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Archived at 2014-05-05T08:45Z

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

Public Domain Day—January 1, 2014—gives me an opportunity to reflect on this important asset, mandated by the Constitution of the United States.
The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
MediaWiki developers will be meeting in San Francisco on January 23–24 for an Architecture Summit.
On 8 January, the Wikimedia Foundation notified the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Sarah Stierch, a popular Wikimedian and the Foundation's Program Evaluation Community Coordinator, was no longer an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, as a result of being paid to create articles on the English Wikipedia.
At the very start of the new year, 2014's WikiCup—an annual competition which has been held on Wikipedia in various forms since 2007—began.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Television.
Twelve articles, three lists, seven pictures, and a portal were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.

The Signpost: 15 January 2014

Wikimedia Germany, the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.
The proposed schedule for the MediaWiki Archicture Summit has been published. The two main plenary sessions will be about HTML templating, and Service-oriented architecture.
It is heavily ironic that two decades after the World Wide Web was started — largely to make it easier to share scholarly research — most of our past and present research publications are still hidden behind paywalls for private profit. The bitter twist is that the vast majority of this research is publicly funded, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide each year.
Wikipedia's recent decline in readership, possibly due to Google's Knowledge Graph. ... Judith Newman in the New York Times asks "What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?"
We now can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not.
This week, we studied human social behavior with the folks at WikiProject Sociology.

The Signpost: 22 January 2014

A particularly esoteric anthology of speculative fiction, filled with imaginary Wikipedia entries from, as the introduction puts it, "the many Wikipedias across the Multiverse."
The Wikimedia Foundation's Director of Community Advocacy's application of pending changes level two on the article Conventional PCI—an action taken under its rarely used office actions policy—has escalated to the Arbitration Committee after an editor upgraded it to full protection.
Fifteen articles, nine lists, twenty pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.
On 15 January, Wikipedia turned thirteen years old. In that time, this site has grown from a small site that was known to only a select few to one of the most popular websites on the internet. At the same time, recent data suggests that there is a power curve among users, where the comparative few who are writing most of Wikipedia have most of the edits. The result of this is that there is going to be bias in what is created, and how we deal with it as Wikipedians is indicative of the future of the site. Furthermore, this brings up what we have to do in order to combat this bias, as there are many ideas, but the question is whether they will work or not.
This week we're interviewing Brion Vibber about the then-upcoming Architecture Summit. Brion is a long time Wikipedian, the first employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently the lead software architect working with the mobile team.
An article in USA Today announced that a European-funded project called RoboEarth that is designed to give robots a mechanism by which to access information to dispense.
While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.

tz database update

Yup, I'm serious.

Hi AlanM1, I would like to refresh the database to the 2013i release, but saw all the reverts you did and big notice you put out. I don't think people would notice my request if I state it in the talk page, so I came to you directly. Let me lay down my plans of updating the tz database and more:

  • I'll create a few pages on (most likely) new time zones, such as Africa/Juba, Asia/Khandyga, Asia/Ust-Nera and Europe/Busingen. I can do these while waiting for your reply.
  • After getting your green light, I'll refresh the table.
  • The picture on the right will replace the current version (as of 2009, goodness), mostly used in the tz infobox. The replacement should be done after the table is updated.
  • The infobox itself will be updated by including a red pog to mark the location of time zones.
  • This might not happen eventually, but I plan to replace the picture in UTC infoboxes with an SVG version. I have the raw ingredients but couldn't cook them up yet.

