Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-11-01
Foundation's finances, geodata milestone, interim counsel, museum conference
Foundation's financial statements released
Last week, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that its audited financial statements for the 2009–10 fiscal year were available on the Foundation wiki. According to a Q&A, revenue increased from $8.7 million in 2008–09 to $16.6 million, with the "vast majority" coming from individual donations; and the cash balance including investments rose from $6.2 million to over $12.7 million. Expenses included $1,056,703 for Internet hosting, compared with $822,405 in 2008–09 – excluding donated services (by organizations such as Kennisnet), which were valued at $424,870 and $463,595, respectively (and other tech-related costs such as salaries and rents). The unaudited mid-year financial statements had been published in March, as mentioned in the Signpost, and the 2010–11 financial plan was published in July, see Signpost coverage: "Plans for major expansions of the WMF".
One million geocoordinates
Last week, the number of geographical coordinates on the English Wikipedia surpassed one million, in around 620,000 articles. At the same time, around 180,000 articles were marked as needing coordinates (which would correspond to a completion rate of 78% if no more geocodable articles were added). In September 2009, the milestone of half a million articles with geocoordinates had been reached (see Signpost coverage). In related news, links to display interactive OpenStreetMap maps within articles were recently enabled by default on the German and Norwegian (Bokmål/Rikmål) Wikipedias (to see an example, click "Karte" on the top right of de:Berlin), the fruit of a collaboration that had been begun last year, supported by the German Wikimedia chapter (see Signpost coverage).
Office hour: COI editing, interim general counsel
The log for the October 27 IRC office hour with Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia Foundation's executive director, has been posted. Gardner asked the participants a question about BLPs and COI editing, namely whether it was "true that 'editing your own article' has become somewhat less frowned-upon, over time?", which several of them denied. She explained that she was asking because Craig Newmark (member of the Foundation's advisory board) was considering adding information to the article about himself, and also mentioned an error in the article about herself. This was followed by a discussion of the estimate that "currently, there are 100K active editors" in the Foundation's Five-year targets (also discussed earlier and later on Foundation-l; the number is cited in the above mentioned financial statements, too).
Asked who the Foundation's interim general counsel was (after Mike Godwin's recent departure, see last week's "News and notes") and how to contact them, Gardner replied that "we have an interim GC lined up: a lawyer with Squires Sanders in DC. We also have a newly-minted lawyer who's worked with us in the past, who will be in the office supporting the more senior lawyer from Squires. They've both worked extensively with Mike, and he feels they'll be a good interim solution for us while we find a new GC", and that legal
wikimedia.org would remain the contact point for legal questions or problems.
Museum Computer Network conference
Liam Wyatt, Katie Filbert, and Lori Phillips, along with Richard McCoy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, attended the Museum Computer Network 2010 conference in Austin, Texas, October 28–30. Liam Wyatt gave a presentation on his experience as a "Wikipedian in Residence" at the British Museum. McCoy and Phillips talked about Wikipedia Saves Public Art, and Filbert led an unconference session to discuss collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution (cf. Signpost coverage).
A major theme discussed at the conference was how museums could make use of "e-volunteers", and in what ways they could recognize such volunteers. Wyatt explained that through Wikipedia, an e-volunteer program already exists. The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) launched its e-volunteer initiative at the conference, and McCoy and Phillips have posted a guide for volunteers to get started. Although the initiative is intended as a way to get new people involved in Wikipedia, current Wikipedians can also participate. E-volunteers for the IMA can utilize free admission to the museum and its wifi, along with access to its collection databases and reference library. At The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Phillips is also serving as "Wikipedian in Residence", and hosting events including a Backstage Pass event on Friday, November 5.
Throughout the conference, numerous museum representatives expressed interest in getting more involved with Wikipedia. In a blog post, Wyatt said that "there really really needs to be a Wikimedia USA chapter" or expansion of the New York City chapter, and there be an outreach coordinator working through the chapter to help manage relationships between institutions and Wikipedia.
News in brief
- Meta Main Page: A new Main page has been implemented for Meta. The redesign was initiated by Killiondude and was largely based on a Main Page design that MZMcBride wrote for strategywiki. There were also many other users involved in discussing and implementing the different aspects of the new main page.
- Swedish plagiarism: As reported on the blog of Wikimedia Sverige ([1],Google translation), the chair of the Swedish Wikimedia chapter has sent a letter to the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) and four of its members, complaining that they plagiarized text from the Swedish Wikipedia in a motion submitted to the parliament.
