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News and notes: Wikimedians and London 2012; WMF budget – staffing, engineering, editor retention effort, and the global South; Telegraph's cheap shot at WP Wikimedia Foundation published its Annual Plan, focusing on technical improvements, editor retention, and structural reforms over the coming year. The movement's total revenue, including almost all chapter funding, is slated to rise by 35%, from $34.2 million to $46.1 million, and global spending to more than $42.1 million. The foundation's own core spending will grow by 15% to $30.2 million in 2012–13.
WikiProject report: Summer sports series: WikiProject Horse Racing We continue our Summer Sports Series this week with WikiProject Horse Racing. Started in November 2005, the project has grown to include nearly 8,000 articles maintained by 34 active members. There are 10 Featured Articles and 19 Good Articles included in the project's scope. In addition to preparing articles for GA and FA status, the project attempts to create requested articles and locate requested images. We interviewed Redrose64, Montanabw, Tigerboy1966, Ealdgyth, and Cuddy Wifter.
Featured content: One of a kind Eight new featured articles, five new featured lists, and eight new featured pictures. The highlights include a new featured picture of Frank Sinatra, created by William P. Gottlieb and nominated by Tomer T. Sinatra (1915–98) was a highly successful American singer and film actor whose career spanned 60 years. This image dates from around 1947.
Arbitration report: No pending or open arbitration cases Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin proposed a motion requiring the alteration of any instances of an editor's previous username in arbitration decisions to reflect their name changes. The Devil's Advocate has initiated an amendment request for the controversial Race and intelligence case.
Op-ed: The Athena Project: being bold At this year's Wikimania, I [Brandon Harris] gave a talk entitled The Athena Project: Wikipedia in 2015. The talk broadly outlined several ideas the foundation is exploring for planned features, user interface changes, and workflow improvements. We expect that many of these changes will be welcomed, while others will be controversial. During the question-and-answer period, I was asked whether people should think of Athena as a skin, a project, or something else. I responded, "You should think of Athena as a kick in the head" – because that's exactly what it's supposed to be: a radical and bold re-examination of some of our sacred cows when it comes to the interface.
News and notes: FDC portal launched On August 1, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) portal was launched on Meta. The FDC will implement the Wikimedia movement's new grant-orientated finance structure in accordance with the WMF board's recent resolutions. As a volunteer committee, the FDC will make recommendations to the WMF board on a $11.4 million budget for 2012–13.
Arbitration report: No pending or open arbitration cases Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin proposed a motion for a procedure on the alteration of an editor's previous username(s) in arbitration decisions to reflect their name change(s). ... The Devil's Advocate initiated an amendment request for the controversial Race and intelligence case.
Featured content: Casliber's words take root This week the Signpost interviews Casliber, an editor who has written or contributed significantly to a startling 69 featured articles. We learn what makes him tick, why he edits, and why he can write on everything from vampires to dinosaurs, birds to plants. He also gives some advice to budding featured article writers.
Technology report: Wikidata nears first deployment but wikis go down in fibre cut calamity The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for July 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project). ... At least one fibre-optic cable was damaged at the WMF's Tampa site on August 6, leading to a sharp downwards spike in traffic lasting over an hour and almost three hours of disruption for readers around the globe.
WikiProject report: Summer sports series: WikiProject Martial Arts This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Martial Arts. Since April 2004, the project has been the hub for discussion and improvement of martial arts articles, including all disciplines and national origins. The project maintains a variety of conventions for handling the names and descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Sikh, Filipino, Okinawan, and hybrid martial arts. WikiProject Martial Arts has spawned or absorbed several subprojects focusing on boxing, kickboxing, sumo, and mixed martial arts.
Op-ed: Small Wikipedias' burden In a certain way, writing Wikipedia is the same everywhere, in every language or culture. You have to stick to the facts, aiming for the most objective way of describing them, including everything relevant and leaving out all the everyday trivia that is not really necessary to understand the context. You have to use critical thinking, trying to be independent of your own preferences and biases. To some effect, that's all there is to it. Naturally, Wikipedians have their biases, some of which can never be cured. Most Wikipedians tend to like encyclopedias; but millions of people in the world don't share that bias, and we represent them rather poorly. I'm also quite sure that an overwhelming majority of Wikipedia co-authors are literate. Again, that's not true for everyone in this world. Yet we have other, less noticeable but barely less fundamental biases.
News and notes: Bangla-language survey suggests the challenges for small Wikipedias The Bangla language, also known as Bengali, is spoken by some 200 million people in Bangladesh and India. The Bangla Wikipedia has a very small active community of about ten to fifteen very active editors, with another 35–40 as less active editors. The project faces particular challenges in being a small Wikipedia, and Dhaka-based WMF community fellow User:Tanvir Rahman is working to understand these challenges and to develop strategies that can improve small wikis that have strong potential to expand their editing communities.
Arbitration report: You really can request for arbitration A request for arbitration was filed late last week, ending the three-week long absence of pending cases.
Featured content: On the road again Six featured articles were promoted this week, including Business US Highway 41, which was a state trunkline highway that served as a business loop in Marquette in the US state of Michigan.
Technology report: "Phabricating" a serious alternative to Gerrit Three weeks into a month-long evaluation of code review tool Gerrit, a serious alternative has finally gained traction in the review process: Facebook-developed but now independently operated Phabricator and its sister command-line tool Arcanist.
WikiProject report: Dispute Resolution This week, we interviewed the lively bunch at WikiProject Dispute Resolution. Started in November 2011 to study and discuss improvements to Wikipedia's resources for resolving disputes between editors, the young project has supplemented dispute resolution efforts currently handled at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, Mediation Committee, and other venues. Over 40 editors have signed up to provide feedback, a variety of ideas have been proposed, and a manual for dispute resolution has been created.
Op-ed: Wikimedians are rightfully wary The Wikimedia Foundation sometimes proposes new features that receive substantive criticism from Wikimedians, yet those criticisms may be dismissed on the basis that people are resistant to change—there's an unjustified view that the wikis have been overrun by vested contributors who hate all change. That view misses a lot of key details and insight because there are good reasons that Wikimedians are suspicious of features development, given past and present development of bad software, growing ties with the problematic Wikia, and a growing belief that it is acceptable to experiment on users.
News and notes: Core content competition in full swing; Wikinews fork taken offline The Core Contest is a month-long competition among editors to improve Wikipedia's most important "core" articles—especially those that are in a relatively poor state. Core articles, such as Music, Computer, and Philosophy, tend to lie in the trunk of the tree of knowledge; by analogy, featured-and good-article processes generally attract more specialist topics out on the branches.
In the news: American judges on citing Wikipedia In the Utah Court of Appeals this week, the majority opinion in Fire Insurance Exchange v. Robert Allen Oltmanns and Brady Blackner relied on Wikipedia for the basic premise of their legal opinion, and included a concurring opinion devoted solely to the issue of citing Wikipedia in a legal opinion.
Featured content: Enough for a week – but I'm damned if I see how the helican. Thirteen featured articles were promoted this week, including pelicans, which are a genus of large water birds comprising the family Pelecanidae, characterised by a long beak and large throat-pouch. They have a fossil record dating back at least 30 million years and are most closely related to the Shoebill and Hammerkop. These fish-feeders have a patchy relationship with humans: the birds are sometimes persecuted and sometimes feature in mythology.
Technology report: Lua onto test2wiki and news of a convention-al extension New embeddable scripting ("template replacement") language Lua received considerable scrutiny this week when it began its long road to widespread deployment, landing on the test2wiki test site on Wednesday (wikitech-l mailing list). ... the fourth in our series profiling participants in this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) programme.
WikiProject report: Land of Calm and Contrast: Korea This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Korea. Started in September 2006, WikiProject Korea covers the history and culture of the Korean people, including both countries that currently occupy the Korean peninsula. This task has proven difficult with North Koreans notably absent from the Wikipedia community due to tight control over access to external media. The project is home to over 16,000 pages, including 15 pieces of Featured material and 66 Good and A-class Articles.
News and notes: Tough journey for new travel guide Wikimedia editors have been debating a community proposal for the adoption of a new project to host free travel-guide content. The debate reached a new stage when a three-month request for comment on Meta came to an end, with a decision to set up the first new type of Wikimedia project in half a decade. The original proposal for the travel guide unfolded during April on Meta and the Wikimedia-l mailing lists, centring around the wish of volunteer contributors to the WikiTravel project to work in a non-commercial environment.
Technology report: Just how bad is the code review backlog? Developers were left one step closer to an understanding of the code review outlook this week after the creation of a graph plotting "number changesets awaiting review" over time. The chart, which also shows the number of new changesets created on a daily basis, reveals a peak in the number of unreviewed changesets in mid-July, followed by a short drop. The current figure stands at approximately 219 unreviewed changesets.
Featured content: Wikipedia rivals The New Yorker: Mark Arsten This week the Signpost interviews Mark Arsten, who has written or contributed significantly to ten featured articles; most have related to new religious movements, and some have touched on other controversial or quirky topics. Mark gives us a rundown on how he keeps neutral and what drives him to write featured content; he also gives some hints for aspiring writers.
WikiProject report: From sonic screwdrivers to jelly babies: Doctor Who This week, we hopped in a little blue box with a batch of companions from WikiProject Doctor Who. Started in April 2005, the project has grown to include about 4,000 pages about the world's longest-running science fiction television show, its spinoffs, and various related material. The project is the parent of the Torchwood Taskforce and a child of WikiProject British TV and WikiProject Science Fiction. With new Doctor Who episodes airing this week and a 50th anniversary celebration around the corner, we thought now would be a good time to inquire about the famed Time Lord.
you could find some time over the next week to see what the default or most widely used term in Hebrew is for the Zion square assault. Technically we do need some sort of Hebrew indications in the lead on this. All the translated press use (attempted) lynch, but perhaps it's more complex than that. No hurry, if you can see your way to looking into this. Thanks, pal. BestNishidani (talk) 19:03, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 03 September 2012
News and notes: World's largest photo competition kicks off; WMF legal fees proposal Some of Wikimedia's most valuable photographs have been shot and uploaded under free licenses as a direct result of the annual Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) event each September. Last year, the project was conducted on a European level, resulting in the submission of an extraordinary 168,208 free images of cultural heritage sites ("monuments") from 18 countries, making it the world's largest photographic competition. Organising the 2012 event—which has just opened and will run for the full month of September—has required input from chapters and volunteers in 35 countries.
Technology report: Time for a MediaWiki Foundation? Developers are currently discussing the possibility of a MediaWiki Foundation to oversee those aspects of MediaWiki development that relate to non-Wikimedia wikis. The proposal was generated after a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list about generalising Wikimedia's CentralAuth system.
Featured content: Wikipedia's Seven Days of Terror Five featured pictures were promoted this week, including a video explaining the recent landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. NASA called the final minutes of the complicated landing procedure "the seven minutes of terror".
Op-ed: Dispute resolution – where we're at, what we're doing well, and what needs fixing Since May 2012 I've been a Wikimedia Foundation community fellow with the task of researching and improving dispute resolution on English Wikipedia. Surveying members of the community has revealed much about their thoughts on and experiences with dispute resolution. I've analysed processes to determine their use and effectiveness, and have presented ideas that I hope will improve the future of dispute resolution.
The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)
Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.
Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow
In this issue:
Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
Research: The most recent DR data
Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
From the editor: Signpost adapts as news consumption changes Thanks to the initiative of Yuvi Panda and Notnarayan, the Signpost now has an Android app, free for download on Google Play. ... but would readers be interested in an iOS app for Apple devices?