I hope that's enough to prove that I will not be vandalizing the page. Hytar (talk) 11:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

@Hytar: Hi. It's nice to see someone take an interest in the tz pages! It would be great to have your contributions. It's been a while since I worked with them, so I can't comment too accurately on your detailed issues without some research, but they sound good. Off the top of my head:
I remember the map being an issue, and getting it into SVG will make it more maintainable.
There was some talk about the difficulties/advisability of having individual pages for each zone name, some of which ambiguate existing pages. Had I to do it over, I'd have at least put them under their own page hierarchy, like "tz/". There is the question of whether most of them will ever have enough info to support their own article.
The way in which the lookup of values is supported currently is somewhat slow, and could really stand to be migrated to Lua and possibly wikidata (which should make future updates easier). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 06:11, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. Sorry I couldn't work on the articles quickly, as I have RL responsibilities and holidays in between.
I think that the current naming of time zones in Wikipedia articles are fine, and does not easily make existing pages ambiguous (because of "/" in the name). Indeed, most of the articles are in the stub category. However, they could be expanded from sometimes elaborate comments in the source files of the tz database, and also from discussion the mailing lists.
On lookup of values, I presume you mean the infobox. No doubt the infobox template is complicated as it pulls text from related pages. Any changes to the database means editing these related but separate pages. Rewriting the template in Lua or to link to Wikidata is a good idea, but I'm not the best person on this topic. Hytar (talk) 03:24, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

The Signpost: 29 January 2014

There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
Contests have existed almost as long as the English Wikipedia. Contestants have expanded hundreds of articles and made tens of thousands of edits. Although it may seem as though there aren't any negatives to contests, they have occasionally become a divisive topic on the English Wikipedia.
Wiki-PR, a public relations agency, whose employees used a sophisticated array of concealed user accounts to create, edit, and maintain several thousand Wikipedia articles for paying clients, has told Business Insider that it was demonized by the online encyclopedia. Jordan French, Wiki-PR's CEO, said he believes the Wikimedia Foundation "painted" his company to look like an "evil entity" that is "scrubbing truths from Wikipedia".
The Kafziel case has been closed, with Kafziel losing his administrator status as a result.
An author experimented with "a promising type of assignment in formal translator training which involves translating and publishing Wikipedia articles", in three courses with students at the University of Warsaw.

The Signpost: 12 February 2014

As reported in various media outlets this week, including The Next Web and The Daily Dot, this past week, Wikimedia Commons and various language Wikipedias are working together to encourage subjects of Wikipedia articles to record a 10-second clip of their voice to be appended to their Wikipedia article.
Software evolution does not always mean that features are being added. It also means that old fat is being trimmed. It is no different for MediaWiki.
In a bold move, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has announced a major change in policy concerning affiliated groups in the worldwide movement, and FDC funding levels to eligible chapters and thematic organizations over the next two years. Both decisions were published last Tuesday after considerable post-meeting consultation with the FDC and the Affiliations Committee (AffCom). The core of the first decision is
Thirteen articles, three lists, and twenty-five images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia from 19 January to 1 February.
Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.
In celebration of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, we revisited the team at WikiProject Russia to learn how the project has changed since our first interview in 2011.

The Signpost: 19 February 2014

The Wikimedia Foundation has proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' Terms of use to specifically ban undisclosed paid editing. ... Dimitris Liourdis, a lawyer in training who moonlights as an administrator on the Greek Wikipedia, is embroiled in a legal dispute with a Greek politician over alleged edits made to his Wikipedia article.
Runa Bhattacharjee has notified the community that the Foundation is ready to turn the Universal Language Selector back on.
WikiProject Countering System Bias aims to combat imbalanced coverage while encouraging neglected cultural perspectives and points of view, both in articles and in the larger Wikipedia community. As you'll see from the varied experiences and motivations of our nine respondents, the biases that the folks at WP CSB tackle run the full gamut of human characteristics and dispositions. The interview that follows unveils many of Wikipedia's greatest shortcomings.
Five articles, seven lists, forty-three pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia in the last two weeks.
Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.