- Good Faith Collaboration review: Ragesoss has published a review of "Good Faith Collaboration", the recent book by Joseph Reagle about Wikipedia's culture (see also Signpost review and Reagle's response, and last week's "In the news").
Reader comments
Airplane construction with Wikipedia, lessons from the strategy project, logic over rhetoric
Kenyan man said to have used Wikipedia as principal source to build his own airplane
It was widely reported that a 42-year-old Kenyan man, Gabriel Nderitu, has built a full size aircraft, designed by himself, in his front yard. His claim that his principal source of information was Wikipedia received a lot of media mention - he was quoted as saying "I read up on the mechanics and science of flight on the internet, downloading about 2GB of information. Mostly I used Wikipedia – it gives you all the specs, that's the good thing". Mr Nderitu, an IT engineer, made the plane largely out of old car parts and scrap, including an engine from a Toyota Corolla. While the project has generated a lot of enthusiasm in Kenya, the plane has yet to fly, and the country's Civil Aviation Authority has served Nderitu with a letter ordering him to "refrain from further construction or development". See The Guardian, Time magazine, The Independent.
Foundation's strategic planning process as a model for companies?
An article titled "Can You Open-Source Your Strategy?" that appeared in the October issue of the Harvard Business Review looked back at the Wikimedia Foundation's Strategic Planning process, as a successful "crowdsourcing" experiment that offers "valuable insights for companies looking to revitalize their own strategy formulation processes". It was written by Barry Newstead (who was involved in the process as a consultant from the non-profit Bridgespan Group and is now the Foundation's Chief Global Development Officer) and Laura Lanzerotti. The article presented four lessons learned ("often the hard way"): To present ideas early to the crowd, because "too much polish" leads to simple pro/contra voting instead of insightful feedback; to "share the raw data" because this enables contributors to find new patterns in it; to allow sufficient time for feedback; and to "recognize when a crowd is just a crowd" ("Contributors can help on many strategy issues, but some—such as resource allocation trade-offs—benefit from C-suite engagement").
(See also earlier Signpost coverage: Sister project report: Strategic Planning update and Eugene Eric Kim (User:Eekim)'s guest article The challenges of strategic planning in a volunteer community)
Wikipedia's notability guidelines criticized as one-sided emphasis of logic over rhetoric
Wikipedia's practice of accepting only established knowledge was criticized in a recent editorial in the scholarly journal AI & Society - Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication, published by Springer Verlag (Gill, Karamjit S. (September 2010). "Beyond logic and rhetoric: the argumentative scientist". AI & Society. doi:10.1007/s00146-010-0301-7. ISSN 0951-5666.). It was prompted by the outcome of an AfD debate in February which had led to the deletion of the article "naturoid" about a concept that had been propagated by Massimo Negrotti (a professor at the University of Urbino and occasional contributor to the journal) for about two decades, but was found by the closing administrator to be "a neologism which has not (yet) achieved the notability required for an article" on the grounds that it hadn't received enough coverage outside Negrotti's own writings. AI & Society argued that "the argument that knowledge is accepted only if it is attested is a reductive view, and it seems to invalidate any future work that is theoretical, methodological or philosophical [...] If WP is an international depository of knowledge, then surely we could reasonably expect hospitality to new knowledge and understanding of the diversity of views in order to benefit from them." The editorial went further to frame the deletion as based on an over-emphasis of logic over rhetoric of knowledge:
| “ | Possibly we can see the conflict between Negrotti and WP to lie in the old division of rhetoric from knowledge or contrariness between logic and rhetoric. It could be said that Negrotti’s argument for inclusion of his article in WP is based on his affirmation of the dialectics of logic and rhetoric; logic of long-term notability of new knowledge, and rhetoric of hospitality to the diversity of knowledges. The argument of WP gatekeepers seems to be constrained by the logic of instrumental reason, with little scope of giving hospitality to rhetoric of the public sphere. | ” |
Briefly
- Wales visits India: Jimmy Wales visited India last week and gave a talk at a Mumbai meetup, generating new media coverage about the Wikimedia Foundation's plans to establish its first-ever presence outside of the USA, in India. See BBC, Hindustan Times, AFP, WA Today, and earlier Signpost coverage: September 27 ("India: Media speculation on country's future 'Wiki-capital'"), September 6, and August 30. News website Tech2 published a summary of Wales' talk along with a short interview. The location of the new office still hasn't been announced, and the job opening for its director was recently extended until October 29.
- Foreign deletions: In related news, Indian technology news website CIOL recently asked "Are foreigners deleting Wikipedia's India content?", quoting an Indian Wikipedia contributor who complained that non-Indians "edit or modify the submitted Indian content and articles as per their own knowledge and understanding. As they are based outside India they often alter the content or even go to the extremes of deletion", but conceded that "the content or articles doesn’t get deleted if there are references or sources mentioned."
