispute between the two that began on-wiki and escalated in off-wiki forums, ending with statements that could be interpreted as threats of violence.

The committee passed findings of fact that Ironholds has "a history of making highly inappropriate remarks both on-wiki and off-wiki on the various IRC channels, where he has often used violent and sexual language (evidence for this has been submitted and discussed in private). Moreover, on at least two occasions, he also logged out to engage in vandalism and to make personal attacks on other editors on other Wikimedia projects."

ArbCom concluded that Kiefer.Wolfowitz "has an extensive history of making comments which are below the level of civility that is expected on Wikipedia, which include personal attacks, often made in an attempt to belittle other editors ... and carefully worded remarks which insinuate misconduct on the part of others without actually asserting it openly. He has also made on-wiki allegations that other editors may have violated the policy on the protection of children."

The following remedies were passed:

Stronger remedies against Ironholds for a fixed-term or indefinite ban failed to gain traction, in spite of the noted severity of the infractions. Various arbitrators pointed out that getting the Ironholds account unbanned at a later date "would not be much of an uphill battle", and that reviewing such a contentious request would set up a difficult situation for a new committee. Others noted that the committee "lacks the authority to tell the Foundation how to manage their personnel" and that previous cases have established that "interference in real-world employment is grounds for removing editors from the project for extended periods if not permanently".

Some concern was expressed that not addressing the issue of Ironhold's second account might be misunderstood, but it was claimed that the lack of support for any banning motions was not so much a wish for Ironholds not to stay off en.WP as much as not to run afoul of the WMF.

Open cases

Tea Party movement

The Tea Party movement case has stalled again after a contentious proposal (see last week's Arbitration Report) was put forward to ban 14 editors. The vote on the "Motion for a final decision" which last week appeared to be passing, is now tied, with five arbitrators voting to support and five arbitrators voting to oppose, after Carcharoth returned from wikibreak and added himself to the list of active arbitrators, and Newyorkbrad voted against the proposal he had co-authored, writing: "... within the past couple of days, some of my colleagues have stated, both here and on our mailing list, that they believe they can complete the preparation of a more traditional decision including specific findings and remedies against specific editors who have behaved poorly."

The case has had a tumultuous history. It was initiated by KillerChihuahua on February 25, 2013, after an acrimonious ANI degenerated into incivility, and concerns were expressed over WikiProject Conservatism being "canvassed for backup support for disruptions" on other articles and the possibility of "the same editors finding their way into the same conflicts over U.S. politics, religion, and homosexuality".

The case was accepted March 6, but faltered briefly as the initial ANI was re-opened and re-closed with no resolution. A proposed final decision was posted on May 6, but by the end of the month, only three of the eleven active arbitrators had voted on findings regarding any individuals. With the proposer of the case now participating from a hospital bed, the case was officially suspended for one month, from June 1 to July 1, to allow for an attempted moderated discussion on the talk page, with arbitrator SilkTork acting as moderator. After the month-long hiatus, voting resumed on the proposed decision, but there was little headway.

To break the impasse, arbitrator AGK put forward the "Proposed motion to close", naming 14 editors in a ban proposal that he described as "draconian". SilkTork, one of the co-drafters of the case, paradoxically added his own name as a party to the case. While the stated reason for this was an attempt to assert that inclusion on the list of banned editors did not reflect misconduct, the addition of an arbitrator's name to the list may have served as a poison pill—as one arbitrator wrote: "I don't think it is appropriate to include an arbitrator in such a motion."

Infoboxes

This case, brought by Ched, involves the issue of who should make the decision to include an infobox in an article and to determine its formatting (right margin, footer, both, etc)—whether the preferences of the original author should be taken into consideration, if the decision should be made by various WikiProjects to promote uniformity between articles, or whether each article should be decided on a case-by-case basis after discussion. It also involves what is perceived by some to be an aggressive addition or reverting of infoboxes to articles without discussion by some editors, in areas where they do not normally edit. Areas that have seen disputes over infoboxes include opera, the Classical Music and Composers project, and featured articles.

The evidence and workshop phases of the case have closed, and a proposed decision was scheduled to have been posted 14 August 2013.

Other requests and committee action

  • Invitation to comment: checkuser and oversight candidates: Nomination statements and answers to questions from the community for potential appointees for checkuser and oversight permissions will be available for comment until August 16.
  • Amendment request: Argentine History: A request made by MarshalN20 for an amendment to a topic ban for history-related sections of the Falkland Islands article was closed with an exemption to the restriction.
  • Clarification request: Argentine History: A request was made by Cambalachero for a clarification of whether a topic ban on pages related to the history of Latin America applies to articles about recent politics or a brief mention of historical context in non-historical articles.

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