Wikidata accepts the Open Data Publisher Award at the ODI Awards in London, 4 November 2014. Second from the right is team-member Magnus Manske, a researcher in the fields of high-throughput sequencing and data visualisation. Manske created MediaWiki and more recently has written some 100 tools on WMFlabs, many of them to facilitate contributions to Wikidata and the ways in which it is used.
Wikidata, Wikimedia's free linked database that supplies Wikipedia and its sister projects, is gearing up to submit a grant application to the EU that would expand Wikidata's scope by developing it as a science hub. The proposal, supported by more than 25 volunteers and half a dozen European institutions as project partners, aims to create a virtual research environment (VRE) that will enhance the project's capacity for freely sharing scientific data.
The goal is to overcome the insular approach of conventional, feature-complete environments by building on Wikidata's existing community and role in sharing scientific data. Instead of secure, self-contained and often discipline-specific platforms, the push is designed to enhance the open collaborative functionalities that Wikidata already provides to enable new forms of research and public interaction among both professional and citizen scientists.
The Wikidata meets archeology symposium in Berlin, March 2013Wikidata's development teams in June 2014A Wikidata diagram in English explaining the terminology of a Wikidata statement, in this case for "Douglas Adams" (Q42).
Wikimedia projects have a long track-record of interaction with the research community, for example through Gene Wiki, which has been creating content on human genes since 2008. A blog post on the Gene Wiki's recent efforts to create Wikidata items for all human genes, followed by the publication of the underlying proposal, is what triggered the drafting of the present proposal.
This was closely followed by an announcement from Google that their collaborative knowledge base, Freebase, will be de-commissioned in early 2015, and that they look forward to the integration of Freebase into Wikidata, which is currently under discussion.
These developments came at the end of a solid year of progress for Wikidata, including increased usability. Through 2014, the local community is now the fourth-most-active editing community among Wikimedia projects—after the English Wikipedia, Commons, and the German Wikipedia. Externally, the project gained additional recognition by winning the Open Data Publisher Award 2014, presented by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, and Nigel Shadbolt.
This proposal is significant because no other open collaborative project—or "virtual research environment", in EU parlance—can connect the free databases in the world across disciplinary and linguistic boundaries. With the inclusion of Freebase into Wikidata in 2015, the project will be capable of providing a unique open service: for the first time, that will allow both citizens and professional scientists from any research or language community to integrate their databases into an open global structure, to publicly annotate, verify, criticise and improve the quality of available data, to define its limits, to contribute to the evolution of its ontology, and to make all this available to everyone, without any restrictions on use and reuse.
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The proposal is being prepared under the guidance of Wikimedia's long-serving volunteer for open science cooperation, biophysicist Daniel Mietchen. He works at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, the city where Wikidata's developmental team is located; the Museum will act as the institutional coordinator of the project. More than 10 institutions have signalled their interest in joining the endeavour as associate partners, in addition to the volunteers, Wikimedia Germany (which has been primarily responsible for developing Wikidata), and the other five European partner institutions. Research from one of them—the Open University of Catalonia—is also featured in this issue's Recent research.
Mietchen told the Signpost that the budget, between €1m and €2m, would be invested primarily in building technical infrastructure, improving Wikidata's two-way connections with external data sources (including their ontologies), and training scientists and interested members of the editing community. Succeeding in EU rounds is notoriously difficult; if approved, it would be by far the biggest competitive external grant for a Wikimedia project. Either way, the proposal will be a significant conceptual and methodological advance; because it is drafted under a CC-BY license, it is available to other proposers or funders to engage with and build on.
Even before the current proposal was conceived, the Wikidata community had been exploring ways of improving ties to scientific communities in several respects. Back in 2012, the German community held a joint workshop with scholars from universities that included Cambridge, Stanford and Oxford to investigate the usability of the project for research (Signpostcoverage). In 2013, Wikidata's WikiProject Chemistry discussed ways to collaborate with PubChem, one of the largest chemical databases.
Mietchen says that the team would welcome community members to participate in the drafting, to review the proposal text, or to help shape the advisory board and network of associate partners. The EU's application deadline is 14 January, so timely contributions are particularly helpful. Upcoming steps on the path to the finishing line are on the project page. Beyond that deadline, the proposal is intended to spark follow-ups with a disciplinary or regional focus, and as a seeding ground for the newly created WikiProject Wikidata for research to develop procedures for the coordination of future activities between the research and Wikidata communities.