Total edit count (blue) and edits per day - Wikipedia's contribution rates: A blog post titled "Rethinking Wikipedia contributions rates" offered some thoughts related to the Editor Trends Study recently begun by Diederik van Liere (the WMF's research consultant and a former collaborator of the post's author). In related news, ais523 last week posted a chart of the daily and total count on the English Wikipedia over time (similar to the charts provided by the WMF here and here, but obtained via a different method).
- Article about non-notability establishes notability: The article about Olga Diaz, a member of the city council of Escondido, California, was recreated last week after local newspaper North County Times had reported on its deletion as non-notable, thereby providing a reference to be cited in the recreated version.
Reader comments
Scoring with WikiProject Ice Hockey
- The newly formed WikiProject Multi-sport events seeks to improve Wikipedia's coverage of non-Olympic and non-Paralympic multi-sport events like the Commonwealth Games. They could use your help.
- WikiProject East Asia has just started and is looking for new members.
- Like to eat bacon? WikiProject Bacon is looking for people to help improve articles related to bacon.
This week, we took a look at WikiProject Ice Hockey. Today, the project is home to 33 featured articles, 91 featured lists, 83 good articles, and a large number of active members. We interviewed Resolute, Kaiser matias, Ravenswing, alaney2k, Leech44 (Mo Rock...Monstrous), GoodDay, Schmloof, and Grsz11.
Kaiser matias grew up in British Columbia and had "no choice but to follow the Vancouver Canucks." Resolute, whose grandfather played in the International Hockey League in the 1950s, was born and raised in Calgary and has "suffered with the Flames all my life." Ravenswing is from Boston and has been a season ticket holder for the Big, Bad Bruins, Springfield Indians/Falcons, and his alma mater Northeastern University Huskies. He has played, coached, and refereed hockey as well as worked as a print reporter, SIHR member, and broadcaster. Alaney2k was born in Toronto and is a fan of the Ottawa Senators, although he has sympathy for the home-town Leafs. He joined the project to improve coverage of the sport's history. Leech44 had an inordinate amount of free time when he began a new job and started reading articles to fill time. He began working on team rosters after noticing a difference in the quality of rosters for Canadian and US teams. He is a Vancouver Canucks supporter, despite being born and raised in Illinois. He explains, "it's a combination of Pavel Bure's highlight-friendly play, the fact that ESPN actually shows hockey, and Bill Wirtz's "brilliant" television policies regarding the Blackhawks. Oh, and trust me I've eaten a substantial amount of crow over the past few years." GoodDay has been a fan of the sport for more than 20 years and follows the Montreal Canadiens, "the oldest and most successful NHL franchise." Schmloof grew up in Vancouver and was "pretty much forced to support the Canucks, although I'm a fan of several other teams, such as the Minnesota Wild and Detroit Red Wings." He joined the project while living in Singapore, "which has a grand total of two (three?) ice rinks with terrible ice, and Wikipedia was my source to keep up with hockey stuff and player info." Grsz11 prefers to remain a mystery, but tends to focus on improving articles about each season.
The project is home to 33 featured articles, 91 featured lists, and 83 good articles. Have you contributed toward any of these articles? Are you involved in one of the ongoing good article nominations?
- Kaiser matias: I have contributed to seven featured articles and four good articles, all biography articles. My first FA was Joe Sakic in 2007, and my most recent was Art Ross in October. I currently have one good article nomination, Michael Grabner, the sixth Canuck first round draft pick I've worked on towards either FA or GA. I'm also working on a project to get the original twelve members of the Hockey Hall of Fame all to FA or GA status; currently sitting at four FA's and three GA's.
- Resolute: Nine FAs and 20 GAs related to hockey to my credit. My interests vary, as I've covered historical teams and players right up to contemporaries, seasons and tournaments.
- Ravenswing: A bunch of them, enough to buff up on my Triple Crown credentials. Beyond that, I don't count coup.
- alaney2k: I've worked on a couple of FAs and several GAs. I've been focused on creating articles on early hockey, season articles, etc. I do find the process to get to FA slow and extremely details-oriented. I'm happy to get articles to GA and improve the quantity of good articles. I'm working on getting the Bobby Orr article to GA right now. I want to help to get all Hall of Fame players articles to a good grade.
- Mo Rock...Monstrous: I have contributed one FL, recently contributed two GA and I have one more article at GAN that I hope will be promoted soon. However, my writing still needs work to get to any where near the level of some of the other writers we have around here.