The Signpost: 26 February 2014

About a week ago, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed to modify the Wikimedia projects' terms of use to specifically ban paid editing, by adding a new clause titled "Paid contributions without disclosure". We have asked two users, one in favor of the measure (Smallbones) and one opposed (Pete Forsyth), to contribute their opinions on the matter.
Eight articles, three lists, and nine pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
This week, we found three Ph.D.s willing to give us a crash course on WikiProject Neuroscience.
Ukraine has been gripped by widespread protests over the past three months. Due to a decision by former president Viktor Yanukovych—at Russia's urging—to abandon integration with the European Union, the country was (and in many ways still is) split between the Europe-favoring Ukrainian-speaking western half and the Russian-speaking east and south. Hundreds have died during the unrest, leaving thousands of family members and friends to bury their loved ones. This week our Wikimedian colleagues in Ukraine are facing that challenge after the death of one of their own.
Following a trend started by Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Argentina has published an open letter challenging the recent deletion of hundreds of images from the Commons under its policy on URAA-restored copyrights, relating to the United States' 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.
The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.
The monthly roundup of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee.

March 9 edit-a-thon at MOCA in downtown LA

LA Meetup: March 9 edit-a-thon at MOCA

Dear fellow Wikipedian,

You have been invited to a meetup and edit-a-thon at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, March 9, 2014 from 11 am to 6 pm! This event is in collaboration with MOCA and the arts collective East of Borneo and aims to improve coverage of LA art since the 1980s. (Even if contemporary art isn't your thing, you're welcome to join too!) Please RSVP here if you're interested.

I hope to see you there! User:Calliopejen1 (talk)

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An RfC that you may be interested in...

As one of the previous contributors to {{Infobox film}} or as one of the commenters on it's talk page, I would like to inform you that there has been a RfC started on the talk page as to implementation of previously deprecated parameters. Your comments and thoughts on the matter would be welcomed. Happy editing!

This message was sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 18:26, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

(test) The Signpost: 05 March 2014

There's nothing like a good old bit of Cold War nostalgia, combined with a suitably scary international incident, to focus our attention on the real world. That said, nothing could stem our outpouring of affection for the beloved comedian Harold Ramis, whose death managed to top the week in the face of those international concerns.
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
This week, the Signpost caught up with the Wikipedia Library (TWL), which aims to connect reference resources with Wikipedia editors who can use them to improve articles. Funded through the Wikimedia Foundation's Individual Engagement Grants program, TWL has a new "visiting scholars" initiative and a microgrants program in the works.
The WikiCup competition is ongoing, while six articles, three lists, and ten pictures were promoted to "featured" status of the English Wikipedia this week.
This week, the Signpost delved into the English Wikipedia's Article Rescue Squadron.

Kennedy Center Honors

I don't care particularly, but the rules for Talk pages specifically say they are not to be used for general discussion of the topic of the article. A list of people who contributors think should win Kennedy Center Honors clearly contravenes that. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 11:53, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

@Intelligent Mr Toad: Editing of other people's contributions to Talk pages is also discouraged, though, unless by admins for oversight-type violations (e.g. personal info, protection of minors). Because it wasn't mentioned in your edit summary, and lumped in with your new section, I assumed it was unintentional. Otherwise, I'd have probably left it alone. However, since it's back now, the comment was responded to, and is over 7 years old, so I'd suggest "let it be". —[AlanM1(talk)]— 19:24, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 March 2014

Wikimedians around the world gathered to celebrate Women's History Month and the associated International Women's Day by holding editathons. If you lived in the United Kingdom, you had the opportunity to attend Wikimedia UK's event at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of University College London and host to one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese artifacts in the world.
An intensely busy week, as a confluence of celebratory, curious and urgent topics pushed typical residents like Facebook and Deaths in 2014 out of the top ten entirely.
Five articles, two lists, and 52 pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
This week, we interviewed Anaxibia from the Russian-language Entomology WikiProject.