A "study tour" by the ChandigarhMunicipal Corporation for the purpose of researching development projects has been the subject of much controversy and criticism in the Indian press. The trip, from August 31 to September 9, took 26 officials of Chandigarh, the capital of the northern Indian states of Haryana and Punjab, to Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu in south India, Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal in east India, and Port Blair, the capital of the territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the east of continental India. The trip has been criticised on a number of grounds: its cost, 2.78 million rupees (about 44 thousand US dollars), the fact that many officials were accompanied by relatives, that officials allegedly skipped meetings to go sightseeing, and that travel arrangements were made by a travel agency owned by a relative of one of the officials.
The trip has resulted in a 20 page report recently submitted to Chandigarh mayor Harphool Chandra Kalyan. The Hindustan Times described it as a "vague report" (December 28) consisting of material largely available on the government websites of the trip's travel destinations. The Indian Expressdescribed (December 29) the report in more detail. It noted a number of government websites from which material was taken "verbatim", with the introduction of new factual and spelling errors. It also noted that the report copied extensively from the Wikipedia articles for Port Blair and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. The Express wrote "the only original part are the photographs".
University class attempts to address gaps in Wikipedia coverage
Wikipedia editors are predominantly male. (Data as of April 2012)
The issue is that because Wikipedia is a cultural text and, therefore, participates in the creation of knowledge . . . what sort of knowledge is being created because only certain people are participating in the editing process? It passes as objective, it passes as universal knowledge, when, in fact, it comes from a very particular perspective — overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly male.
Professor Williams assigned the class to edit Wikipedia pages of aboriginal women, then to create their own articles about them. Such efforts can help address the gender gap here, but this effort is an example of the difficulties outside efforts encounter when they unwittingly conflict with the expectations of Wikipedia editors and the policies of the encyclopedia. Metro noted that some of the articles created for the class had been "taken down". One article cited by Metro was about Métis blogger Samantha Nock. The student expressed her pride in her Wikipedia creation: "It's like my baby now and I don’t want it to be taken down. If it's taken down, I will revise it and put it back up." However, following the publication of the Metro article, the Wikipedia article on Nock was deleted after a discussion at Articles for Deletion.
There is a disconnect between outside observers who express surprise that articles like YouTube Poop exist while articles about aboriginal bloggers are deleted, and the Wikipedia editors who expect those articles to comply with established policies and formats. Until that disconnect is successfully addressed, efforts like this will struggle in combating the gender gap and other blind spots in Wikipedia coverage.
In brief
"The Impact of Wikipedia", a 2012 video starring Adrianne Wadewitz created by the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia bookshelf: Times Higher Educationreviews (January 1) the upcoming book by Nathaniel Tkacz, Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness.
The MP from Wikipedia: On the December 26 edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme Today, Jimmy Wales suggested that votes in the UK's House of Commons should be conducted electronically. He said “The security risks would be minimal, you would have a good record of what people said and you would speed up the process so that Parliament could get more done."
Getting the last word: LiveSciencereports (December 24) that California Institute of Technology professor of geophysics Don L. Anderson's extensive preparations before his December 2 death of cancer included asking his relatives to update his Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia Free Ghana: In a press release (December 24), MTN Ghana announced that it is offering free mobile access to Wikipedia in Ghana as part of the Wikipedia Zero initiative.
Genealogical blues: In an interview (December 20) with The Independent, actress Anna Chancellor expressed disatisfaction with part of her Wikipedia article detailing genealogical links to a number of peers and other notable figures, including Jane Austen. (Chancellor portrayed Caroline Bingley in an adaptation of Austen's Pride and Prejudice.) Chancellor said "Can't you imagine? You've worked hard all your life to be an actress, or whatever you've done, and that is what's presented to you. Don't you think that's embarrassing? I don't enjoy being quoted as saying that's who I am, because I don't feel that is who I am." The section was removed following the publication of the interview on the grounds that it was largely unsourced.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
Unlike last year, Wikipedia viewers seem to have embraced the Christmas spirit, with three topics in the top 10 (and nine in the top 25) focused on the holiday season. The other theme this week was movies (which are really just another aspect of the Christmas season) with four slots about movies or people who were the topic of movies. And of course, the passing of the great Joe Cocker was noted as well.
So, the story goes that this typically absurd American male comedy film starring Seth Rogen (pictured) and James Franco, which lampoons a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, led to the November 2014 Sony Pictures Entertainment hack, and then subsequent internet threats to unleash "September the eleventh" levels of violence if the movie was released, which led movie theater chains to refuse to screen the film, which led Sony to pull the movie's release altogether, a reaction which a cybersecurity expert called "beyond the realm of stupid." (There's a reason you're never supposed to negotiate with terrorists; doing so is handing the fox the key to your chicken coop.) North Korea denied the hack, and saw its own flimsy internet connections flame out on December 22. On December 23, Sony announced the movie would now get a "limited release" on December 25, and on December 24, released the film online. The online release generated an "opening weekend" gross of $15 million, with two million downloads in the first three days, which goes to show that: a) it is possible to keep people safe without conceding to those who threaten them; b) controversy is free advertising and c) movie theatres are dead.