- Schmloof: Nope, I'm more of a gnome, fixing links to disambiguation pages, spelling and grammar, etc.. I would like to get something promoted in good time, probably NHL 11 (which I haven't touched in a while, and I've noticed that it's been overrun with MOS errors), but a combination of laziness and school prevents me from doing as much as I want to.
- Grsz11: I edited 2007–08 Pittsburgh Penguins season throughout that season, and stayed with it all the way until it became the project's first article about a team season (we now have several). I did the same with 2008–09 Pittsburgh Penguins season, which is now at GAC.
How difficult is it to keep articles up-to-date as the 2010–11 NHL season continues?
- Kaiser matias: While I don't focus on current articles that much, I find that it isn't so difficult. We have a policy of not updating player stats until the end of the season to keep some order, and unregistered users are quick to update player and team articles when they are needed. For the most part we established users just need to keep things clean and up to standard, and remove the vandalism that can occur. however major events in the hockey calendar, including the trade deadline in March, the NHL Entry Draft in June, and the start of free agency on July 1 require a lot of attention as things can happen fast and often without reliable sources.
- Ravenswing: Pretty much what Kaiser said. What a bunch of the veteran editors do is watch every NHL article (come to that, I watch many of the minor league articles as well) to chop down on vandalism, but this really is the part of the project where the anon IPs carry much of the freight. The only real problem, I feel, is keeping the articles from being clogged with current affairs to the detriment of decades of history.
- alaney2k: I work on this. I've tried to make the standings and schedules templates easier to update and more straight-forward. The anon editors are good at keeping this up to date. I do find that this really varies by team. Teams in the US south don't get the editor coverage. I really think that this is indicative of interest in ice hockey in the region!
- Mo Rock...Monstrous: Anon users are very help full at updating stats, results and news stories. However, it becomes problematic when they fail to cite sources and the use of prose is almost non-existent with a lot of one line statements like this from the Doug Weight article "On August 31, 2010, Weight was given another one year deal with the New York Islanders." These statements tend to pile-up making articles much more list like. The team season articles have an article drive but with the acceptation of a few dedicated editors very little is added to them in terms of well constructed prose.
- GoodDay: The anon editors tend to have things updated, by the time I come online. Unfortunately, that includes the All-time statistics page, which we prefer not to be updated until the conclusion of the current NHL season.
- Schmloof: I don't mind at all if they're not up to date; I think it helps prevent recentism if they're actually done at the end of the season. Thus, I don't keep things up to date at all. That being said, it's really something like magic when I go to a page after an event and I see that anons have already kept it updated. I remember being really surprised when I started a table somewhere, left for a couple of hours, and came back to see the table complete and accurate. Amazing stuff.
Do you see any national differences in coverage of hockey on Wikipedia? If so, has there been any effort to bridge the gap?
- Kaiser matias: We have only had one issue, and a large one at that. The use of diacritics took the better part of three years for our project to come to a very uneasy consensus on. Things got heated at times between users, but that has been settled for a while now. Aside from that we all operate under the same viewpoints on nearly everything, so there is really no issues.
- Resolute: Russian vs. Canadian and Canadian vs. American nationalism has crept up at times, but for the most part we've remained harmonious as a project.
- Schmloof: I've noticed the European leagues don't get as much effort put into them as they should, likely as most of the best players are all playing in the NHL. I don't think there really has been a proactive effort to improve those articles. Since it's difficult enough to keep the NHL up to date, it may be asking a bit much for the other leagues, too. Hopefully natives of the respective countries will improve them, as we get zero news of European leagues here in North America.
- Grsz11: We've had some flagcruft issues, and I recall an Irish issue at List of NHL statistical leaders by country awhile back.
The project has many unfulfilled image requests, some dating back to 2007. How difficult is it to acquire appropriately-licensed images of players, arenas, and trophies? What are some easy ways ordinary Wikipedians can contribute images to the project's articles?
- Kaiser matias: Acquiring photos for the project has probably been the most difficult task we have. It can be a hassle for users to acquire useable photos while attending a match, especially if they are looking for a specific player. As a result we have relied on Flickr for a large amount of photos, benefiting from people who are generous enough to change their copyright license. Really the best way for anyone to help with images is to simply upload them to Commons and go from there.
- Resolute: I'm probably our biggest single image contributor at this point, with over 200 images of current players uploaded. Being a season ticket holder in Calgary, I've been able to leverage my access to many passable photographs. If we had a few more editors in similar situations - especially out east - we could probably keep active players well covered. Historical players are tough to get free images for though.