Op-ed: Fixing Wikipedia's help pages one key to editor retention Much like article content, the English Wikipedia's help pages have grown organically over the years. Although this has produced a great deal of useful documentation, with time many of the pages have become poorly maintained or have grown overwhelmingly complicated.
In the media: Author criticizes Wikipedia article; Wales attacks UK government proposal Philip Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, wrote an open letter in the New Yorker addressed to Wikipedia this week, alleging severe inaccuracies in the article on his The Human Stain (2000).
WikiProject report: WikiProject Fungi After a week's hiatus, the WikiProject Report returns with an interview featuring WikiProject Fungi. Started in March 2006, the project has grown to include over 9,000 pages, including 47 Featured Articles and 176 Good Articles. The project maintains a list of high priority missing articles and stubs that need expansion.
Special report: Two Wikipedians set to face jury trial In dramatic events that came to light last week, two English Wikipedia volunteers—Doc James (James Heilman) and Wrh2 (Ryan Holliday)—are being sued in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Internet Brands, the owner of Wikitravel.com. Both Wikipedians have also been volunteer Wikitravel editors (and in Holliday's case, a volunteer administrator). IB's complaints focus on both editors' encouragement of their fellow Wikitravel volunteers to migrate to a proposed non-commercial travel guidance site that would be under the umbrella of the WMF.
News and notes: Researchers find that Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus" In its September issue, the peer-reviewed journal First Monday published The readability of Wikipedia, reporting research which shows that the English Wikipedia is struggling to meet Flesch reading ease test criteria, while the Simple English Wikipedia has "lost its focus".
Technology report: Mmmm, milkshake... The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for August 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment).
Re your WP:AIV report: I have blocked that account for now. This report is serious enough that I recommend you also post an "FYI" about this incident at the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I'm not sure if there are other steps that should be taken in the event of death threats made using our email system; a post there gets many more admins' eyes on the issue.
In the future, I'd take any threats of this nature straight to that noticeboard.
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From the editor: Signpost expands to Facebook We now have a Facebook page at facebook.com/wikisignpost. We invite you to "like" the page and join the discussion there.
WikiProject report: Action! — The Indian Cinema Task Force This week, we shine the spotlight on the Indian Cinema Task Force, a subproject that seeks to improve the quality and quantity of articles about Indian cinema. As a child of WikiProject Film and WikiProject India, the Indian Cinema Task Force shares a variety of templates, resources, and members with its parent projects. The task force works on a to-do list, maintains the Bollywood Portal, and ensures articles follow the film style guidelines. With Indian cinema celebrating its 100th year of existence in 2013, we asked Karthik Nadar (Karthikndr), Secret of success, Ankit Bhatt, Dwaipayan, and AnimeshKulkarni what is in store for the Indian Cinema Task Force.
Featured content: Go into the light Eight featured articles, six featured lists, ten featured pictures, and one featured topic were promoted this week.
News and notes: Tens of thousands of monuments loved; members of new funding body announced The world's largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, is entering its final two weeks. The month-long event, of Dutch origin, is being held globally for the first time after the success of its European-level predecessor last year. During September 2011 more than 5000 volunteers from 18 countries took part and uploaded 168,208 free images. This year, volunteers and chapters from 35 countries around the world have organised the event. The best photographs will be determined by juries at the national and finally the global level.
Technology report: Future-proofing: HTML5 and IPv6 1.20wmf12, the 12th release to Wikimedia wikis from the 1.20 branch, was deployed to its first wikis on September 17; if things go well, it will be deployed to all wikis by September 26. Its 200 or so changes – 111 to WMF-deployed extensions plus 98 to core MediaWiki code – include support for links with mixed-case protocols (e.g. Http://example.com) and the removal of the "No higher resolution available" message on the file description pages of SVG images.
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In the media: Editor's response to Roth draws internet attention Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) defense of Wikipedia against the recent Philip Roth controversy has drawn a significant amount of attention over the last week. The problems between Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, and Wikipedia arose from an open letter he penned for the American magazine New Yorker, and were covered by the Signpost two weeks ago. Keyes—who wrote the piece as a prominent Wikipedian but is also a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation—wrote a blog post on the topic, lamenting the factual errors in Roth's letter and criticizing the media for not investigating his claims: "[they took] Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we [Wikipedia] handle primary sourcing."
Recent research: "Rise and decline" of Wikipedia participation, new literature overviews, a look back at WikiSym 2012 A paper to appear in a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist (summarized in the research index) sheds new light on the English Wikipedia's declining editor growth and retention trends. The paper describes how "several changes that the Wikipedia community made to manage quality and consistency in the face of a massive growth in participation have lead to a more restrictive environment for newcomers". The number of active Wikipedia editors has been declining since 2007 and research examining data up to September 2009 has shown that the root of the problem has been the declining retention of new editors. The authors show this decline is mainly due to a decline among desirable, good-faith newcomers, and point to three factors contributing to the increasingly "restrictive environment" they face.
WikiProject report: 01010010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 01101001 01100011 01110011 This week, we tinkered with WikiProject Robotics. From the project's inception in December 2007, it has served as Wikipedia's hub for building and improving articles about robots and robotics, accumulating two Featured Articles and seven Good Articles along the way. The project covers both fictitious and real-life robots, the technology that powers them, and many of the brains behind the robotics field
News and notes: UK chapter rocked by Gibraltar scandal In the second controversy to engulf Wikimedia UK in two months, its immediate past chair Roger Bamkin has resigned from the board of the chapter. The resignation last Wednesday followed a growing furore over the conflict of interest between two of Roger's roles outside the chapter and his close involvement in the UK board's decision-making process, including the access to private mailing lists that board members in all chapters need. But the irony surrounding Roger's resignation is its connection with efforts by Wikimedians and collaborators to strengthen the reach of Wikimedia projects through technical innovation.
Technology report: Signpost investigation: code review times Late last month, the "Technology report" included a story using code review backlog figures – the only code review figures then available – to construct a rough narrative about the average experience of code contributors. This week, we hope to go one better, by looking directly at code review wait times, and, in particular, median code review times
Featured content: Dead as... Fourteen featured articles were promoted this week, including Dodo, along with six featured lists and five featured pictures.
Paid editing: Does Wikipedia Pay? The Founder: Jimmy Wales Does Wikipedia Pay? is a Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved. This week, a scandal centering around Roger Bamkin's work with Wikimedia UK and Gibraltarpedia erupted ... In light of these events, opinions on how to avoid future controversy are as important as ever. ... The Signpost spoke with Jimmy Wales to better understand how he views the paid editing environment and what he thinks is needed to improve it.
News and notes: Independent review of UK chapter governance; editor files motion against Wikitravel owners Following considerable online and media reportage on the Gibraltar controversy and a Signpost report last week, the Wikimedia UK chapter and the foundation published a joint statement on September 28: "To better understand the facts and details of these allegations and to ensure that governance arrangements commensurate with the standing of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia UK and the worldwide Wikimedia movement, Wikimedia UK's trustees and the Wikimedia Foundation will jointly appoint an independent expert advisor to objectively review both Wikimedia UK's governance arrangements and its handling of the conflict of interest."
Featured content: Mooned Five articles, three lists, and nine images were promoted to "featured" this week.
Technology report: WMF and the German chapter face up to Toolserver uncertainty The Toolserver is an external service hosting the hundreds of webpages and scripts (collectively known as "tools") that assist Wikimedia communities in dozens of mostly menial tasks. Few people think that it has been operating well recently; the problems, which include high database replication lag and periods of total downtime, have caused considerable disruption to the Toolserver's usual functions. Those functions are highly valued by many Wikimedia communities ... In 2011, the Foundation announced the creation of Wikimedia Labs, a much better funded project that among other things aimed to mimic the Toolserver's functionality by mid-2013. At the same time, Erik Möller, the WMF's director of engineering, announced that the Foundation would no longer be supporting the Toolserver financially, but would continue to provide the same in-kind support as it had done previously.
WikiProject report: The Name's Bond... WikiProject James Bond In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film series, we spent some time bonding with WikiProject James Bond. The project is in the unique position of having already pushed all of its primary content to Good and Featured status, including all of Ian Fleming's novels, short stories, and every film that has been released. Work has begun in earnest on the article Skyfall for the release of the new Bond film later this month. The project could still use help improving articles about Bond actors, characters, gadgets, music, video games, and related topics
News and notes: Education Program faces community resistance Wikipedia in education is far from a new idea: years of news stories, op-eds, and editorials have focused on the topic; and on Wikipedia itself, the Schools and universities projects page has existed in various forms since 2003. Over the next six years, the page was rarely developed, and when it did advance there was no clear goal in mind.
WikiProject report: Ten years and one million articles: WikiProject Biography On this day five years ago, the WikiProject Report debuted as a new Signpost column with an overview of WikiProject Biography. Today, we're celebrating two milestone: five years of the WikiProject Report and the tenth birthday of our first featured project. WikiProject Biography is by far the largest WikiProject on Wikipedia, with over one million articles under the project's scope. As a comparison, WikiProject Biography is three times larger than Wikipedia's second largest project, and if WikiProject Biography were split into its 14 subprojects and work groups, it would still make the list of the 20 largest WikiProjects... four times.
Featured content: A dash of Arsenikk This week the Signpost interviews Arsenikk, an editor of six years who has brought sixteen lists through our featured list process, mostly regarding transportation in Norway but also about the 1952 Winter Olympics and World Heritage Sites in Africa. Arsenikk tells us about why he joined the project, what moves him, and how editors can join the sometimes daunting world of featured lists.
Technology report: The ups and downs of September and October, plus extension code review analysis The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for September 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project, phase 1 of which is edging its way towards its first deployment). Three of the seven headline items in the report have already been covered in the Signpost: problems with the corruption of several Gerrit (code) repositories, the introduction of widespread translation memory across Wikimedia wikis, and the launch of the "Page Curation" tool on the English Wikipedia, with development work on that project now winding down. The report also drew attention to the end of Google Summer of Code 2012, the deployment to the English Wikipedia of a new ePUB (electronic book) export feature, and improvements to the WLM app aimed at more serious photographers.
Op-ed: AdminCom: A proposal for changing the way we select admins There is wide agreement among English Wikipedians that the administrator system is in some ways broken—but no consensus on how to fix it. Most suggestions have been relatively small in scope, and could at best produce small improvements. I would like to make a proposal to fundamentally restructure the administrator system, in a way that I believe would make it more effective and responsive. The proposal is to create an elected Administration Committee ("AdminCom") which would select, oversee, and deselect administrators.
In the media: Wikipedia's language nerds hit the front page This week saw a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on editorial debates in Wikipedia. The story focused on the title-naming dispute surrounding the Beatles article, and specifically the RfC on whether the 'the' in the band's name should be capitalized or not.
Featured content: Second star to the left On the English Wikipedia, five featured articles, ten featured lists, and four featured pictures were promoted, including USS Lexington, a ship built for the United States Navy that, although ordered in 1916 as a battlecruiser, was converted to an aircraft carrier. It was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea during the Second World War.
News and notes: Chapters ask for big bucks The volunteer-led Wikimedia Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and interested community members are looking at Wikimedia organization applications worth about US$10.4 million out of the committee's first full year's operation, in just the inaugural round one of two that have been planned for the year with a planned budget of US$11.4M.
Technology report: Wikidata is a go: well, almost A trial of the first phase of Wikimedia Deutschland's "Wikidata" project–implementing the first ever interwiki repository—may soon get underway following the successful passage of much of its code through MediaWiki's review processes this week.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Chemicals This week, we experimented with WikiProject Chemicals. Started in August 2004, WikiProject Chemicals has grown to include over 10,000 articles about chemical compounds. The project has a unique assessment system that omits C-class, Good, and Featured Articles. As a result, the project's 11 GAs and 9 FAs are treated as A-class articles. WikiProject Chemicals is a child of WikiProject Chemistry (interviewed in 2009) and a parent of WikiProject Polymers.