And, just like last year, the most queried element of the holiday season is not Christmas, but its less-celebrated addendum. Perhaps Americans remain puzzled over why their Commonwealth cousins get an extra day of Christmas each year, and what on Earth the Nativity has to do with pugilism (to be fair, no one really knows how Boxing Day got its name, and any stories you hear are pretty much stabs in the dark).
This Bollywood film starring Aamir Khan debuted on December 19. The Indian press seems to have liked it, with Bollywood Hungama calling it "a solid entertainer that will surely entertain the masses and classes alike", and reviewer Subhash K. Jha giving it 4 out of 5 stars, saying "'PK' is a film designed to warm the cockles of the heart." The plot revolves around the arrival a human-looking alien on earth who needs to recover a stolen piece of his equipment, and includes satire regarding the phenomenon Indian "godmen". The film grossed about US $25 million in its opening weekend and, in its first 11 days has already become the second-highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, with a worldwide box office of Rs4.34 billion ($68 million).
This American sniper, whose life was the subject of the appropriately named Clint Eastwood-directed film American Sniper, which went into wide release on Christmas Day, is considered the most lethal in US military history, with 160 confirmed kills. Unfortunately, he was murdered last year by a PTSD-afflicted veteran whom he had taken to a shooting range. Before he died, he had claimed that he had once punched former wrestler and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura in 2006 for badmouthing U.S. President Bush and the military. Ventura sued him for defamation, eventually getting a $1.8 million jury award. Last week, Ventura filed a new lawsuit directly against HarperCollins, who published Kyle's book, called, naturally, American Sniper.
The final instalment of The Hobbit film series debuted in New Zealand on December 11, and the United States on December 17. The film topped the US charts in its second weekend and, as of December 29, has already earned nearly $600 million worldwide.
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550,000, apparently heedless of who actually died.
The Wiki Education Foundation, the separate non-profit that administers Wikipedia's Education Program in the US and Canada, recently ended their support of the campus ambassador program. The program was started in July 2010 as part of the Public Policy Initiative. Campus Ambassadors (with the epcampus flag) are meant to be a real-world Wikipedia representative on campus, interacting with the professors and students before these new editors are sent to Wikipedia. While campus ambassadors presumably remain part of Wikipedia's global Education program, students in the US and Canada may no longer be seeing these volunteers in their classrooms. I was one of those campus ambassadors and I did not take the news well. It hit me hard because being an ambassador was primarily what I joined Wikipedia for. I found out about the campus ambassador position in 2013 and decided to start racking up edits on Wikipedia in order to submit an application. I have always thought that although we cannot seem to stop Randy in Boise from editing, we can always try to recruit his antithesis.
Wikipedia is great for the literate self-selectors that can teach themselves by going through our numerous instructional pages. Just as our edit-a-thons accomplish outreach amongst those that will not be self-taught so too does our campus ambassador program reach those not already interested in wiki. Campus ambassadors put a face and a voice to the nebulous Wikipedia movement. For many coming to Wikipedia for the first time this real person in front of them was far more approachable and understandable. I felt utility in bringing the passion I have for the semantic wiki concept to college students so they would eagerly jump into it, too. Our campus ambassadors could instruct in a way our tutorials could not. When the program worked well, students and professors interacted with Wikipedia properly and some good academic content was added. Students not only got a grade for their class but they also contributed to living knowledge. They learned about both the reliability of Wikipedia and the community of editors, well beyond the academic facts learned in their class.
My criticism of the WEF has been that it never made an effort to manage those volunteer ambassadors. While professors like Adrianne Wadewitz could function as their own campus ambassadors, random professors that had heard about Wikipedia might assign their students to edit articles unaware Wikipedia had a formal program with which to participate and had no ambassador knocking on their office door. Some Wikipedians might be interested in volunteering as ambassadors but had no nearby classes using Wikipedia to interact with and no plan to initiate collaboration. Unless a Wikimedia chapter subsidized these activities no money was being allocated to support ambassador activity. Coverage was therefore uneven and in some cases ineffective. When classes of more than 40+ students taught by ill-informed professors arrived on-wiki without the preparation campus ambassadors could provide, editors bore the brunt of turmoil as articles were inundated with poorly-sourced material or copyright violations.
The WEF announced the change on December 18th, effective with the upcoming Spring semester. The announcement indicated that WEF sought to consolidate control of the program, making their own paltry staff accountable for interactions with the classes. But if the ambassadors we did have were insufficient to the task then reason dictates having zero ambassadors would not work any better. Unless the WEF planned to hire our intrepid volunteers I'm not sure what the way forward would be. What is the community's remaining education program in the US and Canada after all of its functions had been subsumed into the WEF?