- Ravenswing: It's not only extremely difficult, we've had a lot of trouble in recent years from image-warriors who keep changing the goalposts as to what's permissible and what permissions are required.
- alaney2k: I've written to various professional offices and I don't think they want to give out photos to Wikipedia. I rarely get an answer. If someone at the NHL could change this around, I would bow down in the direction of the NHL office every day. Several times!
- Mo Rock...Monstrous: It is vary difficult to add photos. With out being able to attend a practice or a game with a good enough camera to capture decent photos were are at the mercy of Flickr. Even then it's difficult to find a photo of a player in question let alone persuade the owner to change the licensing to allow it's up load. Several of the players might be out there but unless someone is working on that particular article it becomes quite laborious to attempt to search through Flickr to find missing photos.
- Schmloof: Many of the photos we do have are of fairly poor quality, due to the the speed of the game, and the use of consumer cameras dozens of metres from the ice. The only good quality shots we seem to have are when players are at a faceoff or standing around waiting for a faceoff, which doesn't lend itself to great "in action" pictures.
WikiProject Ice Hockey oversees 10 task forces that cover several individual teams, two Scandinavian countries, college hockey, and junior hockey. Are you a member of any of these task forces? Is a broad scope or a specific scope better for building membership and maintaining activity?
- Kaiser matias: I'm a sometimes member of the Canucks task force, a group I helped form. A few years ago some members thought it would be beneficial for the project to create task forces and we went along with it for a while. However it soon became apparent to our project that we were a small enough community that it really wasn't necessary to divide our project like that. We are quite active on our project talk page, and everyone contributes on everything.
- Resolute: I'm something of a one-man taskforce for Calgary hockey, but for the most part all of the project members support all aspects of the game's coverage.
- Ravenswing: There was a nascent Boston Bruins task force I joined, but it started no projects, let alone completed any. I place greater reliance and have more faith in the energy and hard work of individual editors to work as they see fit than I do in grandiose projects.
- Mo Rock...Monstrous: I am a member of the Vancouver Canucks task force which in terms of recognized content is head and shoulders above the rest, but that's mainly due to have a couple of dynamite editors. I think that the editors hear are all fans of the game and don't necessarily focus on particular teams, which is better overall so you're not boxed in felling like you need to only work on specific articles.
- Schmloof: I'm a "member" of the Canucks task force, which essentially means that I'm a member of WikiProject Ice hockey and I like the Canucks. I think we're small enough that everyone just helps out wherever they can. In fact, I'm proposing right here that we remove the task forces, to help reduce talk page clutter.
How can a new contributor to WikiProject Ice Hockey help today?
- Kaiser matias: There are several different things that a new member could do. The simplest task would be to simply expand one of the thousands of stub articles, many of which are just a few lines about the subject. Like I previously mentioned, photos are needed for nearly every article. A larger project that recently started is the Hockey Mountain, a project to bring members of the Hockey Hall of Fame and other notable players to GA status or better. At 8% complet with about 400 players listed, its got a ways to go.
- Resolute: There are a lot of player articles in need of expansion, and season articles that need dedicated followers. As with most areas of Wikipedia these days, expansion and sourcing is a primary focus for us.
- Ravenswing: Oh, that's easy. Steer clear of creating new articles and expanding existing team articles, areas where recentism is a perpetual problem. Put all that energy into expanding player articles and team season articles. Most of the trivia and game-by-game recaps newcomers seek to put into the main articles are quite suitable for season articles. We're also weak on non-NHL coverage; there are hundreds of minor league, college and junior hockey articles that could stand TLC.
- alaney2k: I've got to agree that there are so many stubs that need attention. It's not in the spotlight, but it needs to be done. I spend a fair amount of time expanding stubs. I would ask that new editors dig into the history of hockey too. Today's players are somewhat over-represented in the big scheme of things. And the old history is pretty interesting too. Digging into Google news archives for old hockey stories is pretty interesting. I recently dug up that the Vezina Trophy's conditions for winning changed from the beginning of its awarding. I found out that several trophies were awarded -after- the dates that the Hockey Hall of Fame says they were awarded. I found out details about the 1919 Stanley Cup final that have been wrong in most accounts today.
- Mo Rock...Monstrous: Stubs are a big issue and expanding them would be great, there are over 1,500 unassessed articles that need assessing, season articles could use prose, player bios that have become a little "listy" with dates and events could be changed into proes, and any user who speaks French could translate the recognized content from French Wikipedia.