Special report: Examining adminship from the German perspective Unlike the long-running disputes that have characterised attempts to reform the RfA process on the English Wikipedia, the German Wikipedia's tradition of making decisions not by consensus but knife-edged 50% + 1 votes has led to a fundamentally different outcome. In 2009, the project managed to largely settle the RfA mode issue in 2009 indirectly.
Arbitration report: Malleus Fatuorum accused of circumventing topic ban; motion to change "net four votes" rule One clarification request concerns the civility enforcement case – specifically, Malleus Fatuorum's perceived circumvention of his topic ban. It has resulted in thousands of bytes spent in vitriolic discussions, multiple blocks, and "no confidence" motions against the Arbitration Committee and one arbitrator, among other ramifications.
Technology report: Wikivoyage migration: technical strategy announced Planning for Wikivoyage's migration into the WMF fold built up steam this week following a statement by WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller about what the technical side of the migration will involve. Wikivoyage, which split from sister site Wikitravel in 2006, is hoping to migrate its own not-inconsiderable user base to Wikimedia, as well as much of its content, presenting novel challenges for Wikimedia developers
News and notes: Wikimedians get serious about women in science It is well known that women are underrepresented in the sciences, and that high-achieving female scientists have often been excluded from authorship lists and passed over for awards and honours solely on the basis of gender. Also significant has been the underplaying in the academic literature, news reporting, and online, of women's current and historical contributions to science.
WikiProject report: Where in the world is Wikipedia? The WikiProject Report normally brings tidings from Wikipedia's most active, inventive, and unique WikiProjects. This week, we're trying something new by focusing on Wikipedia's dark side: the various regional and national WikiProjects that are dead or dying. How can some tiny municipalities and exclaves generate highly active, cross-language, multimedia platforms be successful while the projects representing many sovereign countries and entire continents wallow in obscurity? Today, we'll search for answers among geographic projects large and small, highly active and barely functioning, enthusiastic about the future and mired in past conflicts.
Featured content: Is RfA Kafkaesque? Eleven articles, including one on Franz Kafka, three lists, one image, and one portal were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
News and notes: First chickens come home to roost for FDC funding applicants; WMF board discusses governance issues and scope of programs The first round of the Wikimedia Foundation's new financial arrangements has proceeded as planned, with the publication of scores and feedback by Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) staff on applications for funding by 11 entities—10 chapters, independent membership organisations supporting the WMF's mission in different countries, and the foundation itself. The results are preliminary assessments that will soon be put to the FDC's seven voting members and two non-voting board representatives. The FDC in turn will send its recommendations to the board of trustees on 15 November, which will announce its decision by 15 December. Funding applications have been on-wiki since 1 October, and the talk pages of applications were open for community comment and discussion from 2 to 22 October, though apart from queries by FDC staff, there was little activity.
WikiProject report: In recognition of... WikiProject Military History This week, we're checking out ways to motivate editors and recognize valuable contributions by focusing on the awards and rewards of WikiProject Military History. Anyone unfamiliar with WikiProject Military History is encouraged to start at the report's first article about the project and make your way forward. While many WikiProjects provide a barnstar that can be awarded to helpful contributors, WikiProject Military History has gone a step further by creating a variety of awards with different criteria ranging from the all-purpose WikiChevrons to rewards for participating in drives and improving special topics to medals for improving articles up to A-class status to the coveted "Military Historian of the Year" award.
Technology report: Improved video support imminent and Wikidata.org live The TimedMediaHandler extension (TMH), which brings dramatic improvements to MediaWiki's video handling capabilities, will go live to the English Wikipedia this week following a long and turbulent development, WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier announced on Monday ... Wikidata.org, a new repository designed to host interwiki links, launched this week and will begin accepting links shortly. The site, which is one half of the forthcoming Wikidata trial (the other half being the Wikidata client, which will be deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia shortly) will also act as a testing area for phase 2 of Wikidata (centralised data storage). The longer term plan is for Wikidata.org to become a "Wikimedia Commons for data" as phases 2 and 3 (dynamic lists) are developed, project managers say.
Featured content: On the road again Thirteen articles, ten lists, nine images, one topic, and one portal were promoted to featured after peer reviews.
The claim about Peter Novick comes from document B of the collection published by JPS. Quoting from the source: "B. ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ, LETTER TO NIELS HOOPER, ACQUISITIONS EDITOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 19 NOVEMBER 2004. The following letter is one of several that Alan Dershowitz sent to editors at the New Press, which was originally contracted to publish Beyond Chutzpah, and to 87 editors and lawyers at the University of California Press on the subject of Beyond Chutzpah."
It is a letter Dershowitz sent to the University of California Press and others in an attempt to stop the publication of Finkelstein's book. Dlv999 (talk) 22:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but the way you edited the footnote sduggested that Dershowitz had written an article for the JPS. In fact, the JPS published the correspondence, it was their editorial decision. There is an issue with the way the statement is presented in the article, and I would like to see Novick's original comment (though I have seen it attributed to him elsewhere). But he has also objected to Dershowitz's use of this in his feud against Finkelstein. So the whole paragraph needs to be rewritten, with proper attributions. But I think your edit to the footnote was misleading. RolandR (talk)23:37, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough, but I'm re-adding the tag until the issue is resolved. Just out of interest, JPS' editorial decision to publish, so they are cited as the publisher, but Dershowitz is still the auther of that document, he will need to part of the citation somewhere if we are going to keep the citation. Dlv999 (talk) 23:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
In that case, I would not list him as the author, but cite it as "AD, in JPS...". And also, our text needs to say "According to AD, Novick said..." RolandR (talk)00:00, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Kitten
Carolmooredc has given you a kitten! Kittens promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Kittens must be fed three times a day and will be your faithful companion forever! Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a kitten, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.
Spread the goodness of kittens by adding {{subst:Kitten}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or kittynap their kitten with {{subst:Kittynap}}
Festivus
Hello. The IP editor on Festivus has taken the discussion to the talk page and it will go upline within the next half hour. He's asked from comments from editors, so please join in if you'd like. Thanks, and good to meet you. Randy Kryn 18:36 30-12-'11
Hi Roland, I edited Edward Lampert to remove the copyright issues. Please check and see if this is good. I guess I lean too much on copying sentences when I do large edits. Let me know what you think. Thanks.Patapsco913 (talk)
The Signpost: 05 November 2012
Op-ed: 2012 WikiCup comes to an end J Milburn is a British editor who has been on the site since 2006. He is one of two judges of the WikiCup. Here, he uses an op-ed to explain the way the WikiCup works and to review this year's competition, which ended recently.
News and notes: Wikimedian photographic talent on display in national submissions to Wiki Loves Monuments The results of most of the national heats for Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) have been published on Commons. A maximum of 10 images have been submitted by all but eight of the 34 participating countries, and the international jury for what is the largest competition of its type in the world is set to announce the global winner in four weeks' time.
In the media: Was climate change a factor in Hurricane Sandy? Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record and has caused millions of dollars in damage. Naturally, Wikipedia covered it. But was Wikipedia's coverage unbiased?
Featured content: Jack-O'-Lanterns and Toads This week, the Signpost interviewed two editors. The first, PumpkinSky, collaborated with Gerda Arendt in writing the recently featured article on Franz Kafka and won second prize in the Core contest last August. The second, Cwmhiraeth, collaborated with Thompsma in promoting the article Frog, which was featured last week. We asked them about the special challenges faced while writing Core content and things to watch out for.
Technology report: Hue, Sqoop, Oozie, Zookeeper, Hive, Pig and Kafka The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for October 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. TimedMediaHandler also went live.
WikiProject report: Listening to WikiProject Songs This week, The Signpost sings along with WikiProject Songs which focuses on articles about songs of every generation and genre. The project initially began as a rough outline in October 2002 and was reimagined in March 2004 using its parent WikiProject Albums as a template.
News and notes: Court ruling complicates the paid-editing debate Last week, media outlets reported a ruling by a German court on the problem of businesses using Wikipedia for marketing purposes. The issue goes beyond the direct management of marketing-related edits by Wikipedians; it involves cross-monitoring and interacting among market competitors themselves on Wikipedia. A company that sells dietary supplements made from frankincense had taken a competitor to court. The recently published judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Munich, in dealing with the German Wikipedia article on frankincense products, was handed down in May and is based on European competition law.
Featured content: The table has turned Thirteen articles, six lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status last week.
Technology report: MediaWiki 1.20 and the prospects for getting 1.21 code reviewed promptly In late September, the Technology report published its findings about (particularly median) code review times. To the 23,900 changesets analysed the first time (the data for which has been updated), the Signpost added data from the 9,000 or so changesets contributed between September 17 and November 9 to a total of 93,000 reviews across 45,000 patchsets. Bots and self-reviews were also discarded, but reviews made by a different user in the form of a superseding patch were retained. Finally, users were categorised by hand according to whether they would be best regarded as staff or volunteers. The new analyses were consistent with the predictions of the previous analysis.
WikiProject report: Land of parrots, palm trees, and the Holy Cross: WikiProject Brazil As promised, we're expanding our horizons by featuring projects that cover underrepresented areas of the globe. This week, we headed to WikiProject Brazil which keeps track of articles about the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country. The project has shown spurts of activity and continues to serve as a hub for discussions, despite the project's collaborations, peer reviews, and outreach activities being largely inactive.
Hi there. You're one of the first 100 people to sign up for a free JSTOR account via the requests page. We're ready to start handing out accounts, if you'd still like one.
JSTOR will provide you access via an email invitation, so to get your account, please email me (swallingwikimedia.org) with...
the subject line "JSTOR"
your English Wikipedia username
your preferred email address for a JSTOR account
The above information will be given to JSTOR to provide you with your account, but will otherwise remain private. Please do so by November 30th or drop me a message to say you don't want/need an account any longer. If you don't meet that deadline, we will assume you have lost interest, and will provide an account to the next person in the rather long waitlist.
News and notes: FDC's financial muscle kicks in The WMF's Funds Dissemination Committee has published its recommendations for the inaugural round 1 of funding. Requests totalled US$10.4M, nearly all of the FDC's budget for both first and second rounds. The seven-member committee of community volunteers appointed in September advises the WMF board on the distribution of grant funds among applying Wikimedia organizations. The committee, which has a separate operating budget of $276k for salaries and expenses, considered 12 applications for funds, from 11 chapters and from the WMF itself for its non-core activities. The decision-making process included community and FDC staff input after October 1, the closing date for submissions. Taken together, the volunteers decided to endorse an average of 81% of the funding sought—a total of $8.43M, which went to 11 of the 12 applicants. This leaves $2.71M to be distributed in round 2, for which applications are due in little more than three months' time.
WikiProject report: No teenagers, mutants, or ninjas: WikiProject Turtles This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Turtles. The young project started in January 2011 and has accumulated 5 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, and 6 Featured Pictures. The project maintains a combined to-do list and hot articles meter, a popular pages ranking, and a collection of resources for turtle articles. We interviewed Faendalimas and NYMFan69-86.
Technology report: Structural reorganisation "not a done deal" WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner was forced to clarify this week that proposed structural changes to the Foundation's Engineering and Product Development Department were not a "done deal" and that it was "important that you [particularly affected staff] realise that ... your input is wanted". The reorganisation, announced on November 5 and planned for the middle of next year, will see its two components split off into their own departments.