The Signpost: 19 March 2014

Non-US editors and chapters have taken issue with a multitude of image deletions done on the Wikimedia Commons to comply with the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a US law that brought the country into compliance with the Berne Convention.
This week, we visited WikiProject History, an ancient project with roots dating back to 2001. The project is home to 196 pieces of Featured material and 483 Good and A-class articles independent of the vast accomplishments of its various child projects. WikiProject History maintains a lengthy list of tasks, oversees the history portal, and continues to build Wikipedia's outline of history.
In a record-breaker, the English Wikipedia has a new largest good topic: the 71-article Light cruisers of Germany, which concerns the light cruisers used by Germany during the 20th century.
Twelve articles, fourteen lists, and six pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.
The utterly mystifying events surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has not fallen from the sky so much as vanished from it entirely, has left an information-starved public scrambling for precedents, some logical, some... not.
The Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014 has been published. A summarized version is also available. Major news include

The Signpost: 26 March 2014

April Fools' Day is rapidly approaching. Every year, members of the community pull pranks and make (or attempt to make) humorous edits to pages across the project. Every year, the community follows April Fools' Day with a contentious debate about whether or not it is necessary to impose limits on April Fools' Day jokes for future years. It is a polarizing issue.
Topics like the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 eased down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.
Have you wondered about differences in the articles on Crimea in the Russian, Ukrainian, and English versions of Wikipedia? A newly published article entitled "Lost in Translation: Contexts, Computing, Disputing on Wikipedia" doesn't address Crimea, but nonetheless offers insight into the editing of contentious articles in multiple language editions through a heavy qualitative examination of Wikipedia articles about the Kosovo in the Serbian, Croatian, and English editions.
Results for the two-stage 2013 Commons Picture of the Year have been announced. This year's winning photograph (above) shows a lightbulb that has been cracked, allowing inert gas to escape—and oxygen to enter, so that the tungsten filament burns. From the flames rise elegant curls of blue smoke.
Four articles, two lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
On 3 April, we will roll out some changes to the typography of Wikipedia's default Vector skin, to increase readability for users on all devices and platforms. After five months of testing, four major iterations, and through close collaboration with the global Wikimedia community, who provided more than 100 threads of feedback, we’ve arrived at a solution which improves the primary reading and editing experience for all users.
As you have probably read on this weeks op-ed, or via various other channels of announcement, 3 April will see the introduction of the Typography refresh (or update) for the Vector skin on all Wikipedias. Other projects like Commons will have this update rolled out a few days prior.
This week, the Signpost interviewed the English Wikipedia's Mountains WikiProject.

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The Signpost: 02 April 2014

The run-up to the conference has seen the unfolding of two fractious threads on the Wikimedia public mailing list, both of which may serve as background for the last session at Berlin: "Future of the Wikimedia Conference".
This week, we visited with WikiProject Germany.
The annual Wikimedia Conference is about to start in Berlin, hosted by Wikimedia Germany, which won the bid to hold the event over three others. This will be the fifth time the chapter has hosted the Wikimedia Conference—it did so from 2009 to 2012, with attendance ranging from 100 to 180 Wikimedians. This year 160 people are expected at the four-day event, which is mainly for representatives of affiliated Wikimedia organisations. The conference has been built around two themes: Organisation, structures, and grants and Success and impact.
The Signpost's "Featured content" writers had a bit of fun this week.
The mysterious fate of MH370 still tops the list, but in all other respects our readership has retreated from the real world into its pop-cultural happy place: TV, movies, music, Reddit and Google Doodles all made an appearance.

The Signpost: 09 April 2014

Community review is open for the four applications in the second and final round of applications to the WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee for 2013–14. Three eligible organisations have applied for funding under the newly named "annual program grants": Wikimedia France, Wikimedia Norway, and the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, which last November was recognised as eligible to apply for FDC funding purposes.
This week, we interviewed the Law WikiProject.
"I remember laughing and talking and laughing and talking at Wikimania 2012. I took this picture of her that she used for a long while as a profile pic. Someone on Facebook said it looked 'skepchickal', which she loved."
Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to 8 if movies released on video and new TV tech are are included.
Five article, five lists, and ten pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.

Dementia

We had a discussion several years ago regarding Parkinson's, dementia and Alzheimer's and how to list the death. Remarkably I wasnt the one stirring the pot in that discussion. Anyways, the end was determined that for the 3 that it is Ok to list them as CoD or to list them as complications of dementia (for example) if it was a quote from the article.