Of course, the Education Program is less about teaching students and more about controlling the scholastic flood which arrives on our shores one way or the other. Wikipedia has been a magnet for some classes without Wikipedia's prodding and unless we put a person on campus these students will simply start editing without anyone on wiki knowing why. The education program noticeboard regularly documents these "stealth classes;" groups of new editors all sloppily editing in the same subject areas replying that their edits must stay due to a class assignment. I recall having to drop-in unannounced on one professor who failed to either reply to several talk page messages or return my numerous e-mails. They sent their students to Wikipedia with no regard for our guidelines or programs and I became the first Wikipedian they interacted with. Now I feel disempowered to conduct this sort of outreach and I fear many easily preventable problems will mount. Since the WMF fancies itself a grant-making organization I would suggest funding the ambassador program through organizations like the WEF and keeping coverage in both areas dense with institutes of higher learning and the schools where professors have historically been proponents of the program. I can only assume the WEF plans to effectively end the Education Program in the US and Canada by restricting course participation to the short list of professors they approve and banning the rest, batch reverting the edits of entire classes. Time will tell if this is the correct strategy.
The views expressed in these op-eds are those of the authors only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. Editors wishing to submit their own op-ed should email the Signpost's editor.
September Morn has apparently yellowed a bit during its time in storage.
September Morn(nominated by Crisco 1492) Completed in 1912 by French painter and illustrator Paul Chabas, this nude painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1913 and received a warm, if somewhat standard, reception. September Morn would have become a mere footnote to a footnote of art history as just one of the many nude depictions regularly exhibited at the Paris Salon, if it were not for the controversy which it sparked when reproductions were shown in the US, particularly in Chicago and New York. In response to concerns that the painting was indecent, the market was swamped with calendars, pins, movies, songs, stage plays and other reproductions featuring the young woman "dressed as the day she was born".
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette(nominated by Wehwalt)Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), was a French general, statesman, aristocrat and hero of the American Revolution. Actually, he was called La Fayette – Lafayette is the English spelling. A key figure in the American Revolution, French Revolution and July Revolution, Lafayette came from a long line of French military officers. Before he went to America, he lived the careless court life at the French king's court at Versailles, but saw the American revolutionary cause as just, and so made plans to travel to America. Sound easy? The French king forbade him to go, so he had to buy his own ship. When he finally got to America in 1777, he served at the Battle of Brandywine, arranging an orderly retreat despite being wounded; and fought in the Battle of Rhode Island with distinction. He subsequently returned home to lobby France to support the Americans' cause. Sound straightforward? Remember how he disobeyed the king to go to America? They put him under house arrest, but eight days later, he was released, and the French entered the war as allies of the United States. Returning to America, he blocked Cornwallis' troops from reaching the Siege of Yorktown until the Americans and French were ready for him. He also helped make trade agreements with France alongside American ambassador Thomas Jefferson. Returning home in 1782 after American independence, Lafayette was seen as a real hero in his homeland and was promoted to high posts. Lafayette had enlightened views, he was an intellectual who tried to apply the Enlightenment's philosophy in practice: toleration, fighting for liberty, democracy, and religious tolerance. Later he attempted, with the assistance of Thomas Jefferson, to plot out a middle road through the French Revolution that would protect the rights of all, collaborating with him on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a fundamental document in the history of human rights. However, he was unable to pull the French Revolution on the lofty path he set out, fled the country, and was arrested by Austrians, where he was imprisoned for five years until Napoleon arranged his release. Late in his life, he was offered a position as dictator of France during the July Revolution, but turned it down, only turning against Louis-Phillipe when he turned autocratic. Having served, to his best ability, both America and France to great acclaim and with a strong moral code, he is sometimes known as the "Hero of Two Worlds", a living symbol of friendship between France and America, and the symbol of the universal goodwill wishing for a new and better world.
List of municipalities in Nunavut(nominated by Mattximus)Nunavut separated from Canada's Northwest Territories in 1999, and consists of a decently-sized chunk the mainland and many, many islands, some quite large, extending towards Greenland in the North, but also including several more southerly islands in Hudson Bay and James Bay, which lie nearer other Canadian territories than any other parts of Nunavut (for example, Akimiski Island is just off the coast of Ontario). One of the most remote, sparsely settled regions in the world, being so far north, 99.97% of its population is clustered into its twenty-five municipalities, which are relatively well-scattered throughout the territory.