Featured content: Wikipedia hit by the Streisand effect Seven featured articles, four featured lists and ten featured pictures – including the photograph that spawned the Streisand effect – were promoted this week.
Discussion report: GOOG, MSFT, WMT: the ticker symbol placement question Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include the question of ticker symbol placement and the notability of various types of creative performer.
News and notes: Toolserver finance remains uncertain On November 24, a general assembly of Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) voted on the fate of the Wikimedia Toolserver, a central external piece of technical infrastructure supporting the editing communities with volunteer-developed scripts and webpages of various kinds that are assisting in performing mostly menial tasks.
Recent research: Movie success predictions, readability, credentials and authority, geographical comparisons An open-access preprint presents the results from a study attempting to predict early box office revenues from Wikipedia traffic and activity data. The authors – a team of computational social scientists from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Aalto University and the Central European University – submit that behavioral patterns on Wikipedia can be used for accurate forecasting, matching and in some cases outperforming the use of social media data for predictive modeling. The results, based on a corpus of 312 English Wikipedia articles on movies released in 2010, indicate that the joint editing activity and traffic measures on Wikipedia are strong predictors of box office revenue for highly successful movies.
Technology report: Wikidata reaches 100,000 entries Wikidata, the new "Wikimedia Commons for data" and the first new Wikimedia project since 2006, reached 100,000 entries this week. The project aims to be a single, human- and machine-readable database for common data, spanning across all Wikipedia projects, which will "lead to a higher consistency and quality within Wikipedia articles, as well as increased availability of information in the smaller language editions" while lowering the burden on Wikipedia's volunteer editors—whose numbers have stalled overall, and continue to dwindle on the English Wikipedia.
WikiProject report: Directing Discussion: WikiProject Deletion Sorting This week, we uncovered WikiProject Deletion Sorting, Wikipedia's most active project by number of edits to all the project's pages. This special project seeks to increase participation in Articles for Deletion nominations by categorizing the AfD discussions by various topic areas that may draw the attention of editors. The project was started in August 2005 with manual processes that are continued today by a bevy of bots, categories, and transclusions. The project took inspiration from WikiProject Stub Sorting and some historical discussions on deletion reform. As the sheer number of AfDs continues to grow, the project is seeking better tools to manage the deletion sorting process and attract editors to comment on these deletion discussions.
News and notes: Wiki Loves Monuments announces 2012 winner The global jury of Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM), the world’s largest photo contest, announced its results on 3 December.
Featured content: The play's the thing Three articles, two lists, and four images were promoted to 'featured' status this week.
Technology report: MediaWiki problems but good news for Toolserver stability Deployments of MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 cause widespread problems for users across wikis when HTML and CSS updates came temporarily out of sync. On the first wikis targeted for deployment, this was caused by the different cache invalidation rates for HTML (typically one month) and CSS (typically five minutes). The retrospective on the problem highlighted the fact that that the test wiki – the WMF's answer to a production environment that individual developers can no longer practically emulate themselves – actually demonstrated the exact problem that would later manifest itself on production wikis. It went unnoticed.
WikiProject report: The White Rose: WikiProject Yorkshire This week, we went searching for white roses in the lands of WikiProject Yorkshire. The project began in May 2007 as a way to improve articles about the historic English county of Yorkshire and its modern-day administrative divisions and cities. Since then, the project has accumulated 31 Featured Articles, 14 Featured Lists, 91 Good Articles, and a monstrous list of Did You Know entries. Despite all of the effort improving Yorkshire articles, the project has experienced waning participation in the last few years. The project still publishes a newsletter each month, monitors the popularity of and recent changes to its articles, maintains a portal, and collects resources for contributors to use.
News and notes: Wobbly start to ArbCom election, but turnout beats last year's At the time of writing, this year's election has just closed after a two-week voting period. The eight seats were contested by 21 candidates. Of these, 15 have not been arbitrators (Beeblebrox, Count Iblis, Guerillero, Jc37, Keilana, Ks0stm, Kww, NuclearWarfare, Pgallert, RegentsPark, Richwales, Salvio giuliano, Timotheus Canens, Worm That Turned, and YOLO Swag); four candidates are sitting arbitrators (David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, Jclemens, and Newyorkbrad); and two have previously served on the committee (Carcharoth and Coren). Four Wikimedia stewards from outside the English Wikipedia stepped forward as election scrutineers: Pundit, from the Polish Wikipedia; Teles, from the Portuguese Wikipedia; Quentinv57, from the French Wikipedia; and Mardetanha, from the Persian Wikipedia. The scrutineers' task is to ensure that the election is free of multiple votes from the same person, to tally the results, and to announce them. The full results are expected to be released within the next few days and will be reported in next week's edition of the Signpost.
Featured content: Wikipedia goes to Hell Eight articles, four images, six lists, and one topic were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Technology report: The new Visual Editor gets a bit more visual The Visual Editor project – an attempt to create the first WMF-deployable WYSIWYG editor – will go live on its first Wikipedias imminently following nearly six months of testing on MediaWiki.org. A full explanatory blog post accompanied the news, explaining the project and its setup. Once a user has opted-in, the editor can handle basic formatting, headings and lists, while safely ignoring elements it is yet to understand, including references, categories, templates, tables and images. At the last count, approximately 2% of pages would break in some way if a user tried the Visual Editor on them; it is unclear whether any specific protection will be put in place beyond relying on editors to spot problems.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Human Rights In celebration of Human Rights Day, we checked out WikiProject Human Rights. Started in February 2006, the project has grown to include over 3,000 articles, including 12 Featured Articles, 3 Featured Lists, 66 Good Articles, a large collection of Did You Know entries, and a few mentions "in the news". The project monitors listings of popular pages and cleanup tags. We interviewed Khazar2, Cirt, and Boud.
Really? Other individuals than you? I took two off your user page and two off this page. He was just blocked BTW. Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 08:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
News and notes: Arbitrator election: stewards release the results Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit. Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain positive support-to-oppose ratios, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities.
WikiProject report: WikiProjekt Computerspiel: Covering Computer Games in Germany In the past year, we've tried to expand our horizons by looking at how WikiProjects work in other languages of Wikipedia. Following in the footsteps of our previously interviewed Czech and French projects, we visited the German Wikipedia to explore WikiProjekt Computerspiel (WikiProject Computer Games). The project dates back to November 2004 and has become the back-end of the Computer Games Portal, which covers all video games regardless of platform. Editors writing about computer games at the German Wikipedia deal with unique cultural and legal challenges, ranging from a lack of fair use precedents to the limited availability of games deemed harmful for youths to strong standards for the inclusion of material on the German Wikipedia.
Op-ed: Finding truth in Sandy Hook This week's big story on the English Wikipedia is obviously the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (which, by the time you read this, may be renamed 2012 Connecticut school shooting). Quickly created and nominated for deletion not once but twice, and both times speedily kept, the article saw the expected flurry of edits (a look at the history suggests an average of at least one a minute over the first day and a half) and more than half a million page views on the first full day.
Featured content: Wikipedia's cute ass Four articles, three lists, and five images were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week, including a picture of a three-week old donkey (also known as an 'ass').
Technology report: MediaWiki groups and why you might want to start snuggling newbie editors MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation. The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups.
Two of my edits were either corrected, or acknowledged by Rolandr in a 24 hour period. As someone very new to wikipedia, I want to thank you for your diligence. Diogenes The Cynic II (talk) 23:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 December 2012
News and notes: Debates on Meta sparking along—grants, new entities, and conflicts of interest As part of its new focus on core responsibilities, the Wikimedia Foundation is reforming its grant schemes so that they are more accessible to individual volunteers. The community is invited to look at proposals for a new scheme—for now called Individual engagement grants (IEGs)—which is due to kick off on January 15. On Meta, the community is once again debating the two new offline participation models—user groups (open membership groups designed to be easy to form) and thematic organizations (incorporated non-profits representing the Wikimedia movement and supporting work on a specific theme within or across countries). In a consultation process on Meta that will last until January 15, the community will be discussing WMF proposals for a new guideline on conflicts of interests concerning Wikimedia resources. The draft covers COI issues for both volunteers and organizations across the movement.
WikiProject report: A Song of Ice and Fire This week, we spent some time with WikiProject A Song of Ice and Fire, which focuses on the eponymous series of high fantasy literature, the television series Game of Thrones, and related works by George R. R. Martin. The project was started in July 2006 and has grown to include 11 Good Articles maintained by a small yet enthusiastic band of editors.
Featured content: Battlecruiser operational Seven articles and two lists were promoted to 'featured' status this week, including List of battlecruisers. The article covers all of the battlecruisers—which were a type of warship similar in size to a battleship but with several defining characteristics—ever planned or constructed. The last British battlecruiser built, HMS Hood, is pictured at right.
Technology report: Efforts to "normalise" Toolserver relations stepped up Efforts were stepped up this week to sow a feeling of trust between the major parties with an interest in the future of the Toolserver. The tool- and bot-hosting server – more accurately servers – are currently operated by German chapter, Wikimedia Germany, with assistance from the Foundation and numerous volunteers, including long-time system administrator Daniel Baur (more commonly known by his pseudonym DaB). However, those parties have more recently failed to see eye-to-eye on the trajectory for the Toolserver, which is scheduled to be replaced by Wikimedia Labs in late 2013, with increasing concern about the tone of discussions.
Hi - we can't actually delete an account or username, so I can't remove it. The username was removed from all edits. But I didn't actually block him, he was blocked some time ago but today sent me about 13 abusive emails, so I removed his ability to email. I must have blocked another sock recently, perhaps 24.126.103.70 (talk·contribs). Sorry I can't help you, but it's technically not possible so far as I know. Dougweller (talk) 12:56, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Asking for user names to be hidden
If you think a username needs to be hidden, please don't mention it explicitly on any public part of Wikipedia, including individual admins' talk pages. In stead, please email the request to some admin and leave them a {{ygm}} on their talk page. (I sent you a more complete version of this message by email) עוד מישהוOd Mishehu15:02, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Because the category itself was deleted, several times, five years ago. And also because I knew Arna, and although she was an internationalist and an anti-imperialist, she was expelled from the Communist Party sixty years ago and did not refer to herself as a communist. RolandR (talk)18:53, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
That was a stupid question from me. But I have to undo half of your latest edit, unless you can show consensus for it. Debresser (talk) 19:03, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
My pleasure. Nice meeting you. And nice to know that her article has been edited by a person who actually knew her. Debresser (talk) 19:51, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 December 2012
From the editor: Wikipedia, our Colosseum In the impersonal, detached Colosseum that is Wikipedia, people find it much easier to put their thumbs down. As such, many people active in the Wikimedia movement have witnessed a precipitous decline in civil discourse. This is far from a new trend, yet many people would agree that it all seemed somehow worse in 2012.
In the media: Is the Wikimedia movement too 'cash rich'? A recent, poorly researched and poorly written story in the Register highlighted the perceived "cash rich" status of the Wikimedia movement. ... The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are multiple links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is, for all intents and purposes, a one-party non-democratic state.
Technology report: Looking back on a year of incremental changes In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
Interview: Interview with Brion Vibber, the WMF's first employee Brion Vibber has been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 11 years and was the first person officially hired to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. He was instrumental in early development of the MediaWiki software and is now the lead software architect for the foundation's mobile development team.
Featured content: Whoa Nelly! Featured content in review At the beginning of the year, we began a series of interviews with editors who have worked hard to combat systemic bias through the creation of featured content; although we haven't seen six installments yet, we've also had some delightful interviews with people who write articles on some of our most core topics. Now, as we close the year, I would like to present some of my own musings on the state of featured content—especially as it pertains to systemic bias and core topics.
