Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-01-14

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-01-14. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: First arbitration case in almost six months (2,847 bytes · 💬)

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Ed. note: the talk page was cleared prior to publication as per the Signpost's normal practice. The previous comments can be read here. Thanks, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

• Interesting. I only recently discovered the "Wikipedia as database" debate. As importing and exporting encyclopedic data to and from WP gets more common, I expect we will have more of these disputes about merging content. --Surturz (talk) 17:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• With regards to the editor's note, a better link to the previous discussion might be this one. The previous comments can be read more easily on that page in my opinion.--Rockfang (talk) 20:40, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
• It is not particularly appealing to have the signpost judge (even a part of) an ArbCom case before it has even been heard. It is also questionable whether it should report some of the more hyperbolic statements cited by parties, third hand. Two layers of selection bias is quite enough. Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC).
  

  I have to agree with this comment - I don't know anything about the case myself here, but reporting it like this (with quotes from the people bringing the case and none from Doncram himself) seems like a bad idea. The Signpost should probably restrict itself to saying 'a new ArbCom case has been opened', and allow those who want to know more to click the link and read it, rather than producing a summary vulnerable to partisan bias. Robofish (talk) 00:25, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

  I am in agreement with the two above. The article left me with a bad taste in my mouth. With regards, Iselilja (talk) 00:44, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

• These three have agreed to disagree in a more or less acrimonious way for months. I am not surprised to see this here. Just a clarification: I think Doncram mostly works with databases from NRHP, which are foreign to Wikipedia, but not foreign in the sense of being in a foreign language. Jane (talk) 10:30, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Discussion report: Flag Manual of Style; accessibility and equality (630 bytes · 💬)

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• Would someone be willing to add WP:AN#PC2 for Mangoeater targets? One thing that's been brought up there is the need for the discussion to be well-publicized. It's currently listed at WP:CENT. — Francophonie&Androphilie^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:12, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Investigative report: Ship ahoy! New travel site finally afloat (1,683 bytes · 💬)

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Hello, you wrote: "Compared with the Wikipedia readership, visitors to Wikivoyage are likely to be younger [...]." This is an interesting question. If one can believe the demographics at Alexa.com, WV rather has its peaks at the middle age and especially at the elderly (65+) columns... (unsigned)

The self-promotional edits are easy to spot; use wikivoyage:project:words to avoid to generate some BINGO cards. Once you've reverted five edits in a row for vague, self-laudatory terms (like "our friendly staff" and "beautiful sunsets" claimed by every venue, good or bad) call BINGO! A good listing is factual, a self-promotional listing will often be missing key facts such as pricing, hours and contact info but be bloated with self-laudatory opinion. A Convention and Visitors Bureau might even try to do this to an entire town's article. The traveller comes first. The hôtelier who submits an entire section of an article as self-praise (where one article is normally a city or region) is reverted, much like the articles about my great garage band that no one's heard of seem never to get featured on the front page of Wikipedia. K7L (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

K7L, thanks, that's very useful info. We all need to skill up on this, and perhaps there are analogues in en.WP. Tony (talk) 08:14, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Launch of annual picture competition, new grant scheme (2,151 bytes · 💬)

POTY

I was under the impression that I wrote the script that we are using for POTY this year. But I would suggest leaving out the name completely because it is not important who did it but just that there is. -- Rillke (talk) 14:58, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note; I've altered the article accordingly. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much. There were so many helpful people organizing POTY that it would be wrong just to mention one. -- Rillke (talk) 15:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Please take a little more care: POTY is not a photo competition, all types of pictures are eligible, including photographs, diagrams, digital art, and restoration work, so long as they fit in with Commons' educational goals. "Photo" is not a generic word meaning "any type of image". I have corrected this for you, but this error was in the title, meaning hundreds of userpages got the wrong information posted directly to them. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

My apologies, and your change here actually fixes it across all userpages. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:20, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem, just an issue that should be noted, as the last thing we want to do is to discourage the people with less common skills from participating. =) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Special report: Loss of an Internet genius (3,779 bytes · 💬)

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Great article, touching and very informative at the same time.

Signpost readers interested in Aaron's involvement in the Wikimedia movement might be interested in the 2006 Signpost interview with him, too. There, he also mentions his "first web application [that] "was basically the same idea as Wikipedia". As mentioned in the WMF blog post, it won him a finalist entry in a teen website competition in 2000, described in a newspaper article at the time as follows:

"an ever-growing encyclopedia-like site filled with "a vast repository of human knowledge" focused on content -- real information for people to use, as [Swartz, then 13 years old] calls it.

The site works like this: Anyone can submit information about what they know in a totally open environment, which means they can add to the information freely.

"In the style of the popular GNU/Linux operating system,"Swartz added."

Also note that he is listed as donor in the last WMF annual report.

As a minor nitpick, it's not quite true that the entire 2006 "six-part series ... was translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, and French" - only the "Who Writes Wikipedia?" part was (at least I'm pretty certain that that's the case for German, having helped a little with the German translation myself at the time).

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 14:39, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, Tilman. I've fixed the nitpick you identified—that was an editing error, caused by me confusing Tony. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 14:58, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This tragedy shows that many US laws are incredibly stupid, as is the philosophy of putting a large percentage of your population behind bars for reasons that are more often than not ridiculous. Threatening to put somebody in prison for 50 years for downloading files, which didn't hurt anybody either personally or financially? How stupid can you get? --Rosenzweig (talk) 15:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This is sad, sad and stupid. It's a story about knowledge, money, power, and system failure. Aaron wanted to do what was manifestly right, in the case of public domain knowledge, and increasingly academic publishing is moving, or being pushed, to an open model. But it was not, mostly, those with vested interests in selling knowledge who are responsible for this tragedy, it is the people who set up as system which rewards the most prosecutions for the most charges for the maximum penalties. Rich Farmbrough, 19:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC).

I read somewhere that he could have accepted a plea deal (but didn't) that involved just 6 months in prison. Can someone verify that? 74.202.39.3 (talk) 20:11, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This is so sad! Since Jstor had decided to make the information public, it was ridiculous for prosecutors to have taken such a hard line. Also, MIT should be ashamed of itself. I hope their investigation leads to some soul searching by universities and other institutions about the free content movement. -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:16, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Technology report: Intermittent outages planned, first Wikidata client deployment (1,940 bytes · 💬)

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• Why isn't there a way to switch from the Tampa to the Ashburn servers without causing any outages? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 18:44, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure operations folks are aiming for no outages and there might well be none. (hopefully) But there's some risk involved in this sort of switchover and maybe the transition isn't 100% perfect. --Aude (talk) 19:56, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Repeating what Aude said for the most part. There isn't some gigantic, Frankenstein-style switch that can just be levered. There are a lot of moving parts and things that can go wrong. As the sayings go, "The map is not the terrain," and "No plan, however well-conceived, survives contact with the enemy."--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Well if both clusters are running and synchronising before the switch over, then careful DNS migration should provide a seamless transition, provided synchronisation can be maintained. However most architectures have weak points, and atomicity is probably ours. Rich Farmbrough, 19:12, 19 January 2013 (UTC).

• I think Echo can only reach its potential if people reply your message on your user talk page, not on their own talk page. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:20, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point, that. MikeLynch (talk) 17:53, 21 January 2013 (UTC)