Gilt-bronze Maitreya in Meditation(created by 6th century sculpture, nominated by Crisco 1492)Haven't we seen this one already recently? No, not quite: The Gilt-bronze Maitreya in Meditation should not be confused with the Gilt-bronze Maitreya in Meditation... wait, let's start again. Despite having the same descriptive name, these are two different artworks, and both National Treasures of Korea, this one being National Treasure No. 78, whereas the previously featured one is National Treasure No. 83. Although it has a more formalized depiction than the relative naturalism of No. 83, hinting at an origin in the Silla kingdom of Korea, it is nonetheless a fine work, with a delicately posed hand, and a very expressive face with just a hint of a smile. Likely dating from the middle or late 6th century, its detailed craftsmanship and superb preservation (a gilt halo has been lost, but the rest of it looks near-perfect), means it well deserves its own featured picture. Even if having the same name as another work is confusing. We can deal with that.
Venus Consoling Love(created by François Boucher, nominated by Hafspajen)Venus Consoling Love is a painting from 1751 by the leading French Rococo artist François Boucher. This painting belonged to Mme de Pompadour, the French king's mistress, who commissioned it, and it is said that she is the very charming young lady who is depicted in the painting, impersonating the goddess of Love (and also the French Rococo ideal of beauty). The young Venus sits beside the pond with white doves, the symbol of the goddess, at her feet, and is about to disarm Cupid, taking the arrows he uses to make people fall in love. Boucher's continued success lies in his mastery of his brush and his superior technical knowledge of his medium he works with. This old French master depicts the charming and sensual scene with the young nude goddess with a real master's fluid brushstrokes and colors, with asymmetric lines and sinuous curves – creating a scene ready to seduce the viewer. The only jewels the goddess adorned herself with are the pearls in her hair – but then, she is a goddess, she doesn't need anything more. The white doves at her feet, her complexion, the pearls in her hair are just as luxurious as the silk draperies that were wrapped around her. The French Enlightenment re–evaluated the concept of what was natural. It was believed that it was right to follow nature, and that the human body, the pursuit of pleasure and its functions were natural. This influenced a new acceptance for the conception of the nude body and the depiction of the naked. It was only after the French Revolution, when a new morality emerged based on political grounds, that these visions of pleasure and delight were condemned, and the expressions of beauty free from moral strictures became less fashionable.
Moros, Zaragoza(created by Diego Delso, nominated by Crisco 1492)Moros is an attractive and picturesque setting on the narrow valley above the Manubles river, with hundreds of small houses on narrow streets that zigzag across the slope, all clustered together on the sunny side of the mountain, surrounded with gardens and orchards, and topped with the parish church and the remains of a Moorish castle. Many of the houses are made by mud bricks; some are covered with Arabic tiles, and some houses have been whitewashed with white lime, but none of this breaks the color harmony. It's a beautiful scene.
Worcester College, Oxford University(created and nominated by Andrew Shiva (Godot13)) Come, join us on a journey through Oxonian history, searching for the mysterious, lost Gloucester College, which was attached to a monastery, and lost to the University of Oxford when Henry VIIIdissolved the monasteries in 1539. However, buildings around a growing university never stay empty forever... St. John's College was happy to snatch them up... but then, wait! In 1714, Sir Thomas Cookes decided to reform the lost college, naming it, not after Gloucester, but after his own county of Worcestershire! And so, we have the stately halls, dating back to the 13th century as an institution of learning... but by a long, wavy path, because Henry VIII just couldn't handle married life very well, and so founded his own religion. ...That sounds wrong, somehow.
The Storm(created by Pierre Auguste Cot, nominated by Crisco 1492) A gorgeous, delicately painted work, The Storm shows a young woman wearing a diaphanous, gleaming white dress (that shows far more than it conceals), and a young man (not particularly well-clothed either) clinging to her, both holding a cloak over their head as a makeshift umbrella and running down a dimly-lit path while a storm brews behind them. A shaft of sunlight illumines the two as they seek shelter. The artist, Pierre Auguste Cot, had made a huge hit at the Salon of 1873 with his similar painting Spring, which showed a woman with similar taste in lack of clothing cuddling with a young, virile man on a swing. That painting was bought by John Wolfe, and is believed to have led his cousin, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, to have commissioned this painting, on a similar subject.
St Christopher's Chapel, Great Ormond Street Hospital(created and nominated by David Iliff) Built in 1875 for the old Great Ormond Street Hospital building, the gorgeously-detailed Franco-Italianate chapel is full of references to childhood, as befits a chapel inside a major children's hospital. One can easily see the "teddy bear choir" (it's literally what it sounds like) and the prayer tree (it's literally what it sounds like), but what one can't see is a fascinating bit of the chapel's history: when the old Great Ormond Street Hospital building was demolished in the 1980s, the chapel was moved on a "concrete raft" to its new position intact. I presume that it still exists, buried in the chapel's foundations.