WikiProject report: New Year, New York This week, we're celebrating the New Year from Times Square by interviewing WikiProject New York City. Since December 2004, WikiProject NYC has had the difficult task of maintaining articles about the largest city in the United States, many of which are also among the the most viewed articles on Wikipedia. The project is home to 22 Featured Articles, 7 Featured Lists, 32 pieces of Featured Media, and a lengthy list of Did You Know? entries.
Recent research: Wikipedia and Sandy Hook; SOPA blackout reexamined Northeastern University researcher Brian Keegan analyzed the gathering of hundreds of Wikipedians to cover the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. ... A First Monday article reviews several aspects of the Wikipedia participation in the 18 January 2012, protests against SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA. The paper focuses on the question of legitimacy, looking at how the Wikipedia community arrived at the decision to participate in those protests.
I see in the AN/I report against Tellyuer1 (talk·contribs) that you've characterized some of his recent edits as reverts. Have you got diffs that will make that pretty obvious?
I ask because, even though I'm involved, I made it pretty clear to him that I would block him if he did any more reverting to article related to Moshe Friedman. I'd say Neturei Karta counts as related.
Not that I want to block him, but I don't want his talk page to turn into a litany of empty threats. Advice and input welcome. Thank you —C.Fred (talk) 20:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Hello, I hope you don't mind me moving your comment from the main RFC page to its talk page. User conduct RfCs should keep to their prescribed format, with only "statement" sections and "endorsement" lists; any further discussion following from them should be held on the talk page in normal threaded form. Fut.Perf.☼16:46, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
There are many other comments (including a lengthy one by Darkstar) which remain on the page. Maybe you should move them all? As it is, the talk page has not been used, and my response appears to be ghettoised! RolandR (talk)16:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Fair enough. I've moved some more stuff over; hopefully that should make your poor lonely comments feel less ghettoized. ;-) Fut.Perf.☼17:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 07 January 2013
Op-ed: Meta, where innovative ideas die Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.
WikiProject report: Where Are They Now? Episode IV: A New Year The dawning of a new year offers both a fresh slate and an opportunity to revisit our previous adventures. 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of the WikiProject Report and was the column's most productive year with 52 articles published. In addition to sharing the experiences of Wikipedia's many active projects, we expanded our scope to highlight unique projects from other languages of Wikipedia, and tracked down all of the former editors-in-chief of the Signpost for an introspective interview ... While last year's "Summer Sports Series" may have drawn yawns from some readers, a special report on "Neglected Geography" elicited more comments than any previous issue of the Report. Following in the footsteps of our past three recaps, we'll spend this week looking back at the trials and tribulations of the WikiProjects we encountered in 2012. Where are they now?
News and notes: 2012—the big year The past 12 months have seen a multitude of issues and events in the Wikimedia foundation, the movement at large, and the English Wikipedia. The movement, now in its second decade, is growing apace in its international reach, cultural and linguistic diversity, technical development, and financial complexity; and many factors have combined to produce what has in many ways been the biggest, most dynamic year in the movement's history. Looking back at 2012, we faced a difficult task in doing justice to all of the notable events in a single article; so the Signpost has selected just a few examples from outside the anglosphere, from the English Wikipedia, and from the Wikimedia Foundation, rather than attempting to cover every detail that happened.
Featured content: Featured content in review Over the past year, 963 pieces of featured content were promoted. The most active of the featured content programs was featured article candidates (FAC), which promoted an average of 31 articles a month. This was followed by featured picture candidates (FPC; 28 a month). Coming in third was featured list candidates (FLC; 20 a month). Featured topic and featured portal candidates remained sluggish, each promoting fewer than 20 items over the year.
Technology report: Looking ahead to 2013 Following on from last week's reflections on 2012, this week the Technology report looks ahead to 2013, a year that will almost certainly be dominated by the juggernauts of Wikidata, Lua and the Visual Editor.
Investigative report: Ship ahoy! New travel site finally afloat After six years without creating a new class of content projects, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has finally expanded into a new area: travel. Wikivoyage was formally launched—though without a traditional ship's christening—on 15 January, having started as a beta trial on 10 November. Wikivoyage has been taken under the WMF's umbrella on the argument that information resources that help with travel are educational and therefore within the scope of the foundation's mission.g
News and notes: Launch of annual picture competition, new grant scheme On January 16, voting for the first round of the 2012 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest will begin. Wikimedia editors with 75 edits or one project are eligible to vote to select their favorite image featured in 2012. ... On January 15, the foundation launched its latest grant scheme, called Individual Engagement Grants (IEG).
WikiProject report: Reach for the Stars: WikiProject Astronomy This week, we set off for the final frontier with WikiProject Astronomy. The project was started in August 2006 using the now-defunct WikiProject Space as inspiration. WikiProject Astronomy is home to 101 pieces of Featured material and 148 Good Articles maintained by a band of 186 members. The project maintains a portal, works on an assortment of vital astronomy articles, and provides resources for editors adding or requesting astronomy images.
Special report: Loss of an Internet genius Comforting those grieving after the loss of a loved one is an impossible task. How then, can an entire community be comforted? The Internet struggled to answer that question this week after the suicide of Aaron Swartz, a celebrated free-culture activist, programmer, and Wikipedian at the age of 26.
Featured content: Featured articles: Quality of reviews, quality of writing in 2012 Continuing our recap of the featured content promoted in 2012, this week the Signpost interviewed three editors, asking them about featured articles which stuck out in their minds. Two, Ian Rose and Graham Colm, are current featured article candidates (FAC) delegates, while Brian Boulton is an active featured article writer and reviewer.
Arbitration report: First arbitration case in almost six months The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
Technology report: Intermittent outages planned, first Wikidata client deployment The Wikidata client extension was successfully deployed to the Hungarian Wikipedia on 14 January, its team reports. The interwiki language links can now come from wikidata.org, though "manual" interwiki links remain functional, overriding those from the central repository.
News and notes: Requests for adminship reform moves forward The English Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process has entered another cycle of proposed reforms. Over the last three weeks, various proposals, ranging from as large as a transition to a representative democracy to as small as a required edit count and service length, have been debated on the RfA talk page. The total number of new administrators for 2012 was just 28, barely more than half of 2011's total and less than a quarter of 2009's total. The total number of unsuccessful RfAs has fallen as well. These declining numbers, which were described in what would now be considered a successful year (2010) as an emerging "wikigeneration gulf", have been coupled with a sharp decline in the number of active administrators since February 2008 (1,021), reaching a low of 653 in November 2012.
WikiProject report: Say What? — WikiProject Linguistics This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Linguistics. Started in January 2004, the project has grown to include 7 Featured Articles, 4 Featured Lists, 2 A-class Articles, and 15 Good Articles maintained by 43 members. The project's members keep an eye on several watchlists, maintain the linguistics category, and continue to build a collection of Did You Know? entries. The project is home to six task forces and works with WikiProject Languages and WikiProject Writing Systems.
Featured content: Wazzup, G? Delegates and featured topics in review This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured topics. We interviewed Grapple X and GamerPro64, who are delegates at the featured topic candidates.
Arbitration report: Doncram case continues The opening of the Doncram case marks the end of almost 6 months without any open cases, the longest in the history of the Committee.
Technology report: Data centre switchover a tentative success On 22 January, WMF staff and contractors switched incoming, non-cached requests (including edits) to the Foundation's newer data centre in Ashburn, Virginia, making it responsible for handling almost all regular traffic. For the first time since 2004, virtually no traffic will be handled by the WMF's other facility in Tampa, Florida.
In the media: Hoaxes draw media attention On New Year's Day, the Daily Dot reported that a "massive Wikipedia hoax" had been exposed after more than five years. The article on the Bicholim conflict had been listed as a "Good Article" for the past half-decade, yet turned out to be an ingenious hoax. Created in July 2007 by User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a, the meticulously detailed piece was approved as a GA in October 2007. A subsequent submission for FA was unsuccessful, but failed to discover that the article's key sources were made up. While the User:A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a account then stopped editing, the hoax remained listed as a Good Article for five years, receiving in the region of 150 to 250 page views a month in 2012. It was finally nominated for deletion on 29 December 2012 by ShelfSkewed—who had discovered the hoax while doing work on Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs—and deleted the same day.
WikiProject report: Checkmate! — WikiProject Chess When we challenged the masters of WikiProject Chess to an interview, Sjakkalle answered our call. WikiProject Chess dates back to December 2003 and has grown to include 4 Featured Articles and 15 Good Articles maintained by over 100 members. The project typically operates independently of other WikiProjects, although the project would theoretically be a child of WikiProject Board and Table Games (interviewed in 2011). WikiProject Chess provides a collection of resources, seeks missing photographs of chess players, and helps determine ways that Wikipedia's coverage of chess can be expanded.
News and notes: Khan Academy's Smarthistory and Wikipedia collaborate To many Wikimedians, the Khan Academy would seem like a close cousin: the academy is a non-profit educational website and a development of the massive open online course concept that has delivered over 227 million lessons in 22 different languages. Its mission is to give "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." This complements Wikipedia's stated goal to "imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge", then go and create that world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the highly successful GLAM-Wiki (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) initiative has partnered with the Khan Academy's Smarthistory project to further both its and Wikipedia's goals.
Featured content: Listing off progress from 2012 This week, the Signpost featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured lists. We interviewed FLC directors Giants2008 and The Rambling Man as well as active reviewer and writer PresN.
Arbitration report: Doncram continues The Doncram case has continued into its third week.
Technology report: Developers get ready for FOSDEM amid caching problems As reported in last week's "Technology Report", the WMF's data centre in Ashburn, Virginia took over responsibility for almost all of the remaining functions that had previously been handled by their old facility in Tampa, Florida on 22 January. The Signpost reported then that few problems had arisen since handover. Unfortunately that was not to remain the case, with reports of caching problems (which typically only affect anonymous users) starting to come in.
Special report: Examining the popularity of Wikipedia articles On February 12, 2012, news of Whitney Houston's death brought 425 hits per second to her Wikipedia article, the highest peak traffic on any article since at least January 2010. It is broadly known that Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website on the Internet, but the English Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles and 29 million total pages. Much less attention has been given to traffic patterns and trends in content viewed.
News and notes: Article Feedback Tool faces community resistance Article feedback, at least through talk pages, has been a part of Wikipedia since its inception in 2001. The use of these pages, though, has typically been limited to experienced editors who know how to use them.
WikiProject report: Land of the Midnight Sun This week, we took a trip to WikiProject Norway. Started in February 2005, WikiProject Norway has become the home for almost 34,000 articles about the world's best place to live, including 16 Featured Articles, 19 Featured Lists, and nearly 250 Good Articles. The project works on a to do list, maintains a categorization system, watches article alerts, and serves as a discussion forum.
Featured content: Portal people on potent potables and portable potholes This week, the Signpost's featured content section continues its recap of 2012 by looking at featured portals, a small yet active part of the project. We interviewed FPOC directors Cirt and OhanaUnited.
In the media: Star Trek Into Pedantry On 30 January 2013, Kevin Morris in the Daily Dot summarised the bitter debates in Wikipedia around capitalisation or non-capitalisation of the word "into" in the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Technology report: Wikidata team targets English Wikipedia deployment Following the deployment of the Wikidata client to the Hungarian Wikipedia last month, the client was also deployed to the Italian and Hebrew Wikipedias on Wednesday. The next target for the client, which automatically provides phase 1 functionality, is the English Wikipedia, with a deployment date of 11 February already set.