- Schmloof: Euroleagues! Anything you want there. Oh, and if you're a gamer, help me out with NHL 11, NHL Slapshot, NHL series, and NHL 2K11. Quality is certainly lacking here, and considering that NHL 11 is one of our most viewed pages, it'll help the project as a whole.
Anything else you'd like to add?
- Kaiser matias: Anyone interested in ice hockey is quite welcome to join. Our members are quite open to new users, and with such a large scope (25,000 articles and growing), we could use extra help in simply maintaining our status, let along growing it.
- Mo Rock...Monstrous: The project page is filled with helpful knowledgeable editors who I have found willing to help if asked.
- alaney2k: I wanted to add that through my research and editing on Wikipedia that I was able to find an error in the NHL Guide and Record Book and get it corrected. For a wiki geek, that was pretty cool. (And you would not believe how many errors there are at the Hockey Hall of Fame web site!) Jump on in, the water's fine. I suspect we're mainly a bunch of beer-swilling couch potatoes; but a good bunch.
- Schmloof: We're not big fans of gaudy infoboxes and huge navboxes (you should ask about our Derek Jeter image). Simplicity here is the key. Just edit anything you want! Hugs and KISSes.
- Ravenswing: Ultimately, you don't need our permission or approval. Grab an article and improve it!
Next week, we'll check out the biggest thing on the west coast. Until then, protect yourself from earthquakes by taking shelter in the archive.
Reader comments
Good-lookin' slugs and snails
New administrators
The Signpost welcomes three editors as our newest admins.
- Leyo (nom) has a Masters of Science degree and is a native German-speaker from Switzerland, with good French and basic Spanish. He has been active on the English Wikipedia for four years and has made more than 50,000 edits to an unusually wide range of Wikimedia projects. He is already an admin on Commons and the German Wikipedia, and being an admin on en.WP will enhance his ability in the interwiki management of image files.
- Elen of the Roads (nom) is an English local government officer, and has been with Wikipedia since 2008, editing fully since 2009. She is an active contributor to WP:Media copyright questions and AN/I, and also contributes to AFD, using her close knowledge of policy. She has a keen interest in Egyptology, but lists her most significant article contribution as rescuing an article on industrial mixing technology.
- Diannaa (nom), from Alberta in western Canada, has made more than 12,000 edits, nearly 60% of them in article space. She has helped to combat vandalism, although most of her admin interests, she says, will lie in managing content rather than editors, including our seriously backlogged area of copyright. Diannaa is an active member of the Guild of Copy Editors and has participated in three Backlog elimination drives (the next one of which starts soon). She is a member of the WikiProject Military History, and has helped several editors promote their articles and lists to good and featured status.
Featured articles
- ARA Moreno (nom), the first of two ships in the Rivadavia class, were a product of a naval arms race between the three most powerful South American countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (nominated by The ed17).
- Oryzomys peninsulae (nom), a little-known rice rat—it may be extinct, it may not; we are uncertain (Ucucha).
- Galaxy Science Fiction (nom), one of the most influential science fiction magazines ever published, which came into being almost accidentally, and had a chequered on-again off-again history of publication (Mike Christie).
- William Walton (nom), one of England's leading 20th century composers (Tim riley).
- Art Ross (nom), a Canadian ice hockey defenceman and executive from 1905 until 1954. Regarded by his peers as one of the best defenders of his era (Kaiser matias).
- Pedro II of Brazil (nom) (1825–91), the second and last ruler of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for 58 years (Lecen and Astynax).
- Killer7 (nom), an action-adventure video game released in 2005, for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 (Axem Titanium).
- Trocaz Pigeon (nom), "just an odd wood pigeon really", says nominator Jimfbleak, "the third in a series of Madeiran endemic birds"
- December 1964 South Vietnamese coup (nom), one of half a dozen changes and rearrangements of government in South Vietnam in 1964, full of deception and intrigue (YellowMonkey). (picture at right)
Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Hurricanehink to select the best of the week.
| “ | My ideal featured article is one that the kids in high school can read for their projects, and hopefully that they'll enjoy too. I think the entire batch this week passed that test, but one stood out in particular. My choice of the week is the December 1964 South Vietnamese coup, since high school kids might well come across that in their curricula. I found the lede very engaging, which I think is the most important aspect of a featured article. Parts of it seemed like they came straight from a movie, but lo and behold it happened. The rest of the featured articles were a varied bunch. ARA Moreno reminded me of the project I'm usually in (the hurricane folks). Oryzomys peninsulae is an example why Wikipedia is great, since it has such a great account on a species that may no longer exist and which wasn't even considered its own species for some time. I also enjoyed William Walton, since I am a musician in real life, even though I try and keep my lives separate! All in all, a good week for FA promotions—a good sign that Wikipedia is not slowing down. | ” |
Three featured articles were delisted:
Featured lists
Four lists were promoted. These will be considered for Choice of the week in a later edition.