Schönbrunn Palace(created by Thomas Wolf, nominated by Tomer T) Located in Vienna, Austria, Schönbrunn Palace, a former imperial residence, is one of the most important cultural, historical and architectural monuments in the country. Now that we've badly paraphrased the article's lead... It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which definitely backs the article's claims of importance. Originally a hunting ground, the main palace was built in the reign of Maria Theresa (note that that link is not disambiguated: despite the relatively common name, she's that important) of the Habsburg monarchy, and is also noted for its formal gardens. In the photograph, we see the formal gardens near us, a relatively austere face of the palace behind them, and then Vienna rising up behind the palace. It's gorgeous. The major part of the garden is the parterre, the Baroque French formal garden, designed by Jean Trehet(who needs an article written on him), a disciple of the famous French landscape architect André Le Nôtre, in 1695. The garden contains, among other things, sculptures, fountains, a maze, Roman ruins the Tiergarten, an orangerie and a palm house, while the eastern parts were turned into an English garden and beside it, a botanical garden. The Gloriette today houses a café and an observation deck, which provides panoramic views of the city – but more about that part next week.
The Virgin in Prayer(created by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, nominated by Hafspajen) A painting by the Italian Baroque painter Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, has a bold black background setting off the main figure – apparently a trend in his artworks – with an almost glowing, detailed, beautiful figure of the Virgin Mary emphasized by the plain background. This painting depicts Mary praying. Like in this picture to, traditionally Mary wears blue and red. Blue was considered since the Middle Ages the color of spirituality, calm and contemplation, while the red clothing was a sign of status and wealth, but also symbolized the blood of Christ. After the Protestant reformation many of the protestant countries stopped painting religious paintings and went over to paint still-lifes, and especially the paintings depicting the Virgin Mary declined, but never stopped, particularly in Catholic countries. Her hands raised in prayer, head demurely covered, the gorgeous fabric wrinkles and delicate skin mark this as a master painting.
Red Hawk cheese(created by Frank Schulenburg, nominated by Tomer T) The article is a bit of a stub, so I think I'll just quote it in full: Red Hawk is a triple-crème, aged, cow's milk cheese with a brine washed rind created by the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station, California (founded in 1994). The brine wash encourages the development of the red-orange rind that gives the cheese its name. The Cowgirl Creamery crafts their own artisanal cheeses using organic milk from the neighboring Straus Family Creamery. It was awarded "Best in Show" at the 20th annual conference of the American Cheese Society.
Dordogne(created by Luc Viatour, nominated by Tomer T) A lovely elevated picture of a river, the Dordogne, as it passes through the Périgord area of southwest France, near Castelnaud-la-Chapelle. The bridge is part of the D57 road. The county of Périgord that was the former province of Périgord, a natural region and a former province of France, which corresponds roughly to the current Dordogne département witch was one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution. The region is noted for its well-preserved mediaeval architecture, though as this scene appears to be taken from some of said architecture and thus doesn't show it, we shan't tempt you with a description of the several castles, chateaux, churches, bastides and cave fortresses; nor with the number of wonderful villages which still have their market halls, dovecotes, tories (stone huts), churches, abbeys and castles. We certainly won't mention Connezac, La Roque-Gageac, Saint-Jean-de-Côle and Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère and other jewels of medieval architecture.
St James's, Spanish Place(created and nominated by David Iliff) As a building, St James's, Spanish Place is a relatively recent church, first opening to the public in 1890, and being consecrated in 1949 (although that was after some major delays caused by war). Its history as a congregation, however, goes back quite a ways further, to 1791, when it served as a rare Catholic church in Protestant England, connected to the Spanish Embassy; however, the original building was leased without possibility of renewal, requiring construction of a new one. Despite its relative recentness, it is designed in an early Gothic style – although probably really more of a Gothic Revival, in truth – and is considered one of the most artistically designed in London (according to our not-entirely-unbiased article, at least – but an inspection of the photo will confirm it is beautiful).
Oenothera biennis(created by George Chernilevsky, nominated by National Names 2000) When once the sun sinks in the west, / And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast; / Almost as pale as moonbeams are, / Or its companionable star, / The evening primrose opes anew / Its delicate blossoms to the dew; / And, hermit-like, shunning the light, / Wastes its fair bloom upon the night, / Who, blindfold to its fond caresses, / Knows not the beauty it possesses; / Thus it blooms on while night is by; / When day looks out with open eye, / Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun, / It faints and withers and is gone. – John Clare
Vertumnus(created by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, nominated by CorinneSD) There are some paintings that are both famous enough that most people have seen them, and weird enough that most people who have seen them will be unable to forget them. Guiseppe Arcimboldo's Vertumnus (c. 1590-1) is one such work. Showing Holy Roman EmperorRudolf II re-imagined as the Roman god of metamorphoses in nature, created out of plants – gourds, pears, apples, cherries, grapes, wheat, artichokes, peapods, corns, onions, artichoke, cabbage foils, cherries, chestnuts, figs, mulberries, grapes, plums, pomegranates, various pumpkins and olives – a riot of edible delights. The flowers and fruits from all season symbolize the abundance of the Golden era that has returned under the Emperor's rule. Looking from the distance, Arcimboldo's whimsical portraits might look like straight portraits, but they are assembled using vegetables, books, plants, kitchen utensils, fruits, sea creatures, animals and tree roots, each individual object chosen to give the impression of anatomical trait of a human face. Generally these faces are composed around certain themes, like the four seasons, four elements and so on. These portraits were an expression of the Renaissance minds fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre Arcimboldo's traditional religious subjects were forgotten but his portraits of human heads made up by objects were greatly admired by his contemporaries and are still fascinating even today.