Op-ed: An article is a construct – hoaxes and Wikipedia Wikipedia has a long, daresay storied history with hoaxes; our internal list documents 198 of the largest ones we have caught as of 4 January 2013. Why?
Featured content: A lousy week Six articles, one list, and fourteen pictures were promoted to "featured" states this week on the English Wikipedia.
WikiProject report: Just the Facts This week, we got the details on WikiProject Infoboxes.
In the media: Wikipedia mirroring life in island ownership dispute Foreign Policy has published a report on editing of the Wikipedia articles on the Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute. The uninhabited islands are under the control of Japan, but China and Taiwan are asserting rival territorial claims. Tensions have risen of late—and not just in the waters surrounding the actual islands.
News and notes: UK chapter governance review marks the end of a controversial year Wikimedia UK, the non-profit organization devoted to furthering the goals of the Wikimedia movement in the United Kingdom, has published the findings of a governance review conducted by Compass Partnership.
Discussion report: WebCite proposal Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include...
WikiProject report: Thank you for flying WikiProject Airlines This week, we put our life in the hands of WikiProject Airlines. Starting in July 2005, the project has improved articles relating to airline companies, alliances, destination lists, and travel benefit programs. WikiProject Airlines has accumulated over 4,000 pages, including 4 Featured Articles and 26 Good Articles.
Technology report: Better templates and 3D buildings As of time of writing, twenty wikis (including the English, French and Hungarian Wikipedias) are in the process of getting access to the Lua scripting language, an optional substitute for the clunky template code that exists at present.
News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation declares 'victory' in Wikivoyage lawsuit On February 15, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) declared 'victory' in its counter-lawsuit against Internet Brands (IB), the owner of Wikitravel and the operator of several online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The lawsuit clears the last remaining hurdles for the WMF's new travel guide project, Wikivoyage.
In the media: Sue Gardner interviewed by the Australian press Sue Gardner's visit to Australia sparked a number of interviews in the Australian press. An interview published in the Daily Telegraph on 12 February 2013, titled "Data plans 'unnerving': Wikipedia boss", saw Gardner comment on Australian plans to store personal internet and telephone data. The planned measure, intended to assist crime prevention, would involve internet service providers and mobile phone firms storing customer usage data for up to two years.
Featured content: Featured content gets schooled Two articles, nine lists, and thirteen pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
In the media: Ex-WMF trustee creates "Wikipedia Corporate Index" for PR agency On 13 February 2013, PR Report, the German sister publication of PR Week, published an article announcing that PR agency Fleishman-Hillard was offering a new analysis tool enabling companies to assess their articles in the German-language Wikipedia: the Wikipedia Corporate Index (WCI).
Recent research: Wikipedia not so novel after all, except to UK university lecturers "Wikipedia and Encyclopedic Production" by Jeff Loveland (a historian of encyclopedias) and Joseph Reagle situates Wikipedia within the context of encyclopedic production historically, arguing that the features that many claim to be unique about Wikipedia actually have roots in encyclopedias of the past.
News and notes: "Very lucky" Picture of the Year The Wikimedia Commons 2012 Picture of the Year contest has ended, with the winner being Pair of Merops apiaster feeding, taken by Pierre Dalous. The picture shows a pair of European Bee-eaters in a mating ritual—the male bird (right) has tossed the wasp into the air, and he will eventually offer it to the female (left).
Featured content: Blue birds be bouncin' Six articles, three lists, and twelve images were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this month.
WikiProject report: How to measure a WikiProject's workload How can we measure the challenges facing a project or determine a WikiProject's productivity? Several prominent projects have been doing it for years: WikiWork.
Technology report: Wikidata development to be continued indefinitely Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) this week committed itself to funding the Wikidata development team, ending fears that phase three would be abandoned.
Oh come on. The first edit cannot possibly be considered a reversion. It was an original edit, introducing material which had not previously been in the article. You reverted me, and I reverted back. Thus we each made just one, permitted, revert. Take that to AE and you will be laughed off the page. RolandR (talk)16:16, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 04 March 2013
Op-ed: We must do more to turn readers into editors Recently I was having a casual conversation with a friend, and he mentioned that he spent too many hours a day playing video games. I responded with a comment that I, too, spent way too much time on an activity of my own – Wikipedia. In an attempt to reply with a relevant remark, he offered something along the lines of: "So have you ever written anything?" After a second, I quickly answered yes, but I was still in shock over his question. It seemed to be rooted in a belief on his part that using Wikipedia meant just reading the articles, and that editing was something that someone, hypothetically, might do, but not really more likely than randomly counting to 7,744.
News and notes: Outing of editor causes firestorm "WP:OUTING", the normally little-noticed policy corner of the English Wikipedia that governs the release of editors' personal information, has suddenly been brought to wider attention after long-term contributor and featured article writer Cla68 was indefinitely blocked last week. This snowballed into several other blocks, a desysopping by ArbCom, and a request for arbitration.
Featured content: Slow week for featured content Three articles, six lists, and three pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including the article on "Laura Secord", who was a Canadian heroine of the War of 1812 best known for warning the British of an impending American attack.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Television Stations This week, we tuned to WikiProject Television Stations, a project that dates back to March 2004. WikiProject Television Stations primarily focuses on local stations, national networks, television markets, and other topics related to television channels in North America, the Caribbean, and some Pacific countries. The project has a fair bit of work ahead of them with over 4,000 unassessed articles and only one Good Article out of 626 assessed articles, giving the project a relative WikiWork rating of 5.262.
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From the editor: Signpost–Wikizine merger I am pleased to announce that the Signpost and Wikizine have reached an in-principle agreement that will see Wikizine published as a special Signpost section at the beginning of each month.
News and notes: Finance committee updates During March, three of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking schemes on Meta will reach important crossroads, which will shape how both the editing communities and Wikimedia institutions handle the distribution of donors' money across the movement.
Featured content: Batman, three birds and a Mercedes Twelve articles, five lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week, including an image of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, a front-engine, 2-seat luxury grand tourer automobile developed by Mercedes-AMG.
WikiProject report: Setting a precedent This week, we spent some time with WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases.
Technology report: Article Feedback reversal The WMF has aborted a plan to deploy version 5 of the Article Feedback tool (AFTv5) rolled out to all English Wikipedia articles.
Hey RolandR; I'm dropping you this note because you've used the article feedback tool in the last month or so. On Thursday and Friday the tool will be down for a major deployment; it should be up by Saturday, failing anything going wrong, and by Monday if something does :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
News and notes: Resigning arbitrator slams Committee Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. At the heart of a strongly worded statement, posted both on his talk page and the arbitration notice board, was the claim that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for".
WikiProject report: Making music This week, we composed a tribute to WikiProject Composers. The project was created during the final hours of 2004 and finalized in early January 2005. It has grown to encompass over 8,000 pages, including 26 Featured Articles and 23 Good Articles. WikiProject Composers faces a difficult workload, with a relative WikiWork rating of 5.45.
Interview: Meeting in the middle: Wikipedia and libraries Ask librarians what they think about Wikipedia and you might get some interesting answers. Some will throw up their hands about the laziness of the Google generation and their overdependence on Wikipedia. Some see it as the "competition". And some will tell you it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Featured content: Wikipedia stays warm Nine articles, seven lists, eleven images, and one topic were promoted to "featured status" this week on the English Wikipedia.
Arbitration report: Richard case closes On Thursday, arbitrator Coren resigned, following closely on the heels of Hersfold's resignation on Wednesday. There are two open cases. A final decision has been given in the Richard case.
Technology report: Visual Editor "on schedule" The WMF's engineering report for January was published this week, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.
Hello RolandR. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Delegitimization of Israel, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: there is enough here to make clear that it is not an A7 candidate. If you think it should be deleted, take it to AfD. Thank you. JohnCD (talk) 20:14, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
actually, there would be many other reasons for declining it. First, A7 is limited to people, animals ,webpages, groups, organizations and individual planned events. . This is none of these. Presumably you mean to say that this is not important, but that would be a question for AfD . I can't really see how anyone could rationally say that, in view of the sources, so I suppose you may have placed the tag because in some way you disagree with the contents.
If you really think the article is essentially advocacy or is hopeless biased, nominate it as such. I'm not sure what in particular you might object to,but that would be for discussion at the AfD if you really want to start one. DGG ( talk ) 02:31, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
WikiProject report: The 'Burgh: WikiProject Pittsburgh Our travels have brought us to Pittsburgh, the American city known for steelworks and bridges.
Featured content: One and a half soursops Seven articles, one list, six pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Arbitration report: Two open cases This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.
News and notes: Sue Gardner to leave WMF; German Wikipedians spearhead another effort to close Wikinews Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, has announced her plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.
Technology report: The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed? Since its inception in May 2011, the Foundation's Visual Editor project has grown to become one of its main focuses. As the project nears its two-year birthday, the Signpost caught up with Visual Editor project manager James Forrester to discuss the progress on the project.
Special report: Who reads which Wikipedia? The Wikimedia Foundation has released its latest report card for the movement's hundreds of sites. The WMF has published statistics about the sites since 2009, but only recently have these been expanded in scope and depth to provide a rich source of data for investigating the movement and the world it serves. Dutch-born Erik Zachte is the driver of the WMF's statistical output, and he writes that the report card and accompanying traffic statistics comprise "enough tables, bar charts and plots to keep you busy for a while".
WikiProject report: Special: FAQs This week's Report is dedicated to answering our readers' questions about WikiProjects. The following Frequently Asked Questions came from feedback at the WikiProject Report's talk page, the WikiProject Council's talk page, and from previous lists of FAQs.
Featured content: What the ? The Signpost interviewed prolific featured content creator and former Signpost "featured content" report writer Crisco 1492 about ? and Indonesian cinema. ? was the "Today's featured article" for 1 April 2013. 1 April is popularly known as April Fools' Day in many countries.
Arbitration report: Three open cases A case brought by Lecen involves several articles about former Argentinian president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
Wikizine: WMF scales back feature after outcry Numerous Wikimedia Commons editors have chimed in on the Wikimedia Foundation's deployment of a new feature to its mobile website. Allowing anonymous users to register and upload pictures for use in an article, the feature was placed prominently at the top of Wikipedia articles in multiple languages.
WikiProject report: Earthshattering WikiProject Earthquakes This week, we felt the world tremble in the presence of WikiProject Earthquakes. The project was started in May 2008 to deal with articles about earthquakes, aftershocks, seismology, seismologists, plate tectonics, and related articles. While the project has seen success building 14 Featured Articles, one A-class Article, and 21 Good Articles, a fairly heavy workload remains, with a relative WikiWork rating of 4.94. WikiProject Earthquakes maintains a portal, a list of open tasks, a popular pages listing, and an article alerts watchlist.
News and notes: French intelligence agents threaten Wikimedia volunteer Last Friday, the Wikimedia movement awoke to news that one of their number—Rémi Mathis, a French volunteer editor—had been summoned to the offices of the interior intelligence service DCRI and threatened with criminal charges and fines if he did not delete an article on the French Wikipedia about a radio station used by the French military.
Arbitration report: Subject experts needed for Argentine History The arbitration committee is looking for expertise in Argentina and the Spanish language for a case involving former Argentinean president Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877).
Featured content: Wikipedia loves poetry Four articles and two pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Technology report: Testing week The deployment of phase 2 of Wikidata to the English Wikipedia, originally scheduled for 8 April but delayed due to technical problems, may be rescheduled again as the result of community resistance.