As far as common practice, it is up to the individual coroner or doctor (if he signs the Death Certificate):

"Depending on the circumstances and the practices of the doctor, dementia may be entered on the death certificate as the sole or main cause of death, or as a contributing factor. If it has not been mentioned, you can ask the doctor to include it if you wish."

http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=101

Most of the deaths like the lingering effects of a stroke is from pneumonia which may or may not be listed as well.

It is something near and dear to my heart as both my Great Grandmother and Grandmother died from dementia. My GG was 102 when she died after suffering from it for 20 years and my Grandmother died from it at 99 after 15+ years of treatment.

And I have looked at this in several Australian papers and they all list a long lingering battle with dementia. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/neville-wran-dead-aged-87-20140420-36ywh.html

Sunnydoo (talk) 00:46, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

@Sunnydoo: Hi. Taken together, the section quoted:
"Although dementia is a life-shortening illness, another condition or illness (such as pneumonia – an infection in the lung) may actually cause a person's death. This other condition or illness will most likely be listed as the cause on the person's death certificate. Pneumonia is listed as the ultimate cause of death in up to two-thirds of people with dementia. The person's ability to cope with infections and other physical problems will be impaired due to the progression of the disease, and the person may die because of a clot on the lung or a heart attack. However, in some people no specific cause of death is found, other than dementia. If the person is over 70, ageing may also be given as a contributing factor."
seems to confirm my understanding that dementia could not really be called the "proximate cause of death" in most (maybe all) cases. The last two sentences seem to say that it is sometimes listed when, absent dementia, "natural causes" would be. To me, "natural causes", or a specific system failure, like cardiac arrest, or even "multi-system failure" is more correct. I looked at other articles for the present case, as well as a couple of others, and they consistently seem to use wording that avoids "cause of death", using terms like "after a long battle with" and "had been suffering from" instead.
Mostly, I found the issue being discussed on the Alzheimer's website, related forums, etc., which makes sense, since it's naturally and reasonably in their interest to promote visibility of the disease.
I suppose it's a question of whether "cause of death" is supposed to mean the "proximate cause of death" usually listed on the cert, or the longer-term cause when it's a degenerative disease, like diabetes, morbid obesity, etc. Maybe we should broaden the documented definition of the field to "established cause of death or major contributing conditions"? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 00:47, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
We have had that discussion a couple of times...I know WWGB and I have discussed a couple of times as well. The problem is that there is not a consistency in the reporting of the deaths and none of us have the time or resources to track down all of the Death Certificates involved. In the US and British Territories for Natural Deaths, there is a Primary Cause and a Secondary Cause for Natural Deaths on the Death Certificate itself. Usually the Primary Cause is like you say Cardiac Arrest, Pneumonia, etc. and the Secondary Cause is usually a long term disease such as MS, MD, Cancer, Diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, etc etc. The problem enters from the Media (as you can tell I am not a fan of the US media at the moment). They either dont report the Primary cause (which is what you are looking for CA, Pneumonia, etc) or they simply use the phrase "Complications from." Unfortunately, the "Complications from" rankles a lot of folks on the Death's page as they dont understand what it means (and in their defense, it is an advanced concept). I had to stop one of the guys (i think it was Inedible Hulk) last month from running through removing all of the Complications from in the Month. What we have resigned ourselves to do is simply choose the best information that we have from a credible source. In this case that would be dementia, as the cause which would be the Secondary Cause in the US. But we simply dont have better information to the #1 cause. Pneumonia is a 66% shot, but I can tell you my Grandmother didnt die from pneumonia but from a secondary digestive infection (peritonitis) which also takes quite a few people with dementia. There was an argument Inedible started on the subject that is in the Archives related to Cardiac Arrest and CoD that touched on a few of the matters. You can access that discussion off of the Talk page under the Archive 1.Sunnydoo (talk) 01:22, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
And the "Natural Causes" argument is one I pushed for but got blowback on as well. In order to be able to list Natural Causes as a CoD on the Death's page, it has to be directly stated in the article. People feel that it is too unspecific.Sunnydoo (talk) 01:28, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
@Sunnydoo: Then it makes sense to just clarify the meaning of the field (as CoD/contributing factors), since that's descriptive of what the media gives us. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:06, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
@Sunnydoo: Thinking about it further, I had the same problem with "cancer" in most cases, since it doesn't really say what system failed. Looking into it further, this doc cleared it up for me. What I was thinking as the meaning of CoD was more like what they describe as "mechanism". —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:35, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I think that may be a little misleading. I understand what they are saying, but I have always been a completionist. If you have never seen one, here is a good link for you to view- http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/blue_form.pdf. Part I is the Primary cause and Part II is the Secondary cause in a Natural death. Cancer can be extremely tricky to judge. Sometimes its the treatment which is extremely toxic, sometimes its damage to the immune system or other bodily apparatus leading to infections or secondary damage such as kidney failure. And sometimes it is a direct cause for example in brain cancers where the tumor either shuts off or overloads the electrical system. Its one of the reason why you see me use "Complications" so much, as it covers a lot of bases.Sunnydoo (talk) 09:44, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm. The handful of death certs I've seen (mostly LA and Orange Counties of California) only have a single line for "Part I" and do not have the time-to-death. It seems that, in the case of diseases like cancer and cerebral disease, the media tend to report that, and that's what we're stuck with. It seems more useful than the "immediate cause", anyway. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 20:16, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 23 April 2014