No. 90 (Composite) Wing RAAF(nominated by Ian Rose and Nick-D) This topic actually has an official description attached to it, so we'll quote that: No. 90 (Composite) Wing was a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) wing that operated during the early years of the Malayan Emergency. It administered two RAAF units, No. 1 (Bomber) Squadron, flying Avro Lincolns, and No. 38 (Transport) Squadron, flying Douglas C-47 Dakotas. The wing was termed "composite" because it operated a mixed complement of aircraft, rather than only one type. Following No. 38 Squadron's departure for Australia in December 1952, No. 90 Wing was disbanded, leaving No. 1 Squadron to carry on as the sole RAAF unit in the campaign until its withdrawal in July 1958. It includes a good article on No. 90 (Composite) Wing, and featured articles on the two squadrons that made it up.
A paper titled "Factors that influence the teaching use of Wikipedia in Higher Education"[1] uses the technology acceptance model to shed light on faculty's (of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) views of Wikipedia as a teaching tool. The main factors are shown to be the perception of colleagues’ opinion about Wikipedia and the perceived quality of the information on Wikipedia. As the authors note, while prior studies also pointed to the quality concerns, this study suggests a causal link between colleagues' views and one's perception of Wikipedia quality. The authors conclude that the strong peer culture within academia makes the importance of role models very significant, which in turn has implications for the segment of the Wikimedia movement that desires greater ties with the academic world. The authors also note that "despite the lack of institutional support and acknowledgement, a growing number of academics think it is very useful and desirable to publish research results or even intermediate data in open repositories", an attitude that also correlates positively with positive views of Wikipedia. To quote the authors' very valid recommendation: "For those faculty members already using Wikipedia as a learning tool, we think it would have greater impact if they publicly acknowledged their practices more, especially to their close colleagues, and explain their own teaching experiences as well as the effects it has had on the students’ academic performance."
The team behind the paper is also partnering in the Wikidata for research project featured in News and notes.
Analysis of two gender-driven talk page conflicts on the German-language Wikipedia
"Gender differences within the German-language Wikipedia"[2] is a pair of close readings of two gender-driven talk page conflicts on the German Wikipedia from 2006 and 2013, "show[ing] exemplarily that a) the feministic gender discourse in Wikipedia is not appreciated – primarily by male Wikipedians – [...] and b) that discussions behind the scenes of Wikipedia can feature an unpleasant and rude nature, that is not very appealing and motivating for female contributors". The analysis aims to focus on the communication styles of the gendered personalities as viewed under the critical rubrics of Margarete Jäger and Nina Schuppener. In the degenerating arguments around whether or not the welcome message on the German Wikipedia's main page (2006 thread) and German Wikipedia articles in general (2013/14 straw poll talk page) should use generic male pronouns and nouns, or newer more neutral alternatives, like using parentheses in "Mitarbeiter(in)", it is highlighted that the male-appearing participants use instruction and discrediting statements; and the female-appearing tend to question intellectual capabilities and give advice. Finally the authors conclude that "the most crucial point is the fact that the female author gave up [first]," stopping responding less than 24 hours into the discussion, and that the change advocated for was not enacted. These deconstructed examples add to an evidence of a hypothesis that minority voices are crowded out in Open Culture, as purported by the "Free as in Sexist" theory.