Op-ed: How do we fix RfA inactivity? The RfA process is widely discussed here on the English Wikipedia and it has been well documented that less and less new Requests for adminship are being filed. There are an abundance of bytes devoted to the discussion and analysis of this situation and plenty of hands have been wrung over the matter. Various RfCs have attempted to find a way to fix the problem. Many proposals have been made offering solutions, some more potentially drastic than others, with the goal of making the changes necessary to kick–start RfA back into regular action. However, Wikipedia operates based on consensus and, to this point, there are have simply been too many disagreeing views for us to reach a consensus on how to increase RfA activity.
WikiProject report: Unity in Diversity: South Africa This week, we ventured to WikiProject South Africa. The project was started in February 2005 and is home to thirteen pieces of featured material, two A-class articles, and twenty-one good articles.
News and notes: Another admin reform attempt flops The most recent move to reform the requests for adminship process on the English Wikipedia has failed, after a complex and drawn-out three-step procedure for community input was subject to decreasing participation as time wore on and came up with no clear consensus.
Featured content: The featured process swings into high gear Four articles, twelve lists, and seven pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
In the media: Wikipedia inaccurate, says Florence; New Wikipedia app for breaking news An article by John Sweeney published on 22 April 2013 on scnow.com, the website of the Florence, South Carolina Morning News, reported that Florence city officials have taken to monitoring and correcting the Wikipedia article on their city.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Editor Retention This week, we spent some time with a project that develops tools and methods for improving the user experience in the hope that new users will continue editing the encyclopedia. The project was started in July 2012 and has grown to include 124 members. The project's members partner with the Teahouse and the Welcoming Committee to spread WikiLove, welcome new users, encourage civility, and other related activities.
News and notes: Milan conference a mixed bag The Wikimedia Conference is an annual meeting of the chapters to discuss their status and the organisational development of the Wikimedia movement. For the first time it included groups that wish to be considered for WMF affiliation as thematic organisations and one of the three groups that was recently affiliated as a user group. The conference was also attended by members of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) Board of Trustees, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), the WMF Affiliations Committee, and a representative of the Wikivoyage Association.
Featured content: Batfish in the Red Sea Nine articles, four lists, eight pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
Technology report: A flurry of deployments On Monday, the English Wikipedia became the 12th wiki to be able to pull data from the central Wikidata.org repository, with other wikis scheduled to receive the update on Wednesday.
News and notes: Chapter furore over FDC knockbacks; First DC GLAM boot-camp The Funds Dissemination Committee released its recommendations to the WMF board last Sunday. The news that the Hong Kong chapter's application for US$212K had failed was followed by a strongly worded resignation announcement by Deryck Chan on the public Wikimedia-l mailing-list.
In the media: Wikipedia's sexism; Yuri Gadyukin hoax On 24 April 2013, novelist Amanda Filipacchi published what turned out to be an influential op-ed in the New York Times; illuminating the unusual background of the Yuri Gadyukin hoax.
Featured content: Wiki loves video games Nine articles, three lists, three pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" this week.
WikiProject report: Japanese WikiProject Baseball This week, we traveled to the Japanese Wikipedia's WikiProject Baseball for perspectives from a version of Wikipedia that treats WikiProjects as their own unique namespace (プロジェクト:) independent of "Wikipedia:".
Traffic report: Most popular Wikipedia articles The WP:TOP25 and WP:5000 reports chronicle the most popular Wikipedia articles on a weekly basis.
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.
Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made; that is to say, editors are not automatically "entitled" to three reverts.
Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.
If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
Nonsense; that second edit was clearly not a revert. Go ahead and make a formal complaint if you want to look foolish. RolandR (talk)12:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
yessense; it reverted the exact same material that was reverted by you earlier. A "revert" means any edit (or administrative action) that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material. Soosim (talk) 12:40, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I added abbreviation tags to the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist) article, this is because the abbreviation CPGB-ML gets used a lot in the article and since it's only defined once in the introduction it could be confusing to readers who aren't familiar with the CPGB-ML and don't often use that abbreviation. You reversed my edits. I still think the abbreviation is confusing and I've noticed other articles on political parties tend to just use the term 'the party' so that might be more appropriate. As an example I've partially done this on the Communist Party of Britain article. Extua (talk) 20:43, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
News and notes: Candidates nominating for Foundation elections; Looking ahead to Wikimania 2014 Although not yet in great numbers, candidates are coming forward for Wikimedia Foundation elections, which will be held from 1 to 15 June. The elections will fill vacancies in three categories, the most prominent of which will be the three community-elected seats on the ten-member Board of Trustees (or the first Board meeting after the election results are announced, if sooner). The current two-year terms for these trustee positions ends on 1 September.
Technology report: Foundation successful in bid for larger Google subsidy The Wikimedia Foundation will be receiving more than $100,000 worth of free developer time courtesy of internet giant Google, it was announced this week. The funds, allocated as part of Google's Summer of Code programme, will support up to 21 student developers through three months of coding time.
Featured content: WikiCup update: full speed ahead! May sees the beginning of Round 3 of the 2013 WikiCup, with 33 of the original 127 competitors remaining. ... six articles, ten pictures, and two portals were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
In the media: New Wikipedia for Schools edition; Anders Behring Breivik's Wikipedia contributions The SOS Children's Villages news service advised on 3 May 2013 that Wikipedia for Schools 2013 is nearly ready for release. ... On 26 April 2013, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation published an article reviewing Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's edits to the English Wikipedia, where it revealed the name of Breivik's English Wikipedia account.
WikiProject report: Earn $100 in cash... and a button! This week's English Wikipedia project, WikiProject Biophysics, is home to several experts in their fields and a collaboration with the Biophysical Society. The project is hosting a contest through July 15 with six contributors winning $100 in cash and given the opportunity to attend the 2014 meeting of the Biophysical Society in San Francisco. Other strong entries will be awarded barnstars online and everyone who contributes can receive a physical button mailed out to them.
News and notes: WMF–community ruckus on Wikimedia mailing list The removal of administrator rights from all volunteers on the Wikimedia Foundation's official website sparked a highly emotional reaction on the Wikimedia-l mailing list—one of the largest off-wiki methods of communication for the Wikimedia movement.
WikiProject report: Knock Out: WikiProject Mixed Martial Arts This week, we spent some time watching WikiProject Mixed Martial Arts, which was started in August 2005 and has grown to include 12 Good Articles and a Featured List.
In the media: PR firm accused of editing Wikipedia for government clients; can Wikipedia predict the stock market? An article published on May 10 on Odwyerpr.com written by Greg Hazley documented a "spar" between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and public relations firm Qorvis partner Matt Lauer, who disputes Wikipedia's guideline discouraging public relations firms from editing articles on their clients.
Arbitration report: Race and politics opened; three open cases The Race and politics case has been accepted for arbitration, and the evidence phase is now open. Two other cases remain open.
I've declined the A7 here, somewhat non-trivial appearances on two TV series is a claim of importance. I did tag it for BLPPROD, however, as an entirely unsourced BLP. Cheers, --j⚛e deckertalk01:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks for keeping an eye on my Talk Page. I know it is only because the Target is a known sockpuppet, but I appreciate it none the less. I have no idea why this guy targets me, but as a *serious* Wikipedian, I'm not please when people vandalize my page. =//= Johnny Squeaky02:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 May 2013
Foundation elections: Trustee candidates speak about Board structure, China, gender, global south, endowment Nominations closed last Friday for the three community-elected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) ten-member Board of Trustees—the ultimate corporate authority of the worldwide WMF. The Board has influential roles and responsibilities over one of the most powerful global information sources on the Internet.
WikiProject report: Classical Greece and Rome This week, we traveled to WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. The project was started in May 2006 and has 37 featured articles.
News and notes: Spanish Wikipedia leaps past one million articles On 16 May, the Spanish Wikipedia became the seventh Wikipedia to cross the million article Rubicon, a symbolic yet important achievement.
In the media: Qworty incident continues Salon.com published another article detailing the ongoing incidents with Wikipedia user Qworty, who has identified himself as Robert Clark Young. It documents Qworty's role in the controversy involving Amanda Filipacchi's op-ed, which kindled a debate on Wikipedia sexism as it relates to categories, where Qworty was responsible for a series of revenge edits against Filipacchi in the days after she released her op-ed.
Featured content: Up in the air Nine articles, six lists, and eight pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
News and notes: First-ever community election for FDC positions Alongside the Signpost's interviews with the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) Board of Trustees candidates, the Signpost asked the candidates for the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and its Ombudsperson position a series of questions relating to the positions they may be taking on. For the FDC candidates, this will include specific recommendations to the WMF on how to disburse over US$11 million in donors' funds to affiliate organizations, something which appears to have garnered little attention from the editing community at large so far.
In the media: Pagans complain about Qworty's anti-Pagan editing In the continuing saga of User:Qworty's outing as author Robert Clark Young, several blogs and websites covered the now-banned user's anti-Pagan editing. In an article published on 22 May 2013, TechEye described Qworty's edits as a "reign of terror" and were pleased to find that he had not succeeded in removing several prominent Pagan biographies from the encyclopedia.
Foundation elections: Candidates talk about the Meta problem, the nation-based chapter model, world languages, and value for money The elections for the three community seats on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees start on 8 June. This second and final part of the interview explores two broad themes: Meta, the site that hosts movement-wide coordination; and offline entities—the chapters and the new thematic organisations and user groups.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Geographical Coordinates This week, we plotted out the demarcations of WikiProject Geographical Coordinates, which aims to create a single standard of handling coordinates in Wikipedia articles.
Featured content: Life of 2π Twelve articles, four lists, and twelve pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Technology report: Amsterdam hackathon: continuity, change, and stroopwafels Second only to the technical track of Wikimania in terms of numbers, the Berlin Hackathon (2009–2012) provided those with an interest in the software that underpins Wikimedia wikis and supports its editors a place to gather, exchange ideas and learn new skills.
Regarding your recent edit to the page, I believe the cited source supported the original text. The relevant text from the source[5] states: "The fact that not all of the Jewish-Israeli public rejects BDS certainly strenghthens the struggle. There are at least two significant sources of support for Global BDS from within Israel. One is the 'Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within', an initiative launched by Jewish-Israeli activisists in early 2009." (My emphasis)
It seems to me that not only was my original text supported by the cited source, but also the author seems to be making a specific point about Jewish-Israeli support for the boycott, which would suggest to me that we should accurately reflect what he is saying on this point. Dlv999 (talk) 23:48, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
But if you read further, you will see that the statement is signed by both Jewish and Palestinian citizens, as it states in its opening sentence. And the list of names includes many who are clearly Palestinian, not Jewish. The book has in fact misunderstood the statement it is citing. The author is wrong, and we should what the original statement says, not a mistaken (and directly contradictory) citation. RolandR (talk)07:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I read the statement -- I took it to be an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians "We, Palestinians, Jews citizens of Israel..." Seeing as there is ambiguity I will not argue with your edit. However, I don't think it is clear that "the book has in fact misunderstood the statement it is citing". We should remember that the author has more information than we do. For instance he has interviewed one of the main activists, of which he reports: "It must be said that these two initiatives see themselves as part of the broader BDS Palestinian Call and more broadly as one of the main activists in 'BDS from Within' told me, 'This is about a Palestinian struggle and we do as much as we can to support it'."