The annual Wikimedia Conference wound up last Sunday, 13 April—a four-day meeting costing several hundred thousand dollars, hosted in Berlin by Wikimedia Germany and attended by more than 100 Wikimedians.
Hey you—yeah you, the Wikipedian! Do you want to help a museum, a library, a university, or other organization explore ways to engage with Wikipedia? Great—you should offer your expertise as a Wikipedian in residence!
Cynthia Ashley-Nelson, who edited as "Cindamuse" on the Wikimedia projects, passed away in her sleep at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin on 10 April.
This week, we visited WikiProject Catholicism.
After just over a month of deliberation, the Wikimania jury has selected Wikimedia Mexico's bid to host Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, with a proposed date of 15–19 July.
If I were the kind of person who made snap judgments based on flimsy evidence, I'd say our readership is in a funk.
Fourteen articles, four lists, seven pictures, and one topic attained "featured" status on the English Wikipedia over the last two weeks.

May 10 Asian Pacific American edit-a-thon in LA

LA Meetup: May 10 Asian Pacific American edit-a-thon

Dear fellow Wikipedian,

You have been invited to a meetup and edit-a-thon at the Junipero Serra Branch of the LA Public Library (4607 S. Main St., 90037) on Saturday, May 10, 2014 from 10 am to 4 pm! This event is sponsored by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association and aims to improve coverage of Asian Pacific American topics, particularly as they relate to southern California. Please RSVP here if you're interested.

I hope to see you there! Calliopejen1 (talk) - via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:11, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

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The Signpost: 30 April 2014

Like hammering a square peg into a round hole, the Wikimedia Foundation has submitted a draft annual plan for 2014–15 to its own Funds Dissemination Committee. Unlike the WMF's submission to the FDC's inaugural round in October 2012, the "proposal" does not seek funding.
Not much to report this week. The same post-Easter celebrations (4/20, Earth Day) were popular again this year, except last year we were still reeling from the Boston Marathon bombing.
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced that its new executive director will be Lila Tretikov, until now a chief product officer in Silicon Valley.
This week, we unraveled the mysteries of WikiProject Genetics.
Ed Roley, Associate Director of Integrated Media at the Peabody Essex Museum, talks about GLAM engagement with Wikipedia.
Four articles and sixteen featured pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia last week.
Can you predict the number of seasonal influenza-like illness in the U.S. using data from Wikipedia?
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