History of the Spanish Wikipedia's ArbCom: A short recounting by Sefidari and Ortega (pre-print) summarised the history of the Spanish WikipediaComité de resolucíon de conflictos (arbitration committee), which existed from 2007 to 2008. It was composed of admins, received complaints which in 80 % of cases involved admins, dismissed nearly all cases presented, ruled against the claimant in a large majority of accepted cases, and was finally dissolved in 2009.[3]
Two new papers on disease forecasting using Wikipedia: Yet another study (pre-print), considering 5 articles, showed that English Wikipedia page views trends can forecast the peak in influenza-like illnesses in the USA. Essentially, by visiting the articles in question, users are self-reporting their (suspect) disease, some weeks in advance of the data collected centrally by a government agency based on medical practitioners' reports of the same.[4] Another study, again focused on some English Wikipedia articles, reached the same conclusion with slightly different (and, notably, fully open source) methods, for 14 diseases, while producing a useful list of some dozens past studies on the matter.[5]
Wikipedia as a source of health information during salmonella outbreak: A statistically significant survey in the Netherlands assessed with what efficacy the population was informed about Salmonella infection during an outbreak in the country. Nearly all information was received passively (mainly from TV, radio and newspapers, but also social media); of the minuscule minority who actively sought information, most turned to their newspaper website, or ended up (with highest satisfaction among all sources) on official websites or Wikipedia.[6]
Most MoodBar users became longer-term contributors: A study on one dataset produced by the (mostly discontinued) MoodBar tool showed that the newcomers who gave feedback via the MoodBar were significantly more likely to become longer-term contributors. After six months, 3.6% of editors who were able to use the MoodBar were still editing, compared to 3.3% of those who did not have the option.[7]
New R libraries for Wikipedia research: A new R programming language library "wikipediatrend"[8] that facilitates longitudinal page-view analyses has been created. The package is a wrapper on top of long-time service stats.grok.se. This marks an uptick in the popularity of the R language for Wikipedia analysis as WikipediR was also recently released which itself wraps many common mediawiki API calls.
Use of Wikinews to teach journalism students: This paper[9] discusses an educational project that used Wikinews in an undergraduate journalism course at the Australian University of Wollongong. While the use of Wikipedia in education has dominated the relevant discussions, Wikinews seems like a valuable, yet underused tool for journalists-in-training. Though this essay-like paper seems to describe the experience in a positive fashion, it does not contain any specific conclusions, nor a list of articles edited by the students that would allow for a more-in depth commentary in the context of the Wikimedia learning experience.
"Linking Today's Wikipedia and News from the Past": This workshop paper[10] presents a method to automatically identify articles in the New York Times archive matching a particular event mentioned on Wikipedia (dataset)
Other recent publications
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
"An Empirical Study of Motivations for Content Contribution and Community Participation in Wikipedia"[11] From the abstract: "The research findings show that content contribution is more driven by extrinsically oriented motivations, including reciprocity and the need for self-development, while community participation is more driven by intrinsically oriented motivations, including altruism and a sense of belonging to the community."
"Wikipedia as a Time Machine"[12] (presented at WWW 2014)
"The political economy of wilkiality: a South African inquiry into knowledge and power on wikipedia"[14] (PhD Thesis)
"Predicting Low-Quality Wikipedia Articles Using User's Judgements"[15] From the abstract: "In this paper, we utilize article ratings from Wikipedia users for the first time to assess article quality. We define 'low-quality' based on those ratings and design automatic methods to identify potential low-quality articles."
"Infoboxer: Using Statistical and Semantic Knowledge to Help Create Wikipedia Infoboxes"[16]
"On the Use of Reliable-Negatives Selection. Strategies in the PU Learning Approach for Quality Flaws Prediction in Wikipedia."[17]
^Sefidari, Maria; Felipe Ortega (2014-12-10). "Evaluating arbitration and conflict resolution mechanisms in the Spanish Wikipedia". arXiv:1412.3695 [cs.CY].
^Ciampaglia, Giovanni Luca; Dario Taraborelli (2014-09-04). "MoodBar: Increasing New User Retention in Wikipedia through Lightweight Socialization". Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. pp. 734–742. arXiv:1409.1496. doi:10.1145/2675133.2675181. ISBN9781450329224. S2CID2285423.
^Stewart Whiting, Joemon M. Jose, Omar Alonso: Wikipedia as a Time Machine. WWW’14 Companion, April 7–11, 2014, Seoul, Korea. PD
^Welinder, Yana; Stephen LaPorte (2014-08-05). Hacking Trademark Law for Collaborative Communities. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. SSRN2476779.
^Roberto Yus, Varish Mulwad, Tim Finin, and Eduardo Mena: "Infoboxer: Using Statistical and Semantic Knowledge to Help Create Wikipedia Infoboxes" PDF
^Edgardo Ferretti, Marcelo Errecalde, Maik Anderka, Benno Stein: On the Use of Reliable-Negatives Selection. Strategies in the PU Learning Approach for Quality Flaws Prediction in Wikipedia. In: Proceedings of the 25th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA’14): 11th International Workshop on Text-based Information Retrieval (TIR’14), Munich, Germany, 2014. IEEE. PDF
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Oenothera rubricaulis, the common evening primrose, photographed by George Chernilevsky.
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette is now the subject of a featured article.
Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato's The Virgin in Prayer
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