In any case I think the main point the author is making is that there is some Jewish-Israeli support for BDS within Israel, and perhaps this point can be reflected in our article without stating that 'BDS from Within' is an entirely Jewish-Israeli group. Dlv999 (talk) 07:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I think that in this case, since I happen to be married to one of the signatories, I can claim as much access as the author to information. The statement does not discriminate between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Israel; it is open to all residents and citizens of Israel to sign. Looking through the list of signatories, it is clear that many are indeed Palestinians. Yes, it is important to recognise that many Israeli Jews do support the BDS call; but it is also important not to misrepresent their statement, and their active identification with Palestinian citizens of Israel. RolandR (talk)08:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Is your removal sourced, Sir? This Wikipedia knows other ways of demanding sources, if you don't believe me. It's enough to click the Honecker kiss to find several of them. Xx236 (talk) 09:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
The Signpost: 05 June 2013
From the editor: Signpost developments I am excited to announce that a Portuguese-language journal, Correio da Wikipédia has been launched by Vitorvicentevalente. It has just published its third edition, and I encourage readers who speak the language to read and contribute to its already-expansive coverage of the Portuguese Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement.
Featured content: A week of portraits Five articles, four lists, and thirteen images were promoted to "featured" status this week on the English Wikipedia.
Discussion report: Return of the Discussion report This is mostly a list of requests for comment believed to be active on 4 June 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC or watchlist notices.
In the media: China blocks secure version of Wikipedia An article on TheNextWeb.com says that the Chinese Government has effectively blocked Wikipedia by cutting off access to the HTTP Secure (https) "workaround", almost completely cutting off access to those in China.
WikiProject report: Operation Normandy This week, we reflect on the anniversary of D-Day by storming the shores of Operation Normandy, a special initiative of WikiProject Military History.
Technology report: Developers accused of making Toolserver fight 'pointless' Last week, the Signpost reported on a feeling at the Amsterdam hackathon that Toolserver developers were coming round to the idea of migrating to Wikimedia Labs.
hi, I have not been aware of the possibility to discuss changes of articles on Wikipedia.
I'm still unable to find the "talk" page of the article I wish to expand upon, namely the "San Remo Conference".
I do not wish to delete any of the already existing parts of the article, but to add the findings of Howard Grief and Dr. Jacques Gauthier.
Please note that:
First, I clearly mark my addition as an opinion represented by these two men, which is a critique of mainstream views on this issue.
However, as an avid Wikipedia user myself, I know that it is common practice in Wikipedia articles to include sections where awareness for different points of view is raised.
Secondly, in the "Anniversary Celebrations" section of the article, it is already mentioned that Dr. Jacques Gauthier stresses the fundamental importance of this Conference for the foundation of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. I merely wish to expand on this, as should be in the interest of any intelligent and open-minded person.
Third, my contribution to the article does not solely focus on the issue of Eretz Israel/Palestine, it offers further information about the decision making of that era and its repercussions for the conflict in general. These issues are still widely underrepresented in Wikipedia.
I am aware of the fact that my contribution to the article is not yet perfectly cited and interlinked with other Wikipedia articles,
but my personal experience in editing Wiki-articles (history section of Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Club) has taught me that Wikipedia consists of the work of thousands of people who complement each others work.
In this spirit, I ask you to allow me to add a base for this article, so that others might add to it, instead of just deleting it and thus disclosing this information from others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maccabipage (talk • contribs) 13:50, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Do you really mean that, despite editing here for more than two years, you still do not know what an article talk page is? You find it by clicking the tab marked "Discussion" at the top of any page; and you are supposed to use it to discuss changes and improvements to the article
The problem with your edit was that it was both extremely long (it more than doubled the size of the article), and it was entirely unsourced. It appeared to advance a novel reading of history, without allowing other editors the chance to see the sources (if any) from which you derived this material. As such, it was treated as original research, which is not permitted here. You were blocked from editing because you repeatedly restored this material, despite objections and removal by several other editors, and you made no attempt to discuss the issue.
I suggest that, if you intend to continue editing, particularly in a controversial area such as the Palestine-Israel dispute, you take the time to study Wikipedia's "five pillars", and the links from that page to the site's guidelines. RolandR (talk)14:05, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
For your information, I edited a page 2 or 3 years ago. Maybe I made use of this function then, but I certainly do not remember it anymore.
The length of my addition is due to the fact that the original article is very short and lacks most of the vital information this Conference provides us with.
I am not playing games, and I expect the same from you.
I will make an effort to find more citations, but as I already mentioned, this is a team effort, and you know as well as I do, that many people add citations and searrch for new ones, as soon as a base is there.
Concluding, I now expect my addition not to be deleted, as I abide with all rules of Wikipedia and most importantly, act in its spirit.
News and notes: How Wikimedia affiliates are spending $8.4 million; PRISM scandal Late last year, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) awarded $8.4 million in donors' money to 11 Wikimedia entities, including the Wikimedia Foundation and 10 nationally defined chapters. Under this arrangement, these organisations are required to issue quarterly reports on how far they have progressed towards their declared programmatic and financial goals. The FDC has now announced that all 11 completed and submitted their reports by the 1 April deadline, and have responded to each.
Featured content: Mixing Bowl Interchange Seven articles, two lists, five pictures, and one topic were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia this week.
In the media: VisualEditor will "change world history" In an article published by the Huffington Post's United Kingdom edition, writer Thomas Church asserts that the new VisualEditor will change history, literally. It says that Wikipedia's mark-up language has been to its advantage, as most people didn't bother trying to learn it
Op-ed: The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons I've long thought that we should get rid of the Wikimedia Commons as we know it. Commons has evolved into a project with interests that compete with the needs of the primary users of Commons and the reason it was created. It's also understaffed, which results in poor curation, large administrative backlogs, and poor policy development.
Traffic report: Who holds the throne? Last week's most popular article list on the English Wikipedia was dominated by the massively popular TV series Game of Thrones, which claimed six slots in the top 25, including the top three. Its popularity was likely stoked by the most recent episode, The Rains of Castamere. Bollywood continued to increase its share of views as well, aided by the tragic suicide of star Nafisa Khan.
WikiProject report: Processing WikiProject Computing This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Computing. Started in October 2003, the project has grown to include 17 featured articles, 11 featured lists, 3 pieces of featured media, and 80 good articles.
Op-ed: Two responses to the 'Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons' Following last week's op-ed by Gigs ("The Tragedy of Wikipedia's Commons"), the Signpost is carrying two contrary opinions from MichaelMaggs, a bureaucrat on Wikimedia Commons, and Mattbuck, a British Commons administrator.
Traffic report: Most popular Wikipedia articles of the last week The season finale of Game of Thrones ensured that the epic high fantasy series would dominate the top 10 again last week; however, it was joined by Maurice Sendak and Man of Steel.
WikiProject report: The Volunteer State: WikiProject Tennessee This week, we visited WikiProject Tennessee, a project dedicate to the state at the geographic and cultural crossroads of the United States.
News and notes: Swedish Wikipedia's millionth article leads to protests; WMF elections—where are all the voters? With erysichton elaborata, the Swedish Wikipedia passed the one million article Rubicon this week. While this is a mostly symbolic achievement, serving as a convenient benchmark with which to gain publicity and attention in an increasingly statistical world, the particular method by which the Swedish site has passed the mark has garnered significant attention—and controversy.
Featured content: Cheaper by the dozen Eleven articles, twelve lists, and eleven pictures were promoted to 'featured' status on the English Wikipedia this week.
Technology report: May engineering report published The WMF's engineering report for May was published recently on the Wikimedia blog and on the MediaWiki wiki ("friendly" summary version), giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month.
Arbitration report: The Farmbrough amendment request—automation and arbitration enforcement Richard Farmbrough was set to have his day in court, but as events transpired, this was not to be so. On 25 March 2013, an accusation was made against Farmbrough at Arbitration Enforcement (AE), claiming that he violated the terms of an automated edit restriction. Within hours, Farmbrough had filed his own request with the arbitration committee, citing the newly filed AE request and claiming that the motion was being used "in an absurd way" in the filing of enforcement requests: "I have not made any edits that a sane person would consider automation."
Traffic report: Most-viewed articles of the week With most TV shows on hiatus for the summer, attention has turned to movies, celebrity and sports. The dramatic events at the 2013 Confederations Cup drew massive attention, as did summer blockbusters like Man of Steel and World War Z. But the most searched event of the week was the tragic and unexpected death of popular actor James Gandolfini on June 19.
Recent research: Most controversial Wikipedia topics, automatic detection of sockpuppets A comparative work by T. Yasseri., A. Spoerri, M. Graham and J. Kertész looks at the 100 most controversial topics in 10 language versions of Wikipedia, and tries to make sense of the similarities and differences in these lists.
News and notes: Election results released Less than three days after the close of voting, the volunteer election committee posted the results on Meta. The worldwide Wikimedia movement has elected three WMF trustees for two-year terms on the 10-seat Board: Samuel Klein (supported by 43.5% of voters), Phoebe Ayers (38.3%), and María Sefidari (35.6%). The new trustees will take their seats at a critical time for the movement: one of the first tasks in their terms will be to help the Board to find and approve the new executive director to take up the top job when Sue Gardner departs.
Featured content: Wikipedia in black + Adam Cuerden This week, the Signpost interviews Adam Cuerden, a Wikimedian who has been for years gathering featured pictures, and who constantly participates in what could be his favourite part of the project. Cuerden dedicates most of his time to scanning and restoring old, valuable illustrative works. He explains to us how the featured process works, its relation with other parts of the encyclopedia, and how pictures evolve before reaching featured status.
WikiProject report: WikiProject Fashion This week, we walked the runway with WikiProject Fashion. Started in March 2007, the project is home to 4 Featured Articles and 41 Good Articles. The project has a lengthy list of how you can help and a list of Article Alerts.
In the media: Jimmy Wales is not an Internet billionaire; a mass shooter's alleged Wikipedia editing Amy Chozick's profile of Jimmy Wales in the New York Times sparked significant controversy in international news outlets this week. Chozick's profile covered Wales's personal life, including his 12-year-old daughter, ex-wife, and current wife Kate Garvey, describing Wales himself as "a well-groomed version of a person who has been slumped over a computer drinking Yoo-hoo for hours." Chozick described his current role in Wikipedia as "Benevolent Dictator for Life", a statement which garnered conflict from all corners of the web, including from Wales, who responded to the piece as a whole with a lengthy talk page statement.
Featured content: Queen of France Four articles, four lists, and fifteen pictures were promoted to "featured" status on the English Wikipedia last week.
WikiProject report: Puppies! This week, the Signpost went to the kennel and interviewed WikiProject Dogs. The project has several featured and good articles, along with a large number of "Did you know" entries. We asked three project members about the challenges of creating, curating, and maintaining canine content in an increasingly dog-obsessed world.
News and notes: Wikipedia's medical collaborations gathering pace The key annual event in the Wikimedia calendar, Wikimania 2013, will be held in Hong Kong in just five weeks' time. Among the events will be a presentation by two people who are working to promote the development of medical content on Wikimedia projects. One is James Heilman of Wiki Project Med, a non-profit dedicated to making "clear, reliable, comprehensive, up-to-date educational resources and information in the biomedical and related social sciences freely available to all people in the language of their choice". The other is Lori Thicke, president of Translators Without Borders (TWB), the Connecticut-based organisation set up in 2010 to provide pro-bono translation services for humanitarian non-profits
Technology report: VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series The VisualEditor extension has gone live by default to registered users on the English Wikipedia, marking a huge milestone in a project that has taken the best part of a decade to reach fruition. The extension was previously described as "the biggest and most important change to our user experience we’ve ever undertaken" by the WMF team behind it.
Traffic report: Yahoo! crushes the competition ... in Wikipedia views The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.
Arbitration report: Tea Party movement reopened, new AUSC appointments Following a one-month period of moderated discussion, Tea Party movement has been reopened by the Committee. The proposed decisions are currently being voted upon. Race and politics remains suspended pending the return of User:Apostle12.
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