- Ciara discography (nom) (nominated by Candyo32)
- Counties of Romania (nom) (Nergaal)
- Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album (nom) (Another Believer)
- 1984 Winter Olympics medal table (nom) (Parutakupiu)
Featured topics
One topic was promoted:
- Rivadavia class battleships (nom), with two featured articles and one good article. This was a two-ship group of battleships designed by the American Fore River Shipbuilding Company for the Argentine Navy and in commission 1914–56.
Two featured topics were delisted:
- The Orange Box, (loss of and failure to regain article status).
- Half-Life 2 titles, (loss of and failure to regain article status).
Featured pictures
- Pulmonata (nom), an illustrated collage of members of the pulmonates, an informal group of snails and slugs that includes many land and freshwater families, and several marine families; the nomination passed after clarification of its encyclopedic value (created by H. Morin; restoration by Citron).
- IJN Yamato schematic (nom), a schematic of the Japanese battleship Yamato in her final configuration on 7 April 1945 (Alexpl).
- Slate pencil urchin (nom), a sea urchin that inhabits the littoral regions of the Atlantic Ocean, probably "traveling over the hard corals and not feeding on them", says creator Nick Hobgood.
- Branched murex (nom), a predatory sea snail of the murex family, an economically important species in the Indo-West Pacific. The compound image shows the characteristics: a short spire, slightly inflated body whorl, moderately long siphonal canal, and striking leaf-like ornamentations (created by H. Zell).
- John Reynold's death (nom), the career US Army officer (1820–63) who died almost instantly after being shot in the back of the head or neck and falling from his horse on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. (Alfred Rudolph Waud, restoration by Jujutacular and Papa Lima Whiskey, including slightly more contrast and less yellowing on the advice of reviewers; from the Library of Congress).
Choice of the week. Chick Bowen, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost:
- "This week saw the promotion of several excellent images demonstrating the remarkable range of our featured pictures. Two historical prints and two digital photographs were joined by an exceptionally detailed and historically precise original drawing. Had the lively underwater photography of Nick Hobgood not been recognized in this space two weeks ago, I might well have chosen his marvelous candid shot of a most peculiar creature in motion, but equally impressive is H. Zell's composite image of a sea snail shell, taken from multiple angles. The precise focus and large depth of field show the possibilities of digital macro photography, revealing complex textures that almost give a sense of tactility."
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Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
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Arb resignation during plagiarism discussion; election RfC closing in 2 days
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving none open.
Arbitrator resigns
Yesterday, after Rlevse blanked his user page and put up a "retired" tag, with an edit summary that said "you guys want it you got it", his name was removed from the list of current members of the Arbitration Committee.
Rlevse retired while copyright and plagiarism concerns were being examined at an administrators' noticeboard discussion. On behalf of Rlevse, arbitrator SirFozzie confirmed that Rlevse has scrambled his passwords in addition to turning in his CheckUser, Oversight and ArbCom permissions. It is expected that his vacant position will be filled by one of the successful candidates of this year's ArbCom elections.
- "Today's featured article" pulled from main page
The copyright and plagiarism concerns were about DYK articles by other editors, and after 3 days had come to extend to Sunday's featured article, Grace Sherwood (on a historical witch-hunt, in accordance with the Halloween theme), which had been co-authored and nominated for FA by Rlevse. Not long after the article had appeared on the main page, the first concern about possible plagiarism from a USA Today article was voiced by an anonymous editor. After 3 minutes, the concern was dismissed by Rlevse, and another 7 minutes later, the IP was blocked for "block evasion" by a checkuser. However, further investigation found that an edit by Rlevse in September had (according to a summary by Hans Adler)
| “ | No less than 8 consecutive sentences plagiarised (and in most cases obviously copied) from a passage consisting of 9 consecutive sentences in a single source, in the same order. Only a minimal amount of added information. The only source given for this passage is a website where the text did not originate. |
” |
(The third concern does not seem to apply to subsequent article versions, as Rlevse had corrected the reference 27 minutes later in the following edit. And in one of his last comments, 7 minutes before his retirement, he defended himself against the plagiarism concerns by stating that the "passage is marked with a ref".)
Raul654, the Featured Article Director, was alerted of these concerns at 11:15 (UTC), and at 12:28 (UTC), replaced the article, after it had spent more than twelve hours on the main page.
A concern was also raised that Rlevse was making unseemly responses (examples: [2] [3] [4]).
Rlevse was contacted for this story, but declined to comment.
- Other questions and allegations
Several other questions and allegations were raised in relation to plagiarism and copyright violations. It was asked whether Wikipedia should avoid using the present form of the DYK process, and instead, adopt different incentives. Arbitrator Risker alleged that Wikipedia’s FAC process is at fault. Other editors stated that editors were responsible for what they write, and that the process isn’t to blame for the issues. Some users discussed the differences between plagiarism, copyright violations and close paraphrasing. At the time of writing, the discussion continues at the noticeboard.
See also last year's Signpost dispatch on plagiarism.
RfC on ArbCom election voting procedure
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure is a request for comment: what procedure should the Community use this year to elect the 2011 Arbitration Committee? The Signpost reminds its readers that the RfC is likely to close in two days.
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Foundation office switches to closed source, secure browsing, brief news
Wikimedia Foundation office switching to Google Apps
Concerns were raised on the Foundation-l mailing list this week by several Wikipedians when it became known that the Office IT team of the Wikimedia Foundation had decided to start using Google Apps. Google Apps is a web-based office suite that includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs and other productivity tools.
User MZMcBride pointed out the software was closed source (in contrast to the open source nature of the MediaWiki software) and wondered if there was any connection to the $2 million grant that Google had given to Wikimedia. The privacy track record of Google was also under question, with Risker noting that "Google's greatest weakness is in the privacy sector. Anyone remember when they turned on Buzz and suddenly there was all kinds of personal information made available because they linked people's multiple accounts? Well, the same thing holds for all their other applications."
Jon Davis, the office IT employee who is running the migration, pointed out the benefits of online office tools for a group of people often on the road, the quality of the software and its usage of open standards. He added that the Foundation is a commercial user of the software and does not receive any benefits for its usage from Google. Responding to privacy concerns, he replied that:
| “ | The EULA for Google App[s] is slightly different than the normal one. We continue to own our data and Google doesn't. We have had the EULA reviewed by legal counsel, as well as our in-house tech staff, and received the opinion that the privacy provisions were strong enough to meet our needs. | ” |
The Foundation's Deputy Director Erik Möller emphasized that its "general policy is to be as open on internal tools as reasonably possible", but that unfortunately the open source Mozilla Thunderbird email client didn't meet all its needs. "We're reluctantly switching to GMail as the standard email solution, but we'd love to switch to an open solution in future".
Browsing securely
Last week's release of the Firefox extension Firesheep prompted discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list about the lack of default secure browsing for Wikimedia websites. Firesheep is a utility that simplifies hijacking the Twitter and Facebook accounts of other users when they use insecure Wi-Fi networks. Although not included in Firesheep, Wikipedia is vulnerable to the same problem unless people make use of the secure server when logging in to Foundation sites. Questions were raised regarding switching all login requests to such secure connections, but Foundation contractor Roan Kattouw quickly pointed out that to protect connections against this problem, all traffic (and not just all login requests) would have to make use of secure connections. On this point, there were many concerns about the hardware cost of switching all traffic to secure connections, but Conrad Irwin pointed out:
| “ | There is no real massive load caused by https [using the secure server] at runtime. There is however a significant chink of developer and sys[tem] admin time needed to implement this and make it work. | ” |
Developer Ashar Voultoiz subsequently added an option to the interface of the MediaWiki software to simplify use of a secure server for logging in. The option will benefit other users of the software who do have the resources to provide a secure browsing environment. In the meantime, editors and especially administrators of the Foundation's websites are encouraged to make use of the secure server whenever they are logging in from open Wi-Fi networks and other shared internet connections, such as in libraries.
In August, The Signpost covered a study of the security of large websites, in which Wikipedia received a 4 out of 10 score on their current password practices.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
- JeLuF has more than doubled the number of servers which work on the job queue (low priority tasks handled during off-peak times, such as category listing updates). It previously stood at about a million "jobs" on the English Wikipedia and is now zero on most wikis and under 200,000 on the English Wikipedia.
- MediaWiki will now use the RSD protocol to announce its API capabilities in a more machine-understandable format (bug #25648).
- It was announced that the speed of Pending Changes has improved and that work is ongoing regarding user interface improvement (wikitech-l mailing list).
- Developer Chad Horohoe announced the official release of a new installer for the MediaWiki software, making it a lot easier for third parties to install and configure their own wiki (wikitech-l mailing list). It had been in the pipeline for a number of months, and a key target feature for the next release of the software.
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